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276 ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE
aspiration, even, of philosophy. They could not conceive so pure and simple an artlessness as we by experience know it to be; nor could they believe that human society could be carried on with so little artificiality and human unitedness.! { Itis a nation, I will say to Plato, in which there is no sort of | traffic, no acquaintance with letters, no knowledge of num- \ bers, no title of magistrate or of political eminence, no cus- , tom of service, of wealth, or of poverty, no contracts, no ‘ successions, no dividings of property, no occupations except | leisurely ones, no respect for any kinship save in common, no clothing, no agriculture, no metals, no use of wine or grain. The very words that signify falsehood, treachery, ari avarice, envy, slander, forgiveness, are un- heard of. How far from such perfection would he find the
Republic he imagined: (c) viri a déis recentes* (4) Hos natura modos primum dedit.?
(a) For the rest, they live in a country with a most agree- able and pleasant climate; ‘ consequently, according to what my witnesses have told me, it is a rare thing to see a sick man there; and they have assured me that any one palsied, or blear-eyed, or toothless, or bent with old age is never to be seen. These people are settled on the sea-shore, and are shut in, landward, by a chain of high mountains, leaving a
- strip a hundred leagues or thereabouts in width. They have a great abundance of fish and meats, which bear no resem- blance to ours, and they eat them without other elaboration® than cooking. The first man who rode a horse there, al- though he had been with them on several other voyages, so terrified them in that guise that they shot him to death with arrows before they could recognise him.
Their buildings are very long and can hold two or three hundred souls; they are built of the bark of large trees, fastened to the earth at one end and resting against and sup- porting one another at the ridge-pole, after the fashion of
1 Soudeure humaine.
- Men recently from the hands of the gods. — Seneca, Epistle go.
? These are the first laws that nature gave. — Virgil, Georgics, II, 20. ‘ En une contrée de pais tres-plaisante et bien temperte.
’ Artifice.