Imatges de pàgina
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CHAP. 8.

WE Come now to the arts, necessary or ornamental, BOOK II. known to the Hindus. As the pleasures, to which the arts are subservient, form one of the grounds of preference between the rude and civilized condition of man, the improvement of the arts may be taken as one of the surest indications of the progress of society.

Of the Hindus, it may, first of all, be observed, that they little courted the pleasures derived from the arts, whatever skill they had attained in them. The houses, even of the great, were mean, and almost destitute of furniture; their food was simple

1 "The buildings are all base, of mud, one story high, except in Surat, where there are some of stone. The Emperor's own houses are of stone, handsome and uniform. The great men build not, for want of inheritance; but, as far as I have yet seen, live in tents, or houses worse than our cottages." Sir T. Roe's Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury Churchill, i. 803.

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CHAP. 8.

BOOK II. and common; and their dress had no distinction (which concerns the present purpose) beyond certain degrees of fineness in the texture,

If we desire to ascertain the arts which man would first practise, in his progress upwards from the lowest barbarism, we must inquire what are the most urgent of his wants. Unless the spontaneous productions of the soil supplied him with food, the means of insnaring, or killing the animals fit for his use by clubs or stones, and afterwards by his bow and arrows, would first engage his attention. How to shelter himself from the inclemency of the weather would be his second consideration; and where cavities of the earth or hollow trees supplied not his wants, the rude construction of a hut would be one of his earliest operations. A covering for his A covering for his person would probably be the next of the accommodations which his feelings prompt him to provide. At first he contents himself with the skin of an animal; but it is surprising at how early a period he becomes acquainted with the means of fabricating cloth.1 Weaving, therefore, and architecture, are among the first of the complicated arts which are practised among barbarians; and experience proves that they may be carried, at a very early period of society, to a high state of

1 It is curious to observe how Plato traces this progress. He is endeavouring to account for the origin of society. I dŋ (yv d'eyw) τῳ λόγῳ εξ αρχης ποιωμεν πολιν ποιησει δ' αυτην, ὡς εοικεν, ἡ ἡμετέρα χρεια. Πως δ'8; Αλλα μεν πρωτη γε και μεγίστη των χρειων, ἡ της τροφης παρασκευη, δευτερα δη οικήσεως, τριτη εσθητος και των τοιέτων. Εστι ταυτα φερε δη (ην δ' εγω) πως η πολις αρκέσει επι τοσαυτην παρασκευην; αλλοτι, γεωργος μεν, εις, ὁ δε οικοδομος· αλλος δε τις υφαντης. Plat. de Repub. lib. ii. p. 599.

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