compact. But we have seen that the most striking and marked characteristic of the savage is improvidence, and this feature is one of the last that disappears as he ascends in the scale of civilization. How, it may be asked, could these isolated individuals learn the advantages of society? To what miracle or accident are we to ascribe the fact, that these advantages were discovered simultaneously by persons previously unconnected? How were the conditions of the compact framed? Was there a marvellous unanimity in the acceptance of the terms; if not, what became of the dissidents? These are a few, and only a few, of the difficulties which must be removed before we can be persuaded that society was the work of man—an institution adopted with preference, purpose, and after mature reflection.

A very little exertion of thought is necessary to shew that the advantages of society could only have been discovered by experience: destitute of all previous knowledge, the isolated man would more reasonably have expected outrage than protection, injury than assistance, from associating with his fellows. In the very few authentic accounts of perfectly isolated individuals— such as that of Peter the wild boy-we find no trace of anything like a desire for society, and still less anything like the wisdom necessary to the formation of a social compact. Men united because they could not help it; they did not discover the advantages of association, but they found them out after they had been associated. It is probably in this sense that we are to understand the remarkable expression of Aristotle, that "the state existed before the individual;" for man undoubtedly is

led to promote the final ends of society before he distinctly perceives them or knows the advantages that they will bring to himself.

This is far different from the assertion that man is indistinctively a gregarious animal, an error into which Cicero and several of the ancient philosophers have fallen. Sociality is not an attribute of the physical but of the moral constitution of man. Bees congregate now for the purpose of constructing a honeycomb in precisely the same forms and under the same conditions that they ever did; the principle of cohesion in their community is not one whit greater or less than it was when they were first noticed by man; but the social principle in humanity is infinitely developed and extended by every advance in civilization.

Sociality is first manifested in the domestic union, which, as we have already seen, has a tendency to become perpetual in the human species, because conjugal attachment is not, as with other animals, limited to certain seasons. This principle is still further extended and developed in the relations of the family, the ties between parent and child, brother and sister, etc. The practice of infanticide, which we find in almost every barbarous country, necessarily hardens the hearts of parents against the children who are spared. It is true that we find in voyages and travels many examples of outbursts of paternal or maternal tenderness, but these are only momentary ebullitions; there is no permanent or abiding love of offspring, no care or forethought for future welfare of children. In Kolff's Voyage of the Dourga, we find that the Papuans, or natives of New Guinea, will not hesitate to sell their own children into slavery.

"Natives worthy of belief have assured me," says Lieut. Kolff, "that if a Papua of the coast is struck by a desire to obtain any articles brought by the foreign trader, for which he has no productions to give in exchange, he will not hesitate to barter one or two of his children for them; and if his own are not at hand, he will ask the loan of those of his neighbour, promising to give his own in exchange when they come to hand, this request being rarely refused. This appeared to me to be almost incredible, but the most trustworthy natives were unanimous evidence to its truth. The mountaineers themselves sometimes sell their children also. In other places, I have known parents sell their children when their maintenance became too heavy a burthen for them to bear, without heeding whether they would ever see them again. Such a total absence of feeling certainly brings these savage people below the level of dumb animals!"

The slave-dealers of the last century relate countless anecdotes of similar barbarity among the African tribes, and their account is fully confirmed by the missionaries. Father Labat mentions one instance of this worse than brutal disregard of natural ties, which is too curious to be omitted. He tells us that being one day, during the year 1654, in his convent of St. Salvador, a native of Congo came into the church and made such loud and doleful lamentations, that he gathered round him all the inhabitants of the convent. They eagerly inquired what dreadful calamity had befallen him, but so extreme was his affliction that he was long unable to make an answer. After much labour, and many kind attempts at consolation, he at length unfolded the

nature of his grief. He told them that he was reduced to the extreme of misery and despair; he had sold his children, his wives, his only sister, his younger brothers, and finally his father and mother; he was therefore in great distress, because there was not one of his family left whom he could turn into money. The worthy Capuchins were astounded; at first they could not forbear from laughing at so strange a complaint; they then endeavoured to shew him what an unnatural monster he was, and how justly he merited sufferings far more severe than those he endured. He coolly replied that he had done nothing but what had been constantly practised in that country, and there could be no crime in reducing them to that slavish condition to which he himself had run the risk of being reduced by them.

It may be said that this unnatural conduct should be attributed to the blighting influence of slavery and the slave trade rather than to barbarism. Undoubtedly, if there were not purchasers, children and relatives could not be sold as slaves: but it would be going too far to say that the mere demand produced the supply; or, if that were conceded, it would be still evident that those ties must be weak which could be so easily broken at the first appearance of temptation.

But parental love is a subject on which very great and injurious errors are made, not only in relation to savage, but also to civilized life. It is, in its origin, an animal sensation—a blind instinct, which belongs to the insect, the bird, the quadruped, as well as the man; an immutable law of nature, and nothing more. "In beings inferior to man," says Aimè Martin, "we

see the operation of this instinct associating itself with the passions, doubling their power, and raising them almost to intelligence. The bird forms its nest before it knows that it is about to produce anything of which it must take care; it lines that nest with a delicate down, before it knows the delicacy of its brood; it sits, that is to say, the most restless of beings sits unmoveable, during several weeks, upon a lifeless egg, before it knows that it encloses beings like itself. At length, the young ones being hatched, it brings their food, it drives away their enemies, is anxious for their preservation, and all these labours, painful or pleasurable, are to remain without a recompense: no filial tenderness will ever respond to this parental tenderness. One day the little ones try their wings,—another they take their flight, and wing their way into the plains of air. The animals have no family-they have none of the true parental affection-they are the servants of nature."

That this tenderness, so affecting to witness, is purely instinctive, and all but mechanical, appears from the fact that animals will bestow the same attention on a substituted progeny as on their own offspring. The hen is not less fond of ducklings than of chickens; the wild bird, though sometimes sorely perplexed by its ravenous appetite, bestows the same care on the intrusive cuckoo as on her own young: a cat, deprived of its kittens, has been known to bring up a leveret, a rat, and even a chicken. Among rational beings, the extraordinary love shewn by childless persons for pets may probably be referred to the same instinct; for many, whose sensibilities towards favourite animals are