Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1780. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... E S SAY S ON THE HISTORY Of MANKIND. ESSAY L ON THE PRIMEVAL FORM OF SOCIETY. HUMAN Nature, in some respects, is so various and fluctuating; so altered, or so disguised by external things, that its independent character has become dark and problematical. The history of its exertions in their primeval form, would reflect a light upon moral and political science, which we endeavour in vain to B collect collect in the annals of polished nations. What pity is it, that, the transactions of this early period being consigned to eternal oblivion, history is necessarily defective in opening the scene of man I Consistently, however, with present appearances, and with the memorials of antiquity, the following changes, it is pretended, may have arisen successively to the species. First, Man may have subsisted, in some sort, like other animals, in a separate and individual state, before the date of language, or the commencement of any regular intercourse. Secondly, He may be contemplated in a higher stage; a proficient in language, and a member of that artless community which consists with equality, with freedom, and independence. Last Last of all, by flow and imperceptible transitions, he subsists and flourishes under the protection and discipline of civil government. It is the design of this Eflay to enquire into the principles which either superseded the first, or hastened the second state; and led to an harmonious and social correspondence, antecedently to the aera of subordination, to the grand enterprises of art, to the institution of laws, or any of the arrangements of nations. But it is the order of improvement merely, not the chronological order of the world, that belongs to this enquiry. Degeneracy, as -+ well as improvement, is incident to man: and we..."