the first occasion to practise chicanery with Nature (Gen. iii. 1.) and, in spite of her prohibition, to make the first experiment of a free choice; which experiment, being the first, probably did not result according to expectation. No matter how insignificant the injury which ensued, man's eyes were opened by it. (Gen. iii. 7.) He discovered in himself the capacity to select his own life-path, instead of being confined to a given one, like other animals. The momentary pleasure which the perception of this advantage might awake in him, must have been followed immediately by fear and anxiety. How was he, who, as yet, knew nothing according to its hidden qualities and remote effects,-how was he to proceed with his newly discovered power? He stood, as it were, on the brink of an abyss. From the single objects of his desire, as they had hitherto been indicated to him by instinct, he learned their infinity, an infinity in which he was as yet unprepared to choose. It was not possible for him however to return from this state of freedom once tasted, to that of servitude, or subjection to the law of instinct.

Next to the instinct of nourishment, by which Nature preserves the individual, the instinct of sex, by which she provides for the preservation of the species, is the most important. Reason, once called into action, began without much delay to manifest its influence here likewise. Man soon found that what, with other animals, is transient and for the most part dependent on periodical impulse, was capable of being prolonged and even increased, in his case, by means of the imagination, which acts with greater moderation indeed, but also with greater permanence and uniformity, the more the object is withdrawn from the senses; and that, by this means, the satiety which the satisfaction of a merely animal desire brings with it, might be prevented. Accordingly, the fig-leaf (v. 7.) was the product of a far greater exercise of reason, than that which appeared in the first stage of its development. For to render a propensity more intense and more permanent by withdrawing the object of it from the senses, shows a consciousness of some degree of power of reason over impulses, and not merely, like that first step, a capacity to serve them to a greater or less extent. Denial was the artifice which led from the joys of mere sensation to ideal ones, from mere animal desire to love, and, with love, from the feeling of the merely agreeable, to the taste for the beautiful, first in man, and then in nature. Propriety, the disposition to inspire respect in others by the decent concealment of whatsoever might produce contempt, as the true foundation of all genuine social union, gave moreover the first hint to the cultivation of man, as a moral being.-A small beginning, but one which makes an epoch, by giving a new direction to thought, is more important than the whole immeasurable series of extensions given to culture, in consequence of it. The third step in the progress of reason, after

it had connected itself with the first felt and immediate necessities, was the deliberate expectation of the future. This faculty, by means of which not only the present life-moment is enjoyed, but the coming and often far distant time made present, is the most decisive mark of the advantage possessed by man in being able to prepare himself, according to his destination, for distant ends; but it is also, at the same time, the most inexhaustible fountain of cares and troubles, occasioned by the uncertain future, from which all other animals are freed. (vs. 13-19.) The man, who had himself and a wife, together with future children, to support, anticipated the ever-growing difficulty of his labour. The woman anticipated the evils to which Nature had subjected her sex, and the added ones which the stronger man would lay upon her. Both saw with fear, in the back ground of the picture, after a toilsome life, that which indeed befalls inevitably all creatures, but without occasioning them any anxiety, namely, death. And they seemed to reproach themselves for the use of reason which had brought all these evils upon them, and to count it a crime. To live in their posterity, who might experience a happier lot, and, as members of a family, lighten the common burden, was, perhaps, the only consoling prospect which still sustained them. (Gen. iii. 16-20.)

The fourth and last step in the progress of reason, and that which raised man entirely above the fellowship of the beasts, was this, that he comprehended, however, obscurely, that he is truly the aim of Nature, and that nothing which lives upon the earth can rival him in this. The first time that he said to the sheep: "that skin which thou wearest, Nature gave thee not for thine own sake but for mine," and so saying, took it from the animal and put it upon himself; (v. 21.) he became conscious of a prerogative which, by virtue of his nature, be possessed above all other animals. He no longer regarded these as his associates in creation, but as means and instruments committed to his will, for the accomplishment of whatsoever ends he pleased. This conception includes, though dimly, the converse; viz. that he could not say the same of his fellowman, but must regard him as an equal partaker with himself of the gifts of Nature. We have here a remote preparative for those limitations which reason was hereafter to impose upon the will of man in regard to his fellow, and which are even more necessary than inclination and love, to the constitution of society.

And thus had man,— in consideration of his title to be an end unto himself, to be regarded as such by every other and by none to be used merely as a means to other ends,-entered into an equality with all rational beings of whatsoever rank. (Gen. iii. 22.) It is here, and not in the possession of reason, considered merely as an instrument for the satisfaction of various propensities, that we are to look for the ground of

ginning of things, was neither better nor worse than now, an assumption which agrees with the analogy of nature, and has nothing presumptuous in it. A history of the first unfolding of freedom from an original capacity in the nature of man, is something very different from the history of freedom in its progress, which can have no other basis than received accounts.

Conjecture, however, must urge no extravagant claims to assent. It must announce itself not as serious occupation, but only as an exercise permitted to the imagination, under the guidance of reason, by way of recreation and mental hygiene. Accordingly, it must not measure itself with a narrative on the same subject, which has been proposed and believed as actual history, and whose evidence depends on far other grounds than those of natural philosophy. For this reason, and because I am attempting here a mere pleasure-excursion, I may count on the privilege of being allowed to avail myself of a certain ancient, sacred document, and of fancying that my excursion made on the wings of imagination, though not without a guiding thread deduced by reason from experience, has hit the exact line which that document historically describes. The reader will turn over the leaves of the document (first book of Moses, from the second to the fourth chapter), and, following step by step, see whether the course pursued by philosophy according to ideas, coincides with the one which is there indicated.

We

Not to lose ourselves in merely fantastic conjectures, we must begin with that which cannot be deduced by human reason from antecedent natural causes, viz. the existence of man. must suppose him existing in fully developed stature, in order that he may be independent of maternal aid. We must suppose a pair, in order that he may propagate his species; and yet but a single pair, in order that war may not spring up at once, between those who are near together and yet estranged from each other; and that Nature may not be charged, on the score of various parentage, with having made no sufficient provision for union, as the chief end of human destination. For the unity of the family from which all men were to derive their origin, was undoubtedly the best means to bring about this end. I place this pair in a region secured against the attack of beasts of prey, and richly furnished by nature with the means of support; that is, in a kind of garden, and in a climate forever genial. Farther still, I contemplate them at that period only, at which they have already made important progress in the ability to use their powers. I begin therefore not with the utter rudeness of nature, lest there should be too many conjectures for the reader, and too few probabilities, if I were to attempt to fill up this gap, which probably comprises a long period of time.

consequently, think. All these faculties he was forced to acquire for himself, for if they had been inborn, they would be hereditary, which is contrary to experience. But I here assume that he is already possessed of these faculties, and direct my attention exclusively to the development of the moral in his doing and abstaining, which necessarily presupposes the faculties in question.

At first, the novice is guided solely by instinct, that voice of God which all animals obey. This allowed him certain articles of food and forbade others. (Gen. iii. 2. 3.) It is not necessary however, to suppose, for this purpose, a special instinct which has since been lost. It might have been simply the sense of smell, its relation to the organ of taste, and the known sympathy of the latter with the instruments of digestion. Hence a capacity, the like of which may still be observed, to predict the suitableness or unsuitableness of any particular species of food. It is not even necessary to suppose this sense stronger in the first pair than it is now; for it is well known what difference exists in the powers of perception, between those who are occupied with their senses alone and those who are occupied, at the same time, with their thoughts, and thereby diverted from their sensations.

So long as inexperienced man obeyed this call of Nature, he found his account in so doing. Soon, however, Reason began to stir and he sought to extend his knowledge of the means of subsistence beyond the bounds of instinct, by a comparison of that which he had eaten with that which resembled it, in the judgment of another sense than the one to which the instinct attached, the sense of sight. (Gen. iii. 6.) This experiment might have had a happy issue, although instinct did not advise, provided it did not forbid. But it is a property of reason to be able, with the help of imagination, to elaborate artificial desires not only without a natural impulse, but even against the impulses of nature. These desires which, in their first manifestation, we call wantonness, gradually produce a whole swarm of unnecessary and even of unnatural propensities, to which we give the name of luxury. The occasion of the first defection from natural instinct, may have been a trifle, but the consequence of this first experiment was, that man became conscious of his reason, as a faculty capable of extension beyond the limits within which other animals are held; and this consequence was of great importance and had a decisive influence on his way of life. Although, therefore, it may have been merely a fruit, the sight of which tempted him to partake of it by its resemblance to other pleasant fruits, of which he had already partaken; yet if we add the example of an animal to whose nature such fruit was adapted, whereas it was not adapted to the nature of man, and, consequently, forbidden to him by an opposing natural in

yet rightly commenced, much less completed its course, according to true principles, educating alike the man and the citizen, arise all the real evils which oppress human life, and all the vices which dishonour it. The propensities which lead to those vices, and on which the blame is laid in such cases, are good in themselves, and have their end as natural endowments. But these natural endowments, being calculated for a state of Nature alone, are trenched upon by progressive culture, and, in turn, re-act upon culture, until perfected Art returns to Nature again; which is the final goal in the moral destination of the human species.

CONCLUSION OF THE HISTORY.

The beginning of the next period was the transition of man from an era of peace and ease to one of labour and discord, as a prelude to social union. And here again we must make a great leap, and suppose him at once in possession of tame animals, and of fruits which he could multiply by sowing and planting: (Gen. iv. 2.) although it must have been a long process, by which he arrived from the rude life of

sition, that Nature has implanted in us two tendencies to two different ends, viz., of man as an animal and of man as a moral species, is the Ars longa vita brevis of Hippocrates. Science and art might be carried much farther by a single mind which is made for them, after it has once attained the requisite maturity of judgment by long discipline and acquired knowledge, than by succes sive generations of learned men; provided that single head could live through the whole period, occupied by those successive generations, with the same youthful power of intellect. Now Nature has evidently taken her determination respecting the duration of human life, from a very different point of view than the promotion of science. For when a man of the happiest intellect stands on the brink of the greatest discoveries, which he is authorized to expect from his skill and experience, old age comes in; he grows dull, and must leave it to another generation, beginning with the A. B. C., and going over the whole ground again which he has been over, to add another span to the progress of culture. Accordingly, the progress of the human race toward the fulfilment of its entire destination appears to be continually interrupted, and in continual danger of falling back again into primitive rudeness. And the Grecian philosopher did not com. plain entirely without cause, when he said "it is a pity that man must die then when he has just begun to understand how he ought to live."

We may take, for a third example, the inequality of the human condition. Not the inequality of natural endowments nor of the gifts of Fortune, but that inequality in universal human rights, concerning which Rousseau complains with much truth, but which is inseparable from culture as long as it proceeds without a plan, as it must for a long time, and to which Nature certainly did not destine man, seeing she gave him freedom, and reason to restrain that freedom solely by its own universal and external legality, which we call civil right. was intended to work his way gradually out of the rudeness of his natural tendencies, and while he lifts himself above them, nevertheless to take heed that he does not sin against them; a faculty which he does not acquire till late, and after many unsuccessful attempts. In the meanwhile, Humanity sighs under various evils which, from inexperience, it inflicts upon itself.

Man

a hunter to the first of these possessions, or from the irregular digging of roots and gathering of fruits to the second. At this point, the division between men who had hitherto lived peaceably side by side, behoved to begin; the consequence of which was the separation of those addicted to different modes of life, and their dispersion over the earth. The life of the shepherd is not only easy, but affords also the most certain support, since there can be no want of feed in a soil which is uninhabited far and wide. On the other hand, agriculture or planting is very toilsome, dependent on the uncertainty of the weather; consequently insecure, and requiring, moreover, permanent buildings, ownership of the soil, and sufficient power to defend it. But the herdsman hates this property in the soil, which limits the freedom of his pasturage. With regard to the first point, the agriculturalist might seem to envy the herdsman as more favoured by Heaven than himself (v. 4.); in fact, however, he was much troubled by him as long as he remained in his neighbourhood; for the browsing cattle did not spare his plantations. Since now it was easy for the herdsman, after the damage which he had caused, to withdraw himself to a distance and thus escape reprisals, seeing he left nothing which he could not as well find everywhere else, it was probably the husbandman who first used violence against these trespasses which the herdsman thought lawful, and who, since the occasion for these trespasses could never entirely cease, was compelled, unless he would lose the fruits of his long diligence, to remove as far as possible from those who led a nomadic life. (v. 16.) This separation makes the third epoch.

The

A soil, on the working and planting of which (especially with trees), the support of life depends, requires fixed habitations; and, for the defence of these against all assaults, a multitude of men who shall assist each other. Consequently, men addicted to this mode of life, could no longer disperse by families, but must keep together and establish villages, (improperly called cities), in order to protect their property against hunters or hordes of vagrant herdsmen. The first necessities of life, the production of which involved various pursuits (v. 20.), might now be exchanged, the one for the other. necessary consequence of this was culture, and the beginning of the arts, as well of amusement as of industry. (vs. 21, 22.) But what is most important, there was also some arrangement toward a civil constitution and public justice; at first, indeed, with respect only to gross acts of violence, the avenging of which was now no longer left to individuals, as in the savage state, but committed to a legalized power which kept the whole together; that is a kind of Government, beyond which there was no executive force (vs. 23, 24.) From this first rude institution, all human arts, among which that of society and civil security is the most profitable, could gradually unfold themselves, the

that unlimited equality of man even with higher beings, who may be incomparably superior to him in natural endowments, but no one of whom has therefore a right to manage and dispose of him at pleasure. This step in the progress of reason is therefore simultaneous with the dismissal of man from the mother-lap of Nature; -a change which was honourable indeed, but at the same time dangerous, inasmuch as it drove him forth from the unmolested and safe condition in which his childhood was nursed, as it were from a garden which had maintained him without any care on his part, (v. 23.) and thrust him into the wide world, where so many cares and troubles and unknown eviis awaited him. Hereafter, the burdens of life will often elicit the wish for a paradise- the creature of his imagination-where he may dream or trifle away his existence in quiet inactivity and uninterrupted peace. But reason, restless and irresistibly impelling him to unfold the capacities implanted in him, stations itself between him and that region of imaginary joys, and will not permit him to return into that condition of rude simplicity out of which it has drawn him forth. (v. 24.) It impels him to undergo with patience the labour which he hates, to chase the gauds which he despises, and to forget even death so terrible to him, in the pursuit of those trifles whose loss is more terrible still.

REMARK.

From this sketch of the first history of man it appears, that his departure from the Paradise which reason represents as the first residence of his species, was nothing else than the transition from the rudeness of a merely animal nature, to humanity, from the leading strings of instinct to the guidance of reason,-in a word, from the guardianship of Nature, to a state of freedom. Whether man has gained or lost by this change, can no longer be a question, if we regard the destination of the species, which consists solely in progress toward perfection; however defective may have been the first attempts, and even a long series of successive attempts to penetrate to this end. Nevertheless, this course which, for the species, is a progress from worse to better, is not exactly such for the individual. Before reason was awakened, there was neither command nor prohibition, and consequently no transgression. But when reason began its work, and, weak as it was, came into collision with animalism in all its strength, it was unavoidable that evils, and what was worse, with the growing cultivation of reason, vices should arise, which were entirely foreign from the state of ignorance, and consequently of innocence. The first step out of this state, therefore, on the moral side, was a Fall; on the physical, a number of life-ills, hitherto unknown, were the effect; consequently, the punishment of that Fall. So the history of Nature begins with good, for it is the work of God; but the history of Freedom begins with evil, for it is the work of man.

For the individual who, in the use of his freedom, has reference only to himself, the change was a loss. For Nature, whose aim in relation to man, is directed to the species, it was a gain. The former, therefore, has reason to ascribe all the evils that he suffers, and all the evils that he does, to his own fault; at the same time, however, as a member of the whole, (the species) he must admire and commend the wisdom and propriety of the arrangement.

In this way, we may reconcile, with each other, and with reason, the oft misinterpreted, and, in appearance, successively conflicting assertions of the celebrated J. J. Rousseau. In his work on The Influence of the Sciences, and in that on The Inequality of Men, he very correctly exhibits the unavoidable contradiction which exists between culture and the nature of man, as a physical race of beings, in which each individual is to fulfil entirely his destination. But in his Emil' and his Social Contract' and other writings, he endeavours to solve the difficult problem, and to show how culture must proceed in order to unfold, according to their destination, the faculties of Humanity as a moral species, so that there may no longer be any conflict between the natural and the moral destination. From this conflict, since culture has not

* To mention but a few instances of this conflict between the effort of Humanity to fulfil its moral destina. tion on the one hand, and the unchangeable observance of the laws implanted in man's nature, adapted to a rude and animal condition on the other hand, I adduce the following. The epoch of man's majority, i. e. the im pulse as well as the capacity to propagate his species, is set by Nature at the age of sixteen or seventeen years; an age at which the youth, in a rude state of Nature, becomes literally a man; for he possesses then the power to maintain himself, to beget children, and to maintain them, together with his wife. The simplicity of his wants makes this easy. In a state of cultivation, on the other hand, many means, acquired skill, as well as favourable external circumstances, are necessary for this purpose; so that, civilly, this epoch is deferred, on an average, by at least ten years. Nature, meanwhile, has not changed her period of maturity to suit the progress of social refinement, but obstinately insists on her own law, which she has calculated for the preservation of the human race, as an animal species. Hence arises an unavoidable conflict between the purposes of Nature and the customs of Society. The natural man has already attained to manhood at an age when the civil man is still a youth, or even a child. For we may call him a child who, on account of his years, (in a state of civilization) cannot even maintain himself, much less his kind; although he has the impulse and the capacity, and, consequently, the call of Nature to beget his kind. Assuredly, Nature has not implanted instincts and capacities in living beings, merely that they may war against and suppress them. The tendencies of Nature, therefore, are not designed for a state of civilization, but solely for the preservation of the human species as a race of animals. There is an unavoidable collision between nature and civilization, in this particular, which only a perfect civil polity-the highest aim of culture can do away. At present, the interval in question (between natural and civil majority) is usually beset with vices and their consequences, the manifold evils of humanity.

Another example which proves the truth of the propo

yet rightly commenced, much less completed its course, according to true principles, educating alike the man and the citizen, arise all the real evils which oppress human life, and all the vices which dishonour it. The propensities which lead to those vices, and on which the blame is laid in such cases, are good in themselves, and have their end as natural endowments. But these natural endowments, being calculated for a state of Nature alone, are trenched upon by progressive culture, and, in turn, re-act upon culture, until perfected Art returns to Nature again; which is the final goal in the moral destination of the human species.

CONCLUSION OF THE HISTORY.

The beginning of the next period was the transition of man from an era of peace and ease to one of labour and discord, as a prelude to social union. And here again we must make a great leap, and suppose him at once in possession of tame animals, and of fruits which he could multiply by sowing and planting: (Gen. iv. 2.) although it must have been a long process, by which he arrived from the rude life of

sition, that Nature has implanted in us two tendencies to two different ends, viz., of man as an animal and of man as a moral species, is the Ars longa vita brevis of Hippocrates. Science and art might be carried much farther by a single mind which is made for them, after it has once attained the requisite maturity of judgment by long discipline and acquired knowledge, than by succes sive generations of learned men; provided that single head could live through the whole period, occupied by those successive generations, with the same youthful power of intellect. Now Nature has evidently taken her determination respecting the duration of human life, from a very different point of view than the promotion of science. For when a man of the happiest intellect stands on the brink of the greatest discoveries, which he is authorized to expect from his skill and experience, old age comes in; he grows dull, and must leave it to another generation, beginning with the A. B. C., and going over the whole ground again which he has been over, to add another span to the progress of culture. Accordingly, the progress of the human race toward the fulfilment of its entire destination appears to be continually interrupted, and in continual danger of falling back again into primitive rudeness. And the Grecian philosopher did not com. plain entirely without cause, when he said "it is a pity that man must die then when he has just begun to understand how he ought to live."

We may take, for a third example, the inequality of the human condition. Not the inequality of natural endowments nor of the gifts of Fortune, but that inequa lity in universal human rights, concerning which Rousseau complains with much truth, but which is inseparable from culture as long as it proceeds without a plan, as it must for a long time, and to which Nature certainly did not destine man, seeing she gave him freedom, and reason to restrain that freedom solely by its own universal and external legality, which we call civil right. Man was intended to work his way gradually out of the rudeness of his natural tendencies, and while he lifts himself above them, nevertheless to take heed that he does not sin against them; a faculty which he does not acquire till late, and after many unsuccessful attempts. In the meanwhile, Humanity sighs under various evils which, from inexperience, it inflicts upon itself.

a hunter to the first of these possessions, or from the irregular digging of roots and gathering of fruits to the second. At this point, the division between men who had hitherto lived peaceably side by side, behoved to begin; the consequence of which was the separation of those addicted to different modes of life, and their dispersion over the earth. The life of the shepherd is not only easy, but affords also the most certain support, since there can be no want of feed in a soil which is uninhabited far and wide. On the other hand, agriculture or planting is very toilsome, dependent on the uncertainty of the weather; consequently insecure, and requiring, moreover, permanent buildings, ownership of the soil, and sufficient power to defend it. But the herdsman hates this property in the soil, which limits the freedom of his pasturage. With regard to the first point, the agriculturalist might seem to envy the herdsman as more favoured by Heaven than himself (v. 4.); in fact, however, he was much troubled by him as long as he remained in his neighbourhood; for the browsing cattle did not spare his plantations. Since now it was easy for the herdsman, after the damage which he had caused, to withdraw himself to a distance and thus escape reprisals, seeing he left nothing which he could not as well find everywhere else, it was probably the husbandman who first used violence against these trespasses which the herdsman thought lawful, and who, since the occasion for these trespasses could never entirely cease, was compelled, unless he would lose the fruits of his long diligence, to remove as far as possible from those who led a nomadic life. (v. 16.) This separation makes the third epoch.

The

A soil, on the working and planting of which (especially with trees), the support of life depends, requires fixed habitations; and, for the defence of these against all assaults, a multitude of men who shall assist each other. Consequently, men addicted to this mode of life, could no longer disperse by families, but must keep together and establish villages, (improperly called cities), in order to protect their property against hunters or hordes of vagrant herdsmen. The first necessities of life, the production of which involved various pursuits (v. 20.), might now be exchanged, the one for the other. necessary consequence of this was culture, and the beginning of the arts, as well of amusement as of industry. (vs. 21, 22.) But what is most important, there was also some arrangement toward a civil constitution and public justice; at first, indeed, with respect only to gross acts of violence, the avenging of which was now no longer left to individuals, as in the savage state, but committed to a legalized power which kept the whole together; that is a kind of Government, beyond which there was no executive force (vs. 23, 24.) From this first rude institution, all human arts, among which that of society and civil security is the most profitable, could gradually unfold themselves, the