i22 A N T I E N T METAPHYSICS. Book 11. 



tells us exadly when a Man was begotten, and when he begot the 

 next Man, by whofe generation tlie tnne Is counted, and lb on ; 

 and this interval of time, betwixt being begotten and begetting, is 

 what the Greeks called a generation, but without defining it, other- 

 wife than, as I have faid, by mere conjed:urc. In this way, Mo- 

 fes, at the fime time that he has given us the genealogy of the an- 

 ceflors of his nation, has given us a moft exadt chronology : And it 

 is not without reafon that Jofephus, on this account, has commended 

 him fo much *. 



Thofe men were not, at lead all of them, in the perfect ftate of 

 Nature ; for they had the ufe of fpeech, and, 1 believe, of letters 

 too : At leaft, if I were to judge of Mofes, as I would do of an hifto- 

 rlan not infpired, I fhould fuppofe that he w^ote from written re- 

 cords t, otherwife I could not believe him ; becaufe no tradition could 

 preferve fo exa£lly the generations and lives of fo many men, for fo 

 long a courfe of time. But thofe Patriarchs, though they were not 

 juil in a State of Nature, w^ere very near to it, and living in as fine 

 a climate, I believe, as any in the world, fo that the length of their 

 lives does not appear to me very wonderful : And, if it could be 

 difcovered how long the Oran Outan lives, I fhould not be furprifed 

 to find that he lives longer, though, I believe, in a climate not 



fo good. 



As 



of the Origin and Progrefs of Language, p. 228. Second Edition, and from whom I 

 have got more information concerning the natives of North America, than from any 

 other, dead or living, that the Albinoquois compute by generations, and allow 60 years 

 to a generation, which, I am perfuaded, comes much nearer to the truth, among a 

 people in a ftate very like that of the antient Greeks, than 30 to 1, or 100 to 3. 



* Jewifh Antiquities Lib. i. cap. 3. 



•}■ Jofephus, I find, fuppofes that he did write from fuch records, and that the 

 Patriarchs, even before the Flood, had the ufe of Letters j Ibid Cap. 3. Sedl. 3. 



