OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 67 



like with like, and consider the multitude of human 

 beings who are enabled, in an advanced state of 

 society, to subsist in a degree of comfort and abun- 

 dance, which at best only a few of the most fortunate 

 in a less civilized state could command, we shall not 

 be at a loss to perceive the principle on which we 

 ought to rest our estimate of the advantages of civi- 

 lization ; and which applies with hardly less force to 

 every degree of it, when contrasted with that next 

 inferior, than to the broad distinction between civil- 

 ized and barbarous life in general. 



(61.) The difference of the degrees in which the in- 

 dividuals of a great community enjoy the good things 

 of life has been a theme of declamation and discon- 

 tent in all ages ; and it is doubtless our paramount 

 duty, in every state of society, to alleviate the pres- 

 sure of the purely evil part of this distribution as much 

 as possible, and, by all the means we can devise, se- 

 cure the lower links in the chain of society from 

 dragging in dishonour and wretchedness : but there 

 is a point of view in which the picture is at least 

 materially altered in its expression. In comparing 

 society on its present immense scale, with its 

 infant or less developed state, we must at least 

 take care to enlarge every feature in the same 

 . proportion. If, on comparing the very lowest states 

 in civilized and savage life, we admit a difficulty in 

 deciding to which the preference is due, at least 

 in every superior grade we cannot hesitate a mo- 

 ment ; and if we institute a similar comparison in 

 every different stage of its progress, we cannot fail 

 to be struck with the rapid rate of dilatation which 

 every degree upward of the scale, so to speak, ex- 

 F 9 



