Chap. III. AN TIE NT METAPHYSICS. 105 



phllorophy of his own fpecies, will think it unworthy of a ferious 

 refutation. 



There are not, as far as we know, any men at prefent to be 

 found in the pure natural ftate, that is, going upon all four, and 

 without arts of any kind ; for even the Oran Outan walks eredt, u- 

 ies a ftick for a weapon, builds huts, and covers the bodies of his 

 dead with branches and foliage. He comes, however, nearer to that 

 ftate, than any other of the human fpecies that are to be found in 

 numbers, or living in any kind of fociety. And there is one thing 

 concerning him, in which all accounts agree, that the Pongo, or 

 Great Oran Outan of Angola, of whofe humanity we are beft aflu- 

 red, is an Animal very much fuperior, in fize and all the faculties of 

 the Body, to any Men now^ in Europe. Some travellers fpeak of 

 his ftrength as wonderful, greater, they fay, than that of ten Men 

 fuch as we *. But of him I have faid enough already in this Vo- 

 lume, and in the Firft Volume of the Origin and Progrefs of Lan- 

 guage ; and I will now proceed to fpeak of Men, with whom we 

 are better acquainted, they having been formed into nations whofe 

 hiftory has been handed down to us. All thcfe, at fome time or an- 

 other, have been in the natural ftate, but of which there neither is, 

 nor can be, any record. It is therefore impoftible that we can judge 

 of them in that ftate, otherwife than by what we know of them in 

 the firft ages of fociety, or in ages much nearer to the natural ftate 

 than that in which we live. For, I think, it muft be prefumed that 

 thofe men could not be very much changed for the worfe, in the 

 qualities of the Body, unlefs we fuppofe, what the gentlemen againft 

 whom I argue will certainly not admit, that the decline in the focial 

 ftate is very great and quick. 



Vol. III. O There 



* Buffon. Nat. Hift. Vol. xiv, p. 49* 



