Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“Man would have continued uncivilized, but for the results of the useful labours of those who preceded him.”
- Source
- Thrift
- Date
- 1875
Meaning of “Man would have continued uncivilized, but for the…”
Smiles directs attention to accumulated labour inherited from earlier generations, emphasizing dependence on work that present-day people did not themselves perform.
Where does it come from?
Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Smiles uses inherited labour, tools and accumulated skill to explain his nineteenth-century account of civilization; the passage is retained as historical social thought rather than current anthropology.
