EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 225 



These conditions can only be regarded as natural laws affect- 

 ing civilization. It is also necessary for a civilization that at 

 least a portion of the community should be placed above 

 mean and engrossing toils. Man's mind is subdued, like the 

 dyer's hand, to that it works in. In rude and difficult cir- 

 cumstances, we unavoidably become rude, because then only 

 the inferior and harsher faculties of our nature are called into 

 exercise. When, on the contrary, there is leisure and abun- 

 dance, the self-seeking and self-preserving instincts are allowed 

 to rest, the gentler and more generous sentiments are evoked, 

 and man becomes that courteous and chivalric being which 

 he is found to be amongst the upper classes of almost all 

 civilized countries. These, then, may be said to be the chief 

 natural laws concerned in the moral phenomenon of civiliza- 

 tion. If I am right in so considering them, it will, of course, 

 be readily admitted that the earliest families of the human 

 race, although they might be simple and innocent, could not 

 have been in anything like a civilized state, seeing that the 

 conditions necessary for that state could not have then 

 existed. Let us only for a moment consider some of the 

 things requisite for their being civilized, namely, a set of 

 elegant homes ready furnished for their reception, fields, 

 ready cultivated to yield them food without labour, stores of 

 luxurious appliances of all kinds, a complete social enginery 

 for the securing of life and property, and we shall turn from 

 the whole conceit as one worthy only of the uninstructed 

 mind. 



Yet, as has been remarked, the earliest families might be 

 simple and innocent, while at the same time unskilled and 

 ignorant, and obliged to live upon only those substances which 

 they could readily procure. The traditions of all nations 

 refer to such a state as that in which mankind were at first : 

 perhaps it is not so much a tradition as an idea which the 

 human mind naturally inclines to form respecting the fathers 

 of the race ; but nothing that we see of mankind absolutely 

 forbids our entertaining this idea, while there are some con- 

 siderations rather favourable to it. A few families, in a state 

 of nature, living near each other, in a country supplying the 

 Q 



