"utumque per se indigenus, alterum alterius auxilio eget;" now feudalism loosened the bands by which society is held together, it tended to produce universal anarchy, and to prevent the development of those principles which are universally recognised as essential to the well-being of a state. We do not simply mean government a state is no more a government than a helm is a ship, or a mahout an elephant; a state is an organized society, whether of few or many, and its perfection depends on the security it affords. Under the feudal system, the guilty escaped punishment and the innocent could not find protection. The social state was therefore defective; and the peculiar independence fostered by feudalism, tended not only to perpetuate, but to extend these defects. While the march of the individual was to a certain extent onwards, that of society was retrograde; and had such a state of things continued, Europe must have sunk in barbarism to the level of Africa. It is sufficiently obvious that when the relations between men are not advanced in the same ratio as man himself, all improvement must be isolated, and can leave no trace in a future generation.* Comparing all these different conditions, we find that they have one common defect—stagnancy: they tend to keep every thing in one fixed position, to check advance and improvement; and hence we may fairly conclude that the primary element of civilization, according to the common sense of mankind, is progress, *Surely every medicine is an innovation, and he that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator, and if time of course alter all things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, where shall be an end?-Bacon's Essays. not from one place to another, but from one condition to another, and always in advance. The idea of progress, development, amelioration, or extension, appears to be the predominant notion (logically speaking, the genus) in the definition of civilization; and the most prominent attribute is, that the progress should be made in social life. It may be objected that this definition would cease to be applicable if perfect civilization were allowed; but we can see no bounds or limits to the advancement of knowledge; The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before us; But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it. Every advance that has yet been made, shews an equally distant horizon placed beyond us. It is not necessary to discuss the question of the perfectibility of the human species, but should humanity attain perfection, we doubt if civilization would be the proper term to describe its condition. Who has ever dreamed of speaking of the civilization of the kingdom of heaven! Civilization is progressive, and barbarism stationary; hence many have been led to infer, that the latter is the state of nature, or natural condition of man,—an inference which perhaps may be traced to the vulgar notions of motion and rest; for even philosophers find it difficult to divest themselves of the habit of regarding the vis inertia of matter as more naturally displayed in rest than in motion. Before investigating the question whether civilization or barbarism be the more natural, we should inquire, what is the true state of nature of any person or thing? A simple instance will suffice to shew that this is not so easy a matter as is generally imagined. Pine trees are found on the high Alps near the confines of perpetual snow; but they are stunted in their growth, they scarce put forth any branches, and their leaves are not fully developed. Pine trees are also found in too luxuriant soils, which give them a precocious exuberance, leading to a deranged organism and early decay. In either case, can the trees be said to be in their natural state? Assuredly not; we know that there are fundamental laws of the life and being of the tree, and that the state most natural to it is that in which it fulfils most completely the end and object for which it is made, according to its organization and the principles of its vitality. Man, in a state of nature, must therefore be man in the state for which nature has fitted him. Is there a definite mould and form to which his faculties are irrevocably predestined and predetermined? then nature has designed him to remain stationary, and the natural man is the savage. On the other hand, are his faculties expansive, his capacities progressive, and his moral endowments susceptible of cultivation ?—If so, nature has organized him for progress; civilization is the natural state, and barbarism the artificial. The erroneous belief that the savage form of life was the natural state, led to the general belief that it was the original condition of man: a belief which branched into two distinct theories, the first describing the solitary and savage life as miserable and wretched, the second asserting that it was a golden age of innocence, virtue, and happiness. The first theory is thus stated by Horace,— When the first mortals crawling rose to birth, This theory has been much extended by a modern school of zoologists, at the head of which stands Lamarck: he asserts that the ape was the original type of humanity, and that the varieties of the species are determined by their greater or less departure from the original stock; he even goes farther, and asserts that the existing mammalia were gradually developed from marine types, shewing, as one of his reviewers has quaintly observed, that the exclamation, "O, ye gods and little fishes!" is a phrase pregnant with meaning; and that the origin of mankind, like his own theory, is mighty like a whale." Without entering into any investigation of the physiological difficulties of this theory, it will be sufficient to say that none of these animals have ever been taken in the state of transition; no one has yet discovered a talking race of monkeys, or a mute race of men. The exaggerated accounts given of the intelligence displayed by the chimpanzee and the ourang-outang, have been sufficiently exploded by the exhibition of these animals in the Zoological Gardens; there was no difficulty in discovering the limits within which their faculties ranged, and it was manifest that many other animals, such as the dog and elephant, possessed a more extended scale of intelligence. The erect posture was manifestly painful to these animals, more so perhaps than to other species of the monkey tribe; and it was adopted not for the purpose of walking but climbing, as it is by the bear and other animals. A theory contradicted by all existing facts, supported by no past experience, and resting only on doubtful analogies, may safely be dismissed without further examination. The golden dream of savage innocence and original happiness can be traced to equally erroneous views. Men saw on the one hand the perfect laws of nature, and on the other the imperfect institutions of society; they also saw mankind producing enervation, degeneracy and moral evil, by the adoption of customs obviously contrary to nature, and thence they concluded that all evil arose from abandoning or counteracting nature. In the age of Louis XV, when the body was disfigured by the most cumbrous and unsuitable dresses, corresponding to shorn trees, denaturalized parks, clipped hedges and formal gardens,-when profligacy was deemed a suitable distinction of rank, and prostitution elevated to an order of the state, it is not wonderful that Rousseau, like Juvenal in a similar age, should turn from the depravity of his own times to a fancied age of primeval innocence. It is, however, surprising that he did not discover the obvious fallacies in his first statements. "All is good," says the author of Emile, "as it came out of the hands of the Creator: every thing degenerates in the hands of man. He forces one land to nourish the productions of another, one tree to bear the fruits of another; he mixes and confounds the climates, the elements, the seasons; he mutilates his very |