Chap. I. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 9 



and he is probably yet alive; for he was fubje^ to no direafe, as I 

 was informed. My letter, from Mr Hunter, is dated in 178^ 



The example of this man, who, with the figure of a man, was 

 really a brute, leads me to fpeak of brutes that live in the pure , 

 natural ftate, which is not the cafe of the nations that I have men- 

 tioned; for they have the ufe of intelledt to a certain degree, by 

 which they are enabled to invent fome few of what we call the nc- 

 cefTary arts of life, fuch as making habitations for themfelvef^, and 

 contriving ways of catching fifh. But the pure natural life is to be 

 found, at prefent, only among the brutes, fome of which perform 

 very great works of art, for their fubfiftance and the propagation of 

 their kind : But in thefe they are direded not by intelled:, which 

 they do not poflefs, but by what we call inJlitiB^ that is the wifdom 

 of God, which has framed their minds in fuch a way as to be guid- 

 ed by certain impulfes upon certain occafions, by which they are led 

 to do every thing that is neceffary for the prefervation of the indivi- 

 dual and the continuation of the kind. Man, when he was in the 

 beginning of his natural ftate, was, I am perluaded, guided in ma- 

 ny things by inftind:, as the brutes are. But, if he had continued to 

 be fo, and had been direded by that inftind, to make fuch artificial 

 works for his fubfiftance and the continuation of the kind, as the 

 bees, the ants, the beavers, and the birds, make, he never could 

 have cultivated his intelled, nor invented arts and fciences ; for it 

 was, firft, his fenfes, and the neceffities of life, which roufed his in- 

 telled from the lethargic ftate it was in after his fall, and excited it 

 to invent thofe arts which were neceftary for his fubfiftance. And 

 thus it appears, that every thing, relating to the reftoration of man 

 from his fallen ftate, has been fo ordained by a wife and good God, as 

 to go on in the moft regular and natural way, beginning with the 

 neceftary arts of life, and only very few of them at firft j and fo go- 

 ing on, ftill cultivating his intelled by the invention of more of the 

 Vol. V. B necelfary 



