SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY OF MAN
NATURAL LAW AND
ENLIGHTENMENT CLASSICS
Knud Haakonssen
General Editor
This book is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a foundation established to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.
The cuneiform inscription that serves as our logo and as a design element in Liberty Fund books is the earliest-known written appearance of the word “freedom” (amagi), or “liberty.” It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.
Introduction, annotations, note on the text, bibliography, index © 2007 by Liberty Fund, Inc.
Cover (detail): Portrait of Henry Home, Lord Kames, by David Martin. Reproduced with permission of the National Galleries of Scotland.
This eBook edition published in 2013.
eBook ISBNs:
Kindle 978-1-61487-051-7
E-PUB 978-1-61487-199-6
CONTENTS
SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY OF MAN
BOOK I: Progress of Men Independent of Society
SKETCH I: Progress Respecting Food and Population
SKETCH II: Progress of Property
SKETCH III: Origin and Progress of Commerce
SKETCH IV: Origin and Progress of Arts
SKETCH VI: Progress of the Female Sex
SKETCH VII: Progress and Effects of Luxury
BOOK II: Progress of Men in Society
SKETCH I: Appetite for Society—Origin of National Societies
SKETCH II: General View of Government
SKETCH III: Different Forms of Government Compared
SKETCH IV: Progress of States from Small to Great, and from Great to Small
SKETCH V: Great and Small States Compared
SKETCH VI: War and Peace Compared
SKETCH VII: Rise and Fall of Patriotism
SKETCH IX: Military Branch of Government
SKETCH X: Public Police with Respect to the Poor
SKETCH XI: A Great City Considered in Physical, Moral, and Political Views
SKETCH XII: Origin and Progress of American Nations
BOOK III: Progress of Sciences
SKETCH I: Principles and Progress of Reason
SKETCH II: Principles and Progress of Morality
SKETCH III: Principles and Progress of Theology
APPENDIX: Sketches Concerning Scotland
Henry Home was born at Kames in Berwickshire, not far from the English border, in 1696. The family was not wealthy, and Henry did not attend a university. Around 1712 he went to Edinburgh to train as a solicitor, but he soon directed his considerable energies instead toward being called to the Scottish bar and was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1723. His legal career seems to have begun slowly. However, by the mid-1730s his practice was flourishing, and political connections enabled him to rise in the profession to the rank of advocate deputy around 1738 and to the Court of Session, Scotland’s highest civil court, in 1752. Henry had inherited his father’s estate at Kames in 1741, and with his seat on the Court of Session came the title Lord Kames. When his wife’s estate at Blair Drummond in Stirlingshire came to him in 1766, Kames became a rich man. A year earlier, he had been elevated to the High Court of Justiciary, Scotland’s supreme criminal court, and appointed to the court’s Western Circuit. He remained active as a judge until shortly before his death on December 27, 1782. Kames played a central role in the efflorescence of work in letters and science that we now call the Scottish Enlightenment. He was a