SECT. II.] PRIMITIVE STATE OP MAN. 289 



tural men, though there is no doubt that they were only 

 degenerated. 



What man is when divested of all cultivation, is a question 

 which has been frequently asked and differently answered. It 

 is difficult to realize this abstraction, but much easier to con- 

 vince ourselves that it does not lead to an idea of a paradisiacal 

 state of innocence and bliss, the result of uncorrupted human 

 nature founded upon a happy harmony of slender knowledge, 

 few desires, and the absence of all passions. There is no doubt 

 the natural man does not possess the refined concealed vices of 

 a corrupt society, from the sight of which Rousseau's sickly 

 imagination shrunk, and caused him to indulge in a dream of 

 the original goodness and purity of mankind; but what he 

 certainly does possess are the ugly features of external and in- 

 ternal crudity, the necessary attendants on an entire absence 

 of intellectual and moral culture. 



On imagining man deprived of everything which is the 

 effect of cultivation, he represents merely the product of the 

 power which called him into life, resembling an individual of 

 perfectly neglected education, upon whom experience, in- 

 struction, or example have exercised no influence, and who 

 consequently is inclined neither to good nor evil, having not 

 yet learned to distinguish between them. The first thing which 

 would strike us as characteristic, would be his perfect depend- 

 ence on surrounding media, his whole inner life would be their 

 product. The primitive man first becomes that which the cir- 

 cumstances in which he is placed make of him. The aliment 

 afforded him by nature, the mode by which he can obtain it, 

 the protection he requires against external agents, the inven- 

 tions requisite to supply his wants, all are taught by nature 

 which surrounds him, and which thus determines his mode of 

 life. The instruments he makes, the skill he acquires, the mag- 

 nitude of the efforts requisite to attain his objects, and the 

 degree of development of his psychical activity, will at the out- 

 set mainly depend on the external media in which he is placed. 

 No sooner, however, has he supplied his pressing necessities, 

 than his physical and mental efforts cease. 



This latter circumstance is a highly important point, ex- 



