Note 316 — THE CONCLUSION: COMPREHENDING A RETROSPECT OF THE LIFE OF DAVID RITTENHOUSE,

In expressing his admiration of “that dispositions of lands and seas, which affords a communication between distant regions, and a mutual exchange of benefits,” Dr. Rittenhouse unquestionably had in view a commercial, as well as social, intercourse between the inhabitants of different climes: he was too enlightened a man, not to have been aware of its “benefits.” “A civilized nation, without commerce,” (as the writer of these memoirs had occasion to observe in a former publication,[316a]) “is a solecism in politics. It is in the rudest state of mankind, only, that a people can exist, without any communication with other societies or commercial intercourse among themselves, every one supporting himself by his own labour. Indeed, so absolute a state of nature can only be conceived; but has scarcely existed in reality. The wants, the fears, the weakness, nay the very nature of man, constitute him a social animal: and, in the very origin of society, their mutual necessities, with the various talents, means, and opportunities of individuals for supporting them, must have produced a reciprocity of services, and an occasional interchange with one another of that property, which each had acquired by his own exertions.”