SOCIETY, a number of rational and moral beings, united for their common preservation and happiness. There are shoals of fishes, herds of quadrupeds, and flocks of birds, Society.

We call crows and beavers, and several other species of animals, gregarious; but it is hardly good English to say that they are social. It is only human society that can be regarded in this light, and the phenomena which it presents are highly worthy of our notice.

Such are the advantages which each individual evidently Mankind derives from living in a social state; and so helpless does the only any human being appear in a solitary state, that we are naturally led to conclude, that if there ever was a period in which mankind were solitary beings, that period could not be of long duration; for their aversion to solitude and love of society would soon induce them to enter into social union. Such is the opinion which we are led to conceive when we compare our own condition as members of civilised and enlightened society with that of the brutes around us, or with that of savages in the earlier and ruder periods of social life.

When we hear of Indians wandering naked through the woods, destitute of arts, unskilled in agriculture, scarcely capable of moral distinctions, void of all religious sentiments, savage or possessed with the most absurd notions concerning superior powers, and procuring means of subsistence in a manner equally precarious with that of the beasts of prey, we look down with pity on their condition, or turn from it with horror. When we view the order of cultivated society, and consider our institutions, arts, and manners, we rejoice over our superior wisdom and happiness. Man in a civilized state appears a being of a superior order to man in a savage state; yet some philosophers tell us, that it is only he who, having been educated in society, has been taught to depend upon others, that can be helpless or miserable when placed in a solitary state. They view the savage who exerts himself with intrepidity to supply his wants, or bears them with fortitude, as the greatest hero, and possessing the greatest happiness.

Whatever be the supposed advantages of a solitary state, certain it is that mankind, at the earliest periods, were united in society. Various theories have been formed concerning the circumstances and principles which gave rise to this union; but it has been sufficiently proved, that the greater part of them are founded in error; that they suppose the original state of man to have been that of savages; and that such a supposition is contradicted by the most authentic records of antiquity. For though the records of the earlier ages are generally obscure, fabulous, and imperfect, yet happily there is one free from the imperfections of the rest, and of undoubted authenticity, to which we may safely have recourse. This record is the Pentateuch of Moses, which presents us with a genuine account of the origin of man and of society.