ECONOMY. 
15 
bly, are not to be distinguished from those of our 
ancestors. 
By the words, necessary of life , I mean whatever, of 
all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been 
from the first, or from long use has become, so im¬ 
portant to human life that few, if any, whether from 
savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to 
do without it. To many creatures there is in this 
sense but one necessary of life, Food. To the bison of 
the prairie it is a few inches of palatable grass, with 
water to drink; unless he seeks the Shelter of the forest 
or the mountain’s shadow. None of the brute creation 
requires more than Food and Shelter. The necessaries 
of life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, 
be distributed under the several heads of Food, Shelter, 
Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have secured these are 
we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with 
freedom and a prospect of success. Man has invented, 
not only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and pos¬ 
sibly from the accidental discovery of the warmth of 
fire, and the consequent use of it, at first a luxury, 
arose the present necessity to sit by it. We observe 
cats and dogs acquiring the same second nature. By 
proper Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain our 
own internal heat; but with an excess of these, or of 
Fuel, that is, with an external heat greater than our own 
internal, may not cookery properly be said to begin ? 
Darwin, the naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Tierra 
del Fuego, that while his own party, who were well 
clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too 
warm, these naked savages, who were farther off, were 
observed, to his great surprise, “ to be streaming with 
perspiration at undergoing such a roasting.” So, we 
