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would have been the Esquimaux. The corrupt manners of the Otaheitans have not been surpassed, nor perhaps equalled, by any of the learned nations, to whom the unfriendly eye of Rousseau is directed. Minds more surrendered to effeminate luxurious ease and every lust have not been exhibited in the page of history; and yet these are an unlettered people, and strangers to the arts which have vitiated modern Europe. They know not this wicked thing called learning, which has brought in luxury and all prostitute manners like a flood upon us; nor those arts, which have been the panders of this luxury and corruption.

Rousseau seems to feel the difficulty of fixing immediately upon learning the crime of luxury and its corrupt attendants; but he is more at home when he refers them directly to the arts, which he supposes to be the offspring of learning. Now in this statement, and in the first hasty view of it, there does appear to be a connection between luxury and the arts, and between the arts and

learning.

learning. But the first view of a subject is not always the true one, and there will be found in this, as in the former instance, the same inaccuracy, the same confused understanding, the same unfounded presumptions, the same illegal conclusion.

That luxury and very corrupt manners may exist without the arts, has already appeared from what has been noticed in some of the rudest and most uncivilized nations, to whom may be added the Turks and the Moguls, examples of notoriety and magnitude, who from the commencement of their empires to the present day have been singu larly hostile to science and the arts, but not hostile to luxury and the corrupt manners, which are justly supposed to be in her train. A nation ignorant of and unexperienced in the arts will and must, in proportion as it is possessed of the means, be luxurious and corrupt. Indolent ease finds the mind vacant to luxury and lust; this is in the constitution of human nature, and is verified in the constant history of national and in

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dividual man. A field of active exertion is therefore provided for man as his refuge; it gives a better direction to his mind; it arouses him from that listless repose, in which he has nothing to brood upon but the indulgence of his appetites and lusts, to which in such a state he is so prone, and which in such a state are almost necessary to support the burthen of existence. Hunting and war alone can rouse the savage to action, and then he is more temperate and abstemious than the philosopher or the hermit. The inexhausted allurements of scientific pursuit or the activity of the arts provide a more constant and salutary refuge to a civilized and wealthy nation from their devouring passions and lusts.

Science and the arts are therefore more properly the moral friend and guardian of man; they may minister to some of the productions which a luxurious and corrupt mind seizes upon, but they are innocent of the misuse, they neither suggest nor favour the misuse. The earth itself produces a

very

considerable part of the food of luxury. Is the earth to be accused as the criminal minister of luxury? The earth and science and the arts are all liberal in their gifts to man; these gifts are in their nature directed to utility and to blessing; they are in the reach of the virtuous and the vicious; virtue enjoys them in their proper character; vice converts them into a curse. To maintain the theory of Rousseau, the earth and science and the arts should be more sparing in their gifts, and all the virtue which his theory aspires to is the impossibility of being vicious. The earth and the arts resemble each other in the variety and richness of their produce, and in not directing nor answering for the use to which their productions shall be applied. But to science are annexed mind and will, and to the deliberate mind and will of science cannot be charged one approbation of abuse, excess, imtemperance, luxury, or licentious, corrupt and profligate

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manners.

There is therefore no natural, no neces

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connection between the arts and luxury or vice. The productions of the arts are illustrious monuments of human ingenuity, and in no small degree imitative of the superior productions of the great artist; they are in their nature innocent of all criminal construction and tendency; they are much more applicable to virtue and to happiness than to vice and misery; luxury and corruption may exist without them, and therefore it is to other parents and to other causes that we must refer their existence and progress.

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If luxury do not derive herself from the arts, however the arts may be violently forced into her service, learning is acquitted of the charge, though the arts should be allowed to be the progeny of learning. For learning, no more than God, is to be interdicted and accused in her most honourable walk, of contributing to the ornament, utility and happiness of man, because vice may seize upon and misuse her gifts. But the argument of Rousseau is even more unfounded

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