of the world. In this state of natural against the intemperance of frigid
liberty, society will be our first and torrid zones, against the sterility
thought. A thousand motives will of the earth which, refuses him aliment,
excite them thereto. The strength of or its baneful fecundity, which
one man is so unequal to his wants, makes poison spring up beneath his
and his mind so unfitted for perpetual feet; in short against the claws and
solitude, that he is soon obliged to teeth of savage beasts, who dispute
seek assistance of another, who, in with him his habitation and his prey,
his turn, requires the same. Four or and attacking his person, seem resolved
five united would be able to raise to render themselves rulers of
a tolerable dwelling in the midst of a this globe, of which he thinks himself
wilderness; but _one_ man might to be the master. Man, in this
labour out the common period of life, state, alone and abandoned to himself,
without accomplishing any thing; could do nothing for his preservation.
when he has felled his timber, he It was necessary, therefore,
could not remove it, nor erect it after that he should unite himself, and associate
it was removed; hunger, in the with his like, in order to
mean time would, urge him from his bring together their strength and intelligence
work, and every different want call in common stock. It is
him a different way. Disease, nay by this union that he has triumphed
even misfortune would be death; over so many evils, that he has
for though neither might be immediately fashioned this globe to his use, restrained
mortal, yet either of them the rivers, subjugated the
would disable him from living, and seas, insured his subsistence, conquered
reduce him to a state in which he apart of the animals in obliging
might rather be said to perish than to them to serve him, and driven others
die.--Thus necessity, like a gravitating far from his empire, to the depths of
power, would form our newly deserts or of woods, where their
arrived emigrants into society, the number diminishes from age to age.
reciprocal benefits of which would What a man alone would not have