The Religion of Nature Delineated

I. Man is a social creature: that is, a single man or family cannot subsist, or not well, alone out of all society. More things are necessary to sustain life, or at least to make it in any degree pleasant and desirable, than it is possible for any one man to make and provide for himself merely by his own labor and ingenuity. Meat, and drink, and clothing, and house, and that frugal furniture which is absolutely requisite, with a little necessary physic, suppose many arts and trades, many heads, and many hands. If he could make a shift, in time of health, to live as a wild man under the protection of trees and rocks, feeding upon such fruits, herbs, roots, and other things as the earth should afford and happen to present to him, yet what could he do in sickness, or old age, when he would not be able to stir out, or receive her beneficence.

If he should take from the other sex such a help as the common appetite might prompt him to seek, or he might happen to meet with in his walks, yet still if the hands are doubled the wants are doubled too -- nay, more: additional wants, and great ones, attending the bearing and education of children.