attacks of ferocious beasts, dispersed in caverns, scattered in forests,
occupied with hunting, painfully labouring to procure themselves a very
precarious subsistence, had not sufficient leisure to make discoveries
calculated to facilitate their labour, or to render it less incessant.
These discoveries are generally the fruit of society: isolated beings,
detached families, hardly ever make any discoveries--scarcely ever think
of making any. The savage is a being who lives in a perpetual state of
infancy, who never reaches maturity unless some one comes to draw him
out of his misery. At first repulsive, unsociable, intractable, he by
degrees familiarizes himself with those who render him service; once
gained by their kindness, he readily lends them his confidence; in the
end he goes the length of sacrificing to them his liberty.

It was commonly from the bosom of civilized nations that have issued
those personages who have carried sociability, agriculture, art, laws,
gods, superstition, forms of worship, to those families or hordes as yet
scattered; who united them either to the body of some other nations, or
formed them into new nations, of which they themselves became the
leaders, sometimes the king, frequently the high priest, and often their
god. These softened their manners--gathered them together--taught them
to reap the advantages of their own powers--to render each other
reciprocal assistance--to satisfy their wants with greater facility. In
thus rendering their existence more comfortable, thus augmenting their
happiness, they attracted their love; obtained their veneration,
acquired the right of prescribing opinions to them, made them adopt such
as they had either invented themselves, or else drawn up in the
civilized countries from whence they came. History points out to us the
most famous legislators as men, who, enriched with useful knowledge they
had gleaned in the bosom of polished nations, carried to savages without
industry, needing assistance, those arts, of which, until then, these