BIMANA. 49 



destroyed the game, advanced but slowly. Their arts were limited to the 

 construction of huts and canoes, to covering themselves with skins and the 

 fabrication of arrows and nets. They observed such stars only as directed 

 them in their journeys, and some few natural objects whose properties 

 were of use to them. They domesticated the Dog, simply because he had 

 a natural inclination for their own kind of life. When they had succeeded 

 In taming the herbivorous animals, they found in the possession of numerous 

 flocks a never failing source of subsistence, and also some leisure, which 

 they employed in extending the sphere of their acquirements. Some in- 

 dustry was tlien employed in the construction of dwellings and the making 

 of clothes: the idea of property was admitted, and consequently that of 

 barter, as well as wealth and difference of conditions, those fruitful sources 

 of the noblest emulation and the vilest passions: but the necessity of search- 

 ing for fresh pastures, and of obeying the changes of the seasons, still 

 doomed them to a wandering life, and limited their improvements to a very 

 narrow sphere. 



The multiplication of the human species, and its improvement in the arts 

 and sciences, have only been carried to a high degree since the invention 

 of agriculture and the division of the soil into hereditary possessions. By 

 means of agriculture, the manual labour of a portion of society is adequate 

 to the maintenance of the whole, and allows the remainder time for less ne- 

 cessary occupations, atthe same time that the hope of acquiring, by industry, 

 a comfortable existence for self and posterity, has given a new springto emu- 

 lation. The discovery of a representative of property or a circulating me- 

 dium, by facilitating exchanges and rendering fortunes more independent 

 and susceptible of being increased, has carried this emulation to its highest 

 degi'ee, but by a necessary consequence it has also equally increased the 

 vices of effeminacy and the furies of ambition. 



The natural propensity to reduce every thing to general principles, and 

 to search for the causes of every phenomenon, has produced reflecting men, 

 in every stage of society, who have added new ideas to those already 

 obtained, nearly all of whom, while knowledge was confined to the few, 

 endeavoured to convert their intellectual superiority into the means of domi- 

 nation, by exaggerating their own merit, and disguising the poverty of their 

 knowledge by the propagation of superstitious ideas. 



An evil still more irremediable, is the abuse of physical power: now that 

 man only can injure man, he is continually seeking to do so, and is the only 

 animal upon earth that is forever at war with liis own species. Savages 

 fight for a forest, and herdsmen for a pasture, and as often as they can, 

 break in upon the cultivators of the earth to rob them of the fruits of their 

 long and painful labours. Even civihzed nations, far from being contented 

 with their blessings, pour out each other's blood for the prerogatives of 

 pride, or the monopoly of trade. Hence, the necessity for governments to 

 direct the national wars, and to repress or reduce to regular forms the 

 quarrels of individuals. 



G 



