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From Hutcheson’s Oration “On the Natural Sociability of Mankind,” courtesy of the Online Library of Liberty (footnotes removed).

It remains for me to add this caution that the term “state of nature” (status naturalis) also suffers from a serious ambiguity. I will not dwell on the utter abuse of words by which the state of nature is not only opposed to the civil state, but is also supposed to exclude all those things that are procured by human strength, diligence, or sagacity, and therefore prevents the exercise not only of our natural forces but also of some of our natural desires. In this usage, so long as he preserves his natural state, man is depicted (may God forgive the thought!) as a mute and naked animal, poor, solitary, nasty, dirty, rude, ignorant, timid, rapacious, aggressive, unsociable, incapable of giving or attracting love.

…

We are therefore right to call that state which is most highly cultivated the natural state of the human race. But we must then ask what name we are to give to its opposite, the state which is not yet cultivated? Insofar as a condition which cannot last for long deserves the name of state, it is entirely appropriate to call it an uncultivated state, where our natural abilities have never been exercised. In things not endowed with intelligence, in an inanimate object, it is right to oppose the natural and uncultivated state to the state which has been cultivated by human art. And among men one may aptly distinguish the natural state from that artificial state which has been produced not by force of natural ability or human desire but by external force, by the cunning of men, by grievous and extraordinary need, or by any scheme which is clever and astute beyond normal human foresight. But an animal endowed with reason, which is always eager to learn something new and has a mind fitted to acquiring and practicing skills, in no way forsakes his natural state, but in every way follows his own nature and God his father and guide, when he forges and refines a variety of skills, when he seeks and offers help in a spirit of mutual affection, and with confidence in his fellowman preserves himself and the human race.

I don’t know why Heart of Darkness receives so much attention among the works of Joseph Conrad. Perhaps it taps the angst of grad students and professors in their quests for titles and tenure. I find it unfortunate, as Conrad has much else to offer and some of his works are more accessible and … less dreary than Heart of Darkness.

Earlier this year I read The Rover (in a very fine, calf-skin edition from 1924), and I’d previously read Victory and a number of Conrad’s shorter works. A few weeks back I stumbled across The Secret Agent in Port Orchard’s Book ‘Em. (Interestingly it was published in Stuttgart and labeled “Not for sale in the U.S.A. or the British Commonwealth.”) According to Conrad’s introduction, the plot is ripped from a headline in the same loose sense as NBC’s Law & Order. In Conrad’s work, the missteps of an agent provocateur gradually expose a tableau of London revolutionaries whose ideologies either render them inert, inhuman, or, at the very best, awash in hypocrisy.

His thoughts caressed the images of ruin and destruction. He walked frail, insignificant, shabby, miserable – and terrible in the simplicity of his idea calling madness and despair to the regeneration of the world. Nobody looked at him.

For an exploration of the hollow core of radical Marxism and Historicism, The Secret Agent offers all that within an espionage tale and with a bit of humor as well.

Federalist No. 39 is the essential essay on Federalism in the original Constitution. Here is how Madison sums up.

The proposed Constitution, therefore, is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both. In its foundation it is federal, not national; in the sources from which the ordinary powers of the government are drawn, it is partly federal and partly national; in the operation of these powers, it is national, not federal; in the extent of them, again, it is federal, not national; and, finally, in the authoritative mode of introducing amendments, it is neither wholly federal nor wholly national.

One word of caution: The Constitution gave Federalism a new meaning very different from the old idea of a lose, defensive federation. Generally, as here, when they use the term they have in mind the older rather than the newer meaning.