FROM SAVAGE TO CIVILIZED LIFE. 199 



might employ in extending their knowledge ;" and he then states, as the third 

 stage in the progress of civilization, that " man did not multiply his species to a 

 great degree, and extend his knowledge and his arts, till the invention of agricul- 

 ture, and the division of the soil into hereditary properties."* 



" Accustomed, as we are," says Mr ALISON, " to the powers which ages of civi- 

 lization have conferred upon mankind, and to the complete subjugation of ani- 

 mals which has resulted from the extension of his numbers, we can hardly ima- 

 gine the difficulties with which our forefathers had to contend when society was 

 in its infancy, and when the human race were placed in the midst of boundless 

 forests and morasses, only to become the prey of the innumerable savage animals 

 by whom they were peopled."! And m a passage immediately after, on consi- 

 dering the precarious situation of the supposed savage state, the few individuals 

 who, in that state, survive infancy, and their want of skill in the arts which 

 minister to the necessities of life, " it seems," says he, " surprising how his num- 

 bers could have ever increased." And he can only account for this by supposing 

 " the unlimited operation of the principle of increase" to be essential, both in the 

 savage and pastoral state, to the extension and improvement of the human race. 

 Assenting, as I willingly do, to the proposition, that man could make 

 little or no progress in numbers or civilization without domestic animals and 

 the cultivated grains, the writers who adopt the progressive theory fail to shew 

 how, in the nature of things, the hunter of wild animals could be converted into 

 their protector ; and how, even supposing one animal to have been accidentally 

 tamed, he could from thence conclude that the species might be rendered domes- 

 tic. What could induce the first man, if created a savage, and feeding on acorns 

 and the apples of the wood, to think of killing the animals around him, and using 

 them as food ? There is no instinctive thirst of blood in the nature of man, I have 

 already observed, to lead him to seize and devour living prey. And, even on the 

 supposition that, by an instinctive propensity, he was led to kill and devour ani- 

 mals, how could he suppose that such animals could be tamed and reared in num- 

 bers around him ? Every timid or herbivorous animal flies by instinct from its 

 natural enemy ; and if savage man were that enemy, it is not easy to see how 

 they ever could have been domesticated. 



On the other hand, if it can be proved, from the earliest histories of the race, 

 that the knowledge of agriculture, including the pasturage of flocks and the cul- 

 tivation of the Cerealia, were known to the first man and his immediate descend- 

 ants, then all imaginary theories of progressive improvement from the savage 



* Rgne Animal, i. 78. 



t The Principles of Population, and their Connection with Human Happiness,!. 10. By ARCHI- 

 BALD ALISON, Esq. F.R.S.E. 



Professor Low considers the ox and sheep, domesticated from the earliest records of human 

 society, to have been instruments, under Providence, for leading man from the savage state. (Illustra- 

 tions of the Breeds of Domestic Animals in the British Islands, No. iv, p. 11. By DAVID Low, Esq. 

 F.R.S.E.) 



