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merscd in apathy and sloth, scarcely, if at all, removed in 

 civilization from the savage animals by which they were sur- 

 rounded — nature in exhaustless profusion anticipating and 

 supplying the wants of man. 



" I should not have dwelt so long on this topic, were it not 

 that certain philosophers have been prone to attribute the 

 civilization of the man to his physical conformation. 'Were, 

 says Helvetius, the hoof of a horse to have been attached to the 

 arm of man, he might still be wandering a denizen of the 

 forest/ 



" 1 have still further limited my proposition, by asserting 

 that civilization was in a great measure owing to the wants of 

 man : I think it necessary to make this bmitation advisedly, 

 because we have no instance in history of a perfect form of 

 spontaneous civilization ; ever has the torch, once kindled, been 

 passed from race to race, and from generation to generation. 

 "Wherever man has been cut off from intercourse with his civi- 

 lized fellow, there we find, if not barbarism, a maimed and 

 stunted development of the human powers. Of those arts and 

 sciences winch owe to accident their origin — not their de- 

 velopment, for that springs from a higher source — geometry 

 is perhaps one of the most remarkable. It is a myth of the 

 father of history, Herodotus, that geometry took its rise from 

 the perplexities and litigations to winch the Egyptian cultivators 

 were annually subjected, in consequence of the Nile overflow- 

 ing its banks, and thus obliterating the hasty and inartificial 

 landmarks set up in a crumbling and alluvial soil. The more 

 accurate and extended investigations of modern times tend 

 rather to show that the origin of this science must be sought 

 still further east, it may be on the plains of Shinar, or on the 

 banks of the Ganges. But, however this may be, and this is 

 not the place to discuss whether Thales, the founder of the 

 Ionian or geometrical school in Greece, borrowed his know- 

 ledge — very profound it was for that age — from his native 

 country Phoenicia, or from Hie priests of Egypt; whether 



