source either of what happened to himself, or of those phenomena to
which he was a witness. As he every where saw only material effects, he
attributed them to causes of the same genus; incapable in his infancy of
those profound reveries, of those subtle speculations, which are the
fruit of time, the result of leisure, he did not imagine any cause
distinguished from the objects that met his sight, nor of any essence
totally different from every thing he beheld.

The observation of nature was the first study of those who had leisure
to meditate: they could not avoid being struck with the phenomena of the
visible world. The rising and setting of the sun, the periodical return
of the seasons, the variations of the atmosphere, the fertility and
sterility of the earth, the advantages of irrigation, the damage caused
by floods, the useful effects of fire, the terrible consequences of
conflagration, were proper and suitable objects to occupy their
thoughts. It was natural for them to believe that those beings they saw
move of themselves, acted by their own peculiar energies; according as
their influence over the inhabitants of the earth was either favorable
or otherwise, they concluded them to have either the power to injure
them, or the disposition to confer benefits. Those who first acquired
the knowledge of gaining an ascendancy over man, then savage, wandering,
unpolished, or dispersed in woods, with but little attachment to the
soil, of which he had not yet learned to reap the advantage, were always
more practised observers--individuals more instructed in the ways of
nature, than the people, or rather the scattered hordes, whom they found
ignorant and destitute of experience: their superior knowledge placed
them in a capacity to render these services--to discover to them useful
inventions, which attracted the confidence of the unhappy beings to whom
they came to offer an assisting hand; savages who were naked, half
famished, exposed to the injuries of the weather, obnoxious to the