Man, abandoned to pure nature, would have, for his language, only a few inarticulate sounds; the species would be reduced to a very small number, from the difficulty of getting nourishment and the want of help, at least in our harsh climates. He would have no more knowledge of God and the soul, than of mathematics; these ideas would be lost in the care of procuring food. The race of beavers would be infinitely preferable. Man would then be only precisely like a robust child; and we have seen many men who are not much above that state, as it is. The Laplanders, the Samoyeds, the inhabitants of Kamchatka, the Kaffirs, and Hottentots are--with respect to man in a state of pure nature--that which the courts of Cyrus and Semiramis were in comparison with the inhabitants of the Cévennes. Yet the inhabitants of Kamchatka and the Hottentots of our days, so superior to men entirely savage, are animals who live six months of the year in caverns, where they eat the vermin by which they are eaten. In general, mankind is not above two or three degrees more civilized than the Kamchatkans. The multitude of brute beasts called men, compared with the little number of those who think, is at least in the proportion of a hundred to one in many nations. It is pleasant to contemplate on one side, Father Malebranche, who treats familiarly of "the Word"; and on the other, these millions of animals similar to him, who have never heard speak of "the Word," and who have not one metaphysical idea. Between men of pure instinct and men of genius floats this immense number occupied solely with subsisting. This subsistence costs us so much pains, that in the north of America an image of God often runs five or six leagues to get a dinner; whilst among us the image of God bedews the ground with the sweat of his brow, in order to procure bread. Add to this bread--or the equivalent--a hut, and a poor dress, and you will have man such as he is in general, from one end of the universe to the other: and it is only in a multitude of ages that he has been able to arrive at this high degree of attainment. Finally, after other ages, things got to the point at which we see them. Here we represent a tragedy in music; there we kill one another on the high seas of another hemisphere, with a thousand pieces of cannon. The opera and a ship of war of the first rank always astonish my imagination. I doubt whether they can be carried much farther in any of the globes with which the heavens are studded. More than half the habitable world, however, is still peopled with two-footed animals, who live in the horrible state approaching to pure nature, existing and clothing themselves with difficulty, scarcely enjoying the gift of speech, scarcely perceiving that they are unfortunate, and living and dying almost without knowing it. _Examination Of A Thought Of Pascal On Man._