SECT. I.] CHARACTERISTICS OP MAN. 275 



rudest nations, and is really specifically human. However 

 poor and miserable, man finds a pleasure in adorning himself. 

 He adorns his person, his instruments, etc., with the greatest 

 industry, and even supports, as in tattooing, great physical 

 pain for this object. What impels him is simply the pleasure 

 to be beautiful in his own eyes and to be admired by others, 

 and so he bepaints and bedecks himself, and all that belongs 

 to him. Variegated colours and their grotesque combination, 

 musical sounds and their variations, are agreeable to him ; he 

 finds a certain satisfaction in depicting by lines and colours 

 what has interested him ; he constructs musical instruments, 

 and thus he beautifies his life, the mere attempt of which 

 raises him, on account of the intellectual basis upon which 

 it rests, far above the scale occupied by the most gifted 

 animals. 



A third chief peculiarity of man must be mentioned, his 

 social character, with which his capacity of speaking stands in 

 intimate relation. Aristotle called him, on account of this 

 character, not a gregarious, but a political being. Men asso- 

 ciate together, not merely under the guidance of an individual, 

 as is the case with many animals, but their association in tribes 

 and families is more consistent. The individuals are not so 

 isolated as animals belonging to the same flock ; but the ex- 

 change of thought by language leads them to more intimate 

 relations between each other, to greater sympathy. True, 

 not everywhere do human beings, living together, form a state, 

 the nature of the country and the dispersion of the population 

 frequently prevent this, as in Australia; but nowhere are 

 peculiar social customs absent, whilst the habits of gregarious 

 animals seem to be everywhere the same : everywhere we find 

 practical ideas of property and right. The small value attached 

 to property by savage nations, must not induce us to think 

 that they know nothing of property. Common property of a 

 tribe or family is acknowledged everywhere, where peoples 

 come in contact : property in the soil, which a stranger must 

 not enter without the permission of the proprietor, seems to 

 be sometimes more fixed among savage nations than we are 

 inclined to believe. Private property is nowhere wanting 



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