第74章

The diminution would have been much more rapid but for some counteracting causes.Rome, while she conquered and enslaved, gave peace, and peace enabled the arts to pass from country to country, and often, under her protection, carried them to regions before barbarous.Again, she herself, as she gradually proceeded to enslave the rest of the world, and encircle it in her empire, received into her bosom those who laud been free, or were the immediate descendants of freemen, and retained something of their virtues.The ungovernable licentiousness, extravagance, and proneness to evil of the Italians, were tempered by the greater decency and frugality of the new men of many of the distant provinces, who flocked in to recruit the diminishing numbers of her citizens." (48)These two circumstances, however, only retarded, they could not resist, the advancing degeneracy, poverty, and weakness, that were gradually sapping the foundations of the Empire, and exposing it to be overturned by external violence, or to fall to ruin by its own weight.While some of her provinces gave strength to Rome, she corrupted them; if she gave them her arts, she gave them also her manners.Like liquor, already begun to turn, mixed with what is yet fresh, the defects of the compound were not at first perceptible;by and by, the adulteration diffused through it wrought on the whole, and rendered it all alike worthless.

The propagation of Christianity over the Empire is to be reckoned as another of the causes retarding its decay.It is to be observed, however, that this took place too late for reaping the advantages, which the morality of the Gospel might have otherwise conferred; and that the corruptions of the times were so great as to lead its teachers rather to preach the duty of withdrawing from the world, than to inspire them with the hopes of remoulding the world to an accordance with a system of perfect purity of morals and benevolence of purpose.The effects of this cause were therefore comparatively small.

The reader will perceive that the subject we are upon might be stretched to an indefinite length.Circumstances have given to every community a peculiar character; the moral and intellectual powers of every people have received different degrees of development, and the continuance of life is more or less probable, and the possession of property more or less assured, in one country than in another.All these particulars vary the relations between the present and the future, in the estimation of the members of different societies, and would therefore determine each community to stop short at some particular point in our series, towards which, the strength of the accumulative principle may be said to cause the instruments it forms continually to gravitate.Unlike the operation of gravity however, the force with which they tend to this point diminishes, as their distance from it decreases, and the farther they are removed from it, the greater the rapidity of their progress towards it.

The subject would not therefore be fairly exhausted, until all the circumstances of the moral and intellectual state, and other particulars of the condition of every people, had been examined, and compared with the extent to which the formation of instruments among them is advanced.Enough however, has perhaps been done to show, that this principle is of very extensive operation, and that in our subsequent inquiries we are warranted in assuming the strength of the effective desire of accumulation, to be a circumstance of primary importance in the determination of the extent to which the formation of instruments will be carried in any society.We should now proceed to examine the more important effects resulting from variations in the strength of this principle in different members of the same community.It is however necessary first to consider some phenomena produced by the progress of it, and of the inventive faculty, and certain classifications of instruments and names applied to them, which have thence arisen.This will form the subject of the next chapter.

CHAPTER VIII.OF THE DIVISION OF EMPLOYMENTS AND OTHER PHENOMENA PRODUCED BYEFFORTS TO ACCELERATE THE EXHAUSTION OF INSTRUMENTS.

Every individual endeavors to exhaust, as speedily as he can, the capacity of the instruments which he possesses.By rapidly exhausting the capacity of any instrument, the returns yielded by it are not lessened, but quickened.

The powers it possesses to bestow enjoyment, or to aid in the formation of other instruments, are not diminished in quantity, but sooner brought into action, and it passes to an order of quicker return.When therefore the efforts of individuals, so divided, are successful, by placing the instruments operated on in more quickly returning orders, they stimulate the accumulative principle to give greater capacity to instruments of the sort, and proportionally increase the capacity of the whole stock of instruments owned by the society.It is to certain phenomena, in the production of which these two circumstances are the main agents, that we have in this chapter to direct our attention.

As the knowledge which mankind possess of the course of nature advances, and they discover a greater number of means to provide for their future wants, the instruments they employ for this purpose become very various.