608 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 
mean that he has always had fine cities and so on: but he has always had the 
same instinct which leads him to feel affection for himself, for the companion of 
his toils, for his children, and so forth. That is what never changes, from one 
end of the world to the other. As the basis of society is always in existence, 
there always is some society. We were not made to live after the manner of 
bears’—a clear hit at the favourite simile of Montesquieu. ‘It is therefore de- 
monstrated that Nature alone inspires us with the useful conceptions which 
precede all our thoughts, In morals it is the same. We all have two instincts 
which are the basis of society, pity and justice.’ ! 
From this fundamental’ uniformity of the human mind, which Voltaire 
assumes and defends, it follows that certain fundamental ideas recur everywhere, 
under suitable circumstances, more especially such religious dogmas as the con- 
ception of the immortality of the soul. In this conception it will be seen that 
Voltaire at the same time reverts almost completely to the anthropological stand- 
point of Aristotle, and anticipates by a century the philosophic position of 
Bastian. But it is also clear that Voltaire’s mode of arriving at the Natural 
State of Man does not differ in its method from that of his predecessors. Both 
alike discover it by the process of subtracting from human nature, as we know 
it, all that can be traced to the operation of any positive prescription or 
observance. What each side finds lying behind this customary stratum of 
human nature, whether sheer passivity, or positive qualities of a selfish 
tendency, or otherwise, depends, as before, partly on the prejudices of the 
observer, but mainly on the current phase of emphasis on this or that section of 
what was known. 
Christopher Meiners. 
The new attitude towards Rousseau is well illustrated by the criticism of 
Christopher Meiners, whose ‘ Historical Comparison of the Customs and Consti- 
tutions, the Laws and Industries, the Trade and Religion, the Sciences and 
Educational Institutions of the Middle Ages’ was published at Hanover in 1793. 
‘Experience, history, and sound reason,’ he says, ‘are mishandled (by Rousseau) 
with unprecedented audacity. On all sides false or distorted facts are treated as 
fundamental, and the best known and best attested observations are misinterpreted 
or left on one side.’? ‘Among the poets of enlightened peoples there is hardly 
to be found any fiction so utterly in conflict with experience and history as 
Rousseau’s picture of the State of Nature, and of Natural Man. But Meiners’ 
criticism is directed wholly against Rousseau’s ignorance of anthropological fact, 
and most particularly of facts about ‘modern savages’; not against the principles 
of his method. For, as Meiners himself contends, ‘ the most important conditions 
in which considerable sections of the human race have been or are now to be 
found, are the conditions of savagery and barbarism, of incipient, or half-com- 
pleted, or entire enlightenment.’ ‘ Human history devotes its particular attention 
to the savages and barbarians of all parts of the world, who have never produced 
the smallest perceptible change in the fortunes of humanity as a whole ; because 
often a single small horde of savages and barbarians can make greater con- 
tributions to the knowledge of human nature than the most magnificent peoples 
who ever conquered and devastated a continent.’ And Meiners goes on to hit 
also Montesquieu for his failure to appreciate the contribution of savages to 
political philosophy. Here we have clearly the beginnings of the modern 
comparative method, with its search for uncontaminated survivals of primitive, 
though not strictly ‘ pre-social’ states. 
Herder. 
But it is mainly to Herder that the expression of the new movement is due ; 
and it is his ‘ Thoughts on the History of Mankind ’ that makes the first systematic 
1 Voltaire, Huvres, xi. 19, 21; see also Rousseau’s reply to this position, Discowrs 
sur Vorigine et les fondemens de Vinégalité parmi les hommes, p. 170. 
2 Vol. i. pp. 7, 16, 18. : 
3 Herder, Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit. 
