50 MAMMALIA. 



families continue to preserve with their parents those tender rela- 

 tions to which they have so long been accustomed. This disposi- 

 tion to mutual assistance multiplies to an almost unlimited extent 

 those advantages previously derived by insulated man from his in- 

 telligence; it has assisted him to tame or repulse other animals, to 

 defend himself from the effects of climate, and thus enabled him to 

 cover the earth with his species. 



In other respects, man appears to possess nothing resembling in- 

 stinct, no regular habit of industry produced by innate ideas; his 

 knowledge is the result of his sensations and of his observation, or 

 of those of his predecessors. Transmitted by speech, increased by 

 meditation, and applied to his necessities and his enjoyments, they 

 have originated all the arts of life. Language and letters, by pre- 

 serving acquired knowledge, are a source of indefinite perfection to 

 his species. It is thus he has acquired ideas, and made all nature 

 contribute to his wants. 



There are very different degrees of development, however, in man. 

 The first hordes, compelled to live by fishing and hunting, or on 

 wild fruits, and being obliged to devote all their time to search for 

 the means of subsistence, and not being able to multiply greatly, 

 because that would have destroyed the game, advanced but slowly. 

 Their arts were limited to the construction of huts and canoes, to 

 covering themselves with skins and the fabrication of arrows and 

 nets. They observed such stars only as directed them in their jour- 

 neys, and some few natural objects whose properties were of use to 

 them. They domesticated the Dog, simply because he had a natu- 

 ral inclination for their own kind of life. When they had succeeded 

 in taming the herbivorous animals, they found in the possession of 

 numerous flocks a never failing source of subsistence, and also some 

 leisure, which they employed in extending the sphere of their ac- 

 quirements. Some industry was then employed in the construction 

 of dwellings and the making of clothes: the idea of property was 

 admitted, and consequently that of barter, as well as wealth and 

 difference of conditions, those fruitful sources of the noblest emula- 

 tion and the vilest passions: but the necessity of searching for fresh 

 pastures, and of obeying the changes of the seasons, still doomed 

 them to a wandering life, and limited their improvement to a very 

 narrow sphere. 



The multiplication of the human species, and its improvement in 

 the arts and sciences, have only been carried to a high degree since 

 the invention of agriculture and the division of the soil into heredi- 

 tary possessions. By means of agriculture, the manual labour of a 

 portion of society is adequate to the maintenance of the whole, and 

 allows the i-emainder time for less necessary occupations, at the same 



