Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/30

 the same Make, former Conquests would have produced the same Effects, as we see later ones have done. In short, We cannot say that ever any one Invention of Universal Use has been laid aside, unless some other of greater, and more general Use has come in the Room of it, or the Conquerors took it away, for some Political Reason, either letting it totally die, or supplying it with something else, which to them seemed a valuable Equivalent. Have any of these Conquerors, since Tubal-Cain's Time, once suffered the Use of Metals, Iron for Instance, or Gold, to be lost in the World? Have Letters been ever lost, since the Time of that first Cadmus, whoever he was, that found them out? Or was Mankind ever put to the Trouble of inventing them a second Time? Have the Arts of Planting, of Weaving, or of Building, been at