, on their side, are likewise
universally allowed to be greatly indebted to the human understanding.
It is by the activity of our passions, that our reason improves: we
covet knowledge merely because we covet enjoyment, and it is
impossible to conceive why a man exempt from fears and desires should
take the trouble to reason. The passions, in their turn, owe their
origin to our wants, and their increase to our progress in science;
for we cannot desire or fear anything, but in consequence of the ideas
we have of it, or of the simple impulses of nature; and savage man,
destitute of every species of knowledge, experiences no passions but
those of this last kind; his desires never extend beyond his physical
wants; he knows no goods but food, a female, and rest; he fears no
evil but pain, and hunger; I say pain, and not death; for no animal,
merely as such, will ever know what it is to die, and the knowledge of
death, and of its terrors, is one of the first acquisitions made by
man, in consequence of his deviating from the animal state.

I could easily, were it requisite, cite facts in support of this
opinion, and show, that the progress of the mind has everywhere kept
pace exactly with the wants, to which nature had left the inhabitants
exposed, or to which circumstances had subjected them, and
consequently to the passions, which inclined them to provide for these
wants. I could exhibit in Egypt the arts starting up, and extending
themselves with the inundations of the Nile; I could pursue them in
their progress among the Greeks, where they were seen to bud forth,
grow, and rise to the heavens, in the midst of the sands and rocks of
Attica, without being able to take root on the fertile banks of the
Eurotas; I would observe that, in general, the inhabitants of the
north are more industrious than those of the south, because they can
less do without industry; as if nature thus meant to make all things
equal, by giving to the mind that fertility she has denied to the
soil.

But exclusive of the uncertain testimonies of history, who does not
perceive that everything seems to remove from savage man the
temptation and the means of altering his condition? His imagination
paints nothing to him; his heart asks nothing from him. His moderate
wants are so easily supplied with what he everywhere finds ready to
his hand, and he stands at such a distance from the degree of
knowledge requisite to covet more, that he can neither have for