nature, transfer to it ideas collected in society, always consider
families as living together under one roof, and their members as
observing among themselves an union, equally intimate and permanent
with that which we see exist in a civil state, where so many common
interests conspire to unite them; whereas in this primitive state, as
there were neither houses nor cabins, nor any kind of property, every
one took up his lodging at random, and seldom continued above one
night in the same place; males and females united without any
premeditated design, as chance, occasion, or desire brought them
together, nor had they any great occasion for language to make known
their thoughts to each other. They parted with the same ease. The
mother suckled her children, when just born, for her own sake; but
afterwards out of love and affection to them, when habit and custom
had made them dear to her; but they no sooner gained strength enough
to run about in quest of food than they separated even from her of
their own accord; and as they scarce had any other method of not
losing each other, than that of remaining constantly in each other's
sight, they soon came to such a pass of forgetfulness, as not even to
know each other, when they happened to meet again. I must further
observe that the child having all his wants to explain, and
consequently more things to say to his mother, than the mother can
have to say to him, it is he that must be at the chief expense of
invention, and the language he makes use of must be in a great measure
his own work; this makes the number of languages equal to that of the
individuals who are to speak them; and this multiplicity of languages
is further increased by their roving and vagabond kind of life, which
allows no idiom time enough to acquire any consistency; for to say
that the mother would have dictated to the child the words he must
employ to ask her this thing and that, may well enough explain in what
manner languages, already formed, are taught, but it does not show us