40 MAMMALIA. 



the different vessels become gradually obstructed, the solids become rigid, 

 and, after a life more or less long, more or less agitated, more or less 

 painful, old age arrives with decrepitude, decay, and death. Man rarely 

 lives beyond a hundred years, and most of the species, either from disease, 

 accident, or old age, perish long before that term. 



The child needs the assistance of its mother much longer than her 

 milk ; from this it obtains an education both moral and physical, and a 

 mutual attachment is created that is fervent and durable. The nearly 

 equal number of the two sexes, the difficulty of supporting more than one 

 wife, when wealth does not supply the want of power, all go to prove that 

 monogamy is tlie mode of union most natural to our species: and as, 

 wherever this kind of tie exists, the father participates in the education of 

 his offspring, the length of time required for that education allows the 

 birth of others — hence the natural permanence of the conjugal state. 

 From the long period of infantile weakness springs domestic subordination, 

 and the order of society in general, as the young people which compose 

 the new families continue to preserve v.ith their parents those tender re- 

 lations to which they have so long been accustomed. This disposition to 

 mutual assistance multiplies to an almost unlimited extent those advan- 

 tages previously derived by insulated man from his intelligence ; it has 

 assisted him to tame or repulse other animals, to defend himself from 

 the effects of climate, and thus enabled him to cover the earth with his 

 species. 



In other respects, man appears to possess nothing resembling instinct, 

 no regular habit of industry produced by innate ideas ; his knowledge is 

 the result of his sensations and of his observation, or of those of his prede- 

 cessors. Transmitted by speech, increased by meditation, and applied to 

 his necessities and his enjoyments, they have originated all the arts of 

 life. Language and letters, by preserving acquired knowledge, are a 

 source of indefinite perfection to his species. It is thus he has acquired 

 ideas, and made all nature contribute to his wants. 



There are very different degrees of developement, however, in man. 



The first hordes, compelled to live by fishing and hunting, or on wild 

 fruits, and being obliged to devote all their time to search for the means 

 of subsistence, and not being able to multiply greatly, because that would 

 have destroyed the game, advanced but slowly. Their arts were limited 

 to the construction of huts and canoes, to covering themselves with skins, 

 and the fabrication of arrows and nets. They observed such stars only as 

 directed them in their journeys, and some few natural objects whose pro- 

 perties were of use to them. They domesticated the dog, simply because 

 he had a natural inclination for their own kind of life. "VATien they had 

 succeeded in taming the herbivorous animals, they found in the possession 

 of numerous flocks a never failing source of subsistence, and also some 

 leisure, which they employed in extending the sphere of their acquire- 

 ments. Some industry was then employed in the construction of dwell- 

 ings and the making of clothes: the idea of property was admitted, and 

 consequently that of barter, as well as wealth and difference of conditions, 

 those fruitful sources of the noblest emulation and the vilest passions : but 

 the necessity of searching for fresh pastures, and of obeying the changes 

 of the seasons, still doomed them to a wandering life, and limited their 

 improvement to a very narrow sphere. 



