l have for constant labour; that they had learned to foretell
their wants at so great a distance of time; that they had guessed
exactly how they were to break the earth, commit their seed to it, and
plant trees; that they had found out the art of grinding their corn,
and improving by fermentation the juice of their grapes; all
operations which we must allow them to have learned from the gods,
since we cannot conceive how they should make such discoveries of
themselves; after all these fine presents, what man would be mad
enough to cultivate a field, that may be robbed by the first comer,
man or beast, who takes a fancy to the produce of it. And would any
man consent to spend his day in labour and fatigue, when the rewards
of his labour and fatigue became more and more precarious in
proportion to his want of them? In a word, how could this situation
engage men to cultivate the earth, as long as it was not parcelled out
among them, that is, as long as a state of nature subsisted.

Though we should suppose savage man as well versed in the art of
thinking, as philosophers make him; though we were, after them, to
make him a philosopher himself, discovering of himself the sublimest
truths, forming to himself, by the most abstract arguments, maxims of
justice and reason drawn from the love of order in general, or from
the known will of his Creator: in a word, though we were to suppose
his mind as intelligent and enlightened, as it must, and is, in fact,
found to be dull and stupid; what benefit would the species receive
from all these metaphysical discoveries, which could not be
communicated, but must perish with the individual who had made them?
What progress could mankind make in the forests, scattered up and down
among the other animals? And to what degree could men mutually improve
and enlighten each other, when they had no fixed habitation, nor any
need of each other's assistance; when the same persons scarcely met
twice in their whole lives, and on meeting neither spoke to, or so
much as knew each other?

Let us consider how many ideas we owe to the use of speech; how much
grammar exercises, and facilitates the operations of the mind; let us,
besides, reflect on the immense pains and time that the first
invention of languages must have required: Let us add these
reflections to the preceding; and then we may judge how many thousand
ages must have been requisite to develop successively the operations,
which the human min