Roman authors quoted.—M. Agrippa,[781] M. Varro,[782] Varro Atacinus,[783] Cornelius Nepos,[784] Hyginus,[785] L. Vetus,[786] Mela Pomponius,[787] Domitius Corbulo,[788] Licinius Mucianus,[789] Claudius Cæsar,[790] Arruntius,[791] Sebosus,[792] Fabricius Tuscus,[793] T. Livius,[794] Seneca,[795] Nigidius.[796]
Foreign authors quoted.—King Juba,[797] Hecatæus,[798] Hellenicus,[799] Damastes,[800] Eudoxus,[801] Dicæarchus,[802] Bæton,[803] Timosthenes,[804] Patrocles,[805] Demodamas,[806] Clitarchus,[807] Eratosthenes,[808] Alexander the Great,[809] Ephorus,[810] Hipparchus,[811] Panætius,[812] Callimachus,[813] Artemidorus,[814] Apollodorus,[815] Agathocles,[816] Polybius,[817] Eumachus,[818] Timæus Siculus,[819] Alexander Polyhistor,[820] Isidorus,[821] Amometus,[822] Metrodorus,[823] Posidonius,[824] Onesicritus,[825] Nearchus,[826] Megasthenes,[827] Diognetus,[828] Aristocreon,[829] Bion,[830] Dalion,[831] the Younger Simonides,[832] Basilis,[833] Xenophon[834] of Lampsacus.
BOOK VII.[835]
MAN, HIS BIRTH, HIS ORGANIZATION, AND THE INVENTION OF THE ARTS.
CHAP. 1.—MAN.
Such then is the present state of the world, and of the countries, nations, more remarkable seas, islands, and cities which it contains.[836] The nature of the animated beings which exist upon it, is hardly in any degree less worthy of our contemplation than its other features; if, indeed, the human mind is able to embrace the whole of so diversified a subject. Our first attention is justly due to Man, for whose sake all other things appear to have been produced by Nature; though, on the other hand, with so great and so severe penalties for the enjoyment of her bounteous gifts, that it is far from easy to determine, whether she has proved to him a kind parent, or a merciless step-mother.
In the first place, she obliges him alone, of all animated beings, to clothe himself with the spoils of the others; while, to all the rest, she has given various kinds of coverings, such as shells, crusts, spines, hides, furs, bristles, hair, down, feathers, scales, and fleeces.[837] The very trunks of the trees even, she has protected against the effects of heat and cold by a bark, which is, in some cases, twofold.[838] Man alone, at the very moment of his birth cast naked upon the naked earth,[839] does she abandon to cries, to lamentations, and, a thing that is the case with no other animal whatever, to tears: this, too, from the very moment that he enters upon existence.[840] But as for laughter, why, by Hercules!—to laugh, if but for an instant only, has never been granted to man before the fortieth day[841] from his birth, and then it is looked upon as a miracle of precocity. Introduced thus to the light, man has fetters and swathings instantly put upon all his limbs,[842] a thing that falls to the lot of none of the brutes even that are born among us. Born to such singular good fortune,[843] there lies the animal, which is destined to command all the others, lies, fast bound hand and foot, and weeping aloud! such being the penalty which he has to pay on beginning life, and that for the sole fault of having been born. Alas! for the folly of those who can think after such a beginning as this, that they have been born for the display of vanity!
The earliest presage of future strength, the earliest bounty of time, confers upon him nought but the resemblance to a quadruped.[844] How soon does man gain the power of walking? How soon does he gain the faculty of speech? How soon is his mouth fitted for mastication? How long are the pulsations of the crown of his head to proclaim him the weakest of all animated beings?[845] And then, the diseases to which he is subject, the numerous remedies which he is obliged to devise against his maladies, and those thwarted every now and then by new forms and features of disease.[846] While other animals have an instinctive knowledge of their natural powers; some, of their swiftness of pace, some of their rapidity of flight, and some again of their power of swimming; man is the only one that knows nothing, that can learn nothing without being taught; he can neither speak, nor walk, nor eat,[847] and, in short, he can do nothing, at the prompting of nature only, but weep. For this it is, that many have been of opinion, that it were better not to have been born, or if born, to have been annihilated[848] at the earliest possible moment.