ands of nature; I see an
animal less strong than some, and less active than others, but, upon
the whole, the most advantageously organized of any; I see him
satisfying the calls of hunger under the first oak, and those of
thirst at the first rivulet; I see him laying himself down to sleep at
the foot of the same tree that afforded him his meal; and behold, this
done, all his wants are completely supplied.

The earth left to its own natural fertility and covered with immense
woods, that no hatchet ever disfigured, offers at every step food and
shelter to every species of animals. Men, dispersed among them,
observe and imitate their industry, and thus rise to the instinct of
beasts; with this advantage, that, whereas every species of beasts is
confined to one peculiar instinct, man, who perhaps has not any that
particularly belongs to him, appropriates to himself those of all
other animals, and lives equally upon most of the different aliments,
which they only divide among themselves; a circumstance which
qualifies him to find his subsistence, with more ease than any of
them.

Men, accustomed from their infancy to the inclemency of the weather,
and to the rigour of the different seasons; inured to fatigue, and
obliged to defend, naked and without arms, their life and their prey
against the other wild inhabitants of the forest, or at least to avoid
their fury by flight, acquire a robust and almost unalterable habit of
body; the children, bringing with them into the world the excellent
constitution of their parents, and strengthening it by the same
exercises that first produced it, attain by this means all the vigour
that the human frame is capable of. Nature treats them exactly in the
same manner that Sparta treated the children of her citizens; those
who come well formed into the world she renders strong and robust, and
destroys all the rest; differing in this respect from our societies,
in which the state, by permitting children to become burdensome to
their parents, murders them all without distinction, even in the wombs
of their mothers.

The body being the only instrument that savage man is acquainted with,
he employs it to different uses, of which ours, for want of practice,
are incapable; and we may thank our industry for the loss of that
strength and agility, which necessity obliges him to acquire. Had he a
hatchet, would his hand so easily snap off from an oak so stout a
branch? Had he a sling, would it dart a