Note 27 — Chapter I · PURPOSE AND METHOD

Dr. Brown, Adam Smith, Lord Monboddo, and others were leading Englishmen in the movement to use the savage to explain early man. Smith and Monboddo enjoyed this literary vivisection, the former once watching “a negro dance to his own song the war-dance of his own country, with such vehemence of action and expression, that the whole company, gentlemen as well as ladies, got up upon chairs and tables.” See the Essays, Edinburgh, 1795, “Of the Imitative Arts,” Parts II., III., and the fragment “Of the Affinity between Music, Dancing, and Poetry.” The main credit, however, belongs to Turgot. In his “Plan du Prém. Disc. sur l’Hist. Universelle,” Œuvres, II. 216, he uses the savages of America to illustrate the state of primitive man. He is also strong for the milieu. “Si Racine fût né au Canada chez les Hurons...!” he says, II. 264; and his other illustrations are suggestive (in the “Plan du 2. Disc.”). II. 265, he notes the homogeneity of barbaric races.