It is an observation I have already made in some former publication, that the circle of civilization is yet incomplete.  A mutuality of wants have formed the individuals of each country into a kind of national society, and here the progress of civilization has stopt.  For it is easy to see, that nations with regard to each other (notwithstanding the ideal civil law, which every one explains as it suits him) are like individuals in a state of nature.  They are regulated by no fixt principle, governed by no compulsive law, and each does independently what it pleases, or what it can.

Were it possible we could have known the world when in a state of barbarism, we might have concluded, that it never could be brought into the order we now see it.  The untamed mind was then as hard, if not harder to work upon in its individual state, than the national mind is in its present one.  Yet we have seen the accomplishment of the one, why then should we doubt that of the other?

There is a greater fitness in mankind to extend and complete the civilization of nations with each other at this day, than there was to begin it with the unconnected individuals at first; in the same manner that it is somewhat easier to put together the materials of a machine after they are formed, than it was to form them from original matter.  The present condition of the world, differing so exceedingly from what it formerly was, has given a new cast to the mind of man, more than what he appears to be sensible of.  The wants of the individual, which first produced the idea of society, are now augmented into the wants of the nation, and he is obliged to seek from another country what before he sought from the next person.

Letters, the tongue of the world, have in some measure brought all mankind acquainted, and, by an extension of their uses, are every day promoting some new friendship.  Through them distant nations became capable of conversation, and losing by degrees the awkwardness of strangers, and the moroseness of suspicion, they learn to know and understand each other.  Science, the partizan of no country, but the beneficent patroness of all, has liberally opened a temple where all may meet.  Her influence on the mind, like the sun on the chilled earth, has long been preparing it for higher cultivation and further improvement.  The philosopher of one country sees not an enemy in the philosopher of another:  he takes his seat in the temple of science, and asks not who sits beside him.

This was not the condition of the barbarian world.  Then the wants of man were few, and the objects within his reach.  While he could acquire these, he lived in a state of individual independence; the consequence of which was, there were as many nations as persons, each contending with the other, to secure something which he had, or to obtain something which he had not.  The world had then no business to follow, no studies to exercise the mind.  Their time was divided between sloth and fatigue.  Hunting and war were their chief occupations; sleep and food their principal enjoyments.