age and condition as a standard for mankind. If in one age or condition he
condemn the use of a coach, in another he would have no less censured the
wearing of shoes; and the very person who exclaims against the first, would
probably not have spared the second, if it had not been already familiar in
ages before his own. A censor born in a cottage, and accustomed to sleep
upon straw, does not propose that men should return to the woods and the
caves for shelter; he admits the reasonableness and the utility of what is
already familiar; and apprehends an excess and corruption, only in the
newest refinement of the rising generation.

The clergy of Europe have preached successively against every new fashion,
and every innovation in dress. The modes of youth are a subject of censure
to the old; and modes of the last age, in their turn, a matter of ridicule
to the flippant, and the young. Of this there is not always a better
account to be given, than that the old are disposed to be severe, and the
young to be merry.

The argument against many of the conveniencies of life, drawn from the mere
consideration of their not being necessary, was equally proper in the mouth
of the savage, who dissuaded from the first applications of industry, as it
is in that of the moralist, who insists on the vanity of the last. "Our
ancestors," he might say, "found their dwelling under this rock; they
gathered their food in the forest; they allayed their thirst from the
fountain; and they were clothed in the spoils of the beast they had slain.
Why should we indulge a false delicacy, or require from the earth fruits
which she is not accustomed to yield? The bow of our father is already too
strong for our arms; and the wild beast begins to lord it in the woods."

Thus the moralist may have found, in the proceedings of every age, those
topics of blame, from which he is so much disposed to arraign the manners