Chap. II. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 247 



I will only add upon this fubje£l:, of the increafe of nations in 

 the firft ages of civil fociety being the caufe of fo many migrations, 

 and of fo many colonies being fent out by different ftates for no 

 other reafon than that the country was not able to maintain them, 

 that this could be the only reafon for the Romans fending out fo 

 many colonies, at a time when they could not have had too many 

 citizens, but mud rather have wanted men by the great loffes they 

 had fullained. And, indeed, it appears to me, that the multiplica- 

 tion of men was a grievance in thofe antient dates. For this reafon 

 it was, that in Crete, (the polity of which was fo excellent, that Ly-, 

 curgus took from it the greateft part of his plan of the polity of 

 Sparta), the love of boys, and the ufe of males for venery, was en- 

 couraged by the legiflaturcj in order to prevent the too great increafe 

 of citizens*. And in Thebes it was fo far from being infamous, that 

 the heft men of their nation were conneded together in that way; 

 fo that their Sacred Band^ held to be invincible, was compofed of 

 lovers of that kind and of Path'ics t. 



By what I have faid here, of men multiplying in the firft ages of 

 fociety, fo much more than in the natural date, it mud not be un- 

 derdood that they were then bigger or dronger in body: For I hold 

 that the contrary of this is the truth ; and that what we read, in antient 

 books, of giants, fuch as the fons of Anack, and what we have feen 

 in modern times, of bones of giants yet preferved, mud be underdood 

 of men who were defcended of families that had lived in the natural 

 date for fome generations. At the fame time I am convinced, that 

 the men of the fird ages of fociety were much bigger, dronger, 

 healthier, and longer lived men than thofe of latter times, for this 

 plain reafon, that they were nearer to the natural life, and lived 



more 



* This we are told by Ariftotle in his fecond book Be Republica, Cap. lo. 



f See what I have faid further upon the fubjc^ of this moft unnatural vice, p. 84. 

 of this volume. 



