"State of nature" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... business of an army should be so little understood. They are really children in the art of war, and I cannot say they do anything as it ought to be done, with the exception of running away, and assembling again in a state of nature. ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... are likewise valuable as a means of promoting activity in the eliminative function of the skin. Primitive man, living in a state of Nature, was not burdened with clothing. There was nothing to interfere with the healthy activity of his epidermis. There can be no question that the smothering of the skin by our clothing has much to do with defective elimination of wastes, and the more nearly ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... contrary, every thing bore the unmistakable marks of neglect and decay; the walks were overgrown, the terraces dilapidated, and the rose pleasaunce had degenerated into a tangled mass of bushes and briers. It seemed as though the whole domain were about to revert into its original state of nature; and every thing spoke either of the absence of a master, or else of something more ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... justice: If self-preservation be the first law of our nature, would not every one in a state of nature be morally justified in taking to himself that which is indispensable to such preservation, where, by so doing, he would not rob another of that which might be equally indispensable to his preservation? And if the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... from Louis Lake. The distance was about nine miles and through an intervale from half a mile to two miles in width. This valley was studded with huge trees at such a distance from each other that it might well be called a park, and when in a state of nature it must have been not only beautiful, but magnificent. The curse of civilization was upon it, however. For lumbering purposes a dam had then been built across the outlet of Indian Lake, and the intervale had been overflowed until all the trees were dead. The grass was rich and we were told ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... that render them superior to the brutes, without any political union, without any means of explaining their sentiments, and even without possessing any of the apprehensions and passions which the voice and the gesture are so well fitted to express. Others have made the state of nature to consist in perpetual wars kindled by competition for dominion and interest, where every individual had a separate quarrel with his kind, and where the presence of a fellow creature ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... that we are in a state of anarchy, and there is no government, no protection to life, property, or business; no law and no self-respect or morality among the people. We are living in a perfect state of nature, without the restraining influence of civil or military law, or the ...
— Memoir of the Proposed Territory of Arizona • Sylvester Mowry
... solely from the legs, and the back, and the breast, and the human body, which they enclose? In that case, it would have been more poetical to have made them fight naked; and Gulley and Gregson, as being nearer to a state of nature, are more poetical boxing in a pair of drawers than Hector and Achilles in radiant armour, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... same direction was the prevalent belief that most of the evils that existed in society were due to the mistakes of civilization, that if men could get back to a "state of nature" and start again, things might be much better. It was felt that there was too much artificiality, too much interference with natural development. Arthur Young condemned the prevailing policy of government, "because it consists of prohibiting the natural course of things. ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... Opportunities for observing the latter, and for collecting facts in connection with them, are abundant in Ceylon, and from the moment of my arrival, I profited by every occasion afforded to me for studying the elephant in a state of nature, and obtaining from hunters and natives correct information as to its oeconomy and disposition. Anecdotes in connection with this subject, I received from some of the most experienced residents In the island; amongst others, Major ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... of Nature that whenever and wherever a wild species exists in a state of nature, free from the trammels and limitations that contact with man always imposes, the species is fitted to survive all ordinary climatic influences. Freedom of action, and the exercise of several options in the line of individual ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... bestow, or the most polished circle produce. So little fitted are we to judge of human nature at once! And yet on such grounds have countries been described, and nations characterized. Hence have arisen those speculative and laborious compositions on the advantages and superiority of a state of nature. But ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... However great its tendency to increase might be, its natural obstacles and enemies would increase in like proportions till at last the two would balance each other, and there could be no further increase in the number of individuals of that species. All classes of animals in a state of nature must have reached this balanced condition generations ago. This is true of the birds. Their natural enemies are capable of preventing their increase; that is, they can and do destroy every year as many as are hatched ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... palpitated-he thought at first that the villainous Indians had stripped them, and left them to wander in a state of nature through the tangled and briery woods. He was, however, soon—too soon—convinced that the savages had dressed them! Yes, that merry crew—who had so often roasted him—had been roasted ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... wild brassica oleracea? Yet from that they have been derived by cultivation. They have, however, a tendency like animals to revert to the original type, or, in the gardener's phrase, to degenerate, which it requires the utmost care on his part to counteract. When left to a state of nature, they speedily lose their acquired forms, properties and character, and regain those of the ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... abstracted, including whole series of journals and transactions, I am surprised at my industry. I soon perceived that selection was the keystone of man's success in making useful races of animals and plants. But how selection could be applied to organisms living in a state of nature remained for some time a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... even mysterious," so that he could "hardly recall them without a thrill of admiration and wonder." But "the most unexpected sensation of surprise and delight was my first meeting and living with man in a state of nature—with absolute uncontaminated savages!... and the surprise of it was that I did not expect to be at all so surprised.... These true wild Indians of the Uaupes ... had nothing that we call clothes; they had ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... so powerful in his own element, on board ship during a storm becomes at once of less general value or consideration than the meanest sailor who can reef a sail or guide a wheel; and, were we to be reduced again suddenly to a state of nature, a company of highly civilised men and women would at once, as we have before remarked, find their social value completely inverted; landed on a desert shore, unarmed and naked, to encounter wild beasts and savages, and to combat nature for food, the primitive scale of human values would ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... a state of nature precious stones do not, as a rule, exhibit any of those beautiful and wonderful properties which cause them to be so admired and sought after as to become of great intrinsic value, for their surfaces ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... of the individual, in contrast with the previous sweep of the poem as a whole, which represents the movement of the world. Both are bound together, both pass through the same stages, though in a different order. The process of social development begins with the state of Nature, with Ogygia, unfolds into a simple institutional life, into Phaeacia, which then enters into certain negative phases, such as are seen in Fableland. But the man from Troy, Ulysses, begins with the last, and is whelmed back into the first, and finally rests in the second before going to Ithaca. Let ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... have thought that the advantages of the state of nature ought to have been more fully displayed. This had undoubtedly been a very ample subject for declamation; but they do not consider the character of the piece. The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... bodily growth a man progresses in things pertaining to nature, wherefore he attains to the state of nature; especially since "what is according to nature is," in a way, "unchangeable" [*Ethic. v, 7], inasmuch as nature is determinate to one thing. In like manner by inward spiritual growth a man reaches the state of perfection in relation to the Divine ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the cover of the bottle. Inside it, he discovered, represented on western enamel, a fair-haired young girl, in a state of nature, on whose two sides figured wings of flesh. This bottle contained ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... puts on more and more of the likeness of the beast, and is more and more the slave of his own lusts, and passions, and fancies, as the dumb animals are. And, as St. Paul says, the animal man, the carnal man, understands not the things of God. And we need no one to tell us that this is the state of nature which we bring into the world with us. We feel it; from our very childhood, from the earliest time we can recollect, have we not had the longing to do what we liked? to please ourselves, to pride ourselves on ourselves, ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... this for man in the state of nature. As he depends only upon himself, it is necessary that he be sufficient for everything. All creation is his property; but he finds in it as many hindrances as helps. He must surmount these obstacles with the single strength that God ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... pressure are the real obstacles to the cultivation of alpine plants, of which cold and the excessive climate are perhaps the most formidable. Plants that grow in localities marked by sudden extremes of heat and cold, are always very variable in stature, habit, and foliage. In a state of nature we say the plants "accommodate themselves" to these changes, and so they do within certain limits; but for one that survives of all the seeds that germinate in these inhospitable localities, thousands die. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... theorists have abused the phrase borrowed from the theologians, and made it cover a political doctrine which they would have been the last to accept. These theorists or political speculators have imagined a state of nature antecedently to civil society, in which men lived without government, law, or manners, out of which they finally came by entering into a voluntary agreement with some one of their number to be king and to govern them, or with one another ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... note that in "Sir Launcelot Greaves," we find a character, Ferret, who frankly poses as a strugforlifeur. M. Daudet's strugforlifeur had heard of Darwin. Mr. Ferret had read Hobbes, learned that man was in a state of nature, and inferred that we ought to prey upon each other, as a pike eats trout. Miss Burney, too, at Bath, about 1780, met a perfectly emancipated young "New Woman." She had read Bolingbroke and Hume, believed in nothing, and was ready to be a "Woman who Did." Our ancestors ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... be quite illusory; but it draws our attention to a fact which is of very high importance in our investigation of the difference between man and all other animals. Man alone seems to be capable of laying up what may be termed an external store of intellectual wealth. Other animals in the state of nature make, so far as we know, no intellectual advances. The bee constructs its cell, the bird builds its nest precisely as its progenitors did in the earliest dawn of history. There is a possibility that some advance, though a very small one, may be made by animals brought ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... there be no God, because he reasons it may be in the course of nature. This allows that the course of nature may be as it is without a God, and that there is therefore no natural proof of a Deity. His farther argument on this head is, that "things usually happen in a state of nature that are proper. A future state is proper. (To carry on the supposed state of melioration and complete the moral government of the universe.) It is therefore probable." This is an argument perhaps more of wish than probability, but let ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner
... fair in the afternoon of the 22d, accompanied by the botanists, I visited our gardens on Motuara, which we found almost in a state of nature, having been wholly neglected by the inhabitants. Nevertheless, many articles were in a flourishing condition, and shewed how well they liked the soil in which they were planted. None of the natives having yet made their appearance, we made a fire on the point of the island, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... beings altogether, at least if they have only English experience to go upon: because there is no place where human nature shows so little of its original lineaments. Both in a good and a bad sense, the English are farther from a state of nature than any other modern people. They are, more than any other people, a product of civilization and discipline. England is the country in which social discipline has most succeeded, not so much in conquering, as in suppressing, ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... would not {117} necessarily forward the best interests of the game birds it is desired to serve. So important and yet so unexpected is the ultimate effect of the activities of predatory creatures that in a state of nature I am convinced the supply of game birds is increased rather than decreased by being preyed upon. Like all other creatures, birds are subject to sickness and disease, but by the laws of nature it appears that they are not designed to suffer long. Their quick removal is advisable if they are to be ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... perhaps, to enquire into the truth of her story, and I will help her as far as I can,—though not in the useless way she proposes. Her letter is evidently unstudied, and so natural, that the orthography is also in a state of nature. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... state of nature the male is mostly polygamous; in most cases there is no obstacle to this, as there is plenty of food for the young ones (beasts of prey excepted): abnormalities like unmated females do not exist in ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... embodied in eighteen Cantos, and is thought to be not the work of one man; but different songs sung from the earliest ages by the people, and gradually blended into one poem. In it we find the ancient traditions which nearly all people possess, of a more free, active and primitive state of nature, whose world of greatness and heroism has been suppressed in later ages. Among the Hindustans there exists a religion resembling in part that of Greece, with traces of the Egyptian; and yet containing in itself many ideas, both moral and philosophical, which in spite of dissimilarity in detail, ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... governments relate to each other, they are in the same condition as we conceive of savage uncivilised life; they put themselves beyond the law as well of God as of man, and are, with respect to principle and reciprocal conduct, like so many individuals in a state of nature. The inhabitants of every country, under the civilisation of laws, easily civilise together, but governments being yet in an uncivilised state, and almost continually at war, they pervert the abundance which civilised life produces to carry on the uncivilised ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... whole series of Journals and Transactions, I am surprized at my industry. I soon perceived that selection was the keystone of man's success in making useful races of animals and plants. But how selection could be applied to organisms living in a state of nature, remained for some time a ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... imaginary roads from town to town, and reconstruct a fortress from the imposing ruins in the bed of the River Waag. Nay, he even ventured upon the audacious experiment of cutting through the mountain chain separating the River Hernad from the River Poprad, and uniting these two rivers (in a state of nature they flow in diametrically opposite directions) into one broad continuous water-course, thus bringing together all the various branches of that scattered family of kindred nations which dwells between the White Sea ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... pretty fresh, and standing out in disagreeable contrast to my own withered and degraded outfit. As we talked, he continued to shift his eyes watchfully between his handiwork and the fat model, who sat at the far end of the studio in a state of nature, with one arm gallantly arched above her head. My errand would have been difficult enough under the best of circumstances: placed between Myner, immersed in his art, and the white, fat, naked female in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... man as a member of society, many things become necessary, which, perhaps, in a state of nature are superfluous; and that many things, not absolutely necessary, are yet so useful and convenient, that they cannot easily be spared. I will make yet a more ample and liberal concession. In opulent states, and regular governments, the temptations to wealth and rank, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... of the GOLDEN AGE, is in some respects, of a piece with the PHILOSOPHICAL fiction of the STATE OF NATURE; only that the former is represented as the most charming and most peaceable condition, which can possibly be imagined; whereas the latter is painted out as a state of mutual war and violence, attended with the most extreme necessity. On the first origin ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... yet driven the primitive tenants of the forest from their favorite retreats. Most of the country was still in a state of nature—unsettled and unappropriated. Few fences or inclosures impeded the free range of the hunter, and very few buts and bounds warned him of his being about to trespass upon the private property of some neighbor. Herds of buffaloes and deer still fed upon the rich cane-brake and rank ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... adventures of Robinson Crusoe are mere child's play, and whose skin had converted itself into a sort of leather, impervious to every thing except lead and steel. In a moral point of view, these men may be considered a psychological curiosity: in the wild state of nature in which they live, their mental faculties frequently develop themselves in a most extraordinary manner; and in the conversation of some of them may be found proofs of a sagacity and largeness of views, of which the greatest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... the style of the Middle Ages. Below, and on both sides of our villa, spread out extensive grounds, consisting of private gardens and groves, separated from each other by two walls, almost concealed from the eye by the number of trees and bushes which grow there in a state of nature and with all its luxuriance. Vines clamber up into the lofty olive trees, and fall down again in light green festoons, heavy with grapes, which wave in the wind. Slender cypresses rise up from amidst ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... ones available during the "state of nature" and the savage state. Before all else, man created weapons: the most circumscribed primitive races have invented engines for attack and defense—of wood, bone, stone, as they were able. Then the weapon became a tool by special adaptation:—the ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... with one mighty purpose in her soul. "Under-nourishment", the doctor had said; and he had laid out a regular schedule. Six times daily the unhappy infant was to be fed; and each time some elaborate concoction had to be got ready—practically nothing could be eaten in a state of nature. The first meal would consist of, say a poached egg on a piece of toast, and the juice of an orange, with the seeds carefully excluded; the next of some chicken broth with a cracker or two, and the pulp of prunes ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... particularly observed that, as just indicated, the facts may be due either to a passive cessation of selection, or to an active reversal of it. Or, more correctly, these facts are probably always due to the cessation of selection, although in most cases where species in a state of nature are concerned, the process of degeneration has been both hastened and intensified by the super-added influence of the reversal of selection. In the next volume I shall have occasion to recur to this distinction, when it will ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... these evils to the want of settled principles respecting the rights and duties of nations and individuals in a state of war. These, he observed, must depend on the previous rights and duties of mankind, in a state of peace: this led him to the preliminary inquiry into their rights and duties in a state of nature. ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... speculative. Now, in all the speculations of Rousseau, the central figure, whether arrayed in an English dress as the signatory of a social compact, or simply stripped naked of all historical qualities, is uniformly Man, in a supposed state of nature. Every law or institution which would misbeseem this imaginary being under these ideal circumstances is to be condemned as having lapsed from an original perfection; every transformation of society which would give it a ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... plans for resistance to royal authority, they were very jealous of any continuance of unnecessary power in the Provincial Congress. Pittsfield by the quill of a cousin of Ethan Allen, the Rev. Thomas Allen, asserted that the town would remain "in a state of nature" [see Note 1] (i.e., simple democracy without representative government) unless it obtained new privileges. If the right of nominating to office is not vested in the people, they said, "we are indifferent ...
— Colonel John Brown, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Brave Accuser of Benedict Arnold • Archibald Murray Howe
... any meaning. But good government in the Middle Ages was only another name for a public-spirited and powerful monarchy. Such monarchies existed in the western states; they rested upon the shoulders of a middle class of small landowners and wealthy merchants, too weak to defend themselves in a state of nature, a war of all against all, but collectively strong enough to overawe ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... Petrarch and Rousseau—"Both were impelled by an equal enthusiasm, though directed towards different objects: Petrarch's towards the glory of the Roman name, Rousseau's towards his idol of a state of nature; the one religious, the other un esprit fort; but may not Petrarch's spite to Babylon be considered, in his time, as a species of free-thinking"—and concludes, that "both were mad, but of a different nature." Unquestionably there were features much ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... America), "we must go back to the time when the two continents were not yet separated, and call to mind the earliest geological changes. At the same time, we must consider the two hundred existing species of quadrupeds as reduced to thirty-eight families. And though this is not at all the state of Nature as she is in our time, and as she has been represented in this volume, and though, in fact, it is a condition which we can only arrive at by induction, and by analogies almost as difficult to lay hold of as is the time which has effaced the greater number of their traces, I shall, ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... produce any one thing that can become an Article in Trade to invite Europeans to fix a settlement upon it. However, this Eastern side is not that barren and miserable country that Dampier and others have described the Western side to be. We are to consider that we see this country in the pure state of nature; the Industry of Man has had nothing to do with any part of it, and yet we find all such things as nature hath bestow'd upon it in a flourishing state. In this Extensive Country it can never be doubted but what most sorts of Grain, Fruit, roots, etc., of every ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... people of Bontoc, and it is to-day a persistent cause. Moreover, since interpueblo warfare exists and head taking is its form, head-hunting is a necessity with an individual group of people in a state of nature. Without it a people could have no peace, and would be annihilated by some group which believed it a coward and an ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... surrendered up, before his Majesty's subjects here can be persuaded to believe, that they hold their political existence at the will of a British Parliament. Shall these governments be dissolved, their property annihilated, and their people reduced to a state of nature, at the imperious breath of a body of men whom they never saw, in whom they never confided, and over whom they have no powers of punishment or removal, let their crimes against the American public be ever so great? Can any one reason be assigned, why ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... depopulation to luxury was to say that it was caused by the inequality of property. The rich man wasted the substance of the country, became demoralised himself, and both corrupted and plundered his neighbours. The return to a 'state of nature,' in Rousseau's phrase, meant the return to a state of things in which this misappropriation should become impossible. The whole industry of the nation would then be devoted to supporting millions of honest, simple peasants and ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... that in the lower animals misery can result from two causes only—restraint and disease; consequently, that animals in a state of nature are not miserable. They are not hindered nor held back. Whether the animal is migrating, or burying himself in his hibernating nest or den; or flying from some rapacious enemy, which he may, or may not, be able to escape; or feeding, or sleeping, or fighting, or courting, or ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... can reach it, is certainly a principle that is contradictory to the whole scheme of salvation. Yet this seems to be the idea of those parents who will not believe that God can reach and change the nature of a child, and bring it out of the state of nature into the state of Grace, and keep it in that Grace. These people treat their children much as a farmer does his colts, letting them run wild for a while, and then ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... on the stems and branches of trees, poking its nose into every crevice. Its nest, he says, is formed of moss at some height from the ground, supported on clusters of orchideous plants. Dr. Cantor, in his 'Catalogue of the Mammalia of the Malayan Peninsula,' writes as follows: "In a state of nature it lives singly or in pairs, fiercely attacking intruders of its own species. When several are confined together they fight each other, or jointly attack and destroy the weakest. The natural food is mixed insectivorous and frugivorous. In confinement, individuals ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... assemble in large troops; and, as they march in search of food, the forests seem to tremble under them. They eat the branches of trees, together with roots, herbs, leaves, grain, and fruit, but will not touch fish nor flesh. In a state of nature, they are peaceable, mild, and brave; exerting their power only for their own protection or in defense ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... dwell in the older districts of America, where art and labor have united for generations to clear the earth of its inequalities, and to remove the vestiges of a state of nature, can form but little idea of the thousand objects that may exist in a clearing, to startle the imagination of one who has admitted alarm, when seen in the doubtful light of even a cloudless moon. Still less can they who have never quitted the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... in the foot by a large needle. The offending instrument had been carefully greased, wrapped in woolen, and placed in a certain charmed nook of the chimney; while the foot, from a fear of weakening the incantation, was left in a state of nature. The arrival of the peddler had altered the whole of this admirable treatment; and the consequences were expressed by Katy, as she concluded ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... individuals in a state of nature, are equal and independent, possessing certain rights and owing certain duties to each other, arising from their necessary and unavoidable relations; which rights and duties there is no common human ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... committing the blunder of supposing that every advance towards perfection only withdraws man further from his primitive and proper condition, Popanilla triumphantly demonstrated that no such order as that which they associated with the phrase "state of nature" ever existed. "Man", said he, "is called the masterpiece of nature; and man is also, as we all know, the most curious of machines. Now, a machine is a work of art; consequently the masterpiece of nature is the masterpiece of art. The object of all mechanism is the attainment of ...
— English Satires • Various
... state of nature, you find any two groups of living beings, which are separated one from the other by some constantly-recurring characteristic, I don't care how slight and trivial, so long as it is defined and ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... consonant with individual liberty. In it no one transfers his natural right so absolutely that he has no further voice in affairs; he only hands it over to the majority of a society, whereof he is a unit. Thus all men remain, as they were in the state of Nature, equals. ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... the plant every where retained its name and credit: and one of our good herbarists, who had seen a wonderful case of a swoln spleen, so big, and hard as to be felt with terror, brought back to a state of nature by it" (p. 37).[15] The greatest portion of Hill's concluding section combines advertisement for the powder medicine he was himself manufacturing at a handsome profit together with a protest against competing apothecaries: "An intelligent person was directed to go to the medicinal ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill
... never so eloquent. To say the same thing in other words, our age will be good enough for most of us, if there is genuine goodness in ourselves. Rousseau fancied he was soaring above his age, not into the thirteenth century, but into the state of nature, while he was falling miserably below his own age in all the common duties and relations of life; and he was a type, not of enthusiasts, for enthusiasm leads to action, but of mere social dreamers. Where there is duty, there is poetry, and tragedy ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... creature, when seen in the "open daylight" of truth. He is selfish, sensual, cruel, indolent, and impassive. The highest graces of character, the sweetest emotions, the finest sensibilities,—which make up the novelist's stock in trade,—are not and cannot be the growth of a so-called state of Nature, which is an essentially unnatural state. We no more believe that Logan ever made the speech reported by Jefferson, in so many words, than we believe that Chatham ever made the speech in reply to Walpole which begins with, "The atrocious crime ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... was so abundant. They could look out upon herds of buffaloes scattered through the canebrakes, browsing upon the leaves of the cane, or cropping the tall grass; the deer bounded fearlessly by the very door of their hut, and wild turkeys were to be found everywhere. Everything was in a state of nature; the animals had not yet learned to be afraid of man. Of course, they did not suffer with hunger: provisions of the finest kind were ever in their cabin. But the buffaloes provided them with more than food. From time to time, as they needed ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... as we go back along the parallel or divergent series, towards the common antitype, the analogy which existed between the two groups becomes an affinity. We are also made aware of the difficulty of arriving at a true classification, even in a small and perfect group;—in the actual state of nature it is almost impossible, the species being so numerous and the modifications of form and structure so varied, arising probably from the immense number of species which have served as antitypes for the existing species, and thus produced a complicated branching of ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... support from our observations on animals, for the sexual life of the latter is notably influenced by the seasons, and change of season resembles in many respects change of climate. In most animals, and more especially in those living in a state of nature, the sexual impulse becomes active at stated intervals only, and these intervals are related to the duration of pregnancy in such a way that the birth of the young occurs always at a season in which the nutritive ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... me," Charley Loughran, the xeno-naturalist, said. "I want a chance to study the life-forms in a state of nature." ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... left entirely alone, they would usually come down after having watched us for a few days. Nor does this conduct seem to be unnatural; for what, in such case, would be the conduct of any people, ourselves for instance, were we living in a state of nature, frequently at war with our neighbours, and ignorant of the existence of any other nation? On the arrival of strangers so different in complexion and appearance to ourselves, having power to transplant themselves over, and even living upon, an element which to us ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... different sort of society, a fraternal society whose end should be identical with the good of all its members, which he thought to be as much better than existing states as these are worse than the state of nature. ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... declaring in his letters on Poland that it was the only European land capable of movement, of law-making, of peaceful renovation. It was small and remote, but it came near to being an actual exemplification of his favorite and fundamental dogma concerning man in a state of nature, of order as arising from conflict, of government as resting on general consent and mutual agreement among the governed. Toward Corsica, therefore, the eyes of all Europe had long been directed. There, more than elsewhere, the setting of the world-drama seemed ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... which Great Britain is now at war. Then, reasoning on the rights of property, established by labor, by occupancy, and by compact, he maintains that the right of exchange, barter,—in other words, of commerce,—necessarily follows; that a state of nature among men is a state of peace; the pursuit of happiness man's natural right; that it is the duty of men to contribute as much as is in their power to one another's happiness, and that there is no other way by which they can so well contribute to the comfort and well-being of one another as by commerce, ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... survived. This law of development has operated down all the past upon all life; it so operates today, and it is not rash to say that it will continue to operate in the future—at least upon all life existing in a state of nature. ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... often been said that no animal uses any tool, but this can be so easily refuted on reflection, that it is hardly worth while considering; for illustration, though, the chimpanzee in a state of nature cracks nuts with a stone; Darwin saw a young orang put a stick in a crevice, slip his hand to the other end, and use it in a proper manner as a lever. The baboons in Abyssinia descend in troops from the mountains ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... social degeneration. A successful opera followed in 1753; and to the same year belongs his "Essay on Inequality among Men" ("Discours sur l'inegalite parmi les Hommes"), in which he came forward as the apostle of the state of nature, and of anarchy. His revolutionary ideas were viewed with great displeasure by the authorities, and he fled in 1764 to Switzerland; and in 1766, under the auspices of David Hume, to England. Rousseau wrote "The New Heloise" ("La Nouvelle Heloise") in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... is beginning to denounce luxury—a characteristic mark of the sentimentalist—and his regret for the period when 'every rood of earth maintained its man' is one side of the aspiration for a return to the state of nature and simplicity of manners. The inimitable Vicar recalls Sir Roger de Coverley and the gentle and delicate touch of Addison. But the Vicar is beginning to take an interest in philanthropy. He is impressed by the evils of the old prison system which ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... correspondence appointed, to write circular letters to all the towns in the province, and to induce them to unite in measures. The committee made a report, containing several resolutions contradictory to the supremacy of the British legislature. After setting forth, that all men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please, they proceed to a report upon the natural rights of the colonists as men, christians, and subjects; and then form a list of infringements and violations of their rights. They enumerate and dwell upon the British parliament's having assumed the power of legislation ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... and in very unenlightened conditions, before mythology had grown, a monotheism prevailed, which afterwards at various times was revived by reformers, is a belief that should have passed away when the delights of savage life and the praises of a state of nature ceased to be the themes of philosophers. We are speaking of a people little capable of abstraction. The exhibitions of force in nature seemed to them the manifestations of that mysterious power felt by their self-consciousness; to combine these various manifestations and recognize them as the operations ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... volume I have by me, published in 1672: the title, Mr. Hobbes's State of Nature considered, &c.; to which are added, Five Letters from the Author of "The Grounds and Occasions of ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... State of Nature, affecting by its singularity, and Old-Roman contempt of the superfluous, we shall quit ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... great age, feeding on coarse grass and water-weeds. Young swans are called cygnets, and are at first quite grey or light brown; they do not become perfectly white until the beginning of the third year. The swan is not a native of our island, but comes originally from the East, and is, when in a state of nature, migratory in its habits. One species of wild swan, called the Hooper, or Whistling Swan, spends the winter in warm climates, sometimes flying as far south as Africa, and returns in spring to Iceland, Norway, Lapland, and Siberia. ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... Human Industry; to estimate their separate and joint work upon that vast landscape. A few centuries ago, perhaps about the time that the Mayflower sighted Plymouth Rock, this valley, now so indescribably beautiful, was almost in the state of nature. Wolves and wild boars may have been prowling about in the woods and tangled thickets that covered this ridge back for several leagues. Bushes, bogs and briers, and coarse prairie grass roughened the bottom of this valley; ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... flattering expectations I found myself completely disappointed, and felt inclined to say to America, as Horace says to his mistress, "intentata nites." Brissot, in the preface to his travels, observes, that "freedom in that country is carried to so high a degree as to border upon a state of nature;" and there certainly is a close approximation to savage life not only in the liberty which they enjoy, but in the violence of party spirit and of private animosity which results from it. This illiberal zeal imbitters all social intercourse; and, though I scarcely ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... paces, as he relates, he fell in with sundry islands, and took possession of one of them, of greater circuit, he asserts, than the whole of Spain. Here he found a race of men living contented, in a state of nature, subsisting on fruits and vegetables, and bread formed from roots.... These people have kings, some greater than others, and they war occasionally among themselves, with bows and arrows, or lances sharpened and hardened ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... observed, the female, when running wild in a state of nature, lays the young one in the sand as soon as it is born, covering every part of the body, and then overlaying it with moss. On this account, we take care to deposit the sand and moss where the animal ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... different way. Socialism may be worthless as a scheme, but it is not meaningless as a symptom. Rousseau's theory of the origin of society, of the social contract, and of a cure for all social evils by a return to a state of nature, had, as we all know now, no more relation to fact than the dreams of an illiterate drunkard; but they were not without value as a vague and symbolical expression of certain evils from which the France of his day was suffering. As a child, ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... can get out of him. Then starve him, harness him anyhow to a truck with a flat tray on it, and see him bowl from Whitechapel to Bayswater. There appears to be no particular private understanding between birds and donkeys, in a state of nature; but in the shy neighbourhood state you shall see them always in the same hands and always developing their very best energies for the very worst company. I have known a donkey—by sight; we were not on speaking terms—who lived over on the Surrey side of London Bridge, among ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... of Christian salvation is that which predicates the power of insuring souls from hell solely of the Church. This is the sacramental theory. It is assumed that, in the state of nature subsequent to the transgression and fall of Adam, all men are alienated from God, and by the universal original sin universally exposed to damnation, indeed, the helpless victims of eternal misery. In the fulness of time, Christ appeared, and offered ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... this, that they might have arisen even in a state of nature, and have been coequal ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... Dogs, we mean not only several sorts of true dogs, that in different parts of the world are found living in a wild state; but also Wolves, Foxes, Jackals, Hyenas, and Fennecs—for all these are but dogs in a state of nature. ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... left to the sole management of dealers. A theory will not feed a starving multitude, and hunger plays the deuce with argument. In short, free-trade, as its warmest votaries now carry out their doctrines, approaches suspiciously near a state of nature: a condition which might do well enough, if trade were a principal, instead of a mere incident of life. With some men, however, it is a principal—an all in all—and this is the reason we frequently find those who are notoriously the advocates of exclusion and privileges in government, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... experiences little difficulty in observing birds in the sparsely-wooded flat country, but in the tree-covered mountains the feathered folk often require to be stalked. If you would see the Pekin-robin in a state of nature, go to some clearing in the Himalayan forest, where the cool breezes blow upon you direct from the snows, whence you can see the most beautiful sight in the world, that of snow-capped mountains standing forth against an azure sky. Tear your eyes away from the white peaks and direct them to ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... "what you propose to do is not only impracticable, but it's cruelty to animals. A domesticated animal can't return to a state of nature, and live." ...
— The Nature Faker • Richard Harding Davis
... of breeding these worms is probably due to their formation. When in a state of nature they can by expansion and contraction of the body working upon the sides of their holes, push their horny jaws against the opposing mass of paper. But when freed from the restraint, which indeed to them is life, they CANNOT eat although surrounded with food, for they have no legs to keep them steady, ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... with their guns close at hand. Almost every day we met Indians, but none that appeared to be hostile. In this way we traveled to Fort Laramie. The country traversed was an unbroken wilderness, in a state of nature, but singularly beautiful as a landscape. It was an open prairie, traversed by what was called the North Platte River, with scarcely water enough in it to be called a creek, with rolling hills on either side, and above, a clear sky, and air pure and bracing. It was the first time I had been so ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... detail of this theory let us note whether the evidence from the lowest peoples confirms it. The lowest peoples in point of culture are not the North American Indians nor the African Negroes, but certain isolated groups that live almost in a state of nature, without any attempt to cultivate the soil or to control nature in other respects. Such are the Bushmen of South Africa, the Australian Aborigines, the Negritos of the Philippine Islands and of the Andaman Islands, the Veddahs of Ceylon, and the ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... similarly retarded, but in a less degree. I have repeatedly observed that carrying a plant from the greenhouse to my room, or from one part to another of the greenhouse, always stopped the movement for a time; hence I conclude that plants in a state of nature and growing in exposed situations, would not make their revolutions during very stormy weather. A decrease in temperature always caused a considerable retardation in the rate of revolution; but Dutrochet (tom. xvii. pp. 994, 996) has given such precise observations on this head with respect ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... preternatural.(286) The question is: To what category of the supernatural belong the salutary acts which man performs by the aid of grace? Undoubtedly there are actual graces which are entitatively natural, e.g. the purely mediate grace of illumination,(287) the natural graces conferred in the pure state of nature, the actual graces of the sensitive sphere,(288) and the so-called cogitatio congrua of Vasquez.(289) The problem therefore narrows itself down to the immediate graces of intellect and will. Before the Tridentine Council theologians contented ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... domestication. We shall thus see that a large amount of hereditary modification is at least possible; and, what is equally or more important, we shall see how great is the power of man in accumulating by his selection successive slight variations. I will then pass on to the variability of species in a state of nature; but I shall, unfortunately, be compelled to treat this subject far too briefly, as it can be treated properly only by giving long catalogues of facts. We shall, however, be enabled to discuss what circumstances are most favourable to variation. In the next chapter ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... produce any new knowledge about animal behavior. Such knowledge must be got, not from animals penned up and tortured, but from animals in a state of nature. A college professor studying the habits of the giraffe, for example, and confining his observations to specimens in zoos, would inevitably come to the conclusion that the giraffe is a sedentary and melancholy ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... regime in the hands of the nation. The declaration of the rights of man and citizen, the sole metaphysical act of the Revolution to this time, had given it a social and universal signification. This declaration had been much jeered; it certainly contained some errors, and confused in terms the state of nature and the state of society; but it was, notwithstanding, the very ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... to me, they were not nearly so unpleasant in a state of nature as they had been in their clothing, for when considered as sentient beings they left much to be desired; as healthy human animals, I had to admit that they were a success, and having conceded the fact that they were animals and Horsham Manor was for the present a zoo, the rest was merely a matter ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... often asked why, in a state of nature, trees are so scarce on the prairies—in Iowa, for instance—although they thrive when planted. In answer we are often told that up to the middle of the nineteenth century such vast herds of buffaloes roamed the prairies ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... presented to the public; they do not, indeed, often happen. It is not, perhaps, once in a century that colonies are established in the most remote parts of the habitable globe; and it is seldom that men are found existing perfectly in a state of nature. When such circumstances do occur, curiosity, and still more laudable sentiments, must be excited. The gratification even of curiosity alone might have formed a sufficient apology for the author; but he has seen too much of virtue even among the vicious to be indifferent to ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... by himself, but unacquainted with that part of the forest, he would scarcely alone have found his way in the dark. A couple of hours' hard riding, sometimes across cultivated ground, and at others over what remained in a state of nature, brought him to the neighbourhood of the Grange. Leaving the horses with Burdale, who promised to remain concealed with them under a thick clump of trees, he went towards the house on foot. Jack found the Squire waiting for ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... occasion a violent shock in your habits, your fortunes, and your prejudices. Vicious contracts and abusive claims must be dissolved, unjust distinctions and ill founded property renounced; you must indeed recur for a moment to a state of nature. Consider whether you can consent to so ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... explained by the will of the gods, and political authority based on divine right. In the metaphysical state of mind, then, to retain our instance, political authority was based on the sovereignty of the people, and social facts were explained by the figment of a falling away from a state of nature. When the positive method has been finally extended to society, as it has been to chemistry and physiology, these social facts will be resolved, as their ultimate analysis, into relations with one another, and instead of seeking causes in the old sense ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... recall the cultivator to his deserted fields. Nothing could do so. The desert extended daily. At the commencement of the fifth century there was, in the happy Campania, the most fertile province of the empire, 520,000 jugera in a state of nature."—MICHELET, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... benefit, and our enquiry is thus a study of the grounds of political obedience. Locke thus traverses the ground Hobbes had covered in his Leviathan though he rejects every premise of the earlier thinker. To Hobbes the state of nature which precedes political organization had been a state of war. Neither peace nor reason could prevail where every man was his neighbor's enemy; and the establishment of absolute power, with the consequent surrender by men of ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... order,—very jackals of humanity; dirty, flea-bitten packs, whose physical and moral constitutions plainly showed the debilitating effects of unnumbered generations of fish-eating, purposeless life. Physical and moral decency usually go hand in hand, even in a state of nature. The Columbia tribes had no conception of either; they were in the same condition then as now, mean-spirited, and strangers to all those little delicacies of behavior that ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... the miseries which had befallen the natives of the New World through the Christian conquerors and their priests. He was not indeed an enthusiastic preacher of Progress. He is unable to decide between the comparative advantages of the savage state of nature and the most highly cultivated society. But he observes that "the human race is what we wish to make it," that the felicity of man depends entirely on the improvement of legislation; and in the survey of the history of Europe to ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... that the Mantis attacks such adversaries in a state of nature when I see it, under my wire-gauze covers, boldly give battle to whatever is placed before it. Lying in wait among the bushes it must profit by the prizes bestowed upon it by hazard, as in its cage it profits by the wealth of diet due to my generosity. The hunting of such big game as I offer, which ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... and separate methods of preparing the tobacco ground: the one is applicable to the preparation of new and uncultivated lands, such as are in a state of nature, and require to be cleared of the heavy timber and other productions with which Providence has stocked them; and the other method is designed to meliorate and revive lands of good foundation, which have been heretofore cultivated, and, in some measure, exhausted ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... accommodation of roads, it is quite evident that his extra thousand pounds of capital will be more profitably expended on such purposes than on lending it to Richard Roe, who has double the quantity of land in a state of nature. For Richard, though with the best intentions, may not find his agricultural returns quite so speedy as he expected, may shake his head negatively at the hint of repayment of the principal, and even be rather tardy with tender of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... are by no means dull or backward in learning new ones, are ever keen and young, and Nature has endowed them with an undying mental youth, until their career on earth is ended. As says a poet, speaking of savages or men in a state of nature:— ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... hard, and misanthropic in the state of nature, softened wonderfully as he sat in the gloom of the tablecover, in silent possession of those two ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... otherwise. Evening was before them in far-off but attainable perspective. Home, lawn-tennis, in connection with bright eyes and pretty faces, would compensate for the labours of the day and let off the steam. They were deep in their game when a rap at the door brought their faces suddenly to a state of nature. ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... these country houses; and it is certainly no longer a matter of surprise to us, that rich proprietors take little interest in embellishing them. A house which will in all probability be converted once a year into a barrack, is decidedly better in a state of nature, than encumbered with elegant furniture. This house has been entirely destroyed in that way more than once, and the last time that it was occupied by troops, was left like an Augean stable. We have here the luxury of books. My room opens ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca |
