Chap. IV. A N T I E N T M E T A P H Y S I C S. 139 



tural fruits of the country, however abundant, could not maintain 

 them. And, therefore, as Diodorus informs us*, they ate one ano- 

 ther : So that, even the Egyptians, the moft antient and befl: civi- 

 lifcd nation of the world, as,. I think, I fhall prove in the fequel of 

 this work, were once as barbarous man-eaters as the people of Pa- 

 raguay ; and fo were the Greeks, (the fineft nation in the world, 

 in my opinion, next to the Egyptians), as Horace tells us, 

 when Orpheus came from Egypt to civilife them f. This fhows 

 that barbarity, and even the eating one another, when other food 

 cannot be found, is a necelTary ftep in the progrefs of men from the 

 natural to the civilifed life ; and that it is only by arts, and a re- 

 gular polity, that men can be tamed and humanifed, as the Para- 

 guaife were by the Jefuits. 



In this barbarous way the Egyptians lived, till Ifis, the fifler and 

 ■wife of Ofiris, dilcovered wheat and barley, which, as Diodorus 

 tells us, were the natural produce of the country, (as I am inclined 

 to believe, every plant which the earth produces was to be found 

 in a country fo fruitful as Egypt 1, and grew with other herbs, but 

 were not known by the inhabitants till Ifis difcovered them as 

 plants the moft proper for nourifhing men ^ ', the memory of 



S 2 which 



* Diodorus, lib. i. cap. 14. 



t See p. 95. of this volume, where I quote two lines of Horace, to which may b« 

 added, the third following, 



Diilus ab hoc lenire tygres rabidofque leones j 



for, I think, the Greeks when Orpheus came among them, as the Paragualfe before 

 they were civililed by the Jefuits, may be very projjerly compared to tygers and lions ; 

 and, indeed, men in fuch a ftate, are, by their natural fagacity, with the addition of 

 fonie arts, which they may have invented or got from other countries, animals more 

 formidable than tygers and lions. 



X Diodorus, lib. i. cap, 14. 



