Secondly. The habitations of mankind render the progress of the human species still more evident.
Where are the times when people dwelled as troglodytes, dispersed about in caves, behind their walls, and every stranger was an enemy? Merely from the course of time no cave, no wall, afforded security: men must learn to know one another; for collectively they are but one family, on one planet of no great extent. It is a melancholy reflection, that every where they first learned to know one another as enemies, and beheld each other with astonishment as so many wolves: but such was the order of nature. The weak feared the strong; the deceived, the deceiver; he who had been expelled, him who could again expel him; the inexperienced child, every stranger. This infantile fear, however, and all its abuses, could not alter the course of nature: the bond of union between nations was knit, though, from the rude state of man, in a rough manner. Growing reason may burst the knots, but cannot untwist the band, and still less undo the discoveries, that have once been made. What are the geologies of Moses and Orpheus, Homer and Herodotus, Strabo and Pliny, compared with ours? What was the commerce of the Phenicians, Greeks, and Romans, to the trade of Europe? Thus with what has hitherto been effected the clew to the labyrinth of what is to be done is given us. Man, while he continues man, will not cease from wandering over his planet, till it is completely known to him: from this neither storms nor shipwreck, nor those vast mountains of ice, nor all the perils of either pole, will deter him; no more than they have deterred him from the first most difficult attempts, even when navigation was very defective. The incentive to all these enterprises lies in his own breast, lies in man’s nature. Curiosity, and the insatiable desire of wealth, fame, discovery, and increase of strength, and even new wants and discontents, inseparable from the present course of things, will impel him; and they by whom dangers have been surmounted in former times, his celebrated and successful predecessors, will animate him. Thus the will of providence will be promoted both by good and bad incentives, till man knows and acts upon the whole of his species. To him the Earth is given; and he will not desist, till it is wholly his own, at least as far as regards knowledge and use. Are we not already ashamed, that one hemisphere of our planet remained for so long a time as unknown to us, as if had been the other side of the Moon?
Thirdly. In consequence of the internal nature of the human mind, its activity has hitherto been employed solely on means of grounding more deeply the humanity and cultivation of our species, and extending them farther.
How vast the progress from the first raft that floated on the water to an European ship! Neither the inventor of the former, nor the many inventors of the various arts and sciences that contribute to navigation, ever formed the least conception of what would arise from the combination of their discoveries: each obeyed his particular impulse of want or curiosity: but it is inherent in the nature of the human intellect, and of the general connection of all things, that no attempt, no discovery, can be made in vain. Those islanders, who had never seen a European vessel, beheld the monster with astonishment, as some prodigy of another World; and were still more astonished when they found, that men like themselves could guide it at pleasure over the trackless ocean. Could their astonishment have been converted into rational reflection on every great purpose, and every little mean, of this floating world of art, how much higher would their admiration of the human mind have arisen? Whither do not the hands of Europeans at present reach, by means of this single implement? Whither may they not reach thereafter?
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