Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow CHAP. I.: Of Men and Animals, with respect to Multiplication of their Species. - Complete Works, vol. 2 The Spirit of Laws

Return to Title Page for Complete Works, vol. 2 The Spirit of Laws

Search this Title:

CHAP. I.: Of Men and Animals, with respect to Multiplication of their Species. - Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Complete Works, vol. 2 The Spirit of Laws [1748]

Edition used:

The Complete Works of M. de Montesquieu (London: T. Evans, 1777), 4 vols. Vol. 2.

Part of: Complete Works of Montesquieu, 4 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


CHAP. I.

Of Men and Animals, with respect to Multiplication of their Species.

  • DELIGHT of human kind, and Gods above;
  • Parent of Rome, propitious queen of love;
  • * * * * * * * * *
  • For when the rising spring adorns the mead,
  • And a new scene of nature stands display’d;
  • When teeming buds, and chearful greens appear,
  • And western gales unlock the lazy year;
  • The joyous birds thy welcome first express,
  • Whose native songs thy genial fire confess:
  • Then savage beasts bound o’er their slighted food,
  • Struck with thy darts, and tempt the raging flood:
    • All nature is thy gift, earth, air, and sea,
    • Of all that breathes, the various progeny
    • Stung with delight, is goaded on by thee.
    • O’er barren mountains, o’er the flow’ry plain,
    • The leafy forest, and the liquid main,
    • Extends thy uncontroul’d and boundless reign.
  • Thro’ all the living regions thou dost move,
  • And scatter’st where thou go’st the kindly seeds of love.

The females of brutes have an almost constant fecundity. But in the human species, the manner of thinking, the character, the passions, the humour, the caprice, the idea of preserving beauty, the pain of childbearing, and the fatigue of a too numerous family, obstruct propagation a thousand different ways.

[]Dryden’s Lucr.