be decayed by
time, or injured by violence.

3. Fortunately for mankind, the more useful, or, at least, more
necessary arts, can be performed without superior talents, or national
subordination: without the powers of one, or the union of many. Each
village, each family, each individual, must always possess both ability
and inclination to perpetuate the use of fire [1201] and of metals; the
propagation and service of domestic animals; the methods of hunting and
fishing; the rudiments of navigation; the imperfect cultivation of
corn, or other nutritive grain; and the simple practice of the mechanic
trades. Private genius and public industry may be extirpated; but these
hardy plants survive the tempest, and strike an everlasting root into
the most unfavorable soil. The splendid days of Augustus and Trajan were
eclipsed by a cloud of ignorance; and the Barbarians subverted the laws
and palaces of Rome. But the scythe, the invention or emblem of Saturn,
[1301] still continued annually to mow the harvests of Italy; and the
human feasts of the Laestrigons [1401] have never been renewed on the
coast of Campania.

[Footnote 1001: It would be an easy, though tedious, task, to produce the
authorities of poets, philosophers, and historians. I shall therefore
content myself with appealing to the decisive and authentic testimony of
Diodorus Siculus, (tom. i. l. i. p. 11, 12, l. iii. p. 184, &c., edit.
Wesseling.) The Icthyophagi, who in his time wandered along the shores
of the Red Sea, can only be compared to the natives of New Holland,
(Dampier's Voyages, vol. i. p. 464-469.) Fancy, or perhaps reason, may
still suppose an extreme and absolute state of nature far below the
level of these savages, who had acquired some arts and instruments.]

[Footnote 1101: See the learned and rational work of the president Goguet,
de l'Origine des Loix, des Arts, et des Sciences. He traces from facts,
or conjectures, (tom. i. p. 147-337, edit. 12mo.,) the first and most
difficult steps of human invention.]

[Footnote 1201: It is certain, however strange, that many nations
have been ignorant of the use of fire. Even the ingenious natives of
Otaheite, who are destitute of metals, have not invented any earthen
vessels capable of sustaining the action of fire, and of communicating
the heat to the liquids which they contain.]

[Footnote 1301: Plutarch. Quaest. Rom. in tom. ii. p. 275. Macrob.
Saturnal. l. i. c. 8, p. 152, edit. London. The arrival