the mines, and
preparing it for fusion, before they knew what could be the result of
such a process. On the other hand, there is the less reason to
attribute this discovery to any accidental fire, as mines are formed
nowhere but in dry and barren places, and such as are bare of trees
and plants, so that it looks as if nature had taken pains to keep from
us so mischievous a secret. Nothing therefore remains but the
extraordinary circumstance of some volcano, which, belching forth
metallic substances ready fused, might have given the spectators a
notion of imitating that operation of nature; and after all we must
suppose them endued with an extraordinary stock of courage and
foresight to undertake so painful a work, and have, at so great a
distance, an eye to the advantages they might derive from it;
qualities scarcely suitable but to heads more exercised, than those of
such discoverers can be supposed to have been.

As to agriculture, the principles of it were known a long time before
the practice of it took place, and it is hardly possible that men,
constantly employed in drawing their subsistence from trees and
plants, should not have early hit on the means employed by nature for
the generation of vegetables; but in all probability it was very late
before their industry took a turn that way, either because trees,
which with their land and water game supplied them with sufficient
food, did not require their attention; or because they did not know
the use of corn; or because they had no instruments to cultivate it;
or because they were destitute of foresight in regard to future
necessities; or in fine, because they wanted means to hinder others
from running away with the fruit of their labours. We may believe that
on their becoming more industrious they began their agriculture by
cultivating with sharp stones and pointed sticks a few pulse or roots
about their cabins; and that it was a long time before they knew the
method of preparing corn, and were provided with instruments necessary
to raise it in large quantities; not to mention the necessity there
is, in order to follow this occupation and sow lands, to consent to
lose something at present to gain a great deal hereafter; a precaution
very foreign to the turn of man's mind in a savage state, in which, as
I have already taken notice, he can hardly foresee his wants from
morning to night.

For this reason the invention of other arts must have been necessary
to oblig