esight
nor curiosity. The spectacle of nature, by growing quite familiar to
him, becomes at last equally indifferent. It is constantly the same
order, constantly the same revolutions; he has not sense enough to
feel surprise at the sight of the greatest wonders; and it is not in
his mind we must look for that philosophy, which man must have to know
how to observe once, what he has every day seen. His soul, which
nothing disturbs, gives itself up entirely to the consciousness of its
actual existence, without any thought of even the nearest futurity;
and his projects, equally confined with his views, scarce extend to
the end of the day. Such is, even at present, the degree of foresight
in the Caribbean: he sells his cotton bed in the morning, and comes in
the evening, with tears in his eyes, to buy it back, not having
foreseen that he should want it again the next night.

The more we meditate on this subject, the wider does the distance
between mere sensation and the most simple knowledge become in our
eyes; and it is impossible to conceive how man, by his own powers
alone, without the assistance of communication, and the spur of
necessity, could have got over so great an interval. How many ages
perhaps revolved, before men beheld any other fire but that of the
heavens? How many different accidents must have concurred to make them
acquainted with the most common uses of this element? How often have
they let it go out, before they knew the art of reproducing it? And
how often perhaps has not every one of these secrets perished with the
discoverer? What shall we say of agriculture, an art which requires so
much labour and foresight; which depends upon other arts; which, it is
very evident, cannot be practised but in a society, if not a formed
one, at least one of some standing, and which does not so much serve
to draw aliments from the earth, for the earth would yield them
without all that trouble, as to oblige her to produce those things,
which we like best, preferably to others? But let us suppose that men
had multiplied to such a degree, that the natural products of the
earth no longer sufficed for their support; a supposition which, by
the bye, would prove that this kind of life would be very advantageous
to the human species; let us suppose that, without forge or anvil, the
instruments of husbandry had dropped from the heavens into the hands
of savages, that these men had got the better of that mortal aversion
they al