OF NATURAL HISTORY. 415 



a number of tribes happen to unite, they only become a larger or 

 more numerous nation. A fingle pair, it is true, if placed in a fitua- 

 tion where plenty of food could be procured without much labour, 

 might, in a fucceffion of ages, produce any indefinite number. This 

 is piecifely the fituation in which Mofes has placed our firft parents. 

 He has added another circumftance highly favourable to a fpeedy 

 population. Inftead of the prefent brevity of human life, he informs 

 us, that men, in the firft periods of the world, lived and propagated 

 feveral hundred years. 



In countries thinly peopled with favages, it is extremely probable, 

 that focieties are formed by the gradual union of families and tribes. 

 The increafe of power arifing from mutual affiftance, and a thoa- 

 fand other comfortable circumftances, foon contribute to cement 

 more firmly the aflbciated members. Some of the arts of life, befide 

 that of hunting, are occafionally difcovered either by accident or by 

 the ingenuity of individuals. In this manner, gradual advances are 

 made from the favage to the civilized condition of mankind. This 

 is a very fhort view of the origin of fociety, which has been adopted 

 by moft authors both ancient and modern, though many of them 

 have derived the aflbciating principle from very different, and even 

 from oppofite caufes, which it is no part of our plan either to enu- 

 merate or refute. Some writers, as Ariftotle, and a few moderns, 

 implicit followers of his opinions, deny that man is naturally a gre- 

 garious or aflbciating animal. To render this notion confiftent with 

 the a£tual and univerfal ftate of the human race, thefe authors have 

 had recourfe to puerile conceits, and to queftionable fa£ts, which 

 it would be fruitlefs to relate. Other writers, poflefled of greater 

 judgment and difcernment, and lefs warped with vanity and hypo- 

 thetical phantoms, have derived the origin of fociety from its real 

 and only fource, Nature herfelf. 



That 



