Page:Repository of Arts, Series 1, Volume 01, 1809, January-June.djvu/15

Rh earliest stages of society, when the first dawning of the arts gleamed upon the universe. Writers, notwithstanding they agree almost generally in opinion, that man is a social being, have, in their speculations, described a slate of nature, which certainly never had any existence but in their own imaginations; and they appear to have fallen into this universal error, from a wish to exhibit the advantages of society in a stronger point of view, by contrasting them with a fancied state of wildness, as painters give effect to light by opposing large masses of shade, or as the beauty of melody is more sensibly felt when succeeding to the imperfect harmony which results from the proper management of discords. These philosophers seem as generally to have omitted the acknowledgment, that such a state of nature in which they are pleased to consider man in the abstract, never had, or could have had, any actual or physical existence.

It is obvious that some of the more useful arts must, from necessity, have been coeval with the first of the human race. The means of procuring food, raiment, and shelter, even in their utmost simplicity, imply a certain extent of knowledge in the arts; some of them are so obvious and necessary, and at the same time their antiquity is so remote, that even tradition does not furnish us with the names of their inventors. At a period when the occupations of mankind were limited to the attainment of what was necessary to existence, there was neither time nor occasion tor the cultivation of those arts which were to promote the conveniences, or minister to the luxuries of life. But very soon the shepherd state afforded not only the time, but was calculated to excite a desire for the useful arts; and the gradual improvements of agriculture furnished the means of supplying food for those who, relieved from the necessity of bodily labour, were employed in the useful arts, and afterwards in cultivating such as contributed to the enjoyments and amusements of mankind: accordingly, we find the arts first made their appearance in the East, under a genial sky and in a fertile soil. The bow and arrow, those necessary appendages of the first hunters, are attributed to Scythus, the son of Jupiter; and spinning, the most useful perhaps of all the arts, has usually been ascribed to some illustrious inventor; by the Egyptians to Isis, by the Greeks to Minerva, by the Peruvians to Mama Ella, wife to their first sovereign Mango Capac, and by the Chinese to the wife of their emperor Yao. The first attempts at architecture were necessarily rude and simple, and the hut of the savage was rivalled in neatness and accommodation by the commodious habitations of the more sagacious brutes. To a state of society naturally succeeded the appropriation of property, which as naturally led, first to individual trespasses, and afterwards to the mutual encroachments of different tribes upon one another. The means of attack and defence appear to have been among the first essays of human invention, and the miserable has, perhaps, in succeeding ages,  called forth the powers of the human mind in a greater degree than any of the arts of peace. To the club and the dart succeeded the bow and arrow. The employment of iron was a later discovery: even at the siege of Troy, B2