Knowledge Is Power. Charles Knight
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and serpents but a stick; he had nothing of which to make his bed but long grass and rushes; he had nothing to eat but hips and wild cherries. The man would doubtless have perished, unless he had met with some Indians, who knew better how to avail themselves of the spontaneous productions around them. But this is not an instance of the continuance of Labour in the lowest state of its power.
The few individuals, also, who have been found exposed in forests, such as Peter the Wild Boy, and the Savage of Aveyron—who were discovered, the one about a century ago, in Germany, the other about forty years since, in France—differed from the civilized man cast naked upon a desert shore in this particular—their wants were of the lowest nature. They were not raised above the desires of the most brutish animals. They supplied those desires after the fashion of brutes. Peter was enticed from the woods by the sight of two apples, which the man who found him displayed. He did not like bread, but he eagerly peeled green sticks, and chewed the rind. He had, doubtless, subsisted in this way in the woods. He would not, at first, wear shoes, and delighted to throw the hat which was given him into the river. He was brought to England, and lived many years with a farmer in Hertfordshire. During the Scotch Rebellion, in 1745, he wandered into Norfolk; and having been apprehended as a suspicious character, was sent to prison. The gaol was on fire; and Peter was found in a corner, enjoying the warmth of the flames without any fear. The Savage of Aveyron, in the same manner, had the lowest desires and the feeblest powers. He could use his hands, for instance, for no other purpose than to seize upon an object; and his sense of touch was so defective, that he could not distinguish a raised surface, such as a carving, from a painting. This circumstance of the low physical and intellectual powers of these unfortunate persons prevents us exhibiting them as examples of the state which we asked the reader to suppose.
Let us advance another step in our view of the power of Labour. Let us take a man in one respect in the same condition that we supposed—left upon a desert land, without any direct social aid; but with some help to his labour by a small Accumulation of former industry. We have instances on record of this next state.
In the year 1681 a Moskito Indian was left by accident on the island of Juan Fernandez, in the Pacific Ocean; the English ship in which he was a sailor having been chased off the coast by some hostile Spanish vessels. Captain Dampier describes this man's condition in the following words:—
"This Indian lived here alone above three years; and although he was several times sought after by the Spaniards, who knew he was left on the island, yet they could never find him. He was in the woods hunting for goats, when Captain Watlin drew off his men, and the ship was under sail before he came back to shore. He had with him his gun, and a knife, with a small horn of powder, and a few shot; which being spent, he contrived a way, by notching his knife, to saw the barrel of his gun into small pieces, wherewith he made harpoons, lances, hooks, and a long knife; heating the pieces first in the fire, which he struck with his gun-flint, and a piece of the barrel of his gun, which he hardened, having learnt to do that among the English. The hot pieces of iron he would hammer out and bend as he pleased with stones, and saw them with his jagged knife, or grind them to an edge by long labour, and harden them to a good temper as there was occasion.[5] With such instruments as he made in that manner, he got such provisions as the island afforded, either goats or fish. He told us that at first he was forced to eat seal, which is very ordinary meat, before he had made hooks; but afterwards he never killed any seals but to make lines, cutting their skins into thongs. He had a little house, or hut, half a mile from the sea, which was lined with goat's skin; his couch, or barbecu of sticks, lying along about two feet distance from the ground, was spread with the same, and was all his bedding. He had no clothes left, having worn out those he brought from Watlin's ship, but only a skin about his waist. He saw our ship the day before we came to an anchor, and did believe we were English; and therefore killed three goats in the morning, before we came to an anchor, and dressed them with cabbage, to treat us when we came ashore."
Here, indeed, is a material alteration in the wealth of a man left on an uninhabited island. He had a regular supply of goats and fish; he had the means of cooking this food; he had a house lined with goats' skins, and bedding of the same; his body was clothed with skins; he had provisions in abundance to offer, properly cooked, when his old companions came to him after three years' absence. What gave him this power to labour profitably?—to maintain existence in tolerable comfort? Simply, the gun, the knife, and the flint, which he accidentally had with him when the ship sailed away. The flint and the bit of steel which he hardened out of the gun-barrel gave him the means of procuring fire; the gun became the material for making harpoons, lances, and hooks, with which he could obtain fish and flesh. Till he had these tools, he was compelled to eat seal's flesh. The instant he possessed the tools, he could make a selection of what was most agreeable to his taste. It is almost impossible to imagine a human being with less accumulation about him. His small stock of powder and shot was soon spent, and he had only an iron gun-barrel and a knife left, with the means of changing the form of the gun-barrel by fire. Yet this single accumulation enabled him to direct his labour, as all labour is directed even in its highest employment, to the change of form and change of place of the natural supplies by which he was surrounded. He created nothing; he only gave his natural supplies a value by his labour. Until he laboured, the things about him had no value, as far as he was concerned; when he did obtain them by labour, they instantly acquired a value. He brought the wild goat from the mountain to his hut in the valley—he changed its place; he converted its flesh into cooked food, and its skin into a lining for his bed—he changed its form. Change of form and change of place are the beginning and end of all human labour; and the Moskito Indian only employed the same principle for the supply of his wants which directs the labour of all the producers of civilized life into the channels of manufactures or commerce.
But the Moskito Indian, far removed as his situation was above the condition of the man without any accumulation of former labour—that is, of the man without any capital about him—was only in the second stage in which the power of labour can be exercised, and in which it is comparatively still weak and powerless. He laboured—he laboured with accumulation—but he laboured without that other power which gives the last and highest direction to profitable labour.
Let us state all the conditions necessary for the production of Utility, or of what is essential to the support, comfort, and pleasure of human life:—
1. That there shall be Labour.
The man thrown upon a desert island without accumulation—the half-idiot boy who wandered into the German forests at so early an age that he forgot all the usages of mankind—were each compelled to labour, and to labour unceasingly, to maintain existence. Even with an unbounded command of the spontaneous productions of nature, this condition is absolute. It applies to the inferior animals as well as to man. The bee wanders from flower to flower, but it is to labour for the honey. The sloth hangs upon the branches of a tree, but he labours till he has devoured all the leaves, and then climbs another tree. The condition of the support of animation is labour; and if the labour of all animals were miraculously suspended for a season, very short as compared with the duration of individual life, the reign of animated nature upon this globe would be at an end.
The second condition in the production of utility is—
2. That there shall be accumulation of former labour, or Capital.
Without accumulation, as we have seen, the condition of man is the lowest in the scale of animal existence. The reason is obvious. Man requires some accumulation to aid his natural powers of labouring; for he is not provided with instruments of labour to anything like the perfection in which they exist amongst the inferior animals. He wants the gnawing teeth, the tearing claws, the sharp bills, the solid mandibles that enable quadrupeds, and birds, and insects to secure their food, and to provide shelter in so many ingenious ways, each leading us to admire and reverence the directing Providence which presides over such manifold contrivances. He must, therefore, to work profitably, accumulate instruments of work. But he must do more, even in the unsocial state, where he is at perfect liberty