An Essay on the History of Civil Society, 8th edition | Page 2

our conjectures and different opinions of what
man must have been in the first age of his being. The poet, the historian,
and the moralist frequently allude to this ancient time; and under the
emblems of gold, or of iron, represent a condition, and a manner of life,
from which mankind have either degenerated, or on which they have
greatly improved. On either supposition, the first state of our nature
must have borne no resemblance to what men have exhibited in any
subsequent period; historical monuments, even of the earliest date, are
to be considered as novelties; and the most common establishments of
human society are to be classed among the encroachments which fraud,
oppression, or a busy invention, have made upon the reign of nature, by
which the chief of our grievances or blessings were equally withheld.
Among the writers who have attempted to distinguish, in the human
character, its original qualities, and to point out the limits between
nature and art, some have represented mankind in their first condition,
as possessed of mere animal sensibility, without any exercise of the
faculties that render them superior to the brutes, without any political
union, without any means of explaining their sentiments, and even
without possessing any of the apprehensions and passions which the
voice and the gesture are so well fitted to express. Others have made
the state of nature to consist in perpetual wars kindled by competition
for dominion and interest, where every individual had a separate
quarrel with his kind, and where the presence of a fellow creature was
the signal of battle.
The desire of laying the foundation of a favourite system, or a fond
expectation, perhaps, that we may be able to penetrate the secrets of
nature, to the very source of existence, have, on this subject, led to

many fruitless inquiries, and given rise to many wild suppositions.
Among the various qualities which mankind possess, we select one or a
few particulars on which to establish a theory, and in framing our
account of what man was in some imaginary state of nature, we
overlook what he has always appeared within the reach of our own
observation, and in the records of history.
In every other instance, however, the natural historian thinks himself
obliged to collect facts, not to offer conjectures. When he treats of any
particular species of animals, he supposes that their present dispositions
and instincts are the same which they originally had, and that their
present manner of life is a continuance of their first destination. He
admits, that his knowledge of the material system of the world consists
in a collection of facts, or at most, in general tenets derived from
particular observations and experiments. It is only in what relates to
himself, and in matters the most important and the most easily known,
that he substitutes hypothesis instead of reality, and confounds the
provinces of imagination and reason, of poetry and science.
But without entering any further on questions either in moral or
physical subjects, relating to the manner or to the origin of our
knowledge; without any disparagement to that subtilty which would
analyze every sentiment, and trace every mode of being to its source; it
may be safely affirmed, that the character of man, as he now exists, that
the laws of his animal and intellectual system, on which his happiness
now depends, deserve our principal study; and that general principles
relating to this or any other subject, are useful only so far as they are
founded on just observation, and lead to the knowledge of important
consequences, or so far as they enable us to act with success when we
would apply either the intellectual or the physical powers of nature, to
the purposes of human life.
If both the earliest and the latest accounts collected from every quarter
of the earth, represent mankind as assembled in troops and companies;
and the individual always joined by affection to one party, while he is
possibly opposed to another; employed in the exercise of recollection
and foresight; inclined to communicate his own sentiments, and to be
made acquainted with those of others; these facts must be admitted as
the foundation of all our reasoning relative to man. His mixed
disposition to friendship or enmity, his reason, his use of language and

articulate sounds, like the shape and the erect position of his body, are
to be considered as so many attributes of his nature: they are to be
retained in his description, as the wing and the paw are in that of the
eagle and the lion, and as different degrees of fierceness, vigilance,
timidity, or speed, have a place in the natural history of different
animals.
If the question be put, What the mind of man could perform, when left