: I earnestly
entreat them to consider how much time and knowledge must have been
requisite to find out numbers, abstract words, the aorists, and all
the other tenses of verbs, the particles, and syntax, the method of
connecting propositions and arguments, of forming all the logic of
discourse. For my own part, I am so scared at the difficulties that
multiply at every step, and so convinced of the almost demonstrated
impossibility of languages owing their birth and establishment to
means that were merely human, that I must leave to whoever may please
to take it up, the task of discussing this difficult problem. "Which
was the most necessary, society already formed to invent languages, or
languages already invented to form society?"

But be the case of these origins ever so mysterious, we may at least
infer from the little care which nature has taken to bring men
together by mutual wants, and make the use of speech easy to them, how
little she has done towards making them sociable, and how little she
has contributed to anything which they themselves have done to become
so. In fact, it is impossible to conceive, why, in this primitive
state, one man should have more occasion for the assistance of
another, than one monkey, or one wolf for that of another animal of
the same species; or supposing that he had, what motive could induce
another to assist him; or even, in this last case, how he, who wanted
assistance, and he from whom it was wanted, could agree among
themselves upon the conditions. Authors, I know, are continually
telling us, that in this state man would have been a most miserable
creature; and if it is true, as I fancy I have proved it, that he must
have continued many ages without either the desire or the opportunity
of emerging from such a state, this their assertion could only serve
to justify a charge against nature, and not any against the being
which nature had thus constituted; but, if I thoroughly understand
this term miserable, it is a word, that either has no meaning, or
signifies nothing, but a privation attended with pain, and a suffering
state of body or soul; now I would fain know what kind of misery can
be that of a free being, whose heart enjoys perfect peace, and body
perfect health? And which is aptest to become insupportable to those
who enjoy it, a civil or a natural life? In civil life we can scarcely
meet a single person who does not complain of his existence; many even
throw away as much