There was no fear of the house falling, or the rustling of a rat behind the arras; they had no palaces then like cities; but they had open air, and breathing room, crystal fountains, refreshing shades, the meadows dressed up in their native beauty, and such cottages as were according to nature, and wherein they lived contentedly, without fear either of losing or of falling. These people lived without either solitude or fraud; and yet I must call them rather happy than wise. That men were generally better before they were corrupted than after, I make no doubt; and I am apt to believe that they were both stronger and hardier too but their wits were not yet come to maturity; for Nature does not give virtue; and it is a kind of art to become good. They had not as yet torn up the bowels of the earth for gold, silver, or precious stones; and so far were they from killing any man, as we do, for a spectacle, that they were not as yet come to it, either in fear or anger; nay, they spared the very fishes. But, after all this, they were innocent because they were ignorant: and there is a great difference betwixt not knowing how to offend and not being willing to do it. They had, in that rude life, certain images and resemblances of virtue, but yet they fell short of virtue itself, which comes only by institution, learning, and study, as it is perfected by practice. It is indeed the end for which we were born, but yet it did not come into the world with us; and in the best of men, before they are instructed, we find rather the matter and the seeds of virtue than the virtue itself. It is the wonderful benignity of Nature that has laid open to us all things that may do us good, and only hid those things from us that may hurt us; as if she durst not trust us with gold and silver, or with iron, which is the instrument of war and contention, for the other. It is we ourselves that have drawn out of the earth both the _causes_ and the _instruments_ of our dangers: and we are so vain as to set the highest esteem upon those things to which Nature has assigned the lowest place. What can be more coarse and rude in the mine than these precious metals, or more slavish and dirty than the people that dig and work them? and yet they defile our minds more than our bodies, and make the possessor fouler than the artificer of them. Rich men, in fine, are only the greater slaves; both the one and the other want a great deal.