The object of this paper is to controvert the generally received opinion, derived from the classical writers, and adopted by most philosophers, that human society, in its original state, was one of savage barbarism; and, that, in the supposed progress from savage to civilized life, three separate stages or gradations have been gone through, the one leading necessarily to the other. These stages,—or the hunter's life, when the food of man was procured by the chase of wild animals, the pastoral state, when flocks and herds formed his chief support, and the agricultural state, when grains were cultivated,—the author shews never had any existence, except in the fancies of poets or the theories of philosophers.