202 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book 11. 



diftraded and torn to pieces by different paffions, each contending 

 for maftery, which never happens to the animal in the natural ft ate, 

 who is perfectly one animal, without difcord or divifion. It is not, 

 therefore, without reafon, that Homer has pronounced the civilized 

 Man the moft miferable of all animals upon the face of the earth *. 



There are no men living together in numbers or in any kind of 

 fociety, that are in the perfect natural ftate, fo flir as we know, 

 (^for fmgle Savages have been found in that ftate, in dlflerent 

 parts of Europe *;, though they may be, and, in fome parts of the 

 earth not yet dlfcovered. Even the Oran Outan is not in a ftate 

 perfectly natural ; for, though he has not a language of articulation, 

 he ufes a weapon, builds fome kind of huts ; and, what is more ex- 

 traordinary ftill, and is never done by any mere animal, he carries off 

 Negro girls and boys, in order to ufe them for fervants ; a fad as well 

 atteftedasany concerning him. We cannot, therefore, form any per- 

 fe(fl judgment of the happinefs of Man in the natural ftate, except by 

 what we know of him in the firft ages of civility. Of thefe there have 

 been traditions preferved (for records there could be none,) in fome 

 countries, and particularly in Greece, which have been handed down 

 to us by their poets, the only hiftorians of thofe early times. Of 

 thefe traditions we have a full account in the beginning of Ovid's 

 Metamorphofes, where he has defcribed at great length this golden 



age, 



Iliad, xvii. Sftr^. 446. 



He makes Jupiter fay this, when he laments the condition of the two immortal 

 borfes of Achilles, who, by deftmy, were condemned to live for ever among fuch 

 miferable mortals. If it was a misfortune to live for ever, even among fuch men as 

 thofe antient heroes, how would he have lamented the fate of a Strulbrug man or 

 horfe, condemned to an eternity of life, among fuch men as the piefent, and in fuch 

 times ? 



* Page 74. 



