NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION, 225 



coutnirv, there is leisure and abundance, 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 

 civilised countries. These, then, may be said to be the 

 chief natural laws concerned in the moral phenomenon 

 of civilisation. 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 civilised 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 civilised — namely, a set of elegant homes 

 ready furnished for their reception, tields 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 i)liilos()phers 

 of Utopia. 



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 merely upon such sub- 

 stances as they could readily procure. The traditions of 

 all nations refer to such a state as that in which mankind 

 were at lirst : 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; considoratious rather favour- 

 able to it. A few families, in a state of nature, living 

 near each other, in a country supplying the means (.f 

 livelihood abundantly. ;n(' genei'ally sini})le and innocent; 



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