<P> In the 1st century AD, sterling qualities such as those enumerated above by Fénelon (excepting perhaps belief in the brotherhood of man) had been attributed by Tacitus in his Germania to the German barbarians, in pointed contrast to the softened, Romanized Gauls . By inference Tacitus was criticizing his own Roman culture for getting away from its roots--which was the perennial function of such comparisons . Tacitus's Germans did not inhabit a "Golden Age" of ease but were tough and inured to hardship, qualities which he saw as preferable to the decadent softness of civilized life . In antiquity this form of "hard primitivism", whether admired or deplored (both attitudes were common), co-existed in rhetorical opposition to the "soft primitivism" of visions of a lost Golden Age of ease and plenty . </P> <P> As art historian Erwin Panofsky explains: </P> <P> There had been, from the beginning of classical speculation, two contrasting opinions about the natural state of man, each of them, of course, a "Gegen - Konstruktion" to the conditions under which it was formed . One view, termed "soft" primitivism in an illuminating book by Lovejoy and Boas, conceives of primitive life as a golden age of plenty, innocence, and happiness--in other words, as civilized life purged of its vices . The other, "hard" form of primitivism conceives of primitive life as an almost subhuman existence full of terrible hardships and devoid of all comforts--in other words, as civilized life stripped of its virtues . </P> <P> In the 18th century the debates about primitivism centered around the examples of the people of Scotland as often as the American Indians . The rude ways of the Highlanders were often scorned, but their toughness also called forth a degree of admiration among "hard" primitivists, just as that of the Spartans and the Germans had done in antiquity . One Scottish writer described his Highland countrymen this way: </P>

What french philosopher coined the phrase noble savage