civilized state without communion in some form with a people
already civilized, and why there is no moral or intellectual
development and progress without education and instruction,
consequently without instructors and educators. Hence the value
of tradition; and hence, as the first man could not instruct
himself, Christian theologians, with a deeper philosophy than is
dreamed of by the sciolists of the age, maintain that God himself
was man's first teacher, or that he created Adam a full-grown
man, with all his faculties developed, complete, and in full
activity. Hence, too, the heathen mythologies, which always
contain some elements of truth, however they may distort,
mutilate, or travesty them, make the gods the first teachers of
the human race, and ascribe to their instruction even the most
simple and ordinary arts of every-day life. The gods teach men to
plough, to plant, to reap, to work in iron, to erect a shelter
from the storm, and to build a fire to warm them and to cook
their food. The common sense, as well as the common traditions
of mankind, refuses to accept the doctrine that men are developed
without foreign aid, or progressive without divine assistance.
Nature of herself can no more develop government than it can
language. There can be no language without society, and no
society without language. There can be no government without
society, and no society without government of some sort.

But even if nature could spontaneously develop herself, she could
never develop an institution that has the right to govern, for
she has not herself that right. Nature is not God, has not
created us, therefore has not the right of property in us. She
is not and cannot be our sovereign. We belong not to her, nor
does she belong to herself, for she is herself creature, and