182 MR STARK ON THE SUPPOSED PROGRESS OF HUMAN SOCIETY 



in the most perfect state, could know nothing till experience had taught him the 

 use of his senses ; and supposing such a being awakened, in the plenitude of his 

 powers and with the faculty of speech, to the objects of the world around him, 

 he has given a very interesting and, I believe, philosophical account of his first 

 sensations.* 



SHARON TURNER in one place represents the first pair as utterly ignorant at 

 first of every thing, and having to acquire the knowledge of whatever there was 

 to know by gradual sensations as they should occur, and totally incapable of fore- 

 seeing any result or of distinguishing good from evil, until, by slow and progres- 

 sive experience, they should learn what was either, or what would become such. 

 And again, " ADAM could not, at his creation, be perfect in knowledge, because 

 he would have it all to acquire, and must begin his earthly existence without 



any."f 



Dr ADAM FERGUSON, forgetting for a moment that the state of the first pair 

 bore no analogy to their future oifspring, observes, that " the individual in every 

 age has the same race to run, from infancy to manhood ; and every infant or ig- 

 norant person now, is a model of what man was in his original state."! 



And Sir HUMPHRY DAVY, supposing that the first created man had certain 

 powers and instincts, such as now belong to the rudest savages of the southern 

 hemisphere, observes, " Their progress from this early state of society to that of 

 the highest state of civilization and refinement may, I think, be easily deduced 

 from the exertions of reason, assisted by the influence of the moral powers and 

 of physical circumstances. " 



Such are some of the representations of man's early state given by writers of 

 no mean celebrity ; and such are some of the degrading theories which would 

 bring down man to the level of the beasts around him. Several of these opinions 

 have apparently their origin in the fables of ancient poets ; but even those 

 more modern and plausible theories, which suppose savage man capable, in the 



* BUFFON, par SONNINI, xx. 51. | Sacred History of the World, ii. 253, 293. 



| Essay on the History of Civil Society, p. 7- By ADAM FERGUSON, LL.D. Lond. 1793. 



Consolations in Travel, or the Last Days of a Philosopher, p. 76. In this little work, though Sir 

 HUMPHRY makes one of the speakers in his Second Dialogue question the classical theory of man's savage 

 origin, yet this is so feebly done as to imply the author's want of confidence in the position his opponent 

 is made to assume ; and even the appeal to the first book of MOSES is modified by passages, in which the 

 author shews his leaning to the doctrine of savage original and progressive advancement. In the VISION, 

 which is the base of the first two dialogues, the human race are described as advancing through all the 

 classical periods, from the mute savage of Horace up to the pastoral and agricultural life. But Sir 

 HUMPHRY fails to shew how his supposed instincts could ever lead man to sow or reap, or tame animals, 

 and none of the speakers in the dialogue explain how man, created savage, could ever have risen above 

 that condition. Afterwards, however, he makes another speaker concede that man was created, not a 

 savage (as formerly represented), but perfect in his faculties, and with a variety of instinctive powers 

 and knowledge, and that he transmitted these powers and knowledge to his offspring. (P. 100.) 



