Living wholly upon vegetables without culinary preparation, our man of nature could never experience thirst. Even intense heat does not appear to excite thirst, unless it be upon bodies injured by a depraved and unnatural diet. He would have no call therefore to the use of liquids, further than as they are contained in the juices of the fruits and esculent plants which he would eat. Drinking would be needless; it is an action which does not appear suited to the natural organization of man after the infant state.

Finally, it is highly probable that man under these circumstances, considered as a mere animal, would arrive at a high degree of physical perfection; that he would have a body duly formed, and a robust frame; great vigor, great activity, and uninterrupted health. I cannot think, however, that this state is comparable to the benefits of civilization; such an opinion is an extravagance which can be maintained only from the love of paradox and singularity. This fancied state of nature excludes the very notion of morality, and admits not of intellectual improvement, principles which form the most proud distinction of the human race.

Though this picture is in a good measure the creature of the imagination, there having been found no tribes of men who depend for their subsistence solely upon their physical powers, yet solitary examples have not been unfrequent in which individuals have really subsisted by no other means. Such are the wild men, the homines sylvestres of Linnæus, who have been found in the forests, even in Europe. In intellect these did not appear to be superior to the animals, their associates; which must have resulted from having been secluded from all converse with their species. But they were in perfect health, and possessed incredible activity. They could have used nothing but fresh vegetable food; this was the sort of food of which they were the fondest; the want of it seems to have been the principal object of their regret, and the motive for attempting to return to their accustomed mode of life, as they constantly did.

If men ever lived nearly in the manner I have described, it is obvious that this condition could not continue. Man is by nature gregarious; and has naturally both the will and the power of communicating his ideas by the inflections of his voice. I have heard a child of three months old call for the breast by a distinct and peculiar note. Knowledge must therefore spring up and increase. Arts would be invented, and man would call his ingenuity in aid of his physical force. The pride of reason

ror, compassion, and aversion. In a warm climate, putrefaction succeeding immediately to dissolution, dead flesh must speedily diffuse an offensive odor, and occasion insuperable loathing and disgust.

Living wholly upon vegetables without culinary preparation, our man of nature could never experience thirst. Even intense heat does not appear to excite thirst, unless it be upon bodies injured by a depraved and unnatural diet. He would have no call therefore to the use of liquids, further than as they are contained in the juices of the fruits and esculent plants which he would eat. Drinking would be needless; it is an action which does not appear suited to the natural organization of man after the infant state.

Finally, it is highly probable that man under these circumstances, considered as a mere animal, would arrive at a high degree of physical perfection; that he would have a body duly formed, and a robust frame; great vigor, great activity, and uninterrupted health. I cannot think, however, that this state is comparable to the benefits of civilization; such an opinion is an extravagance which can be maintained only from the love of paradox and singularity. This fancied state of nature excludes the very notion of morality, and admits not of intellectual improvement, principles which form the most proud distinction of the human race.

Though this picture is in a good measure the creature of the imagination, there having been found no tribes of men who depend for their subsistence solely upon their physical powers, yet solitary examples have not been unfrequent in which individuals have really subsisted by no other means. Such are the wild men, the homines sylvestres of Linnæus, who have been found in the forests, even in Europe. In intellect these did not appear to be superior to the animals, their associates; which must have resulted from having been secluded from all converse with their species. But they were in perfect health, and possessed incredible activity. They could have used nothing but fresh vegetable food; this was the sort of food of which they were the fondest; the want of it seems to have been the principal object of their regret, and the motive for attempting to return to their accustomed mode of life, as they constantly did.

If men ever lived nearly in the manner I have described, it is obvious that this condition could not continue. Man is by nature gregarious; and has naturally both the will and the power of communicating his ideas by the inflections of his voice.

I have heard a child of three months old call for the breast by a distinct and peculiar note. Knowledge must therefore spring up and increase. Arts would be invented, and man would call his ingenuity in aid of his physical force. The pride of reason and the wantonness of power would extend his dominion, engender artificial wants, and make him the enemy and the tyrant of his more feeble and less crafty companions. No society of men has been observed in which the procuring and preparation of food has not been a work of some degree of skill and ingenuity. The savage, the pastoral, and the agricultural states comprehend the principal forms of society under which men are found to live.

The energies of the savage are almost wholly absorbed in the search of food; the chase, and such vegetables as grow spontaneously being his sole dependence. The materials which support life being very scanty, population must be proportionally limited; and war seems necessary to secure to him the undivided possession of his precarious means of subsistence. His mind is congenial to his situation; the hostile and furious passions have uncontrolled possession of his soul; he delights in the infliction of wounds and death; he is a stranger to remorse, to compassion, and to sympathy; he knows not the charms of benevolence; even love in his obdurate bosom is but a transient spark. This state is, by those who have not very definite ideas of things, confounded with the imaginary state of nature; and some have concluded, from the vices of the savage state, that man is naturally cruel, ferocious, and malevolent. But this state is totally distinct from what must be supposed to be the state of nature. It is one in which instinct is the most completely annihilated, and reason is the most feeble. The qualities of the savage are the direct result of situation and mode of life. If the proper nature of man is to be improvable without limit, by the force of intellect, the condition of the savage, so far from being natural, is that which recedes the farthest from the state of nature.

The period of individual existence appears in this state to be short. So many are cut off by violence (for their wars are indiscriminate massacres, in which neither age nor sex are spared), that it is impossible to conjecture what proportion would reach old age. But we are assured by a faithful observer of the northern tribes, that among them a woman is old and wrinkled at thirty.

By the simple arts of fencing in the land, and preserving a portion of the natural herbage for winter fodder, man became

enabled to domesticate some tribes of animals. By a regular

supply of food, the number of these animals is greatly increased, so that they form a portion of the artificial population of cultivated countries. Over these tribes, he has assumed despotic power; he uses their labor, and applies both their milk and their flesh to his own sustenance. Man then became a shepherd, and by this transition he very much improved his condition. Food being more abundant, population increased; and from an increased sense of security, manners would become less ferocious. Still civilization would be very imperfect. All the hordes of barbarians, who have desolated kingdoms andsubverted empires, were pastoral tribes, drawing their chief subsistence from their flocks and herds.

Nor is it certain that by giving life to these new tribes of animals, man has conferred upon them any real blessing. One fact alone may make us hesitate on this subject. It appears impossible to keep the domestic animals in a state of subjection. without mutilating the males, excepting a few who are preserved for the purpose of propagation. It may fairly be inquired whether this shocking outrage on the common rights of nature, this cutting asunder of the link which connects the individual with his common species, does not more than counter- . balance all the pleasures which any being may be supposed to derive from the mere enjoyment of animal life.

The cultivation of the earth, and the direct application of its various productions to human subsistence, seems to be the limit of improvement in the arts essential to the support of life. By the exercise of this beneficial art, myriads of human beings are called into life who could otherwise have never existed. By its introduction, a great revolution was commenced in the relations of neighboring communities. The cultivator being directly interested in the preservation of public tranquillity, and the causes which fostered hostility and rancor being removed, nations became disposed to suspend their animosities, and rather to contribute to the promotion of their mutual welfare, which became to all a common source of prosperity. Internal order became, too, as necessary as external security. Thus, peace and the empire of the law would succeed to strife, violence, and anarchy. It seems no visionary or romantic speculation to conjecture that if all mankind confined themselves for their support to the productions supplied by the culture of the earth, war, with its attendant misery and horrors, might cease to be one of the scourges of the human race.

Nor are the effects of agriculture less favorable to private

happiness than to public prosperity. Probably there is not one of the real wants of life which may not be supplied directly from the soil: food, clothing, light, heat, the materials of houses, and the instruments needful for their construction. By its means, not only is population increased to an indefinite extent, but the happiness of each individual is greatly augmented. It multiplies enjoyments by presenting to the organs an infinite variety of new and agreeable impressions, which are of themselves, to an unvitiated palate, abundantly sufficient for the gratifications of sense. Indeed, every taste, that is truly exquisite, is afforded by the vegetable kingdom. In a wretched state of perversion must be the digesting organs and palate of the man who has lost his relish for these pure, simple, and innocent delights. Agriculture disseminates man over the surface of the soil; it diffuses health, prosperity, joy, society, benevolence; from it spring all the charities of life, and it makes a common family of the whole human race. If those who confine themselves to its precious gifts cannot, without other precautions, escape diseases, these are at least more mild in their form, and more slow in their progress; longevity is promoted, the final stroke is received with tranquillity, and death is disarmed of its terrors.

The primeval command of the Deity to our first parents was, "Subdue the earth.” The labors of agriculture fulfill this first command, and men, in their providing for their own necessities, pay the homage of obedience to the divine will. The reflecting mind, upon contemplating the strict connection between the exercise of this art, and the well-being of human society, can hardly abstain from the inquiry, whether man can perform any act of religion more grateful to the Author of his existence.

We find, by looking on things as they really are, that in almost all societies of men, which have attained any tolerable degree of civilization, in a certain degree the arts of all the different stages of society continue to be practiced. Men hunt and fish, and live partly upon the produce, be it of their pleasure or their toil. They keep domestic animals, and they till the earth. Thus, in fact, the manners of savage, of pastoral, and agricultural life are blended together. And in the progress of the arts it has so happened that the things which, in a rude state of society, were the most plentiful, become the most scanty; and, inversely, things which could hardly be procured in the first stages of society became gradually highly abun.dant, and of little relative value.

Thus, in the rude beginnings of human society, the flesh of