I. B two grand sources of invention. Art is natural to LETTER mang. He can find his happiness and accommodation in any condition. But they who have contemplated him in every point of view, will be at no loss to determine, in what state he attaineth the perfection of his chaThat state which affords the fullest exercise to his intellectual faculties, without injury to his corporeal powers, must be found in cultivated society; in a com racter. 9. This was the general maxim of all the ancient philosophers, except those of the sect of Epicurus; but more especially of the Platonists. And an enlightened modern philosopher (lord Shaftesbury) who wrote as early as the beginning of the present century, when savage life was less perfectly known than at present, has admirably refuted and ridiculed the idea, "That mankind ever lived in a state, "where they were unacquainted with the use of speech, the more ne"cessary arts, or strangers to social affection." Without belying ' nature,' observes he, and contradicting what is evident from na tural history, fact, and the natural course of things, it is impossible ♦ to admit this ill-natured proposition. For if Providence, not chance, gave MAN his being, he must have been at first, nearly what we now find him. But let us suppose him to have sprung, as the old 'poets feigned, from a bigbellied oak; and, at first, to have had little ⚫form, and no more life than the sensitive plant; that, by degrees, the members of this fortuitous birth were displayed, and the organs ' of sense began to unfold themselves; that here sprang an eur, there 'peeped an eye! Pelike, a tail too came in company! for what super fluities Nature may have been charged with, at first, is difficult to • determine! They dropt off, however, it seems, in time; and happily ་་ have left things, at last, in a good posture: and, to a wonder! just as they should be. This is surely the lowest view of the origin of humankind!' adds he. But granting it to have been such as I have described it, and as ' a certain philosopher would needs have it, yet will our conclusion be the same. In a word, if generation be natural; if affection to, ' and the care of, offspring, be natural, it follows,' "That society must also be natural to mankind; and that out of society and com"munity, MAN never did, nor ever can subsist." And can we allow 'this social part to man, and go no farther? Is it possible he should 'pair, and live in fellowship with his partner and offspring, and re'main still wholly speechless, and without those ARTS of storing, building, and other economy, as natural surely, to him, as to the 'beaver, the ant, or the bee.' Shaftesbury's Characteristics, vol ii. Moralists, part. ii, sect. iv. VOL. I. munity PART I. munity polished but not corrupted, and pressing for. ward in the career of military fame, policy, and arts. Hence the sage remark of Aristotle :/"We are to judge "of man in his state of advancement, not in that of ignorance or barbarity; a progress in knowledge and "civility being natural to him"," 66 Such, according to the accounts of the most judicious travellers, and the observations of the most profound philosophers, is the natural or rude state of man in all countries, and such his advances toward refinement. But these advances are very different in different regions of the earth. In northern countries, where the soil is rugged, the climate severe, and the spontaneous productions of the earth, fit for the support of human life, few, and of small value, the progress of society is slow. Hunting is there long the sole employment of man, and his principal means of subsistence. He feeds upon the flesh, and clothes himself with the skins of wild animals". But in southern latitudes, where the earth is more bountiful, the soil more susceptible of culture, and the use of animal food less necessary, the savage state is of shorter continuance. Little inclined, in such climates, to active exertions, mankind soon relinquish the pursuit of wild beasts, or cease to consider the chace as their chief occupation. They early acquire the art of taming and rearing the more docile and useful animals, and of cultivating the most nutritive vegetable productions". 10. Aristot. Polit. lib. i. cap. ii. 11. Hist. Gen. des Voyages, passim, et auct. cit. In 12. I am not ignorant, that the passion for hunting has been represented as so strong in the human species, that men never betake themselves to the taming or rearing of animals, until the wild breed becomes I. In proportion as food becomes more plentiful men LETTER are enabled to indulge more freely the appetite for society. They live together in larger bodies. Towns and cities are built. Private property in land is ascertained, and placed under the guardianship of laws". Agriculture is prosecuted; metals are discovered, and mines worked. Genius is called forth by emulation, and arts and sciences are invented. The political union among the members of the same community, is ren becomes too scarce to furnish them with food; and their aversion against labour so great, that they do not apply themselves to agriculture, while they can find sufficient room to pasture their herds and flocks. (See lord Kaims's Sketches of the History of Man, book i. passim.) But this reasoning, founded on the practice of the NorthAmerican savages and Asiatic Tartars, though plausible in theory, is contradicted by facts; and, therefore, cannot be of universal ap. plication; because unsupported by general observation or experience, in the history of ancient or modern nations, inhabiting the milder climates of the earth. Such of the ancient Scythian tribes as had seized upon fertile districts, cultivated the ground; and several of them had attained, by these means, to a considerable degree of civility; while those tribes, less fortunately situated, were utterly rude and barbarous. (Herodot. lib. iv. passim.) The same observation may be extended to some North-American tribes, on the banks of the Ohio, Missisippi, &c. and to every people inhabiting such districts, over the face of the globe. See Hist. Gen. des Voyages, passim. 13. This may be considered as the first great stage in the progress of civil society: the advance from hunting to herding, or even from berding to rude agriculture, such as is found among pasturing nations, being comparatively small. For while men pasture their cattle, or cultivate the ground in commm, their industry is languid, and the product of their flocks and fields scanty. Personal property, in land, and the prospect of reaping exclusively, the fruits of his labour, can alone give activity and perseverance to the labours of the husbandman, or fertility to the earth. Hence the attention of ancient legislators to the preservation of land-marks; and the vengeance, both human and divine, that was denounced against such as should remove them. They considered the division of lands, which gave birth to jurisprudence, as the parent of civil order; in making each man the guardian of his own possessions, and the magistrate the guardian of all, by the regulations which it made necessary. See Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscript. tom. i. et auct. cit. (Edit. Paris, 1736), p. 50, et seq. dered PART. I. dered more close, by an apprehension of danger from abroad; and the intercourse between them more general, from a sense of mutual conveniency. Hence pa triotism and internal traffic, the two great sources of national happiness and prosperity. Men acquire a strong affection for their native coun try, and for their fellow-citizens, soon after the division of lands; in consequence of their common struggles to defend their cultivated possessions against the ravages of barbarous and hostile neighbours. An unlimited exchange of commodities, originating in a desire of mutual accommodation, takes place between the people of the same state; and that exchange quickens industry, gives birth to new arts, and calls forth all the ingenuity of man, in order to improve the fashion or fabric of the articles of barter. A general instrument of exchange, under the name of money, is invented: and commercial transactions being thus rendered more easy and expeditious, trade is extended from the members of a particular community to those of other states, Nations, like individuals, mutually supply each other's wants, and the social system is gradually perfected, Conformable to this view of the natural progress of society, we find Assyria and Egypt, countries abounding in spontaneous productions proper for the food of man, and of easy culture, more early populous and civilized than any other regions intimately known to the ancient inhabitants of our division of the earth. India and China, favoured with similar advantages, boast as old an acquaintance with the arts of civil life. And the kingdoms of Mexico and Peru, in the new world, owed their superiority in population and improvement over the other American districts, at the time of their discovery, also to soil and climate. But America, perhaps, had not emerged from the ocean at the 1. the period of which I speak. India had little, and LETTER The Assyrians, who possessed the fertile banks of the Euphrates and Tigris, and the fat and extensive plain between these two rivers, anciently known by the name of Mesopotamia, had many inducements to indulge the social principle, independent of all ideas of mutual safety and support. If nature denied them the olive, the fig, and the vine, she had bountifully bestowed on them the palm-tree"; which includes most of the virtues of those choice fruits, beside many others peculiar to itself's. And to that precious gift was added a soft and rich soil, that rewarded the labours of the husbandman with abundant crops of wheat, barley, and other kinds of grain-with the incredible increase of two, and even of three hundred fold". The 14. Herodot. lib. i. cap. cxciii. Strabo, lib. xvi. p. 742, Edit. Lu tet. Paris, typis Regiis, 1620. Pliny, Hist. Nat. lib. xiii. cap. iv. 15. Id. ibid. et Kämpfer, Amanitat. Exotica, fascicul. iv. The inhabitants of Assyria celebrated, in songs, the three hundred and sixty virtues of the palm-tree. Strabo, lib. xvi. p. 742. 16. Strabo, lib. xvi. p. 740. 17. Herodot. lib. i. cap. cxciii. Theophrast. Hist. Plantar. lib. viii. cap. vii. Strabo, lib. xvi. p. 742, For that extraordinary fertility. Assyria was partly indebted, in its most cultivated state, to artificial canals, that conveyed the waters of the Euphrates into the channel of the Tigris; and which, intersecting the plain of Mesopotamia, in various directions, by means of cross-cuts, afforded a constant supply of moisture to the fields, during the absence of rain. (Herodot. et Strabo, ubi sup.) Nor was this the only purpose these canals served: they prevented the lands from being deluged by the overflowing of the Euphrates; which was annually swelled, in the beginning of summer, by the melting of snows on the mountains of Armenia. (Strabo, lib. xvi. p. 740.) They served also to facilitate commercial intercourse, some of them being navigable. (Id. Ibid.) The confining of rivers within their banks, and draining off stagnat |