Page:Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Volume 1 (1791).djvu/27

Rh the ordinary wants of life, all remove its ordinary inconveniences, much in the same way.

If on the present occasion my principal object were to amuse the fancy, I should dwell long on this early period of the history of the human race. The first probable wants and inventions of mankind; their progress from a state of nature, peace and innocence, to one more turbulent and active, but less natural and happy; the simple origin of each art and science, and especially the source of all human knowledge, in the observation of nature, with the different degrees of cultivation which each science may be supposed to have received according to the various circumstances in which mankind have been—all these things might form a very amusing subject for speculation : but as such disquisitions must be chiefly guided by the imagination, and after all could be only considered in the light of a romance, I must not at present enter upon them. My review of those much later periods, although still far remote from us, in which the progress of science begins to be marked, must be even more flight than the traces of its footsteps in the page of history; and we shall easily console ourselves for out ignorance of what former ages have thought and known, when we find how little real advantage is to be derived from the knowledge of those much nearer to us.

In a very early state of society the sum of human knowledge would become too much for every individual to acquire; of course some must necessarily pursue particular arts or enquiries in preference to the rest; and this difference is observable not only among individuals, but also between different nations and bodies of men. In infant states warlike accomplishments more than any others engage the generality of the citizens, and, because most evidently necessary to the safety of the whole, are held in the highest esteem. But when external danger is kept at a distance, the Rh