has all his life been the close
eye-witness. The natural man reveals to us every motive, every process
internal and external, every slightest circumstance of his daily life,
and each element that gradually transformed him into the non-natural
man. One who had watched bees or beetles for years could not give us a
more full or confident account of their doings, their hourly goings in
and out, than it was the fashion in the eighteenth century to give of
the walk and conversation of the primeval ancestor. The conditions of
primitive man were discussed by very incompetent ladies and gentlemen at
convivial supper parties, and settled with complete assurance.[175]

Rousseau thought and talked about the state of nature because all his
world was thinking and talking about it. He used phrases and formulas
with reference to it which other people used. He required no more
evidence than they did, as to the reality of the existence of the
supposed set of conditions to which they gave the almost sacramental
name of state of nature. He never thought of asking, any more than
anybody else did in the middle of the eighteenth century, what sort of
proof, how strong, how direct, was to be had, that primeval man had such
and such habits, and changed them in such a way and direction, and for
such reasons. Physical science had reached a stage by this time when its
followers were careful to ask questions about evidence, correct
description, verification. But the idea of accurate method had to be
made very familiar to men by the successes of physical science in the
search after truths of one kind, before the indispensableness of
applying it in the search after truths of all kinds had extended to the
science of the constitution and succession of social states. In this
respect Rousseau was not guiltier than the bulk of his contemporaries.
Voltaire's piercing common sense, Hume's deep-set sagacity,
Montesquieu's caution, prevented them from launching very far on to this
metaphysical sea of nature and natural laws and states, but none of them
asked those critical questions in relation to such matters which occur
so promptly in the present day to persons far inferior to them in
intellectual strength. Rousseau took the notion of the state of nature
because he found it to his hand; he fitted to it his own characteristic
aspirations, expanding and vivifying a philosophic conception with all
the heat of humane passion; and thus, although, at the end of th