Chap. VIII. A N T I E N T M E T A P H y S I C S. gs 



chief vice, drunkennefs *, and the arts of life which they had learn- 

 ed from their governors, I think we may pronounce with great 

 aflurance that they were as happy as any people that ever exilled, 

 while they continued under the government of the Jefuits. 



We are now to inquire how fo wonderful a change was wrought 

 upon thofe barbarians : And this is an inquiry which belongs, as 

 much or more than any other, to the hiftory of man ; for it is in- 

 quiring how man, from a ftate more wild and favage than that of any 

 brute, came to be a mild and gentle animal, and in a ftate which 

 fitted him for the acquifition of arts and fciences, by which only our 

 nature, in this ftate of our exiftence, can be brought to any degree 

 of perfedion. And I fay that it was firft by religion, the great 

 tamer and civilifer of men, without which 1 hold that no nation 

 ever was or ever can be civilifed. The Jefuits there, were, among 

 thofe Indians, what Orpheus was among the Greeks, of whon^ 

 Horace fays, 



Sylveftres homines facer Interprefque Deorutn 

 Csedibus et vidu foedo deterruit Orpheus f. 



where by the words aedlbus et viclu fodoy it is evident Horace meant 

 that the Greeks then killed and ate their fellow creatures, as the In- 

 dians of South America did before they were tamed and humanifed 

 by their Miflionaries, and as the Indians of North America, I believe, 

 at once did, and fome, far to the weft and beyond the Apulachian 

 mountains, do at this daylj;. And, 2dly, By mufic, for which men 

 have a natural and inftindtive love, and organs which eafily adapt 

 themfelves to the performance of it. And particularly this was the 



cafe 

 * Vol. I. p. 256. 



\ De Arte Poetica, v. 391. 



:j: Origin and Progrefs of Language, vol. I. p. 227. in the note. 



