GIBBON ON FALL OF ROME IN THE WEST 755

state of Man, he has gradually arisen to command the animals, to fertilise
the Earth, to traverse the Ocean, and to measure the Heavens. His progress
in the improvement and exercise of his mental and corporeal faculties1 has
been irregular and various; infinitely slow in the beginning, and increasing
by degrees with redoubled velocity: ages of laborious ascent have been
followed by a moment of rapid downfall; and the several climates of the
globe have felt the vicissitudes of light and darkness. Yet the experience of
four thousand years should enlarge our hopes and diminish our apprehen-
sions : we cannot determine to what height the Human Species may aspire
in their advances towards perfection; but it may safely be presumed that
no people, unless the face of Nature is changed, will relapse into their
original barbarism. The improvements of Society may be viewed under
a threefold aspect, i. The poet or philosopher illustrates his age and
country by the efforts of a single mind; but these superior powers of
Reason or Fancy are rare and spontaneous productions; and the genius of
Homer or Cicero or Newton would excite less admiration if they could be
created by the will of a prince or the lessons of a preceptor. 2. The benefits
of law and policy, of trade and manufactures, of arts and sciences, are
more solid and permanent; and many individuals may be qualified, by
education and discipline, to promote, in their respective stations, the
interest of the community. But this general order is the effect of skill and
labour; and the complex machinery may be decayed by time or injured
by violence. 3. Fortunately for Mankind, the more useful, or, at least, more
necessary, arts can be performed without superior talents or national sub-
ordination ; without the powers of one or the union of many. Each village,
each family, each individual must always possess both ability and inclina-
tion to perpetuate the use of fire2 and of metals; the propagation and ser-
vice of domestic animals; the methods of hunting and fishing; the rudi-
ments of navigation; the imperfect cultivation of corn or other nutritive
grain; and the simple practice of the mechanic trades. Private genius and
public industry may be extirpated, but these hardy plants survive the
tempest and strike an everlasting root into the most unfavourable soil.
The splendid days of Augustus and Trajan were eclipsed by a cloud of
ignorance; and the Barbarians subverted the laws and palaces of Rome.
But the scythe, the invention or emblem of Saturn,3 still continued
annually to mow the harvests of Italy; and the human feasts of the
Laestrigons4 have never been renewed on the coast of Campania.

* Since the first discovery of the arts, war, commerce, and religious zeal
have diffused, among the savages of the Old and New World, those
inestimable gifts: they have been successively propagated; they can never

•wandered along the shores of the Red Sea, can only be compared to the natives of New
Holland (Dampier's Voyages, vol. i, pp. 464-69). Fancy, or perhaps Reason, may still
suppose an extreme and absolute state of Nature far below the level of these savages,
•who had acquired some arts and instruments.'

1 [in the original, "]. 'See the learned and rational work of the President Goguet, De
VOrigine fas Loix, des Arts, et des Sciences. He traces from facts or conjectures (torn, i,
pp. 147-337, edit, izmo.) the first and most difficult steps of human invention/

z i1*]. 'It is certain, however strange, that many nations have been ignorant of the use
of fire. Even the ingenious natives of Otaheite, who are destitute of metals, have not
invented any-earthen vessels capable of sustaining the action of fire and of communicat-
ing the heat to the liquids which they contain.'

3 [13], 'Plutarch, Quaestiones Romance, in torn, ii, p. 275. Macrobius, Saturnalia,
Book I, ch. viii, p. 152, edit, London. The arrival of Saturn (or his religious worship)
in a ship may indicate that the savage coast of Latium was first discovered and civilised
by the Phoenicians.*

* [*+]. 'In the ninth and tenth books of the Odyssey, Homer has embellished the tales
of fearful and credulous sailors who transformed the cannibals of Italy and Sicily into
monstrous giants.'