recreation or business, if in their excursions they meet with
many sick or feeble animals. They meet with many carrying the marks of
considerable wounds, that have been perfectly well healed and closed
up; with many, whose bones formerly broken, and whose limbs almost
torn off, have completely knit and united, without any other surgeon
but time, any other regimen but their usual way of living, and whose
cures were not the less perfect for their not having been tortured
with incisions, poisoned with drugs, or worn out by diet and
abstinence. In a word, however useful medicine well administered may
be to us who live in a state of society, it is still past doubt, that
if, on the one hand, the sick savage, destitute of help, has nothing
to hope from nature, on the other, he has nothing to fear but from his
disease; a circumstance, which oftens renders his situation preferable
to ours.

Let us therefore beware of confounding savage man with the men, whom
we daily see and converse with. Nature behaves towards all animals
left to her care with a predilection, that seems to prove how jealous
she is of that prerogative. The horse, the cat, the bull, nay the ass
itself, have generally a higher stature, and always a more robust
constitution, more vigour, more strength and courage in their forests
than in our houses; they lose half these advantages by becoming
domestic animals; it looks as if all our attention to treat them
kindly, and to feed them well, served only to bastardize them. It is
thus with man himself. In proportion as he becomes sociable and a
slave to others, he becomes weak, fearful, mean-spirited, and his soft
and effeminate way of living at once completes the enervation of his
strength and of his courage. We may add, that there must be still a
wider difference between man and man in a savage and domestic
condition, than between beast and beast; for as men and beasts have
been treated alike by nature, all the conveniences with which men
indulge themselves more than they do the beasts tamed by them, are so
many particular causes which make them degenerate more sensibly.

Nakedness therefore, the want of houses, and of all these
unnecessaries, which we consider as so very necessary, are not such
mighty evils in respect to these primitive men, and much less still
any obstacle to their preservation. Their skins, it is true, are
destitute of hair; but then they have no occasion for any such
covering in warm climates;