The theory of moral sentiments: By Adam Smith, ...

they call the song of death, a song which he is to sing when he has fallen into the hands of his enemies, and is expiring under the tor|tures which they inflict upon him. It con|sists of insults upon his tormentors, and ex|presses the highest contempt of death and pain. He sings this song upon all extraordinary oc|casions, when he goes out to war, when he meets his enemies in the field, or whenever he has a mind to show that he has familiarised his imagination, to the most dreadful misfor|tunes, and that no human event can daunt his resolution, or alter his purpose. The same contempt of death and torture prevails among all other savage nations. There is not a negro from the coast of Africa who does not, in this respect, possess a degree of mag|nanimity which the soul of his sordid master is scarce capable of conceiving. Fortune never exerted more cruelly her empire over mankind, than when she subjected those na|tions of heroes to the refuse of the jails of Europe, to wretches who possess the virtues neither of the countries which they come from, nor of those which they go to, and whose levity, brutality and baseness, so justly expose them to the contempt of the van|quished.