The period immediately succeeding the dispersion of mankind, is characterised by the greatest ignorance and rudeness. All society being dissolved by the con fusion of tongues, and families living detached from each other, they sunk in a little time into a state completely savage. Men wandered in the woods and fields, without laws, without leaders, without any form of government. They were strangers to the most common and simple kinds of knowledge ; and unacquainted with those arts which are esteemed the most necessary to life. By degrees, however, they formed political associations, and tasted the security of laws and government : then arose the endless variety of the arts, both useful and ornamental, of which the progression is unlimited, and the refinement nearly without end. In their early stages, however, they bore sufficient marks of the rudeness of the tribes among which they originated; and it is in this state that they are the most interesting objects of philosophical curiosity. In the few remarks which are to follow on the origin of the arts, we shall separate them into two classes, between which there exists a na tural and very obvious distinction, namely, the useful, and ornamental, which are also called the fine arts; and we shall speak first of the elder branch of the family, the useful arts.
I. Among the great variety of arts which may de servedly be called useful, we shall confine our attention to those of the most obvious necessity, or of which the benefit is most clearly apparent : and with this view, we shall offer a few remarks on the origin of the following departments of the arts beneficial to life. 1st, Food. 2d, Clothing. 3d, Architecture and the Mechanic arts.
1st, All authors agree, that the food of men, in the savage and barbarous period of their history, was wretched in the extreme. They were necessitated to gather the fruits and herbs which grew in the woods and fields, and eat without any dressing, what the earth produced without any cultivation. Acorns were the great dainty of this period of society, by which, however,.we are not merely to understand the seed or nut of the oak, but various other species of nuts, or chesnuts, which were the spontaneous produce of the woods. The early ancestors of the Greeks, according to the testimony of their poets and historians, subsisted chiefly upon acorns. (Paus. lib. viii. c. 1.) The Athe nians had established a custom, in order to recall the memory of those ages of rusticity; which consisted in presenting to every new married pair, on the day of their nuptials, a basket of acorns mixed with bread.
The animal food of savages is not less coarse than their vegetable: rats, toads, serpents, insects, reptiles, and creatures, at the sight of which we are apt to shud der, are, according to the testimony of numerous voy agers, indiscriminately devoured by various barbarous tribes; and were probably in frequent use as nourish ment during the period of which we are at present treating. As to fish, however, the Greeks, at least of
the heroic ages, were very fastidious. Thus, in the Odyssey, (1. iv. v. 368.) Menelaus excuses himself for having eaten fish, because he was then reduced to the greatest necessity.
The cookery of animal food, at this rude period of society, could not have been very skilful ; for there is good reason to think, that many of the savage tribes of this period had forgotten the use of fire. This appears to be attested by the unanimous voice of the most an cient traditions. The Egyptians, Persians, Phoenicians, Greeks, and several other ancient nations, acknow ledged that their ancestors Were once without the use of this element. The Chinese confess the same thing with respect to their progenitors, (Martini, Hist. de la Chine, torn. i.) Nor need we be greatly surprised at this deplorable state of ignorance. Several ancient au thors, particularly Pliny, Plutarch, and Pomponius Mela, speak of nations who, at the time they wrote, were ig norant of the use of fire, or had but just acquired it ; and several modern travellers have fully attested facts of the same kind. Thus the inhabitants of the Ladrone, or Marian islands, had no idea of fire when they were first visited by Magellan in 1521 ; and never was as tonishment greater than theirs when they first saw it used by the Europeans. At first they believed it to be a kind of animal that fixed itself to, and fed upon wood. Some of them who approached too near being burnt, the rest were terrified, and`durst only look upon it at a distance. They were afraid, they said, of being bit, or lest that dreadful animal should wound them with his violent respiration; for such were the notions they had attached to the heat and flame. (Hist. des Isles Jlfariannes par le P. lc Gobien.) The inhabitants of the Philippine and•Canary islands were in the same state when they were first discovered; and several tribes of Africa and America are said to continue so to the present day.
In what manner the artificial production of fire first occurred to men, whether from the collision of flints, the rubbing of pieces of dried wood together, the pro cess of natural fermentation, &cc. it is needless to spend time in inquiring. The Phoenicians indeed related, that the discovery was made by observing that the violent collision of trees occasioned them to catch fire, (Saco niatho a/iud Euseb.) And the Chinese say, that Sui quin-chi, one of their first kings, taught them to kindle fire by rubbing two pieces of wood strongly against each other. (Martini.) The Greeks had a similar tra dition, (Pliny, 1. 4.); and such is, to this day, the most common method of kindling fire practised by savages.