Cleo. What you say agrees exactly with the accounts we have of the uncivilized nations that are still subsisting in the world; and thus men may live miserably many ages.
Hor. The very first generation that was brought up under the tuition of parents, would be governable: and would not every succeeding generation grow wiser than the foregoing?
Cleo. Without doubt they would increase in knowledge and cunning: time and experience would have the same effect upon them as it has upon others; and in the particular things to which they applied themselves, they would become as expert and ingenious as the most civilized nations: but their unruly passions, and the discords occasioned by them, would never suffer them to be happy; their mutual contentions would be continually spoiling their improvements, destroying their inventions, and frustrating their designs.
Hor. But would not their sufferings in time bring them acquainted with the causes of their disagreement; and would not that knowledge put them upon making of contracts, not to injure one another?
Cleo. Very probably they would; but among such ill-bred and uncultivated people, no man would keep a contract longer than that interest lasted which made him submit to it.
Hor. But might not religion, the fear of an invisible cause, be made serviceable to them, as to the keeping of their contracts?
Cleo. It might, without dispute; and would, before many generations passed away. But religion could do no more among them, than it does among civilized nations; where the Divine vengeance is seldom trusted to only, and oaths themselves are thought to be of little service, where there is no human power to enforce the obligation, and punish perjury.
Hor. But do not think, that the same ambition that made a man aspire to be a leader, would make him likewise desirous of being obeyed in civil matters, by the numbers he led?
Cleo. I do; and moreover that, notwithstanding this unsettled and precarious way communities would live in, after three or four generations, human nature would be looked into, and begin to be understood: leaders would find out, that the more strife and discord there was amongst the people they headed, the less use they could make of them: this would put them upon various ways of curbing mankind; they would forbid killing and striking one another; the taking away by force the wives or children of others in the same community; they would invent penalties, and very early find out that nobody ought to be a judge in his own cause; and that old men, generally speaking, knew more than young.
Hor. When once they have prohibitions and penalties, I should think all the difficulty surmounted; and I wonder why you said, that thus they might live miserably for many ages.