The argument against many of the conveniencies of life, drawn from the mere
consideration of their not being necessary, was equally proper in the mouth
of the savage, who dissuaded from the first applications of industry, as it
is in that of the moralist, who insists on the vanity of the last. "Our
ancestors," he might say, "found their dwelling under this rock; they
gathered their food in the forest; they allayed their thirst from the
fountain; and they were clothed in the spoils of the beast they had slain.
Why should we indulge a false delicacy, or require from the earth fruits
which she is not accustomed to yield? The bow of our father is already too
strong for our arms; and the wild beast begins to lord it in the woods."
Thus the moralist may have found, in the proceedings of every age, those
topics of blame, from which he is so much disposed to arraign the manners
of his own; and our embarrassment on the subject is, perhaps, but a part of
that general perplexity which we undergo, in trying to define moral
characters by external circumstances, which may, or may not, be attended
with faults in the mind and the heart.
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