pid progrefs; some have proceeded more flowly; and fome continue favages. To trace out that progrefs toward maturity in different nations, is the subject of the prefent undertaking.

SKETCHES

SKETCHES

OF THE

HISTORY OF MAN,

BOOK I.

Progrefs of MEN INDEPENDENT OF SOCIETY.

SKETCH I.

Progress refpecting Food and Population.

'N temperate climes, men fed originally

IN

on fruits that grow without culture,

and on the flesh of land-animals. As fuch animals become shy when often hunted, there is a contrivance of nature, no less fimple than effectual, which engages men to bear with chearfulness the fatigues of

hunting,

hunting, and the uncertainty of capture ;

and that is, an Hunger alone is

appetite for hunting. not fufficient: favages who act by fenfe, not by forefight, move not when the ftomach is full; and it would be too late when the ftomach is empty, to form a hunting-party. As that appetite is common to all favages whofe food depends on hunting; it is an illuflrious inftance of providential care, the adapting the internal conftitution of man to his external circumftanees

The appetite

It would be an agreeable undertaking, to collect all the inftances where the internal constitution of man is adapted to his external ftructure, and to other circumstances; but it would be a laborious work, as the inftances are extremely numerous; and, in the course of the prefent undertaking, there will be occafion to mark feveral of them.. "How finely are the external "parts of animals adjufted to their internal difpofi “tions! That ftrong and nervous leg armed with tearing fangs, how perfectly does it correfpond to the fiercenefs of the lion! Had it been adorned "like the human arm with fingers instead of fangs, "the natural energies of a lion had been all of them "defeated. That more delicate ftructure of an arm

46

terminating in fingers fo nicely diverfified, how #perfectly does it-correfpond to the pregnant inven tion of the human foul! Had these fingers been. fangs, what had become of poor Art that procures

petite for hunting, though among us little neceffary for food, is to this day remark

able

"us fo many elegancies and utilities! 'Tis here we "behold the harmony between the visible world and "the invifible (a)." The following is another inftance of the fame kind, which I mention here because it falls not under common obfervation. How finely, in the human fpecies, are the throat and the ear adjusted to each other, the one to emit mufical founds, the other to enjoy them! the one without the other would be an ufelefs talent. May it not be juftly thought, that to the power we have of emitting mufical founds by the throat, we owe the invention of mufical inftruments? A man would never think of inventing a mufical inftrument, but in order to imi tate founds that his ear had been delighted with. But there is a faculty in man still more remarkable, which ferves to correct the organs of external sense, where they tend to mislead him. I give two curious inftances. The image of every visible object is painted on the retina tunica, and by that means the object makes an impreffion on the mind. In what manner this is done, cannot be explained; because we have no conception how mind acts on body, or body on mind. But, as far as we can conceive or conjecture, a visible object ought to appear to us inverted, because the image painted on the retina tunica is inverted. But this is corrected by the faculty mentioned, which makes us perceive objects as they really exift. The other inAtance follows. As a man has two eyes, and fees with each of them, every object naturally ought to appear double; and yet with two eyes we fee every object

(a) Harris.

fingle,

able in young men, high and low, rich and poor. Natural propenfities may be rendered faint or obfcure, but never are totally eradicated.

Mene

Fish was not early the food of man. Water is not our element; and favages probably did not attempt to draw food from the fea or from rivers, till land-animals became scarce. Plutarch in his Sympofiacs obferves, that the Syrians and Greeks of old abstained from fifh. laus (a) complains, that his companions had been reduced by hunger to that food; and though the Grecian camp at the fiege of Troy was on the fea-fhore, there is not in Homer a fingle hint of their feeding on fish. We learn from Dion Caffius, that the Caledonians did not eat fish, though they had them in plenty; which is confirmed by Adamannus, a Scotch hiftorian, in his

fingle, precisely as if we had but one. Many philofophers, Sir Ifaac Newton in particular, have endeavoured to account for this phaenomenon by mechanical principles, but evidently without giving fatisfaction. To explain this phaenomenon, it appears to me that we must have recourse to the faculty mentioned acting against mechanical principles.

(a) Book 4. of the Odyssey.