eat, or kill, or to attain any other purpose, a man in this Age must naturally rush on to the point propofed, regardless of impediments or confequences. If food be in his reach, he eats voraciously; if the enemy be in his power, he gluts his vengeance by every circumstance of cruelty. The customs of the NorthAmerican favages are well known, and too horrid for quotation, I will therefore give an instance from another people, of that violence which is the prominent characteristic of favage life. "The more important the cause that calls them to arms, the more greedy they are of death. Neither the bravery, nor the number of their adverfaries can at all intimidate them: it is then they fwear to deftroy the fun. They discharge this terrible oath by cutting the throats of their wives and children, burning all their poffeffions, and rufhing madly into the midst of their enemies!" Said of the Koriacs by De Leffeps.

A

A want of great focieties

The inhabitants even of a finall island are feldom under one chief-their first step towards the Brazen-Age, is the melting down of many little ftates to make a large one.

An ignorance of all the arts and sci

ences

Except those which are immediately neceffary for ornamenting the person*procuring food-covering-and weapons for each individual.

An absence of all religious ideas

Of

* People in this state of fociety confider ornament as of the first confequence.-Nothing can fhew the esteem in which it is held more, than the great bodily pain they endure in order to be beautiful.-Boring of noses, ears, lips, &c.—puncturing the skin to make flourishes on it, and other customs of this fort, are more or less practised by all unformed people in every country and cli

mate.

Of course, no worship of a fuperior being, or belief of a future existence.†

Selfishness

As this quality is strongest in the folitary savage, and is nearly extinguished in the last state of society, we must suppose it to be very powerful in the Iron-Age, and in fact we find it fo. Savages feek food, &c. for themfelves only, unless forced to procure it for their fuperiors:

few

It has been faid, there are no people fo rude. but have fome religious worship—but this is not true-man in the Iron-Age, which we are now defcribing, has invariably been found untinctured with any principle of gratitude to the deity for bleffings received; of hope, for bleffings to come; or of fear, for laws tranfgreffed. When Warburton, in his Divine Legation of Mofes, afferted, that all nations worshipped fomething or other, and believed in future rewards and punishments; one of his adverfaries brought the Hottentots as an inftance to the contrary-both were right.—The assertion was taken from man in his fecond ftage of fociety; but the objection, from man in his favage ftate.

1

few inftances occur of their parting with any thing from a principle of kind

nefs.

A want of curiofity

That is for such things as are fur beyond any to which they are accustomed.— Thus, they do not confider a fhip as an object of attention; but a canoe much larger, or more adorned than they have been used to fee, would attract their notice.*

I have already remarked, that in the fame Age, one people may be civilized, and another, barbarous: to which must be added, that thefe different ftates of fociety exist in the fame country at the fame time, according to the different fituations or employment of the inhabi

tants.

*Moft of thefe characteristics are taken from defcriptions of favage people, by the late voyagers, who found them in the same state of society, tho' in different countries.

tants. Thus a mere ruftic in England, who never faw any other affemblage of houfes or people than the neighbouring village or church presented, is as it were extinguished in the capital; but his curiofity would be excited, and highly gratified by a fair, or a cathedral church. In a fair are more people, more cattle, and a greater display of finery than he usually meets with; but it is all of that kind for which his ideas are already prepared. The fame may be faid of the cathedral-he confiders it as his own village church upon a grander fcale. But an habitual exercise of the judgment is required to comprehend an idea, greatly fuperior to common exertion, as in the instance of the ship abovementioned; and it belongs to a cultivated state of the mind to admit an idea perfectly new.

Whenever it happens that a people in the Iron-Age have abated of personal violence, have made fome attempts, how