ht," 1784. This paper has been translated by De Quincey, and
attention has been recently drawn to its "signal merits" by the Editor
of the _Fortnightly Review_ in his Essay on Condorcet. (_Fortnightly
Review_, No. xxxviii. N.S. pp. 136, 137.)]

"The means of which Nature has availed herself, in order to
bring about the development of all the capacities of man, is
the antagonism of those capacities to social organization,
so far as the latter does in the long run necessitate their
definite correlation. By antagonism, I here mean the unsocial
sociability of mankind--that is, the combination in them of
an impulse to enter into society, with a thorough spirit
of opposition which constantly threatens to break up this
society. The ground of this lies in human nature. Man has an
inclination to enter into society, because in that state he
feels that he becomes more a man, or, in other words, that his
natural faculties develop. But he has also a great tendency to
isolate himself, because he is, at the same time, aware of the
unsocial peculiarity of desiring to have everything his own
way; and thus, being conscious of an inclination to oppose
others, he is naturally led to expect opposition from them.

"Now it is this opposition which awakens all the dormant
powers of men, stimulates them to overcome their inclination
to be idle, and, spurred by the love of honour, or power, or
wealth, to make themselves a place among their fellows, whom
they can neither do with, nor do without.

"Thus they make the first steps from brutishness towards
culture, of which the social value of man is the measure. Thus
all talents become gradually developed, taste is formed,
and by continual enlightenment the foundations of a way of
thinking are laid, which gradually changes the mere rude
capacity of moral perception into determinate practical
principles; and thus society, which is originated by a sort
of pathological compulsion, becomes metamorphosed into a moral
unity." (_Loc. cit_. p. 147.)

"All the culture and art which adorn humanity, the most
refined social order, are produced by that unsociability which
is compelled by its own existence to discipline itself, and
so by enforced art to bring the seeds implanted by nature into
full flower." (_Loc. cit_. p. 148.)

In these passages, as in others of this