FROM SAVAGE TO CIVILIZED LIFE. 205 



But even supposing, with some philosophers, that Man at his creation had to 

 acquire by slow experience a knowledge of the objects around him, what could 

 his boasted reason, exerted for the first time, have taught him, either regarding 

 the taming of cattle, or the cultivation of the Cerealia ? How could he, a priori, 

 know that, by burying in the ground the ripened seeds springing spontaneously 

 for his use, they would reproduce their seeds again, increased twenty-fold for 

 one? The thing is impossible. Accident, in the course of years, might have 

 thrown such an instance in the way of a rational creature trained to observation 

 from infancy, and reflection might have suggested analogies between the annual 

 reproduction of fruits and that of grains ; but long years of experiment must have 

 retarded the general acquisition of such knowledge. Neither is it very evident 

 how individuals, living on fruits of much superior size to the cultivated grains, 

 could first come to the knowledge that the minute seeds of the grasses might be 

 made available for food. And it is more surprising still, that these early agri- 

 culturists should fix at once upon all the available Cerealia, proper for the food of 

 man, and leave nothing to be added to the stock of cultivated grains, by the in- 

 genuity of the thousands of generations who have succeeded them. " All animals," 

 says Lord MONBODDO, " are directed by instinct to search for, to find out, and to 

 make use of the food which Nature has provided for them. But it has not di- 

 rected nor instructed them to multiply that food, and to make the earth produce 

 more than it naturally produces. In other words, instinct does not teach us to 

 till, sow, or plant."* If the first man had been created a savage, and left to the 

 acquisition of knowledge by his own unaided efforts, ages might have elapsed and 

 found him a savage still. And without the aid of cultivated grains from the com- 

 mencement of his progress, and a knowledge of their use as food, the population 

 of the globe would have been limited to scattered tribes of rude savages, scantily 

 extended over the wastes of creation. 



It is besides a strong presumption of the truth of the views now submitted 

 as to the domestic animals, and the knowledge of the cultivation of the Cerealia 

 being the gift of his Maker to the first man, that in all the traditions of the an- 

 cient nations, the discovery of the grains the domestication of cattle the in- 

 vention of writing, &c. are specially referred to their divinities or divine benefactors 

 in the earliest periods of the world. The worship of Isis in Egypt, and the rites of 

 Ceres in Greece and Rome, have reference to knowledge communicated to the 

 human race by means beyond human ; and thus the scattered traditions of dis- 

 tant nations not only afford evidence of man's origin from a common stock, but 

 confirm in a singular manner the recorded facts of his early history. 



Having thus shewn, as far as the limits of a single paper permitted me, that 

 man was not created a mute savage, but a rational and intelligent being, endowed 

 by his Maker with all the attributes of man in his best estate, it remains to be 



* Origin and Progress of Language, vol. i. Book ii. p. 273-4. 

 VOL. XV. PART I. 3 I 



