An Essay on the History of Civil Society Part 6

Of the nations who dwell in those, or any other of the less cultivated parts of the earth, some entrust their subsistence chiefly to hunting, fis.h.i.+ng, or the natural produce of the soil. They have little attention to property, and scarcely any beginnings of subordination or government.

Others, having possessed themselves of herbs, and depending for their provision on pasture, know what it is to be poor and rich. They know the relations of patron and client, of servant and master, and by the measures of fortune determine their station. This distinction must create a material difference of character, and may furnish two separate heads, under which to consider the history, of mankind in their rudest state; that of the savage, who is not yet acquainted with property; and that of the barbarian, to whom it is, although not ascertained by laws, a princ.i.p.al object of care and desire.

It must appear very evident, that property is a matter of progress. It requires, among other particulars, which are the effects of time, some method of defining possession. The very desire of it proceeds from experience; and the industry by which it is gained, or improved, requires such a habit of acting with a view to distant objects, as may overcome the present disposition either to sloth or to enjoyment. This habit is slowly acquired, and is in reality a princ.i.p.al distinction of nations in the advanced state of mechanic and commercial arts.

In a tribe which subsists by hunting and fis.h.i.+ng, the arms, the utensils, and the fur, which the individual carries, are to him the only subjects of property. The food of to-morrow is yet wild in the forest, or hid in the lake; it cannot be appropriated before it is caught; and even then, being the purchase of numbers, who fish or hunt in a body, it accrues to the community, and is applied to immediate use, or becomes an accession to the stores of the public.

Where savage nations, as in most parts of America, mix with the practice of hunting some species of rude agriculture, they still follow, with respect to the soil and the fruits of the earth, the a.n.a.logy of their princ.i.p.al object. As the men hunt, so the women labour together; and, after they have shared the toils of the seed time, they enjoy the fruits of the harvest in common. The field in which they have planted, like the district over which they are accustomed to hunt, is claimed as a property by the nation, but is not parcelled in lots to its members. They go forth in parties to prepare the ground, to plant and to reap. The harvest is gathered into the public granary, and from thence, at stated times, is divided into shares for the maintenance of separate families. [Footnote: History of the Caribbees.]

Even the returns of the market, when they trade with foreigners, are brought home to the stock of the nation. [Footnote: Charlevoix. This account of Rude Nations, in most points of importance, so far as it relates to the original North Americans, is not founded so much on the testimony of this or the other writers cited, as it is on the concurring representations of living witnesses, who, in the course of trade, of war, and of treaties, have had ample occasion to observe the manners of that people. It is necessary however, for the sake of those who may not have conversed with the living witnesses, to refer to printed authorities.]

As the fur and the bow pertain to the individual, the cabin and its utensils are appropriated to the family; and as the domestic cares are committed to the women, so the property of the household seems likewise to be vested in them. The children are considered as pertaining to the mother, with little regard to descent on the father's side. The males, before they are married, remain in the cabin in which they are born; but after they have formed a new connection with the other s.e.x, they change their habitation, and become an accession to the family in which they have found their wives. The hunter and the warrior are numbered by the matron as a part of her treasure; they are reserved for perils and trying occasions; and in the recess of public councils, in the intervals of hunting or war, are maintained by the cares of the women, and loiter about in mere amus.e.m.e.nt or sloth. [Footnote: Lafitau.]

While one s.e.x continue to value themselves chiefly on their courage, their talent for policy, and their warlike achievements, this species of property which is bestowed on the other, is, in reality, a mark of subjection; not, as some writers allege, of their having acquired an ascendant. [Footnote: Ibid.] It is the care and trouble of a subject with which the warrior does not choose to be embarra.s.sed. It is a servitude, and a continual toil, where no honours are won; and they whose province it is, are in fact the slaves and the helots of their country. If in this destination of the s.e.xes, while the men continue to indulge themselves in the contempt of sordid and mercenary arts, the cruel establishment of slavery is for some ages deferred; if, in this tender, though unequal alliance, the affections of the heart prevent the severities practised on slaves; we have in the custom itself, as perhaps in many other instances, reason to prefer the first suggestions of nature, to many of her after refinements.

If mankind, in any instance, continue the article of property on the footing we have now represented, we may easily credit what is further reported by travellers; that they admit of no distinctions of rank or condition; and that they have in fact no degree of subordination different from the distribution of function, which follows the differences of age, talents, and dispositions. Personal qualities give an ascendant in the midst of occasions which require their exertion; but in times of relaxation, leave no vestige of power or prerogative. A warrior who has led the youth of his nation to the slaughter of their enemies, or who has been foremost in the chase, returns upon a level with the rest of his tribe; and when the only business is to sleep, or to feed, can enjoy no pre-eminence; for he sleeps and he feeds no better than they.

Where no profit attends dominion, one party is as much averse to the trouble of perpetual command, as the other is to the mortification of perpetual submission. "I love victory, I love great actions," says Montesquieu, in the character of Sylla; "but have no relish for the languid detail of pacific government, or the pageantry of high station." He has touched perhaps what is a prevailing sentiment in the simplest state of society, when the weakness of motive suggested by interest, and the ignorance of any elevation not founded on merit, supplies the place of disdain.

The character of the mind, however, in this state, is not founded on ignorance alone. Men are conscious of their equality, and are tenacious of its rights. Even when they follow a leader to the field, they cannot brook the pretensions to a formal command: they listen to no orders; and they come under no military engagements, but those of mutual fidelity, and equal ardour in the enterprise. [Footnote: Charlevoix.]

This description, we may believe, is unequally applicable to different nations, who have made unequal advances in the establishment of property.

Among the Caribbees, and the other natives of the warmer climates in America, the dignity of chieftain is hereditary, or elective, and continued for life: the unequal distribution of property creates a visible subordination. [Footnote: Wafer's Account of the Isthmus of Darien.] But among the Iroquois, and other nations of the temperate zone, the t.i.tles of _magistrate_ and _subject_, of _n.o.ble_ and _mean_, are as little known as those of _rich_ and _poor_. The old men, without being invested with any coercive power, employ their natural authority in advising or in prompting the resolutions of their tribe: the military leader is pointed out by the superiority of his manhood and valour; the statesman is distinguished only by the attention with which his counsel is heard; the warrior by the confidence with which the youth of his nation follow him to the field; and if their concerts must be supposed to const.i.tute a species of political government, it is one to which no language of ours can be applied. Power is more than the natural ascendancy of the mind; the discharge of office no more than a natural exercise of the personal character; and while the community acts with an appearance of order, there is no sense of disparity in the breast of any of its members.

[Footnote: Colden's History of the Five Nations.]

In these happy, though informal proceedings, where age alone gives a place in the council; where youth, ardour, and valour in the field, give a t.i.tle to the station of leader; where the whole community is a.s.sembled on any alarming occasion, we may venture to say, that we have found the origin of the senate, the executive power, and the a.s.sembly of the people; inst.i.tutions for which ancient legislators have been so much renowned. The senate among the Greeks, as well as the Latins, appears, from the etymology of its name, to have been originally composed of elderly men. The military leader at Rome, in a manner not unlike to that of the American warrior, proclaimed his levies, and the citizen prepared for the field, in consequence of a voluntary engagement. The suggestions of nature, which directed the policy of nations in the wilds of America, were followed before on the banks of the Eurotas and the Tyber; and Lycurgus and Romulus found the model of their inst.i.tutions, where the members of every rude nation find the earliest mode of uniting their talents, and combining their forces.

Among the North American nations, every individual is independent; but he is engaged by his affections and his habits in the cares of a family.

Families, like so many separate tribes, are subject to no inspection or government from abroad; whatever pa.s.ses at home, even bloodshed and murder, are only supposed to concern themselves. They are, in the mean time, the parts of a canton; the women a.s.semble to plant their maize; the old men go to council; the huntsman and the warrior joins the youth of his village in the field. Many such cantons a.s.semble to const.i.tute a national council, or to execute a national enterprise. When the Europeans made their first settlements in America, six such nations had formed a league, had their amphyctiones or states general, and, by the firmness of their union and the ability of their councils, had obtained an ascendant from the mouth of St.

Lawrence to that of the Mississippi. [Footnote: Lafitau, Charlevoix, Colden, &c.] They appeared to understand the objects of the confederacy, as well as those of the separate nation; they studied a balance of power; the statesman of one country watched the designs and proceedings of another; and occasionally threw the weight of his tribe into a different scale. They had their alliances and their treaties, which, like the nations of Europe, they maintained, or they broke, upon reasons of state; and remained at peace from a sense of necessity or expediency, and went to war upon any emergence of provocation or jealousy.

Thus, without any settled form of government, or any bond of union, but what resembled more the suggestion of instinct, than the invention of reason, they conducted themselves with the concert and the force of nations. Foreigners, without being able to discover who is the magistrate, or in what manner the senate is composed, always find a council with whom they may treat, or a band of warriors with whom they may fight. Without police or compulsory, laws, their domestic society is conducted with order, and the absence of vicious dispositions, is a better security than any public establishment for the suppression of crimes.

Disorders, however, sometimes occur, especially in times of debauch, when the immoderate use of intoxicating liquors, to which they are extremely addicted, suspends the ordinary caution of their demeanour, and, inflaming their violent pa.s.sions, engages them in quarrels and bloodshed. When a person is slain, his murderer is seldom called to an immediate account; but he has a quarrel to sustain with the family and the friends; or, if a stranger, with the countrymen of the deceased; sometimes even with his own nation at home, if the injury committed be of a kind to alarm the society.

The nation, the canton, or the family endeavour, by presents, to atone for the offence of any of their members; and, by pacifying the parties aggrieved, endeavour to prevent what alarms the community more than the first disorder, the subsequent effects of revenge and animosity. [Footnote: Lafitau.] The shedding of blood, however, if the guilty person remain where he has committed the crime, seldom escapes unpunished: the friend of the deceased knows how to disguise, though not to suppress, his resentment; and even after many years have elapsed, is sure to repay the injury that was done to his kindred or his house.

These considerations render them cautious and circ.u.mspect, put them on their guard against their pa.s.sions, and give to their ordinary deportment an air of phlegm and composure superior to what is possessed among polished nations. They are, in the mean time, affectionate in their carriage, and in their conversations, pay a mutual attention and regard, says Charlevoix, more tender and more engaging, than what we profess in the ceremonial of polished societies.

This writer has observed, that the nations among whom he travelled in North America, never mentioned acts of generosity or kindness under the notion of duty. They acted from affection, as they acted from appet.i.te, without regard to its consequences. When they had done a kindness, they had gratified a desire; the business was finished, and it pa.s.sed from the memory. When they received a favour, it might, or it might not, prove the occasion of friends.h.i.+p: if it did not, the parties appeared to have no apprehensions of grat.i.tude, as a duty by which the one was bound to make a return, or the other ent.i.tled to reproach the person who had failed in his part. The spirit with which they give or receive presents, is the same which, Tacitus observed among the ancient Germans; they delight in them, but do not consider them as matter of obligation. [Footnote: Muneribus gaudent, sed nec data imputant, nec acceptis obligantur.] Such gifts are of little consequence, except when employed as the seal of a bargain or treaty.

It was their favourite maxim, that no man is naturally indebted to another; that he is not, therefore, obliged to bear with any imposition, or unequal treatment. [Footnote: Charlevoix] Thus, in a principle apparently sullen and inhospitable, they have discovered the foundation of justice, and observe its rules, with a steadiness and candour which no cultivation has been found to improve. The freedom which they give in what relates to the supposed duties of kindness and friends.h.i.+p, serves only to engage the heart more entirely, where it is once possessed with affection. We love to choose our object without any restraint, and we consider kindness itself as a task, when the duties of friends.h.i.+p are exacted by rule. We therefore, by our demand for attentions, rather corrupt than improve the system of morality; and by our exactions of grat.i.tude, and out frequent proposals to enforce its observance, we only shew that we have mistaken its nature; we only give symptoms of that growing sensibility to interest, from which we measure the expediency of friends.h.i.+p and generosity itself; and by which we would introduce the spirit of traffic into the commerce of affection. In consequence of this proceeding, we are often obliged to decline a favour, with the same spirit that we throw off a servile engagement, or reject a bribe. To the unrefined savage every favour is welcome, and every present received without reserve or reflection.

The love of equality, and the love of justice, were originally the same; and although, by the const.i.tution of different societies, unequal privileges are bestowed on their members; and although justice itself requires a proper regard to be paid to such privileges; yet he who has forgotten that men were originally equal, easily degenerates into a slave; or, in the capacity of a master, is not to be trusted with the rights of his fellow creatures. This happy principle gives to the mind its sense of independence, renders it indifferent to the favours which are in the power of other men, checks it in the commission of injuries, and leaves the heart open to the affections of generosity and kindness. It gives to the untutored American that sentiment of candour, and of regard to the welfare of others, which, in some degree, softens the arrogant pride of his carriage, and in times of confidence and peace, without the a.s.sistance of government or law, renders the approach and commerce of strangers secure.

Among this people, the foundations of honour are eminent abilities, and great fort.i.tude; not the distinctions of equipage and fortune: the talents in esteem are such as their situation leads them to employ, the exact knowledge of a country, and stratagem in war. On these qualifications, a captain among the Caribbees underwent an examination. When a new leader was to be chosen, a scout was sent forth to traverse the forests which led to the enemy's country, and upon his return, the candidate was desired to find the track in which he had travelled. A brook, or a fountain, was named to him on the frontier, and he was desired to find the nearest path to a particular station, and to plant a stake in the place. [Footnote: Lafitau]

They can, accordingly, trace a wild beast, or the human foot, over many leagues of a pathless forest, and find their way across a woody and uninhabited continent, by means of refined observations, which escape the traveller who has been accustomed to different aids. They steer in slender canoes, across stormy seas, with a dexterity equal to that of the most experienced pilot. [Footnote: Charlevoix.] They carry a penetrating eye for the thoughts and intentions of those with whom they have to deal; and when they mean to deceive, they cover themselves with arts which the most subtile can seldom elude. They harangue in their public councils with a nervous and a figurative elocution; and conduct themselves in the management of their treaties with a perfect discernment of their national interests.

Thus being able masters in the detail of their own affairs, and well qualified to acquit themselves on particular occasions, they study no science, and go in pursuit of no general principles. They even seem incapable of attending to any distant consequences, beyond those they have experienced in hunting or war. They entrust the provision of every season to itself; consume the fruits of the earth in summer; and, in winter, are driven in quest of their prey, through woods, and over deserts covered with snow. They do not form in one hour those maxims which may prevent the errors of the next; and they fail in those apprehensions, which, in the intervals of pa.s.sion, produce ingenuous shame, compa.s.sion, remorse, or a command of appet.i.te. They are seldom made to repent of any violence; nor is a person, indeed, thought accountable in his sober mood, for what he did in the heat of a pa.s.sion, or in a time of debauch.

Their superst.i.tions are groveling and mean; and did this happen among rude nations alone, we could not sufficiently admire the effects of politeness; but it is a subject on which few nations are ent.i.tled to censure their neighbours. When we have considered the superst.i.tions of one people, we find little variety in those of another. They are but a repet.i.tion of similar weaknesses and absurdities, derived from a common source, a perplexed apprehension of invisible agents, that are supposed to guide all precarious events to which human foresight cannot extend.

In what depends on the known or the regular course of nature, the mind trusts to itself; but in strange and uncommon situations, it is the dupe of its own perplexity, and, instead of relying on its prudence or courage, has recourse to divination, and a variety of observances, that, for being irrational, are always the more revered. Superst.i.tion being founded in doubts and anxiety, is fostered by ignorance and mystery. Its maxims, in the mean time, are not always confounded with those of common life; nor does its weakness or folly always prevent the watchfulness, penetration, and courage, men are accustomed to employ in the management of common affairs. A Roman consulting futurity by the pecking of birds, or a king of Sparta inspecting the entrails of a beast, Mithridates consulting his women on the interpretation of his dreams, are examples sufficient to prove, that a childish imbecility on this subject is consistent with the greatest military and political conduct.

Confidence in the effect of charms is not peculiar to any age or nation.

Few, even of the accomplished Greeks and Romans, were able to shake off this weakness. In their case, it, was not removed by the highest measures of civilization. It has yielded only to the light of true religion, or to the study of nature, by which we are led to subst.i.tute a wise providence operating by physical causes, in the place of phantoms that terrify or amuse the ignorant.

The princ.i.p.al point of honour among the rude nations of America, as indeed in every instance where mankind are not greatly corrupted, is fort.i.tude.

Yet their way of maintaining this point of honour, is very different from that of the nations of Europe. Their ordinary method of making war is by ambuscade; and they strive, by overreaching an enemy, to commit the greatest slaughter, or to make the greatest number of prisoners, with the least hazard to themselves. They deem it a folly to expose their own persons in a.s.saulting an enemy, and do not rejoice in victories which are stained with the blood of their own people. They do not value themselves, as in Europe, on defying their enemy upon equal terms. They even boast, that they approach like foxes, or that they fly like birds, not less than they devour like lions. In Europe, to fall in battle is accounted an honour; among the natives of America it is reckoned disgraceful. [Footnote: Charlevoix.] They reserve their fort.i.tude for the trials they abide when attacked by surprise, or when fallen into their enemies' hands; and when they are obliged to maintain their own honour, and that of their own nation, in the midst of torments that require efforts of patience more than of valour.

On these occasions, they are far from allowing it to be supposed that they wish to decline the conflict. It is held infamous to avoid it, even by a voluntary death; and the greatest affront which can be offered to a prisoner, is to refuse him the honours of a man, in the manner of his execution. "Withhold," says an old man, in the midst of his torture, "the stabs of your knife; rather let me die by fire, that those dogs, your allies, from beyond the seas, may learn to suffer like men." [Footnote: Colden.] With terms of defiance, the victim, in those solemn trials, commonly excites the animosities of his tormentors, as well as his own; and whilst we suffer for human nature, under the effect of its errors, we must admire its force.

The people with whom this practice prevailed, were commonly desirous of repairing their own losses, by adopting prisoners of war into their families; and even, in the last moment, the hand which was raised to torment, frequently gave the sign of adoption, by which the prisoner became the child or the brother of his enemy, and came to share in all the privileges of a citizen. In their treatment of those who suffered, they did not appear to be guided by principles of hatred or revenge; they observed the point of honour in applying as well as in bearing their torments; and, by a strange kind of affection and tenderness, were directed to be most cruel where they intend the highest respect; the coward was put to immediate death by the hands of women; the valiant was supposed to be ent.i.tled to all the trials of fort.i.tude that men could invent or employ.

"It gave me joy," says an old man to his captive, "that so gallant a youth was allotted to my share; I proposed to have placed you on the couch of my nephew, who was slain by your countrymen; to have transferred all my tenderness to you; and to have solaced my age in your company; but, maimed and mutilated as you now appear, death is better than life; prepare yourself therefore to die like a man." [Footnote: Charlevoix.]

It is perhaps with a view to these exhibitions, or rather in admiration of fort.i.tude, the principle from which they proceed, that the Americans are so attentive, in their earliest years, to harden their nerves. [Footnote: _Ib_. This writer says, that he has seen a boy and a girl, having bound their naked arms together, place a burning coal between them, to try who could endure it longest.] The children are taught to vie with each other in bearing the sharpest torments; the youth are admitted into the cla.s.s of manhood, after violent proofs of their patience; and leaders are put to the test by famine, burning, and suffocation. [Footnote: Lafitau.]

It might be apprehended, that among rude nations, where the means of subsistence are procured with so much difficulty, the mind could never raise itself above the consideration of this subject; and that man would, in this condition, give examples of the meanest and most mercenary spirit.

The reverse, however, is true. Directed in this particular by the desires of nature, men, in their simplest state, attend to the objects of appet.i.te no further than appet.i.te requires; and their desires of fortune extend no further than the meal which gratifies their hunger: they apprehend no superiority of rank in the possession of wealth, such as might inspire any habitual principle of covetousness, vanity, or ambition: they can apply to no task that engages no immediate pa.s.sion, and take pleasure in no occupation that affords no dangers to be braved, and no honours to be won.

It was not among the ancient Romans alone that commercial arts, or a sordid mind, were held in contempt. A like spirit prevails in every rude and independent society. "I am a warrior, and not a merchant," said an American to the governor of Canada, who proposed to give him goods in exchange for some prisoners he had taken; "your clothes and utensils do not tempt me; but my prisoners are now in your power, and you may seize them: if you do, I must go forth and take more prisoners, or perish in the attempt; and if that chance should befal me, I shall die like a man; but remember, that our nation will charge you as the cause of my death." [Footnote: Charlevoix.] With these apprehensions, they have an elevation, and a stateliness of carriage, which the pride of n.o.bility, where it is most revered by polished nations, seldom bestows.

They are attentive to their persons, and employ much time, as well as endure great pain, in the methods they take to adorn their bodies, to give the permanent stains with which they are coloured, or preserve the paint, which they are perpetually repairing, in order to appear with advantage.

Their aversion to every sort of employment which they hold to be mean, makes them pa.s.s great part of their time in idleness or sleep; and a man who, in pursuit of a wild beast, or to surprise his enemy, will traverse a hundred leagues on snow, will not, to procure his food, submit to any species of ordinary labour. "Strange," says Tacitus, "that the same person should be so much averse to repose, and so much addicted to sloth."

[Footnote: Mira diversitas naturae, ut idem homines sic ament intertiam et oderint quietem.] Games of hazard are not the invention of polished ages; men of curiosity have looked for their origin in vain, among the monuments of an obscure antiquity; and it is probable that they belonged to times too remote and too rude even for the conjectures of antiquarians to reach. The very savage brings his furs, his utensils, and his beads, to the hazard table: he finds here the pa.s.sions and agitations which the applications of a tedious industry could not excite; and while the throw is depending, he tears his hair, and beats his breast, with a rage which the more accomplished gamester has sometimes learned to repress: he often quits the party naked and stripped of all his possessions; or where slavery is in use, stakes his freedom to have one chance more to recover his former loss.

[Footnote: Tacitus, Lafitau, Charlevoix.]

With all these infirmities, vices, or respectable qualities, belonging to the human species in its rudest state; the love of society, friends.h.i.+p, and public affection, penetration, eloquence, and courage, appear to have been its original properties, not the subsequent effects of device or invention.

If mankind are qualified to improve their manners, the materials to be improved were furnished by nature; and the effect of this improvement is not to inspire the sentiments of tenderness and generosity, nor to bestow the princ.i.p.al const.i.tuents of a respectable character, but to obviate the casual abuses of pa.s.sion; and to prevent a mind, which feels the best dispositions in their greatest force, from being at times likewise the sport of brutal appet.i.te, and of ungovernable violence.

Were Lycurgus employed anew to find a plan of government for the people we have described, he would find them, in many important particulars, prepared by nature herself to receive his inst.i.tutions. His equality in matters of property being already established, he would have no faction to apprehend from the opposite interests of the poor and the rich; his senate, his a.s.sembly of the people, is const.i.tuted; his discipline is in some measure adopted, and the place of his helots is supplied by the task allotted to one of the s.e.xes. With all these advantages, he would still have had a very important lesson for civil society to teach, that by which a few learn to command, and the many are taught to obey: he would have all his precautions to take against the future intrusion of mercenary arts, the admiration of luxury, and the pa.s.sion for interest: he would still perhaps have a more difficult task than any of the former, in teaching his citizens the command of appet.i.te, and an indifference to pleasure, as well as a contempt of pain; in teaching them to maintain in the field the formality of uniform precautions, and as much to avoid being themselves surprised, as they endeavour to surprise their enemy.

For want of these advantages, rude nations in general, though they are patient of hards.h.i.+p and fatigue, though they are addicted to war, and are qualified by their stratagem and valour to throw terror into the armies of a more regular enemy; yet, in the course of a continual struggle, always yield to the superior arts, and the discipline of more civilized nations.

Hence the Romans were able to overrun the provinces of Gaul, Germany, and Britain; and hence the Europeans have a growing ascendancy over the nations of Africa and America.

On the credit of a superiority which certain nations possess, they think that they have a claim to dominion; and even Caesar appears to have forgotten what were the pa.s.sions, as well as the rights of mankind, when he complained, that the Britons, after having sent him a submissive message to Gaul, perhaps to prevent his invasion, still pretended to fight for their liberties, and to oppose his descent on their island. [Footnote: Caesar questus, quod quum ultro in continentem legatis missis pacem a se petissent, bellum sine causa intulissent. _Lib_. 4.]

There is not, perhaps, in the whole description of mankind, a circ.u.mstance more remarkable than that mutual contempt and aversion which nations, under a different state of commercial arts, bestow on each other. Addicted to their own pursuits, and considering their own condition as the standard of human felicity, all nations pretend to the preference, and in their practice give sufficient proof of sincerity. Even the savage, still less than the citizen, can be made to quit that manner of life in which he is trained: he loves that freedom of mind which will not be bound to any task, and which owns no superior: however tempted to mix with polished nations, and to better his fortune, the first moment of liberty brings him back to the woods again; he droops and he pines in the streets of the populous city; he wanders dissatisfied over the open and the cultivated field; he seeks the frontier and the forest, where, with a const.i.tution prepared to undergo the hards.h.i.+ps and the difficulties of the situation, he enjoys a delicious freedom from care, and a seducing society, where no rules of behaviour are prescribed, but the simple dictates of the heart.

SECTION III.

OF RUDE NATIONS UNDER THE IMPRESSIONS OF PROPERTY AND INTEREST.

It was a proverbial imprecation in use among the hunting nations on the confines of Siberia, that their enemy might be obliged to live like a Tartar, and have the folly of troubling himself with the charge of cattle.

[Footnote: Abulgaze's Genealogical History of the Tartars] Nature, it seems, in their apprehension, by storing the woods and desert with game, rendered the task of the herdsman unnecessary, and left to man only the trouble of selecting and of seizing his prey.

The indolence of mankind, or rather their aversion to any application in which they are not engaged by immediate instinct and pa.s.sion, r.e.t.a.r.ds the progress of industry and of impropriation. It has been found, however, even while the means of subsistence are left in common, and the stock of the public is yet undivided, that property is apprehended in different subjects; that the fur and the bow belong to the individual; that the cottage, with its furniture, are appropriated to the family.