Ul . SELECTIONS FROM M. PAUW, BY DANIEL WEBB, ESQ. PRICE 4S. SELECTIONS FROM M. PAUW, WITH ADDITIONS BY DANIEL WEBB, ESQ.. Affuitur pannus. Unus et alter HOR. BATH, PRINTED BY R. CRUTTWELL; AND SOLD BY C. DILLY, POULTRY; AND J. WALLIS, LUDGATE-STK.EET, LONDON; AND BULL AND CO. BATH. 6 5* REESE CONTENTS. I PAGE NTRODUCTION vii General View of the Americans - i On the Population of America 21 Of the Climate - 23 Of the Cuftoms and Manners peculiar to the Americans - - - - - - 37 Of California 57 Of the Colour of the Americans 60 Anthropophagi j or, Eaters of Human Flefh - 63 Of theEfkimaux ....... 70 Of the Patagonians ----- 84. Of the Blafards, and White Negroes 93 Of the Commerce of Europe with America - 99 Of Money, as a Sign of Civilization - - 103 Of their want of Numerical Terms - - - 106 Of the flate of the Arts in Peru, when firfl difcovered no Of the Hofpitality of Savages - - - - 119 Conclusion of the Subject on the Americans - 121 APPENDIX. Of certain cuftoms which formerly prevailed in our Hemifphere, and which were found among the Americans - - - - - 125 VI CONTENTS.. Obfervations on our Globe - - - -13* On the Egyptians and Chinefe - - - 163 Of the Diet of the Egyptians - - - - 181 Of the Fine Arts - '- - - - - 186 Of the Egyptian and Chinefe Architecture - 193 Of the Religion of the Egyptians - 105 Of the Chinefe Religion - - 018 Of the Egyptian Government - 224. Of the Chinefe Government - aa8 INTRODUCTION. SHOULD the admirer of order and fyitem be tempted to pafs beyond the title-page, he will have no right to complain of a difappointment : the cha racter of the work is in the MOTTO. I know well what muft attend a pro- feffed neglect of the lucidus or do; and am prepared to meet at every turn that peevifh rebuke non erat his locus. Laws, however, by no one lefs obferved than by him who impofed them. Whence that elegant but cutting ftric- ture Vlll INTRODUCTION. ture on his art of poetry, that it was de arte> fine arte. If Horace could indulge himfelf in fo open a violation of his own laws, may I not take advantage of the pre cedent, and, under the protection of this admired delinquent^ commit the fol lowing little work to the judgment of the public. {^ The Additions are printed in Italicks, to dis~ tinguish them from the Selections; that neither M. Pauw, nor the Author of the Additions, might be responsible for what was not his own. SELECTIONS FROM M. PAUW. GENERAL VIEW OF THE AMERICANS. W HEN the Spaniards, on their difcovery of the new world, difembarked at St. Do mingo, then called Hayti,* they were fur- prifed to find a race of men, of whom fluggiihnefs was the principal chara&eriftic: after eating and dancing the better part of * Hayti, O-Ta-Heite. The identity of the names of thefe two iflands will fuggeft reflexions on the pro- grefs of population, and on the poffibility of commu nications between the inhabitants of -our globe, in the earlieft times; which, in the prefent, are fuppofed to have been impracticable. B the ft GENERAL VIEW OF the day, they fpent the reft in fleep, without thought of to-morrow. The greater number had neither reflexion nor memory, went- almoft naked, and often intoxicated them- felves with tobacco. The furprife of the Spaniards increafed, when, penetrating farther into this new world, they found that the men had no beards, their bodies hairlefs, like thofe of eunuques ; that they were almoft infenfible to the paffion of love; had milk, or a kind of milky liquid, in their breads; that they could not, or would not carry weights; and that the men and women were univer- fally tainted with the venereal difeafe : fuch throughout the lazinefs of the men, and their hatred of labour, that extreme want,^ to which they were often fubjeft, had never induced them to cultivate the earth; trufting all to nature, and utter ftrangers- to induftry. The THE AMERICANS. 3 The following defcription of the Ameri cans, by M. De la Condamine, a diftin- guifhed philofopher of the prefent times, who refided many years in different parts of this continent, lets us into their phyfical and moral character: " It appears to me that the Americans " have all one common character, of which " infenfibility is the governing principle; " whether this is to be honoured with the " name of apathy, or difg raced by that of " flupidity, I (hall leave undecided. It " fprings, no doubt, from the fmall number " of their ideas, which extend not beyond " their wants: Gluttons to excefs, where " they have the means; temperate, to a " feeming indifference, when they have not; " pufillanimous in the extreme, if not tranf- " ported by drunkennefs; detefting labour; " indifferent to every motive of glory, ho is 2 " hour, 4 . GENERAL VIEW OF " nour, or gratitude; folely poiTeifed by the " prcfent objeft, and ever determined by it; " without inquietude for the future, or " memory of the pad, giving themfelves " up to a childifh joy, which they exprefs, " when unreftrained, by leaping, and im- " moderate burfts of laughter, without " object or defign; they pafs their lives " without thinking, and grow old without " rifing out of childhood, of which they " preferve all the defers to the laft. Were " thefe reproaches confined to the Indians " of' fome provinces of Peru, one might " fufpe& that this degree of brutality " fprings from the abjeft dependance under "which they are held; but the Indians of " the miffions, and the favages who enjoy " their liberty, being equally limited in their " intelle&s with the reft, one cannot con- " template, without humiliation, the near " approach of man abandone^l to his fimple cc nature THE AMERICANS. 5 " nature- and deprived of education, to the " condition of a beaft." AMERICA contains about two millions of fquare 'leagues, and on this prodigious ex- panfe there were found but two nations uni ted in a kind of political fociety; all the reft wandering, and difperfed in hordes of fami lies, knowing no other than favage life, ve getated under the (hade of their forefts, and were hardly poffeffed of fufficient intelligence to procure themfelves food. It has puzzled our philofophers to account for the difference between the old world and the new. To fuppofe, with Buffon, that the human 'race is modern in America, (not more, it may be, than of 600 years Handing) is an idea that contradicts common fenfe. What right had one horizon to the prefer ence of being populated fo many ages before the GENERA^ VIEW OF the other? Could Nature have been fo im potent as not to have finifhed her work but by intervals, or on fecond thoughts? To fuppofe an after creation, is a mere reverie, unfupported by any parallel in the hiftory of nature, the feeds of whofe productions are as ancient as the fpecies, and the fpecies coeval with the exiflence of the globe. If fponta- neous and fortuitous formations occupied for fuch a length of time the philofophers of antiquity, it was becaufe they were not fuf- ficiently verfed in the hiftory of nature to perceive the futility of their metaphyfical difputations, ' .'w. ' . . - - / / As the moft ancient hiflories agree in reprefenting every race of men rifmg grav dually out of favage life to the firil rudi ments of arts, and of fociety, there is jufl reafon to believe that the firfl men were thrown on this globe without other notions or THE AMERICANS. / or advantages than thofe which are found in ordinary favages ; containing in themfelves the elements of p erf eftibility, they were at a mighty diftance from the attainment: in their creation, brutal and unenlightened, they owe to themfelves their manners, their laws, and their fciences. They had no common model, no fixed rule of conduft; accordingly, they have differed very much, as well in the means of attaining to civilized life, as in the inftitu- tions on which their civilization depended: climate has governed them full as much as reafon; the different degrees of heat and cold have clearly infpired legiflators with oppofite ideas: on comparing the legiflative codes of the Temperate, with thofe of the Torrid Zone or its neighbourhood, all is contrail, nothing analogous. o CD There are people, who, it fhould feem, can never emerge out of infancy, or a ftate of 8 GENERAL VIEW OF of nature. The Elkimeaux, the Green- landers, will not have towns, or (which is the fame thing) a cultivated foil, while the prefent pofition of the globe remains the fame with refpeft to them. The Negro will never be civilized fo long as he dwells under the Line, expofed to the greatefl heat the earth knows. It is agriculture that has led man by the hand from a favage (late to a politic con- ftitution: the more cultivated the foil, the more abundant the harveft, the fooner will the cultivators humanize. The firfl effect of agriculture is to render men fedentary; from that moment they are half civilized; from hence we may determine the claffes in which the feveral fpecies of favages ihould be placed, in proportion to their compara tive diftance from moral perfection. ift. CULTI- THE AMERICANS. $ id. CULTIVATORS are the fird by pre eminence, though the lad in time, becaufe their fubfiftence is the lead precarious, their mode of life the lead turbulent; they have time to invent and to perfect their indru- ments ; they have leifure to think and to refleft. sdly. PASTORS come next, but differ from the former, in that, being obliged to look out for fredi padures, and 1 attend their flocks, they are never edabliflied. The Tartars, Arabians, Moors, and Laplanders, are thofe of this cad the bed known; from their man ners are to be colle&ed the bed ideas we can have of this mode of life, intermediate be tween the favage and civil, and at an equal didance from the two points. 3dly. The third clafs confids of thofe who live on the roots and fruits of the earth, without IO GENERAL VIEW OF without culture; their manners depend much on the quality of the productions., and the fertility of the foil 5 thofe who had the cocoa and palm tree, were more at their eafe, and lefs favage, than thofe whofe firfl refource was in the beech-mad and acorn. Thofe who live on fifh form the fourth clafs; their mode of life differs little from that of the paflors, except that the latter have a refource in their tamed cattle, while the fifhers depend on chance or dexterity for their fubfiftence. HUNTERS conflitute the laft order, and are of all the moft favage; wandering, un- afiiired of their fubfiftence, they mufl dread the union and multiplication of their fimilars as the>greateft of evils; becaufe game, much lefs abundant than fifh, decreafes in every country in proportion as the number of men increafes. THE AMERICANS. II increafes. The fa v age hunter's fcene of a&ion is the wildernefs; he avoids every hu man habitation, and gets to a greater dif- tance at every ftep from focial life. If he builds a hut, it is rather for a retreat than a dwelling; never at peace with either men or animals, his inflinft is ferocious, his manners horrid: the more his thoughts are employed on the means of procuring food, the lefs he reflects on the means of his improvement; he is, in human kind, what the carnivorous bead is among quadrupeds, folitary and un- fociable. That America and its inhabitants fliould continue favage to fo late a period as the fifteenth century, has been a fubjeft of won der to our greater! philofophers. To fup- pofe, with BuiFon, an after creation, or with others, a modern deluge, is a mere affertion; an afTumption of a caufe to anfwer a parti cular 12 GENERAL VIEW OF cular purpofe: yet either of thefe folutions is preferable to that given by Montefquieu " Ce qui fait qu'il y a tarit de nations fau- " vages Amerique, c'eft que la terre y pro- " duit d' elle meme beaucoup de fruits dont " on peut fe nourrir." Unhappily for this conclufion^ as for the natives of America, barrennefs, not fruitfulnefs, is the diftinction of the foil; fluggifhnefs that of its inhabitants. Could a favage fill his belly by ftretching out his hand, he would become fedentary; have leifure to colleft and communicate his ideas 5 he would rife to civilization. It is not a fertility of foil that confines man to favage life; it is, on the contrary, the want of fubfiftence that prevents his get- ging out of it; fo that Montefquieu's deci- fion is falfe in the faft, and abfurd in the inference. In THE AMERICANS. 13 In the countries temperate in climate, and rich in vegetables, fociety has been efta- bliihed infinitely fooner than in the cold and barren. One fees it pafs, and, as it were, travel from .Afia into Egypt; thence into Greece, and fo in gradation into Italy, Gaul, and Germany, following the degrees of na tural or cultivable advantages in each parti cular country. Where property is undetermined, men fight with fury to prevent its eflablifliment ; as every eflablifliment tends to contract their means of fubfiflence. Where property is fixed, men fight with equal fury to defend or enlarge it ; in either cafe, men are fo hof- tile to each other, that the higheft effort of virtue is, to bring one's felf to love them: nay^fuch is our propenfity to difturb each other y that even in the moft polijhedfocieties, the pri mitive inftinfls of man break through all re- Jlraints^ .*? -f- GENERAL VIEW OF 14 ftraints, and the phihfopher in theory is a fa- vage In practice. In the Peloponnefian war, the petty ftates of Greece were fo many tribes of favages in malignity, treachery., and every fpecies of barbarity ; with this difference in favour of the untutored favage, that he fights that he may eat; the Greeks fought to prevent each other from eating. But the character of war, we are told, has been humanized fmce thofe times ; that is, we advance to battle with out motive or rancour ; carnage is tempered by etiquette, and we make peace, to draw breath, and begin again. But are the caufes of war more legitimate, or do fewer men fall by the fword? The jus gentium ,fo happily defined, in books, is a dead letter in the field: did it pre vent the humane, 'the generous Turenne from burning, wafting, and deft roy ing, until he had converted the Palatinate, the fineft province of Germany* into a defert ? Could a Huron or an Iroquols have done more? The THE AMERICANS. f . 15 The American, ftriftly fpeaking, is neither virtuous nor vicious. What motive has he to be either? The timidity of his foul, the weaknefs of his intellects, the neceffity of providing for his fubfiilence, the powers of fuperflition, the influences of climate, all lead him far wide of the poffibility of improve ment; but he perceives it not; his happinefs is, not to think; to remain in perfect ina&ion; to fleep a great deal; to wiih for nothing, when his hunger is appeafed; and to be con cerned about nothing but the means of pro curing food when hunger torments him. He would not build a cabin, did not cold and the inclemency of the atmofphere force him to it, nor ever quit that cabin, did 'not ne ceffity thruft him out. In his underflanding there is no gradation, he continues an infant to the laft hour of his life. By his nature iluggifh in the extreme, he is revengeful through weaknefs, and atrocious in his ven geance. 1 6 GENERAL VIEW OF geance, becaufe he is in himfelf infenfible; having nothing to lofe but his life, he looks on all his enemies as fo many murderers. If his fchemes of vengeance were fupported by a courage to carry them into execution, there would not be on the earth a more terrible animal; nor would he be lefs dangerous to the Europeans themfelves, than he is to the little hordes with whom he is at war, and who, not being more brave than himfelf, render their parties equal, and their wars eternal. When Canada was difcovered in 1523, the Iroquois were at war with the Hurons, and are fo at this day ; time hath neither foftened their hatred, nor exhaufled their vengeance. The only authority they refpeft, is that of their old men, whom, however, they aban don from the moment that through weaknefs or difeafe they become an incumbrancej as is THE AMERICANS. IJ is the cafe with beafls of prey, who are left to perifh miferably when they are no longer able to hunt and provide for themfelves. % This ingratitude in the young favage towards the author of his being, and the proteftor of his infancy, is a law of the animal nature^ interefted only for the individual while grow ing ; indifferent to its fate when it can fliift for itfelf. _ The Europeans who pafs into America degenerate, as do the animals ; a proof that the climate is unfavourable to the improve ment of either man or animal. The Creoles, defcending from Europeans and born in America, though educated in the univerfities of Mexico, of Lima, and College de Santa Fe, have never produced a fingle book. This degradation of humanity mufl be impu- ., , ted to the vitiated qualities of the air flag- . ; nated in their immenfe forefts, and corrupted by l GENERAL VIEW OF - by noxious vapours from (landing waters and uncultivated grounds. Curious as this fa& may feem, it is at-- tended by another much more fo; the Creoles both of South and North America come to a maturity of intellect, fuch as theirs is, more early than the children in Europe; but this anticipation of ripenefs is fhort-lived, in proportion to the unfeafonablenefs of its appearance; for the Creole falls off, as he approaches to puberty; his vivacity deferts him, his powers grow dull, and he ceafes to think at the very time that he might think to fome purpofe: hence it is commonly faid of them, that they are already blind at the time that other men begin to fee. From the Streight of Bahama to that of Davis, a traft of about 3000 miles, one meets not a fmgle man with a beard; hence the THE AMERICANS. 19 the Spanifh theologians juftified the cruelty of their countrymen to the wretched Ameri cans, by denying that they were men; they not having that fign of virility, which Nature has given to all the nations of the earth except to them. The infenfibility of the Americans to the paflion of love is a fact no lefs curious than the former, and feems to have its origin in the fame principle a fingular feeblenefs of complexion. Savage life fubdues this pa fion more or lefs, according to the climate, and other circumilances infeparable from this (late. Hippocrates made this obfervation in treating of the manners of the Scythians. The natural confequence of this indifference in the men, is their cruel treatment of the women. It has been a matter of difpute among our philofophers, whether favage or civilized life contains 2O GENERAL VIEW &C. contains the greater degree of happinefs-* Thefe two dates are fo oppofed, that they neceflarily exclude all companion; in order to judge of their "pretenfions, one mud know to precifion their minuted fufferings, their minuted enjoyments ; to know, one mud have felt them; that is, have been educated in the two dates at the fame time: the thing is impoflible, the quedion frivolous. * " Political confutations, in nations barely fettled, " are on plans fo natural and fimple, fo well calculated " for the general intereft, and the enjoyment of per- " fonal happinefs, that writers of lively imaginations " have rendered it problematical, whether the life of " a favage be not preferable to that of a citizen in any " civilized ftate." Had the author of the above pajjage known any thing ef the real condition of a favage t had he been fo fortu nate as to have met withjhe work before us, he never have hazarded fuch crude ideas. ON Of UNIVERSITY ON THE POPULATION OF AMERICA. I N general, America could never have been peopled like Europe and Afia, in their im- proved (late; it is covered by immenftr fwamps, which render the -air extremely un- wholfome, and the foil productive of a pro- digious number of poifonous vegetables. One may travel in North-America over vafl wades, without finding a tingle habitation, or human footflep. Thefe confiderations have led Buffon to conclude that the peopling of America is of a very late date; but this is contradicted by the analogies of nature, and the concurrent traditions of the natives, that their anceftors were forced to betake themfelves to the mountains 22 POPULATION OF AMERICA. mountains at the time of a mighty flood; a circumftance that proves this country to have been inhabited at a very early aera. It is conftantly obferved, that favage tribes difappear in proportion as the civilized fettle among them. Many think, that if the Englifh continue to extend their efta- blifhments, no more favages will be feen in North-America. The five nations of Canada, who in 1530 could bring 15000 men into the field, cannot now mufter 3000. Their fimplicity in felling their grounds to Europeans, and their confequent deteftation of the purchafers, drive them to a diftance from their former fettlements. The wars of the feveral tribes with each other for hunting grounds, their exceflive paffion for ftrong fpirits, and above all, the ravages of the fmall-pox, threaten the approaching an nihilation of the fpecies. The POPULATION OF AMERICA. 23 The American women bring forth children / with little or no pain, yet they are not fo fruitful as the European. This muft be from 'A a derangement^of combination; for in the fouthern provinces of China, the women bring forth with the facility of the Americans, but at the fame time are wonderfully fruitful. One cannot attribute the depopulation of America to the cruelty of its invaders, fince it is admitted, that more Europeans have paired into it fmce the firft difcovery, than - could have been deftroyed of the natives ; to which mud be added, the great number of negroes annually imported. OF THE CLIMATE. THIS fubjecl: is fo connected with the for mer, that it may be confidered as a continua tion of it. ~ One 24 CLIMATE OF AMERICA. One may form an idea of the population of America when firil difcovered, from the fufferings to which the Spaniards were re duced through the want of fubfiflence / for fo 5 . fmall a number as three or four hundred. In North- America, the firfl fettlers of Virginia > were forced to return to Europe through J want of food ; while the colony of Philadel phia, and more than forty others, abfolutely perimed by famine. No wonder this mould happen in a country totally uncultivated, fo overfpread with forefts, that no way was to be found through them without the ufe of a compafs. Even at this day there are forefts in North- America which cover regions more extenfive than the Low-Countries and Ger many united. The air of that part of Peru neareft to the Line, is not fo unhealthy as it was before cultivation had in fome degree correfted_its malignity. V)' v) CLIMATE OF AMERICA. 25 malignity. In the iflands, and in general through all the provinces of the continent the moft frequented by Europeans, the cut ting down and clearing of forefls, the drain ing of lakes, the culture cf the foil, have more or lefs corrected the ill qualities of the jur^except in fome cantons which have been found incorrigible; as in the ifthmus of Pa nama, and above all in the neighbourhood of Carthagena and Porto-Bello, efpecially of the latter, the air of which is more deadly than in any other part of the globe. As to the degrees of cold in the fame parallels of the New and Old World, our author judges the air to be twelve degrees colder in the New; this difference is to be imputed to the quantity of uncultivated grounds, and to the prodigious lakes, fwamps, and for efts, which cover the country. The 26 CLIMATE OF AMERICA. The effe&s of cultivation are proved by the difference of the cold of Quebec and Paris, which are in the fame latitude; this difference was not fo great in Gaul, before its forefls were cleared, and grounds culti vated, as is proved by the defcription given of the climate of Paris by the Emperor Julian. This fame obfervation extends to a comparifon of the parallels of Peterfburgh and Siberia. As to the regions between the Tropics, they are extremely elevated, full of lakes, fwamps, and forefls, with mountains co vered with mow; in fhort, they bear no re- femblance to thofe of the Torrid Zone. This difference in the quality of the atmo- fphere mufl have great influence on the men and animals of the New World, which by -culture may come to wear a different face. It CLIMATE OF AMERICA, 27 It has been obferved, that the rivers and lakes of North-America contain lefs water at this day than they did fixty years ago, in confequence of draining the grounds, and reducing the forefts; yet the -cliange of climate has not been fo great as might have been expefted, owing to the vaft regions covered with water and woods furrounding the fpots which have been cultivated; nor has the degeneracy in men and animals of European origin diminifhed in the propor tion that was expefted. All the naturalifts affert, that animals im ported from Europe into America degene rate; the fame deterioration which prevails through the flronger animals, extends to men, who, in different provinces, have fallen into epidemic diftempers more or lefs deadly. The great humidity of the atmofphere, the prodigious quantity of ftagnant waters, the noxious 28 CLIMATE OF AME-RJCA._ noxious vapours, corrupt juices, and vitiated qualities of the plants and aliments, will ac count for that feeblenefs of complexion, that averfion from labour, and general unfitnefs for iflapqX^nents of every kind, which have prevented the Americans from emerging oui of favage life. Through the whole extent, of America, from Cape-Horn to-Hudfon's-Bay, there has never appeared a philofopher, an artift, a man of learning or of parts, whofe name has found a place in the hiflory of fciences, or whofe talents have done credit to himfelf, r been of ufe to others* Europe is the only part of the world in which are found natural philofophers and aftronomers, for the Chinefe, with all their boafts, have not one. They have neither fculptors, painters, nor architects, any more than CLIMATE OF AMERICA. -29 than the other people of Afia; as to their poets, they are m'ere Troubadours; and for their drama, there is as great a didance between the Taha-o-chi-cou-Ell, their bed tragedy, and the Phaedra of Racine, as be tween the Alaric of Scuderi, or the Pucelle of Chapelain, and the .ZEneid. Of the European plants, imported into America, rice, as it delights in humidity, fucceeded the foonefl; but it is the word culture that can be encouraged, as being the lead proper to purify the air; hence it has been totally banifhed out of France ; it may be, that in the hot regions of Afia this ill difpoiltion may be corrected by the drynefs of the -air. But the mod furprifmg circumftance at tending the climate of the New World is, that the utmoft induftry of man, fo greatly interefted 3O CLIMATE OF AMERICA. mterefted in the event, has never been able to bring the grape to produce good wine. At St. Domingo, and the Antilles, one can not fo much as raife the vine. Among the exotic plants which have de generated in America, muft be reckoned the coffee^tree, original of Arabia. Much the fame may be affirmed of the fugar-cane; it being allowed, that the fugars of the Canaries, of China, and of Egypt, are fu- perior to that of Brazil, the befl in America. Nothing is lefs underilood than the nature of this fweet fait, which is fpread over the furface of the globe* Almoft all fruits, and many roots, contain more or lefs of fugar ; grapes abound with it ; the more {harp the fruit before its maturity, the fweeter it be comes after. There may be fome excep tions, but they are few; whence we may con clude, that fugar is nothing more than a true vegetable CLIMATE OF AMERICA. 3! vegetable acid, mixed with a certain quantity of oil, and difguifed by the aion of heat. Our remarks on the degeneracy of Euro pean plants in America, are confirmed by a known fact, that the North-American oak employed in fhip-building does not lafl half fo long as the European. It was obferved, at the difcovery of the New World, that there was no fuch thing as a large quadruped to be found between the Tropics; there were neither horfes, affes, oxen, camels, dromedaries, or elephants; all which, except the laft, have from time immemorial been fo effe&ually tamed to the fervices of man in our hemifphere.- Of the elephant it is remarkable, that, though ea- fily tamed, he can never be fo thoroughly domefticated as to be fublervient to the gene ral ufes of man. It Jhould feem that tbe ele phant 32 CLIMATE OF AMERICA. phant has a fenfe of his own confequence, and of his high Ji at ion in the order of animals. The Puma, or lion of America, has no mane; nor is it to be compared for fize, force, or courage, with the lion of Africa. The fame may be affirmed of their Jaguar, which has been honoured with the name of tiger; as to the Couguar, or poltroon tiger, as it is called, it feems to be peculiar to this country. Our author obferves, that the lion, leo pard, &c. are to be tamed to a certain de gree; and that in captivity they appear rather melancholic than mifchievous. It is not fo with the tiger; hunger renders him more terrible, blows more fierce; ca- reffes provoke him, and the firft hand he would devour is that which feeds him. In his ftate of' liberty, he attacks all that breathes CLIMATE OF 'AMERICA. 33 breathes in nature; beginning with man, he attempts the crocodile, retires not from the elephant, braves the lion, and drags off an ox with the fame eafe that a wolf bears away a lamb. Nothing is more "remarkable than the manner in which Nature has diftributed the animal fpecies over the globe; one might expeft to find the fame fpecies under the fame latitudes, but it is not fo. It is pro bable that men, by clearing forefts and cultivating the foil, have driven the larger animals to a diftance, while the fmaller re main; a country may be cleared of wolves, but not of mice, frogs, or makes. It is certain that many animals have been found in the New World, which have not their fimilars in the Old; from which we may infer, that the two continents were never united under the equator; for if the fea D between 34 , CLIMATE OF AMERICA. between Guinea and Brazil had ever been terra firma, the animals of the Torrid Zone of the two hemifpheres would be found on each continent : whence it follows, that each climate hath received from Nature its appro priate fpecies. It is very remarkable, that while Nature thus varies in the New World her animal productions, ihe is perfectly uniform with refpeft to the mineral; for, excepting the Platina, or white gold of Choco, (and even as to this exception there may be a doubt, as the mines of the interior of Africa are little known) all the minerals are common to the two continents. To the malignity of the air of America muft be imputed the prodigious propagation of infefts, venomous ferpents, and infected vegetations, which fo unhappily diftinguifti ' this CLIMATE OF AMERICA. 35 this hemifphere. The fame ill qualities of the air which are favourable to thefe noxious productions, are probably the true origin of the degeneracy in men and animals; as the fame corrupt juices which infeft the vegeta ble nature, muft taint the blood, and fubdue the powers of the animal* The degeneracy which prevails in the ^ ftranger animals, among whom I fhall reckon man, differs in different provinces. Dogs, , Osf which in Peru are fubjeft to the venereal difeafe, are not fo in the northern regions; hogs, which dwindle in Pennlylvania, in other places lofe their fliape, but not their flature ; in the Englifli colonies, European fheep become fmaller, without lofing their wool ; in the iflands, as in Jamaica, they change , their wool for a hair hard and coarfe, which cannot be manufactured ; the changes vary in the fame fpecies, becaufe the air is not in D 2 all 36 CLIMATE OF AMERICA. all parts equally unwholefome, or has been purified in one place more than another by the labour of man. There are other animals of Afiatic and African origin, fuch as camels, the moil patient or heat, which cannot fup- port the climate of America even under the equator, but gradually difappear, without leaving a trace of their exiftence in the New World. C 37 J OF THE CUSTOMS AND MANNERS PECULIAR TO THE AMERICANS, AND OF SUCH AS THEY HAVE IN COMMON WITH OTHER PEOPLE; AS LIKEWISE OF THE VARIETY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES IN AMERICA. INTR ODUC TION. IT has been always the privilege of thofe who have difcovered new and far diltant countries, to relate wonders concerning them; fecure in the general paffion of man kind for the marvellous, and in the diffi culty of difproving abfurdities coming from afar ; as if diftance could give a fanftion to things out of nature, or confidence fhould be placed in the credulity of a dunce, or the integrity of an impoftor. The ambaffadors fent by Pope Innocert IVth, in 1 246, with that ridiculous mandate to 38 CUSTOMS AND MANNERS tcTthe Great Kan, to be baptized on the fpot, and to become a chriftian, publifhed on their return, that they had feen men with one leg, who joining together in couples ran with extreme fwiftnefs; there was nothing wanting to the completion of this abfurdity but the authority of St. Auguftine, who declares himfelf well affured, that there were in his time in Africa men who were monopeds, and bleft with an immortal foul. It is probable, that thefe ambafladors, who were monks, revived the fable to fup- port the credit of the faint, who by his foolifh credulity has {hewn, that the love of the marvellous can fafcinate the under- ftandings of faints as well as of the pro fane. We are not to wonder then that the Spanilh hiftorians, who were for the moft part priefts, fhould add this prodigy to many others equally extravagant in their early PECULIAR TO THE AMERICANS. 39 early accounts of America. Nor were thefe abfurdities confined to the Spaniards ; the Portuguefe faw ihoals of fyrens floating on the fea of Brazil, the French fifhed up tritons at Martinico, and the fober Hol lander found negroes beyond Paramaribo in Africa, whole feet were formed like the tail of a lo.bfler. It is not only natural, but even neceflary, that there fhould be many points of refem- blance between favages living under fimilar atmofpheres ; there, where the fame wants are felt, the means of fupplying them the fame, and the influences of climate in exact correfpondence, how fliould the habits be various, or conceptions difcordant? No; the differences will be found only in -the degrees of their intellects. If we hold by this principle, all will be explained, all re conciled to the underftanding. The 4O CUSTOM^ AND MANNERS The Tungufes, a people of Siberia, are, like the Canadians, grave, phlegmatic, and fpeak little; becaufe they have but few ideas, and ftill fewer words to exprefs them; add to this, that the filence and gloom of their forefts naturally induce an habitual melancholy. Hence it is that they prefer flrong and inebriating liquors, which quicken the motion of the blood, and fet the machine in aftion, to the moft precious gifts that can be made them. The Tungufes hang their dead on trees, fo do the Illinois of America ; they cannot dig graves in'earth frozen hard to the depth of twenty feet. This is obvioufly nothing more than a coincidence. One would hardly fufpeft that phyfical caufes (hould influence nations in the difpo- fmg of the dead ; there is, however, an evi dent PECULIAR TO THE AMERICANS. 41 dent proof of this in Europe, in which the cuftom of burning the dead obtained in ge neral about 1 900 years ago. But it became neceffary at lad to bury them; becaufe arts, population, and the clearing of grounds, had thinned the forefls to fuch a degree, that towns and entire provinces were menaced with an approaching want of firing. In the fecond century of our aera, the Romans fore- faw the neceffity of abandoning their ancient practice, of changing their funeral piles into graves, and of committing the remains of their deareft connections, with infinite regret, to worms and putrefaction. The Chriftian religion, though originating in a country where the dead were aukwardly embalmed, had not the fmallefl {hare in producing the change in queftion. The Siberians have their forcerers, called Schamesj the Americans, their jongleurs. Why 42 CUSTOMS AND MANNERS. Why not ? Had not we too our witches till within this century, and ihould we not have them to this day, had we continued to do them the honour of burning them? The Orientals, from the earlieft times, have been addicted to the magic of aftrology : the northern nations, to miracles, and pro- phefy from infpiration. The Tungufes plant a pole wherever they fancy, on which they difplay the Ikin of a white fox, exclaiming, Behold our Deity! let us proftrate ourfelves before him. The favages of Canada take the fkin of a beaver, fix it on a ftaff, and fay, Behold our Mani- tou! let us adore him. A learned Abbe of the French Academy affirms ) that God did not think it apropos to honour with his fpecial prefence any other na tion PECULIAR TO THE AMERICANS. 43 tion than the Hebrew. What could the other nations do? Juft what they did; each flruck out a prefence for itfeJf, from the Capitolian Jupiter, to the Canadian Manitou; from the deified wafer, to the Jkin of a fox. But fo far above all was the Perfian in dignity, that David for a moment for gat his own ark,\ " Et in fole pofuit tabernaculum fuum." The fame Academican,fpeaking of Jojhua's flopping the fun, exclaims, " How great mufl " have been the furprife of a Perfian to fee " his Mithra || obey the command of a mortal!' 9 Very great indeed ! f- " Ka; sv rcij vihsw eQsTo TO O-WVU/AIX awts. Sep. || Mithra, in Perfic, fignifies a Mediator ; hence, per haps, the learned Milton, " EflPulgence of my glory fecond Omnipotence." Par. Loft. There 44 CUSTOMS AND MANNERS There is in thefe religious ufages of the Tungufes and Canadians, it will be faid, a flrong prefumption of affinity, or at leaft of communication, between the two people. Without enlarging on thefe national analo gies, owing fimply to the co-operation of limilar conceptions, it is certain, that the adoration of the ikins of beads, among hunt ers who know nothing more admirable in nature than the robes of zibelines and bea vers, has nothing in it that fhould excite our A wonder. It is utility or fear that has deified all the obje&s to which nations have ad- drelTed their vows and their incenfe : of the former, the worfhip of the cow, the calf, of onions, of fire, of Pomona, Ceres, Bacchus, &c. afford proofs more than fufficient. Fear and want have been the parents of idolatry ; the intereft of men has made the fortune of the gods. Such, PECULIAR TO THE AMERICANS. 45 Such, for the moft part, are the points of refemblance between the Tungufes and Cana dians; but the points of difference are more remarkable. The Siberians have known for ages iron and the forge; they have tamed the rein-deer, and harneffed him to their traineauxes; hence, being fecure in part of fubfiftence, they do not hunt to any great diflance from their dwellings, nor do they need to be eternally at war with their neigh bours for the pofleflion of game. The Ca nadians, on the contrary, have left in a (late of nature the fame animals which have been tamed by the Siberians; the idea of rendering them ufeful has never entered their heads. They wander a hundred and fifty leagues to kill a caribou, which they might have every hour under their hands, had their ingenuity been equal to that of the Tun gufes ; a manifefl proof of a fuperiority of intellecl: in the latter. The 46 CUSTOMS AND MANNERS The natives of the Torrid Zone, and of the foil them parts of America, form a vari ety, which bears not the leaft refeniblance to the generations of the North, except in the common want of a beard, and of hair over all the furface of the body. This race re- fembles as little the Europeans, Chinefe, Tartars, and Negroes; in fliort, its character may pafs for original. The Peruvians are not tall of ftature, but are tolerably well proportioned ; they have the nofe aquiline, the forehead narrow, the head well furniflied with black hair, coarfe and flecked; the complexion between red and olive; the iris of the eye black, and the white fomewhat duiky. They never have a beard, for that name cannor be given to a few fhort fcattered hairs, which come out in old age; neither men nor women have that downy hair which is with us the indication of PECULIAR TO THE AMERICANS. 47 of puberty; a circumflance which diftin- guiihes them from a]l the nations of the globe, even the Tartars and Chinefe. It is the charafteriftic, as in eunuchs, of their deA generation. This portrait of the Peruvians may ferve to reprefent all the Indians of the weftern coaft, from Panama to Chili, where >* ' the bloodjeems more purified, and the fpe- cies lefs degenerate than in any other parts of the Weft-Indies. The inhabitants of the iflands, and of the eaft coaft, from the defert of the Patagonians to the tropic of Cancer, differ little from the former, except that they are taller, have a body more mufcular, the eye-brows more tufted, the white of the eye clearer, and the ridge of the nofe more flat; but there is fome- thing very remarkable in the appearance of their eyes; the lids do not terminate at either end in a ftiarp angle, but form an arch, which mafks 48 CUSTOMS AND MANNERS malks the lachrymal glands, and renders, at firfl fight, their look hidious and horrible. The tafle, or rather fury of the Americans for beautifying their perfons, is no lefs curi ous in its principle, than ridiculous in its exertions. In this view, the mothers take the heads of their infants, three or four days old, in hand, and begin to faihion them into the form of a pyramid, a cone, a cylinder ; fome to be quite flat, others an exa& fquare; and the laft, which is the completion of beauty, perfe&ly round ; thefe are called by the French, refiding in Canada, tetes de boule. Little indebted to Nature for his other endowments, thefavage feems in this to retort her injuftice, by defacing the faireft example of her art. The naturalifts among the ancients, who believed that there were in Scythia men with dogs' PECULIAL TO THE AMERICANS. 49 dogs' heads, were deceived by ignorant tra vellers, who having feen favages with heads ending in a point, formed of them monfters compounded of parts half dog and half man. The greater number of the ancients reported thefe prodigies merely as hearfays; but what are we to think of St. Auguftin, the mod enlightened of the early Chriflians, who affirms that he faw, in the Lower Ethiopia, men who had but one eye in the middle of their forehead, and to whom he was fo happy as to preach the gofpel! It is not eafy to comprehend how he could contrive to catechife beings who certainly have never exifted in Lower Ethiopia, or any where elfe. There is in the Caribane a fort of favages who have hardly any neck, and whofe fhoul- ders rife as high as the ears; thisjoo is fa&itious, and brought about by laying- great weights on the head of the infant, E which 50 CUSTOMS AND MANNERS which comprcfs the vertebrae of the neck, and force them to defcend into the hollow formed by the two bones of the upper part of the bread. Thefe monflers appear, at a certain diftance, to have the mouth in the middle of the breaft; and may well re new, to travellers ignorant and delighting in wonders, the ancient fable of Acephales, or of men without heads. The love of the marvellous is Jo predomi nant in man 9 and this in proportion to his ignorance, that a mixture of fables with focJs mufi of courfe be found in the early hi/lories of all nations; the fables may be conftdered as a kind of national creed, which hiftorians were bound to obferve, if they would not forfeit the favour of their countrymen. The works ofthejirft Greek hiftorians are loft % but are quoted by thofe who came after them; PECULIAR TO THE AMERICANS, 5! them; the -points in which the latter hiflorians agree, are to us a clajfical creed, or authentic hi/lory ; thofe on which they differ fhould be left out of the queftion; yet it is on thefe points of dif ference, and the prevalence of fable , that the moderns found their objections to ancient hiftory. French and Englijh hjftorians differ, as might well be expected, in their accounts of the battle of Agincourt. Does it therefore fol low that nofuch battle was ever fought? As to fable, confidered as an objection to the veracity of a writer, there is a difference be tween compliance and convicllon. A Roman augur divided a whetftone with a razor! Can it be fuppofed that a man, who thought juftly in other matters, could want common fenfe in thefe alone ? The cafe was in things out of nature, Livy wrote for his countrymen; in things which come within nature, he wrote for mankind. E a After OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 4UFQR 52 CUSTOMS AND MANNERS After the early hiftorians of Greece, whofe works are loft, Ctejias is the firft ; fome rem nants only of his work have come down to us. He delighted in fable, and for this is condemned by the ancients themf elves, yet he had credit with them in points truly hiftorical; their rejection of his fables gives authority to their acceptance of his hi/tor y. Herodotus is called by Cicero the father of hiftory ; by the moderns, afabulift: he recited his works at the publick games, and to the af- fembled literati of Greece. Would they have received -extravagant fables for genuine hif- tory? No ; but they could feparate the fables from the faffs ; they lived at no great diftance from the times. The obfervations of eclipfes, calculated by Ptolemy, and referred by him to the reigns of the Perfian kings, agree with the chronology of Herodotus. PECULIAR TO THE AMERICANS. 53 Herodotus. No matter: Herodotus muft Hill be nothing better than afabulift. This hiftorian flourijhed 500 years before our ara; Homer and He/tod 400, as he informs us, before him: French critics come 2300 years after him, difpute about the age of Homer, and deny there was any fuch man as He/tod. We are in much lefs danger of being deceived by the credulity of the ancients, than by th& pre- fumptlon of the moderns. If a man does not marry at the ufual age, if he refufes to go to the war when decla red, or to the chace, he is pronounced to be infane; from that time he is treated with the greateft refpect, and even affection: this cannot proceed from a fpirit of beneficence in the favage, who leaves his aged parent to perifh, when he becomes an incumbrance, and can no longer provide for himfelf. This extraordinary 54 CUSTOMS AND MANNERS extraordiary cuilom obtains in Turkey, and throughout Afla, and ftarts up mod unex- peftedly, at our doors, among the peafants of Switzerland. The Turks declare the infane to be privileged beings, from whom Provi dence has kindly withheld the dangerous prefent of rationality. This is a manifeft re finement; which , though it may become the fen- fibility of the Afiatic^ will never apply to the genius of the Sivitzer. This agreement in nations of fetch different characters, finds an eafyfolution in the fuppofition that the Afiatics and Germans were in early times favages ; that the cuftom in quejiion took place in thofe times, and had its origin in feme particular point of fuperftition. Such are the principal obfervations which have appeared to deferve a place in this ar ticle. It is well known that there are ftill vaft regions in America which remain unex plored, PECULIAR TO THE AMERICANS. 55 plored, and where the natural hiflory of man might make great acquifitions. One knows that there are other countries, concerning which all information has been defignedly fuppreffed. Thofe who, abufing at once the holinefs of their miniftry, and the confidence of a harmlefs and unhappy people, have ere&ed themfelves into petit tyrants under the two tropics of the New World, have thought it contrary both to their honour and their intereft to give fair and faithful relations of their conquefts. The hiflories of Paraguai, by Charlevoix and Muratori, are written with fo much partiality and fo little difcernment, that it is impoffible to give them any degree of credit; they are kinds of legends, which the reader will know how to eftimate, when he finds in Charlevoix, that in the country he defcribes, there are enor mous ferpents, whofe fole employment it is to ravifh girls, notwithftanding the efforts of the 56 CUSTOMS AND MANNERS &C. the miffionaries> who throw themfelves def- perately on thefe bold animals, to fave, at the hazard of their lives, the virginity of the young Indian females. // would be ungenerous to infmuate that the mijjionaries might have other motives than re ligious zeal for this interference. OF S~;~t OF CALIFORNIA. JL HE natives of this country differ fo little from their brethren of the continent, that they would never have been thought worthy of a diftinft confideration, had they not been poiTeffed of an ineflimable treafure in their pearl fifliery; a treafure, however, of little ufe to them, as they were too flupid and fluggilh to avail themfelves. of it. This was not the cafe with the Jefuits, a fociety of priefls famed for their inimitable art in ma king a love of gold pafs for the love of GOD. It was in the year 1697 tnat tn fe reverend fathers fet out from Old Spain to make a fettlement on this peninfula; their oftenfible motive, the propagation of the gofpel; the real and concealed, the pearl fiihery; the richeft, 5& OF "CALIFORNIA. richer!, in the beauty of the jewel, and the abundance of its produce, of any as yet found on the globe. . PoffdTed of this treafure, the firft obje& of their avarice was to make it all their own. Accordingly they ftopt the u'fual import of the pearls into Mexico, where they paid a high duty to the Spanifh government. The confe- quent decreafe of the revenue produced ftrong remonflrances to the court of Spain ; but the influenced of fuperftition on the confcience of the king, and of gold on the integrity of his miniilers, fecured to the monopolifts a tem porary enjoyment of their pious fraud. Unhappily for them, when Lord Anfon, in 1744, took the Spanifh galleon that went every year from Acapulco to Manilla, he found that more thanjwo-thirds of the cargo belonged to the Company of Jefus. He OF CALIFORNIA. 59 He was the firft who obferved, that this commerce cuts the knot which fliould keep Mexico and Peru in a perfect dependance on Spain ; that it {hocks all the laws of found policy ; mud end in the ruin of the parent country ; and could ferve no purpofe, but to enrich a fet of rapacious priefts. Thefe remarks, which he publifhed on his return to Europe, opened the eyes of the Spaniards, but the king iliut his; the punifh- ment of the abufe was for a time fufpended, until the good fenfe of Anfon, confirmed by the dangerous projects of the jefuits in Para- guai, was verified in the total ruin of thofc ambitious mifcreants. How pleafingly muft It found to our pofterity, that the fagacity of an Englijh Jailor was the firft ft ep towards reft or ing an infatuated nation to its fenfes, and preventing the deftruftion of a mighty empire. OF THE COLOUR OF THE AMERICANS. COLUMBUS, at his firft landing on the New r World, was furprifed to fee, within four degrees of the Equator, men who were not black. He fufpefted that he had mif- taken the latitude ; not conceiving it poiTible, that in the fame parallels on the two conti nents, the Africans fliould have a black fkin, and crifped woolly hair ; the Ameri cans, a fkin of a copper colour, with hair long and ftrait. But the furprife ends not here; for from the extremity of the north to that of the fouth, a tral embracing all the known lati tudes of the globe, the inhabitants of the New World have but one colour. That COLOUR OF THE AMERICANS. 6 1 1 . That men expofed naked to the biting blajls of Canada^ and the fcorchlng heats of Jhould not differ in the tints of the Jkin^ is a phenomenon that defeats^ the pride of phllofophj and the triumphs of fvftem. Some theologians of the prefent age cut the matter fhort ; they tell us that negroes defcend in a direcl: Jine from Cain, whofe nofe was crufhed, and fkin blackened, that he might be known wherever he went to be an aflaffin. Others inform us, with equal probability, that the Ethiopians are the pof- terity of Chus, Canaan, or Ifmael. Some, dill more bold, or rather abfurd, aiTert, that the firft woman had an ovarium, in which ihe laid up black and white eggs, which produced, the one kind, Germans, Swedes, and all the people who are white ; the other, negroes, and all thofe who are black. You mud therefore^ choofe between Ifmael or Cain, 62 COLOUR OF THE AMERICANS. Cain, or between the white eggs and black, if you will eftablifli a fyftem on the varia tions in queflion. Who, after this, could exped that our author Jhould attempt to eftablijh a fyftem on this very fubjefty and to account from the re of on of things for the uniformity of complexion through the various climates of the New World. With the great eft ref peel for the genius and learning of M. Pauw 9 I cannot help thinking that he gives too much into a predilecJion for philofo- phical difcujfions ; as I take no notice of thefe, except where I am perfecllj fatisfied with the proofs^ my feleflions are for the moft part con- fined to facls. All beyond this I refign to thofe fuperior fpirits who fancy that they enter into the views of the Firft Caufe. ANTHRO- -ANTHROPOPHAGI; OR, EATERS OF HUMAN FLESH. IT ihould not be the objeft here to write a fatire or an eulogium on human kind, whom neither reproach nor praife hath ever corrected. We muft confine ourfelves to fafts; lay them open fuch as they are, or one believes them to be, without hatred, without prejudice, without refpeft, except for the truth. If the Spaniards had not felt the fevered remorfe for their {laughter of fo many miie- rable Indians, they would not have calum niated them with fo much fury after their death. It was expedient to render odious thofe whom they had butchered, in order- to 64 ANTHROPOPHAGI. to become lefs odious themfelves ; but it is the nature of exaggeration to defeat its own purpofe. They have faid, that Montezuma facrificed every year 20,000 infants; that human viftims were offered in all the temples of Mexico, of which there were, according to Antonio Solis, 2000 in that capital. The truth is, that there was but one chapel, built in the form of an amphitheatre, in the whole town. It is evident, that Solis meant not fo much to inform pofterity, as to palliate the atrocious cruelty of the Spanifh conquerors. It was on the fame principle, that Livy, with a view to prejudice his readers againft the enemies of Rome, aflerts ferioufly, that Han nibal diftributed human flefh for food to his foldiers, in order to render them more fierce in battle. It ANTHROPOPHAGI. 65 It is an infult to our understandings, that the Portuguefe and Spaniards fliould be thofe who mofl exclaim againft the abominable cruelty of a people weak and uninformed : They fliould have refle&ed on their own auto da fe, lefs pardonable* in many refpe&s than the repafls of cannibals, or the facrifices of the Mexicans. It is a fubjeft of controverfy among writers, whether the repaft preceded or followed the facrifice. As the pra&ice muft have had its origin among favages, moil of whom have but vague ideas of worfliip, and many of them no ideas at all, it is probable that hun ger and revenge firft impelled them to devour their prifoners of war.* * " On ne peut nier que les hommes n'aient eu befoin " de manger avant quils aient eu befoin de prier." All 66 ANTHROPOPHAGI. All worjhip implies fome degree of reflection and civilization, even where the motive is no thing more than fear; as to gratitude, the finer motive to adoration, this is a pajfion too artificial to enter into the moral fvftem of favage life, The Scythians, Egyptians, Chinefe, Indi ans, Phoenicians, Perfians, Greeks, Romans, Arabians, Gauls, Germans, Britons, Spa niards, Negroes, and Jews, were in early times in the habit of facrificing men without number. If it is not poffible to prove that they were all Anthropophagi in their ftate of barbarifm, it is becaufe that ftate hath pre ceded the records of hiftory. In the account of China, publifhed by the Abbe Renaudot, it is faid, that there were Anthropophagi in this empire fo late as the ninth century, which is hardly to be believed; yet ANTHROPOPHAGI. 67 yet Marc Paolo, who had never read this account written by the Arabians, relates, that the inhabitants of the provinces of Xandu and Concha eat their prifoners. The barbarity of the Chinefe with refpeft to the infants whom they will not rear, and of whom they deflroy every year throughout the em pire not fewer than 30,000, by fmothering them in tubs of hot water, or expofing them in the flreets and highways, is llkeuolfe hardly to be believed^ and yet it is true. The Peruvians, who had gone before the other nations of America in civilization, did not, at the time they were firft difcovered, facrifice human viftims; they were content to draw from the frontal vein, or from the nofe of a child, a certain portion of blood, which being mixed with flour, was made into cakes, and diflributed to all the fubjefts of the empire on a certain annual folemnity. F 2 This 68 ANTHROPOPHAGI. This clearly proves that the Peruvians had been originally eaters of human flefh; it is, at the fame time, a manifeft mitigation of a barbarous fpecies of worfhip; their manners and habits had been in fome degree foftened, and religion followed the revolution, in their moral charafter. Happy had it been for more civilized nations ? that this correfpondence had been carefully pre ferred; and that goodfenfe in religious matters had kept pace with their advances in fcience, and a polifh in their manners! Our author has given himfelf the trouble to enumerate the various modes of Anthropo phagy which obtain from one extremity to the other. He thought it, no doubt , his duty as arihijlorian to undertake this tajk ; but there is no fuch call on me, who have undertaken nothing more than tofelecJ thofe paffages which appear ANTHROPOPHAGI. 69 appear moft inftruftive and entertaining. The fubjeft in general is uninterejling, the details are often difgufting.-\ f " Les Iroquois ne trouvoient rien du plus fin, ni de " plus tendre, dit on, que le col et tout ce que envelope " la nuque : les Caraibes, au contaire, preferoient les " mollets des jambes ou les carnofites des cuifTes : ils ne " mangeoient jamais des fe'mmes ou des filles, dont la " chair leur paraifToit peut etre moins favoureufe &c. " Les chiens dogues, que les Efoagnols employerent " a la deftruclion des Indiens, preferoient de meme la (f chair des hommes a celle des femmes " OF OF THE ESK1MAUX. X HESE inhabit the northern extremity of America, and fpread themfelves from the interior of Labrador, by the coafls and iilands of Hudfon's-Bay, very far towards the Pole. Wandering and difperfed in little troops, they embrace an immenfe region; were they to be colle&ed into a body, they would not occupy a hundred hamlets. Before we proceed further into their hif- tory, let us enquire to what degree of Nor thern latitude our globe is inhabited; as like- wife whether the human race can live in the center of the Frozen Zones, as it does on their borders. In OF THE ESKIMAUX. 7! In the moft diftant regions, in iflands the mod remote, our navigators have found men more unhappy, more weak, and approaching nearer to the (late of brutes, in proportion to their diftance from the Temperate Zones ; all equally diiTatisfied with their fituation, and uncertain of their origin. Boerhaave, and other phyficians of our times, willing to determine the degree of cold which mud coagulate the human blood, or of heat that would fuffocate, have pro duced calculations fo faulty, that they cannot ' be admitted without contradicting common experience. There, (fay they) where fpirits of wine well deflegmated would annually freeze, the vital heat would be extinguifhed. To this axiom, as to many other philofophic decifions, there is one material objection it is not founded on fact. At 72 OF THE ESKIMAUX. At the 68th degree of latitude, fpirits of wine, the moft pure and re&ified, regularly freeze every year, the needle ceafes to point towards the north, and mercury is not un- frequently fixed: this does not prevent Eu ropeans, much lefs inured to the climate than the Efkimaux and Greenlanders, from having eflabliihments {till nearer to the Pole than the point at which fpirits of wine in the open air are found to congeal; of this the Danifh colonies, fubfifting in Greenland in 1764, are the clearefl proof. The navigator Baffin advanced northward through Davis' s Straight, and trafficked with the Eikimaux at the 73d degree; and the Greenlanders of the Ifle of Difco affert, that they found the habitations of men beyond the 78th. The Dutch wintered in 1633, on a rock of Spitzberg, in the 8oth degree, with out lofmg a fingle man of their company. At OF THE ESKIMAUX. J $ At Spitzberg, which appears to be the extreme land of our hemifphere, are found bears, foxes, and rein-deer, loaded with fat. But though thefe animals are there few in number, and that the excefs of cold ren ders their fpecies, as it does ours, weak and unprolific, Nature, however, is not impo tent in thofe extreme climates. Beneath tremendous vaults of congregated maffes of ice fwims the enormous Leviathan; round him, in myriads, his tenants of the deep, his fubjefts or his food, as he pleafes to confider them; whilft they in their turn, by feeding on each other, keep up the bellum omnium in omnia, that great law of nature, that proof (in the opinion of a celebrated chemifi) of the wifdom and goodnefs of the Divine Creator* * See Watfon's Chemiftry, vol. v. Eflay 3. The 74 OF THE ESKIMAUX. The innumerable fhoals of herrings, cod, and other fifh, thofe clouds of fea-fowl which darken at times the furface of the frozen ocean, prove that Nature has not been lefs active in this part of her creation, than in thofe where flie difplays her power in the produ&ion of plants, trees, and the aftoniflv ing variety of terreftrial creatures. Mufl not this obfervation convince us, that there is all over the globe the fame tendency to organization ; an equal portion of that vi vifying fpirit which modifies matter ad infi- nitum^ without being fo far fubject to the mtemperature of climate, as to fufpend in any part the operations of an all-creating energy? To return to the Efkimaux. They are the mod diminutive race of human kind, their flature in general not exceeding four feet. They have enormous heads, are ex- tremely OF THE ESKIMAUX. 75 tremely fat and corpulent, and much under- limbed. On examining the extremities of their limbs, one perceives that organization ' has been checked by_the feverity of that cold, which contracts and degrades all earthly productions. Man, however, refifts this imprefTion in higher degrees towards the Pole than trees or plants, fince beyond the 68th degree neither tree nor flirub is to be found, while favages are met with 300 leagues beyond that elevation. Thefe nor thern pigmies have, without exception, an olive complexion ; they have, like the reft of the Americans, no beard, their face flat, the mouth round, the nofe fnrall, the white of the eye yellowifti, the iris black and dull, the lower jaw extends beyond the upper, its lip thick and fleftiy. Thus falhioned, though hideous to the eye of an European, they are perfectly beautiful in their own, and diftinguifli all other men. by a term, which 76 OF THE ESKIMAUX. which in their language is equivalent to barbarian. Is it 'not pie af ant to obfervefuch a coincidence of impertinence in the high-polijhed Greek, and the jilt hieft of fa^ ages? As they feed almoft entirely on oily fim, their fleih has in a manner contracted its fubftance; their blood, become 'thick and un&uous, exhales a penetrating odour of whale oil, and on touching their hands, one feels a clamminefs, not unlike to that vifco- fity which invelopes the bodies of fifh which have not fcales: accordingly, this is the only nation of which it has been obferved, that the mothers, like fome quadrupeds, lick their new-born infants. There is another finking effeft from their food, and that is the extreme heat of their ftomach and blood ; infomuch that the glow of their breath fo warms the huts in which they OF THE ESKIMAUX. 77 they live during the winter, that an Euro pean cannot fupport the heat, nor do they, though in the coldeft region of the habi table globe, ever need a fire; a lamp fuf- ficing to boil their food, when they do not eat it quite raw. Without law, without worfliip, without a ruler, and with very few moral ideas, they have nothing to interrupt their fole occupa tion, that of procuring food. Their time is fo precious to them, that they infift on being paid for fo much of it as is taken up in attending the fermons of the Danifli "mif- fionaries. While one furniflies them with food, they are excellent Neophytes, full of piety and zeal; the moment that is withdrawn, they return to their boats, and purfue the whale, laughing at the inftruc- tions and catechifms which they could not underftand. The 78 OF THE ESKIMAUX. The do&rine of the immortality of the foul had, according to fome writers, already travelled beyond the Polar circle, before the arrival of the firfl Europeans; but if the metaphyfical opinions of polifhed peo ple are fo uncertain, fo complicated, fo hard to be underflood, we ftiould be on ,our guard againft thofe fplendid fyflems which travellers are fo fond of attributing to favages. If man had an innate idea of his fpiritu- ality, I believe that the animal and ruftic life would never efface that primitive notion; but, if it be only by a gradation in reafon- ing, and a conne&ed feries of abftracl: ideas, that we have rifen to this fublime hypothe- fis, we mud not look for it among favages little better than brutes, and who know not what it is to reafon. There OF THE ESKIMAUX. 79 There is a teft by which we may be affured whether fuch or fuch a people have had fuch or fuch ideas; we have but to examine whe ther they have words in their language to exprefs thofe ideas; if they have not, as is the cafe with the Eikimaux and Greenland- ers, who are the fame people, (their manners and language being precifely the fame) we may venture to pronounce that they >have never fo much as thought of the immortality of the foul. Let us determine this article, by an obfer- vation on the people of the North in our divifion of the globe. Thofe who inhabit the extremity of the Temperate Zone have for the moft part hair of a flaxen colour, blue eyes, the ikin fair, are of a vigorous com plexion, and tall of flature; they are bold, courageous, warlike, and reillefs; a kind of inftindt hath ever urged them to expatriate and 8O OF THE ESKIMAUX. and invade every quarter of the earth, which they confider as formed for them: they have extended their invafions even to Africa; all Europe, and a great part of Afia, are, to a certain degree, peopled by their defcendants ; nor is there a nation among us which is not allied in blood to fome one of the tribes of the North. When one vifits at this day thefe pretended hives of human kind, and the countries from which have iiTued thofe fwarms of men, one is furprifed to find them little more than de- ferts: Denmark contains but two millions, Sweden two millions and a half of inhabi tants, and the empire of Ruflia, refpecl: had to its extent, is a folitude. How is this to be accounted for? Simply, by fuppofmg that the ancient emigrations of thofe northern people confifted of feveral lit tle OF THE ESKIMAUX. 8 1 tie wandering nations, who occupied an im- menfe extent of land, confederated of a fud- den to expatriate, and to enjoy a happier climate than their own; fo that the country remained, after their exit, in a manner empty and unpeopled during fix or feven genera tions : accordingly it has been remarked, that thofe clouds of emigrants, who drew along with them their wives, children, and cattle, appeared only from time to time, like dorms, and that there have been great intervals be tween one irruption and another. For thefe forty years pad the Tartars have not dirred; one would take them for the mod jud, the mod peaceful of men 5 but this calm proceeds from the weaknefs of their population, exhauded by their late conquefl of China and Afia, which will be hereafter the lefs expofed to their invaiions, in that Europe, perfectly civilized and con- G dandy $2 OF THE ESKIMAUX. flantly in arms, oppofes to them an infur- mountable barrier. ~ m ' - . , The favages, of whom we are treating, arc very different from the people juft defcribed, whether we confider their figure, 9r enter into a comparifon of their manners and incli nations. Diminutive, tawny, weak, thfe re-? fufe of human kind, they feem to conftitute a race the moft worthlefs and contemptible, with an exception, it may be, of the natives of the Torrid Zone. The extremes of cold and heat aft much in the fame manner on the faculties and conflitution of man. ^S^&-'. r *3tfo /foliffr ''^x So long as - the climate continues the fame, the people of whom we are fpeaking will never rife above their prefent abjeft condition. Were they to unite in fociety, they would perifli with hunger; becaufe the agriculture which affords fubfiflence to towns, OF THE ESKIMAUX. $3 towns, is impra&i cable in their folitudes, covered with fnow and ice. With refpeft to their population, it" has never been fo low, fmce the black plague, as at this day;; and their numbers have con- flantly and rapidly decreafed within thefe forty yearSj that the {j^aH-pox hath fpread its ravages, throughout the cold Zone, Their commerce with the Europeans has been to them a mortal blow; as if it were deftined that all favage people fhould tend to extin&iofc from the moment that civilized nations come to fettle among them. 'An apparent paradox; but a natural confeqitence of the 'views of the invader, and the character of the native. G 2 OF m OF THE PATAGONIANS. (JN the f out hern extremity of the New World, the mqft inohfpitable and unfruitful of all the regions of the earth , dwells, as we are told, a race of giants, fo lazy, that they never ftir but on horfeback ; and fo dajiardly, that notwith- ftanding their fuperiority injirength of body to the dwarfs who fur round them, they have ne ver dared to make their way to a happier cli* mate than their own, though a troop of one hundred fuch combatants might have ranged unrejtfted from one end of that continent to the other. This confederation, joined to the total want of analogy in any other quarter of the globe, and to the great improbability that Na ture fbould have thrown a race of men, the fineji forms of her creation, on a fpot of earth the OF THE PATAGONIANS. 85 the leaft fitted to fupport them, is fufficient to convince me that there are no fuch beings exifting. I Jhall not^ therefore^ enter with my author Into a minute exa?nination of the authorities b$ which the facJ is fupport ed* but pafs to the latter part of this article^ which is lefs argumentative ', and more to the purpofe* < J have often^imagined that the notion of the Europeans, determined to difcover giants round the Streight of Magellan, hath had its fource in the tradition of the Americans, * In Lord Anfon's expedition to the South Sea, the Wager being wrecked on the coaft of Patagonia, eight of the crew were made prifoners by the natives, among whom they refided eight months; thefe, on their re turn to Europe, declared that the Patagonians were of the ordinary flature of other men. " Cette deciiion me ft paroit etre d'un plus grande a^utorite que les temoig- '1 (f , . .' Though the phyfiognomy of the Dondos is not precifely the fame with that of the Negroes, one difcovers neverthelefs, in their features half effaced, that they are of African origin; in like manner as the Kackerlakes are diftinguifhed to be of Afiatic extraction. Thefe AND WHITE NEGROES. 95 Thefe men, of the colour of chalk, with the eyes of cats or owls, are found only ia the Torrid Zone, to the tenth degree or thereabouts from the Equator; at Loango, Congo, and Angola, in Africa; at Ceylon, Borneo, and Java, in Afia; at New Guinea, in the Terras Auftrales; and at Darien, in America. But what is mod remarkable, wherever found, they are held in the higheft degree of refpecl: and even veneration; not by the vulgar alone, but by the fovereigns of Africa and the Indies, who confider the poiTeffion of them in their courts, and about their perfons, as an article of magnificence; looking ori them as beings dirlinguiihed, not difgraced, by Nature. It is curious to find by the letters of Cortez, that the dune idea was entertained of thefe Blafards in Ame rica, and that Montezuma had three or four of thefe creatures in his court. Could 96 OF THE BLAFARDS, Could we expeft to find, as it were at our own doors, in the Cretin of Switzerland, a being fomewhat analogous to the Blafard? Thefe Cretins are feen in confiderable num bers in the Valais, and principally at Sion, the capital of the country ; they are deaf, dumb, idiots, almoft infenfible to blows, and have prodigious goitres, which defcend below the ftomach; they are totally inept, and incapable of thinking. The inhabitants of the country hold thefe Cretins to be the guardian angels of their families ; and thofe who are fo unfor tunate, that they cannot claim kindred with one or more of them, ferioufly confider them- felves as on ill terms with Heaven; they are never contradi&ed, are carefully provided for, nothing omitted that may amufe them, and fatisfy their defires; the children dare not infult them, and the old behold them with refpeft; this refpect is founded on their in nocence and weaknefs. This AND WHITE NEGROES. 97 This is precifely the cafe with the Blafards, whofe ftupidity is not lefs than that of the Cretins; for though the excefs of their de^ generacy has not quite deprived them of the power of fpeech, it has to a great degree impaired their fight and hearing. It is related, that at Loango, the Albinos or Blafards recite prayers before the king; this cuftom fprings from the opinion of thejr fan&ity. The Switzers, no doubt, would have adopted this ufage, were it not that their Cretins are unhappily dumb. Tkefe prejudices are not modern; we find the cleared traces of them in the higheft anti quity, when it was believed that Heaven often infpired the idiot and the crackbrained, in preference to the devotee. Prophets, in ger neral, had the reputation of not being quite found; and yet they were liftened to, and believed, both at home and abroad* The H prieftefs 98 OF THE BLAFARDS, &C. prieftefs of Apollo, enouncing his oracles, aflumed, in the violence of her geflures, all the extravagances of phrenzy ; and was never fo much in credit, as when ihe appeared to be quite out of her fenfes. Though Chriftians have not, like Maho metans, the charity to treat idiots kindly in this world, they have no doubt of their being very well off in the next. All thefe different prejudices are as it were in contact ; becaufe from one extremity of the earth to the other, under fimilar circumftances, men are the fame. OF OF THE COMMERCE OF EUROPE WITH AMERICA. HE mines of gold and filver arc no fource of happinefs to the New World; on the contrary, they have impoverifhed the Spariards and Portuguefe, who for the mod part poifefs them. Peru would be more happy, if, inftead of its veins of metals, it had a fufficient population, plenty of cul tivable grounds, and above all, great roads. But how fhould the Spaniards have them in Peru, who have them not at home? Yet in Germany, and even in Bohemia, where the want of money is a general complaint, the roads are excellent. H 2 The 100 OF THE COMMERCE OF / . The pearls of Panama and California are of little advantage to the regions which abound in them; thefe riches, like thofe of the mines, inftead of augmenting, diminifli f j& population, the true wealth of a nation. At Mexico, the fame man who wears diamond buckles on his ihoes, retires at night to fleep on flraw: fo the a'bbes of Rome, proudly dreiTed in filk, dine at one hofpital and fup at another. 'X The cochineal is a little red infeft, which, enlivened by a ftrong acid, produces a fine tint: this is a real treafure; it employs hands, and advances population. When beavers abound in a country, as they did in North- America when firft difco- cl vered, it is a proof of that country's being lit tle better then a defert : fuch a mifchievous animal cannot be tolerated in a cultivated country; EUROPE WITH AMERICA. 1OI country; efpecially where there are dykes and fences againft inundations. There are provinces in Germany where they pay eleven crowns a head for that of a beaver. The importations from Europe into Ame rica are of the necerTaries of life; thofe from America into Europe are articles of luxury; fo that Europe muft gradually draw out of the New World all its filver and gold. The true principle of the weaknefs of { ' America is in its want or inhabitants; of Negroes in the South, and of Germans in t -&-X. ^~ the North: it is admitted, that, at different , times, the Englifli colonies fcave drawn half a million of labourers from the Palatinate, Suabia, Bavaria, and the Eccleliaftical States: while Spain and Portugal have been dif- peopled by their colonies; the miferable policy of powers depending on their mines; the 102 OF THE COMMERCE &C. the produce of which mufl in the end go to other nations for thofe neceflaries which they want hands to raife at home. From all this it follows, that fo long as population continues fo weak, efpecially in South- Ame rica, that country muffc remain dependant on Europe, the miftrefs of the coaft of Africa, // ( * (*$ the nurfery of labourers. U,M*V v6 h C\A 5 OF / OF MONEY, AS A SIGN OF CIVILIZATION. we know nothing more of it than as being a name for a parent tongue, which, having no known exiftence itfelf, has given exiftence to moft of the European languages : So much for this particular enquiry. In general, what en- largements offcience, what treasures of litera ture, may we not expecl from an union of Sanfcrit with Irifh erudition!^ Alia and Europe into our fouthern provinces ; and who, by a ftrange fatality, confidering their probable non- exiilence as a diftincl: people, have furnifhed our Lin- guifts and Antiquarians with matter for eternal difputes and contradictions. J To promote this very defirable end, would it not be advifable to fend out fome learned profeflbr of Iriih on an embafly to the Grand Lama, the Pope of the Bra- mins : it will be attended with lefs expence, and may be of as great utility to the caufe of literature, as a late embafiy to the Emperor of China is likely to be of to the commerce of England. OF OF THE HOSPITALITY OF SAVAGES. IT is a known fa& that robbers and fa- vages are diftinguiihed for hofpitality. A wandering people do not labour; therefore they have no money; travelling without mo ney, they mud lodge and feed one another, which is but to lend what is of little value. Thus it is that the begging Monks throughout the Catholick countries are extremely hof- pitable; they get with facility more than they can confume, and diftribute that fuper- fluity, which is ufelefs to them, among the poor of the place, or to travelling beggars who lodge in their convents. The lazinefs of thefe monks fupports the lazinefs of thofe who are not monks ; this is the wornY effeft of a thing ill in itfelf; it is to introduce among 120 HOSPITALITY OF SAVAGES. among civilized nations the neceffities and manners of the favage. If a well-ordered government creates in- duftry; induftry, property; and property, money; it follows, that hofpitality, a thing of neceffity to the Savage, argues a want of police in civilized nations. CONCLUSION CONCLUSION OF THE SUBJECT ON THE AMERICANS. PERFECTIBILITY is the greateft feirf which nature hath beftowed on man, who hath received this faculty to the end that he might be thereby qualified to attain to civilived life; for, had it been defigned to confine him to favage life, nothing more had been given him than animal inftinft, which had fufficed for him as it does for other animals. Animal inftinft teaches the favage to build a hut, to copulate, to rear up his chil dren, dxT fpeafc) to fubfifl by the chace, by fifliing, or on the fpontaneous fruits of the earth; 122 CONCLUSION. earth; to defend himfelf againft, or attack, his enemies. Now, is there in all thefe ac tions a fingle one that diftinguifhes him, from brutes? They build dwellings, couple, rear their young, have their language, live by the chace, by fifhing, or on the wild produ&ions of the earth; attack or defend themfelves, according to the occafion. One fees that all thefe a&ions sxclude indireff labour, and include merely the dirett; which looks no further than to prefent fubfiflence, or the conflruclion of a dwelling; and this hath fo little of real labour, that it may be faid, that the favage and the bead do not la bour at all: here, then, we have a proof ' that the favage has no thought of extending his perfectibility, which is not to be done but by indireB labour; that is, by ftudy, or the labour of thought the moft hard, the moil intenfe, of all labours. ( . \ if CONCLUSION. If this our globe had no other inhabitants than favages, it would become a fcene of horror and defolation : the earth unimproved by labour would revert to that (late in which it came out of the hands of nature; the level grounds would be one continued fwamp, from the inundations of rivers undrained; the higher covered with foreds, the nurferies of beads, which would gradually fupplant the human fpecies; as was the cafe in North- Amerieeiwhen firft difcovered, on which there were reckoned one hundred beavers for every individual of human kind. The inhabitants of fuch a wade mud live by the chace; from the decreafe of game, mud enlarge the bounds of their hunting grounds: the different tribes, impelled by the fame neceilities, mud interfere ; hence eternal wars; wars which, with their caufe, can have no end; they mud fight, becaufe they mud eatj 124 CONCLUSION, eat; nor can thefe contefls have any other objeft than extermination: hence, favages are ever fo atrocious in tfieir vengeance, fo furious in their anger, that they do not feem to know what it is to forgive. jfu APPENDIX, APPENDIX. OF CERTAIN CUSTOMS WHICH FORMERLY PRE VAILED IN OUR HEMISPHERE, AND WHICH WERE FOUND AMONG THE AMERICANS. 1 HE cuflom of interring living perfons with the ^leceafed was not quite abolifhed among the Gauls in the time of Csefar. This had been introduced by Scythian colonies; exifts in feveral parts of Lower Afia, and of the coafts of Africa^ and was found both in North and South America. It feems to have fprung from the idea of being ferved in ano ther world by thofe we have commanded in this: Hence the facrificing qf flaves at the tombs of their matters, and of wives on the bodies of their hufbands. At the funeral of a king of Akin, fays M. Roemer, in 1764, they buried with him 300 of his wives, and a much 126 OF ANCIENT CUSTOMS. a much greater number of flaves. The wife who has children, among the Sad-Indians, is not allowed to burn for her huiband ; this honour is referred for the molt beloved, on the fuppofition, no doubt, that he is to enjoy her fociety in another world. So rooted is this abfurdity in their manners, though in direcl contradiction to their favourite doftrine of a metempfychofis ; according to which, our author play/ully remarks, the foul of the hufband may pafs into the embrio of a moufe, and the foul of the wife into that of a cat. By this we fee, that contradiction between religious dogmas and civil cufloms is no proof, though often ufed as fuch, againft the ekiflence of the latter. The Indians give a beverage of faffron, nightmade, and the ftrongeft narcotics, to overcome the reluctance of the deflined victims: the North-Americans' give a paffe fo OF ANCIENT CUSTOMS. I2/ of bruifed tobacco leaves, &c. for the fame purpofe, and with the fame effect. The do&rine of the refurre&ion of the body has been more general than is ima gined. We hardly know of any ancient nation that was not iri the habit of putting into tombs, by the fide of the dead, arms, kitchen utenfils, &c. a manifefl proof of their belief of an after-exiftence. And here it muft feem very unaccountable, that an ceconomical precept concerning interment iliould be omitted in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, in which the detail in other refpe&s is fo very minute as to forbid the eatin? of the thi^h of a hare. O O To the cuftom juft mentioned may be added a flrange one in the article of mourn ing: it confifls in cutting off a joint of a finger on the lofs of a hufband, a wife, or near 128 OF ANCIENT CUSTOMS. near relation. The inhabitants of Paraguai, the Guaranos, and many other people of America, have made thefe amputations fo fre quent, that men and women have been feen with only five or fix fingers entire on both hands; which gave rife to the firft accounts, that thefe people had naturally but three fingers on -each hand. The Hottentot has preferved more of the original facrifice, by cutting away one of his tefticles. May not this cujiom^fo unacountable at fifft view^ have bad its rife in the fimple notion, of offering a part for the whole; a kind of com pounding for the omljjion of the deftruftivc ^v&r"**^*^*-- f f .(<.- -"~~ practice of facrificing life?' ,It is a cuftom among many nations of America for the huuband to take to his bed the moment that his wife is brought to bed. Will it be believed, that this foolery has been OF ANCIENT CUSTOMS. 129 been and is even now in ufe in- the Canton of Bern, where it is called faire couvade. It is probable that the Bernois borrowed it from the Spaniards, among whom it ob tained in the time of Strabo. Herodotus found it among the Scythians and Egyp tians ; it is obferved by the Brafilians, and many other people of America. Mark Paul afTures us that he found it among many tribes of the^ independant Tartars : fo that this cuftom has made the tour of the globe. The univerfality of accompanying eclipfes .with every kind of noife that could be made, appears very extraordinary to our author. That it Jhould feemfo to one who is an advocate for a much higher antiquity than is generally attri buted to our world, would feem no lefs extra ordinary to me, did I not know, that having undertaken to prove that the Americans were K aboriginals, 130 OF ANCIENT CUSTOMS. Aboriginals, he muft of courfe reject every idea of communication. Such is the influence of fyftem, even on minds the moji liberal. Give to this our globe its jiift right , an un bounded antiquity ; admit that, in the expanfe tf time, it may have undergone many very great changes, as of ocean into continent, and of conti nent into ocean, the latter of which is- confirmed by recent dif cover ies of many ijlands in the South Sea; and ijlands, we know, are nothing elfe than the higheft grounds of an overflown conti nent: thefe changes, I fay, admitted, it follows that no conclufions can be drawn from the pre- fent face of the earth, again/I any pojjible inter- courfe between its moft diftant inhabitants in the earlieft ages. All the nations who believe in the tranf- migration of fouls make the world to be much more ancient than thofe who do not believe OF ANCIENT CUSTOMS. believe in it. Hence the prodigious period t of the people of Thibet, and of the Indians, /' which has paffed from them to the Chinefe. So prodigious indeed, that it could not flop Jhort of eternity; for, the faffing of the foul from one body into another induces the idea of a progrsf- fion 'without end that which hath no end can have no beginning; and fo vice verfd. Hence a ivorld eternal and uncreated no creation, no firft caufe. The gradations thefe of an afcent, of which the apex is atheifm implied, not profeffed, nor^ it may be, intended, by the Orientals ; in which point alone they differ from Spinoza, whofe doclrine, as to the refult, is but a renovation of theirs ; with the advan* tage of a procefe more impofmg, becaufe more pbilofophical. OBSBR- OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE, [FROM- THE SAME,] J.T is remarkable that the three great capes or promontories of the earth, viz. Cape -Horn, the Gape of Good Hope, and that of Diemen's Land, (New Guinea) fhould be turned to the South. The points of the three great continents thus dire&ed make me iufpeft, that immenfe volumes of water have rolled with violence from the South to the North 5 and that they have made breaches, wherever the foft and fandy foils have given way to the impulfe of the ocean. The moft diftinguifhed capes, after thofe juft mentioned, have much the fame direc tion; fuch as, Gape Comorin, in Afia; than of Malacca, in the peninfula of that namej St. OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE. 133 St. Mary, in Madagafcar; thofe of the penin- fula of Kamfcatka, of Nova-Zembla, of the great ifland of Jefo, of Greenland, of Cali fornia, and of Bahama in Florida. Thefe objeh, feen in the great, make it unneceflary to regard thofe little points which advance into the fea in other parts, and which, though called capes, are nothing more than falient angles, formed by particular accidents or finuofities of the coaft. The three great promontories of the Mediterranean, thofe of Calabria, the Morea, and the Crimea, are likewife turned towards the South. ^ ... The greateft irruption of waters into our continent appears between Africa and New- Holland to Cape Comorin, which, being formed of vaft impenetrable rocks, divided the currents from the South. One of thefe currents, turned out of its courfe, feems to have formed the Red Sea, of which the Adriatic 134 OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE. Adriatic Gulph is, in my opinion, a conti nuation; and that the fame force which carried the waters into the land at Babel- Mandel, impelled them on to the neigh bourhood of Venice, furmounting the ifth- mus of Suez, which is fince dried up, either by the retreat of the Mediterranean, or by the diminution of the Red Sea. The- dtfficulty is to account for thefe retreats and diminutions. As to the Perfian Gulph, it feems to have been produced by the fame irruption and tendency of the ocean toward the North Pole. ' The ancients thought that the Cafpian Sea was a prolongation of this gulph; in palling over the fpace between them, in a line be tween the 7 1 ft and ?2d degrees of longitude, one falls on manifeft veftiges of the fea's ancient bed, a wide champaign country of moving fands, mixed with fragments of dells, OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE. 135 fliells, and of marine fubftances. Beyond thefe plains, now dry, is the great defert of fand, 120 miles North of Ifpahan; in the depth of this folitude, enormous mountains of fait fpread over the furface for many leagues every way: this canton is called at this day by the inhabitants the Salt Sea, and in our maps Mare Salfum. On the right of this region of fait runs a line of fandy hills, which the winds have heaped together. In advancing under the fame meridian beyond Coucheftan, the earth inclines, and con tinues Hoping perceptibly to Ferrabat; the courfe, probably, by which the ocean re treated, after a temporary refidence in the region firft defcribed. I have obferved with aftonifliment, that there is much more dry land on our fide of the Equator than on the other j the fuppo- fition, that there mud be a balance in the South 136 OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE. South to the weight of the earth in the North, is contradicted by the experience of all modern navigators, who, from the 55th degree of latitude on our hemifphere, to the 6oth on the oppofite, have not fallen in with any great continent. I obferve, with equal furprife, that almoft all the parts of the globe placed dire&ly under the Equator are covered by the ocean ; which cannot be reconciled with the elevation, it is faid, the earth muil have at the Equator; it being the nature of fluids to find their own level. T0 this the .Newtonians will anfwer, that the axis of the Equator, being longer than that of the Poles, the motion of the earth muft he greater under the Line; and that the waters follow the greater movement: if fo, it only re mains for them to prove, that this increafe of motion is fufficient to furmount the natural tendency of water to an equilibrium: and as this OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE. 137 this is a matter of calculation^ in which they excel, I have no doubt of their making it out to the fatisfaflion of all thofe who are, able to follow them. Navigators have reached to the Both de gree of North latitude, but have not been able to get beyond the 6oth of Southern, owing to the extreme cold, and oppofition of ice: this confirms the prevalency of water over earth in the South; it being admitted, that air pafling over water is much colder than that which pafTes over dry land, which militates ftrongly againfl the fuppofition of a great Southern continent. M. Buffon fup- pofes that the great malTes of ice in the South Seas are formed by rivers defcending from the Auflral lands; but, admitting the exiftence of thofe lands, this does not re move the difficulty, the queflion not being how thefe bodies of ice are formed, but why they 13& OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE. they fhould dilTolve in fummer hi the Both degree of our latitude, and never melt in any feafon in the 6oth of the oppofite. If a force from the South has driven the waters to the North, thofe of the North muft have taken a dire&ion to the South, to fupply the wafte, and reflore the equili brium; the obfervations of the Swediih naturalifts confirm the fuppofition, by mark ing the retreat of the fea from the Northern coafts, in the proportion of four feet fix inches in a century. If this were the cafe, the retreat of the "Northern ocean Jhould bear feme proportion to the advances of the Southern, but this is notfe; the former being flow and gradual r , the latter impetuous and greatly predominant. Our au thor refers this to a certain periodical motion in nature yet unknown; this is no uncommon way, OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE. 1^9 Way, though 'very unfatisfaffory, offolving the difficulties of natural hi/lory, which muft for ever abound in difficulties, as we know nothing of the principles on which the great Author of nature has atled. We often hear of the fuperiority of the mo dern^ over the ancient naturalifts ; owing, we are told, to the wifdom of the former in aban doning analogy ', and conjecture from the reafon of things, the favourite practice of the ancients ; and trufting intirely to invejligation by experi ment : yet the ancients did not negletJ, fo much as has been fuppofed, this mode of invejtiga- tion ; witnefs, the celebrated I have found it* of Archimedes, not unlike, though of lefs eclat, to that divine Jiroke of Newton, by which his prifm brought out at once the whole fecret of colours. As to the great advantages which have OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE, been derived from this adherence to expe riment^ we may form a judgment of them, in y from the following Jiatements : " If it be afked what are the difcriminativc " charafteriftics of minerals, vegetables, and " animals, as oppofite to one another, I " plainly anfwer, that I do not know any, " either from natural hiftory or chemiftry, a which can wholly be relied on." Again: - " Every one thinks that he ," knows what an animal is, and how it is * c contra-diftinguilhed from a vegetable; and " would be oiFended at having his knowledge " queftioned thereupon. A dog or a horfe, " he is truly perfuaded, are beings as clearly " diftinguiihcd from a herb or a tree, as " light is from darknefs; yet as in thefe, " fo in the productions of nature, the tran- cc fition from one to the other is effe&ed by ** imperceptible gradations." . , . OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE. 14! - And again : " If rejecting fpontaneous " motion and figure as very inadequate tefts " of animality, we adopt perception in their " flead, no doubt, he would be efteemed a " vifionary in philofophy, who fhould extend " that faculty to vegetables ; and yet there, " are fever al chemical, phyfical, and meta- " phyfical reafons, which feem to render the " fuppofition not altogether indefenjible." If the diminution of the fea be perceptible in the Northern Regions, it ihould take place in fome degree in the Mediterranean ; and fo it has been found to do from age to age. The fediment from running waters is not fo considerable as the appearance of thofe waters indicates. The waters of any river, however thick or muddy, do not contain * See WATSON'S Chemifhy, vol. v. EfTajr 3. quite 142 OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE, quite fixty grains of earth in one hundred and twenty pounds of water. On fetting fome water of the Nile in a glafs tube, the fediment was found to have only the eighth of a line in a volume of water which feemed to have fifty times more mud than was ob tained by precipitation: it is abfurd, there fore, to account for the land's gaining on the fea, by fuppofmg that the bottom of the Mediterranean has been raifed by the fand and mud carried into it by the currents of rivers; for, were this the cafe, the intire foil of Egypt mud have been fwept away by the Nile into the Mediterranean: Or rather the Nile, by its overflowings , muft have raifed the furface of Egypt out of the reach of its own inundations. No hiftory or tradition has taken notice of any memorable cataflrophe occafioned by earthquakes between the 52d and 6ifl degrees OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE. 143 degrees of North latitude: it is only when we advance towards the Pole or the Line, in the heart of the Continent, that earth quakes become both frequent and terrible. Another obfervation, no lefs interefling, is, that the greater part of the volcano s on our hemifphere are fituated on iilands, or very near the fea, as Hecla, in Iceland; Etna, in Sicily; and Vefuvius, &c. Among the great volcanos are, the Paranucah in tfye iile of Java, Conopy in that of Banda, and Balaluan in Sumatra. There are alfo vol canos in the iflands of Ferando, Sec. ; in fhort, in all thofe which compofe the great empire of Japan, as well as in the Manilla ifles, the Azores, Cape Verd, and above all that of Del Fucgo. The prevalence of vol canos in iilands, or in the neighbourhood of the fea, makes me fufpeft that fea-water is neceffary to produce the inflammation of iulphureous and ferruginous pyrites, the principal 144 OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE. principal aliment of volcanos: it is certain that thefe pyrites never burn but when in contaft with water, or in a moift atmo- fphere, which may be attributed to the pro perty in iron of decompofing fulphur by the aid of water. By the lavas difcovered in the Pyrenees, the Alps, the mountains of Auvergne, Provence, &c. it is concluded, that all thefe places have anciently been vol canos. But why are the furnaces, found at this day on the Terra-Firma, extinft? The caufe, in my opinion, is, that the fea having retreated from their vicinity, the fire has ceafed, becaufe the decompofition of the pyrites can no longer take place in the bowels of the earth for want of a fufficient quantity of water. To attribute the extin&ion of volcanos on the Continent to the phlogiflic matter being exhaufled, is a manifeft error. Why fliould OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE. 145 fhould it fail there, and not in iflands, or on the fea coafts? Vefuvius has burnt for more than 3000 years. In the excavations of Herculaneum, the pavement of the ftreets and foundations of houfes are found to confifl of fquare pieces of lava, of the very fame quality with that now thrown out from Vefuvius. Now, Herculaneum was built by the Aufonians and Arrunci, before the firft colonies from Greece fettled in Italy; this could not be later than 1330 years before our asra. Etna too had burnt many years before the birth of Homer and Hefiod. If the combuftible matter of thefe two has not been drained in all this time, what reafon is there to fuppofe that it fhould have failed in the volcanos of our continent? Whatever has been written hitherto on the formation of mountains, is fubjeft to infupe- L rablc 146 OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE. rable difficulties, fmce it is known that the higheft mountainous points are in no part of the world covered with marine remains ; fuch as {hells, dendrites, or other petrifications, under whatever name they may be diftin- guifhed.' The fea, then, has never fur- mounted thofe heights, as is advanced by fo .many naturalifts. I can never believe that it is by the fea that thofe rocks have been formed, whofe beds of the fame fort of {lone we fee prolongued for a fpace of many leagues. How fliould the waters affemble fo many fubftances of one kind, and depofit them in another place; at the fame time ex cluding all mixture of heterogeneous matter in the moment of the cohefion of thefe lapidific particles ? It is not at all ftrange that fragments of {hells fhould be found in marbles, becaufe all marbles are nothing more than coagulations; but it has never been found, nor ever will be, that there are any OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE. 147 any fhells in rock-flone, which proves to a certainty, that this ftone, of which entire mountains confift, has never been decompo- fed or recompofed by the waves of the fea; but is an homogeneous fubftance, primitive and coeval with the world. Thofe who would account for the for mation of mountains, do not difhinguiih be tween them and the great convex elevation of Oriental Tartary, proved by the vafl rivers defending from it in eyery dire&ion towards the cardinal points. Switzerland is, in miniature, to Europe, what the region of Thibet is, in the great, to Afia; with this difference, that Switzerland has mountains much more elevated than any to be met with on the great convex of Tartary, found to be much higher than the higheft tops of the Swifs mountains. . If the elevation of Thibet proceeds, as fome have advanced, L 2 from 148 OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE. from the crumbling of mountains, let it be confidered how many millions of ages it would take up to convert the pyramidal form of Switzerland into an uniform con vex elevation. Mountains, of whatever height they might be, could not ferve as a retreat to the inhabitants of a country overwhelmed by inundations; becaufe fuch mountains, being more dry and flerile in proportion to their altitude, could not furniih the alimentary vegetables necefTary to the fuflenance of families and herds of cattle: ten individuals could not live ten days on the fummit of Mount Jura. It is on fuch convexities as that of Tartary, that the remains of the human race might hope to find an afylum againft the crufh of elements, and*the fury of inundations. If OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE. 149 If the tribes of Tartars had not, in their wars with each other, deftroyed the libraries formed by the learned of Thibet; if a vile Emperor of China had not caufed to be burnt all the books and manufcripts that could be found in Upper Afia; we might, without doubt, collect many facts which would throw light on the hiftory of our globe, fo modern, when we confult the mo numents of men ; fo ancient, when we appeal to the indications of nature. The definition of records in China; the burning of the library of Alexandria in that romantic rather fcuffle than war by Julius Casfar; and a fecond time, after it had been in part re-eftablifhed, condemned to the flames by the Caliph Omar; the deftru&ion of an cient Greek authors by Pope Gregory; to which we may add the prodigious number of volumes defaced by ignorant Monks , to make ivay, 150 OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE. way, by the rafure of the original text, for their miferable homilies and compofitions ; have been the moft forrowful events in the hiftory of human kind:, they have deprived us of treafures of knowledge which can never be recovered: the archives of the world were loft. Yet our Chronologifts boldly determine the epocha of the origin of all nations. To obferve the arrogance with which they offer their vain calculations, one would ima gine that they had read all the books and manufcripts deftroyed in China, Thibet, Egypt, and Rome, the very titles of which are unknown to them* Of all the attempts to calculate the age of the world, the fyftem of petrifactions is the moft unphilofophical; it being impof- fible to afcertain a procefs depending on the quality and quantity of lapidific juices, and other circumftances, varying ad infini- tum OBSERVATIONS ON OtJR GLOBE. 151 turn in different places, according to the nature of earths, waters, and air; and even of the pofitions of the bodies on which the experiments are mads. CONTINUATION. My author takes notice of a pajfage in Juftin the abbreviator, concerning a difpute on the point of antiquity between fome Scythians and Egyptians. The former fupported their claim by obferving, " Scythiam adeo editi- " orem omnibus terris effe, ut cun&a flumina " ibi nata, in Mceotim, turn deinde in Pon- " ticum et Egyptium mare decurrunt; hoc " argumento fuperatis Egyptis, antiquiores " Temper Scythias vifi." C. i. lib. 2. This argument, in my opinion, does not juftify the inference; efpe dally as there are chrono- glcal fads which fet the pretenfions of the Egyptians on a better footing* We 152 OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE. We are told by Bochart, that the Hebrew was the eldefl of nations. Abraham, who lived 600 years bfeore the Trojan war, on his faffing into Egypt, found it a great and flour ijhing kingdom > the Jews do not fret end to trace their origin, as a people, higher than Abraham* So much for the antiquity of the Jews, As to Bocharfo Jecond ajjertion, that the Egyptians borrowed their arts and fciences from the Jews, it will be Jufficient to obferve, that, at the time of Abraham's vifit, the great pyramid was ftanding-, this pyramid exhibits a precife meridian, the difcovery of an aftronomer far advanced in the fcience-, and the building itfelf could not have been raifed without a con- Jummate knowledge of mechanics. The facility ( with which the Egyptians raifed thoje obelijks which formed avenues to their temples, and which of courfe left little room for the working of engines, brings to Jhame the complicated machinery OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE. 153 machinery employed by Fontana in creeling the obelifk before the church of St. Peter at Rome. Among the proofs of antiquity^ great and early advances in the fciences, particularly in a/lronomy, are the mofl decifive. 'The Egypti- ' ans knew, at a very early period, that the fun was fxed 9 a common center to the earth and planets 'which move round it. They gave the firft hint of thejublime idea of every flar being a fun to a Jyftem like our own. Nor did they flop Jhort of the invefligation of comet s> which ' they held to be planet s> moving m orbits fimilar but eccentrical to our Jy ft em. Seneca tfre Natu- ralift) Jpeaking of comet 'j, objerves, " Depre- " hendi propter raritatem edrum curfus adhuc " non poteft; nee explorari an vices fervent, et " illos ad fuum diem certus ordo producat." Has not the fame uncertainty prevailed with us till within this century 3 and are there not even fome doubts touching the Jolitary prediction of the 154 OBSERVATIONS ON OUR GLOBE. the comet 0/17$$? As to that, which y ac cording to Newton, is to make its appearance Jome time in the prefent century, and to Jweep away in its vortex the fun, planets, and our whole Jy ft em, it is to, be hoped that there is a *JIaw in his calculation ; and we are encouraged in this hope by the confederation, that, at the time of his publijhing this alarming prediction, Sir IJaac was deeply engaged in writing a com mentary on the Revelations of John. It is admitted that the Jews, on their coming out of Egypt, 1500 years before our when compared with the great extent of the empire. The Chinefe crowd to the fea-coafts, trading towns, and the banks of great rivers: here the popula tion is exceflive; and hence the interior of the country is deferted and uncultivated: hence frequent famines; the inroads of the poorer on the richer provinces, and the confequent fubverfion of law and govern ment. The unequal population, the want of prote&ion from violence in the central provinces, and the defefts of police in a re gion of fuch extent, account for the miferies incident to this country. Robbers are in fuch numbers, that, one year with ; another, from thirty to forty thoufand are thrown into prifon : when thefe bands EGYPTIANS AND CHINESE. 165 bands unite, the great towns are facked, and entire provinces laid wafte. The beft check on this evil would be a good body of militia; its only preventive a ftridl: police: the jealoufy of the Emperor will not truft a militia in the hands of a fubject: and their ignorance in legiflation excludes every hope of an effe&ual police. Defpotifm never thinks of preventives ; it truft s alone to the /event}' ofitspunijhments. In the earliefl times, moft legiflators gave to the father a power over the life of his children; but to tofs them into the river as we do puppies, to throw them into the flreet to be devoured by dogs and hogs, was referved for the Chinefe. Here our author obferves, that to find the juft bounds of paternal authority is the mafter- piece of legiflation, unknown, for the mod part, to ancient legiflators even to Solon, -for this fimple l66 EGYPTIANS AND CHINESE. fimple reajon, that it is not the lejjbn of Jupe- rior wifdom : the thoughtlefs favage has not learnt, he feels it; it is a part of his conftitu- tion: confcious of man's right to independence, the father does not ajjume, nor would cuftom allow him the power to infringe it. fhoje who after t abfolute power in the parent to be a law of nature, are, I think, miftaken: it is to property that we muft look for the ori gin of power : nature takes no notice of pro perty-, her fir ft law is theufus communis cfher benefits : from the moment property takes place, the difpofal of it muft, be in the hands of the parent who pojfejjes it: he who has in his keeping the means of life, is in- effeff majler of that life-, in this we fee the origin of the prin ciple in queftion. The limitation of this power has not been the work of politicians, too intent in all times on preferring EGYPTIANS AND CHINESE. 167 preferring a dominion over the minds of men, which could not better begin than in the domejiic example. By a law of the twelve tables a Roman father could take away the life of his child; but the univerfal abhorrence with which the per petration was attended, put a flop to the thing: thus manners, not law, reduced this power within proper bounds. There is nothing better underjlood than pro perty, as an object of purfuit ; nothing lefs un- derftood, as a fubjecJ of philofophy : of this we have a proof In the following extracts from Volney's account of the Arabs: " The fituation of the Arab is very differ- " ent from that of the American favage: " amid his vaft naked plains, without water, " without forefts, he could not, for want of x " game l68 EGYPTIANS AND CHINESE. " game or Mi, become either a hunter or a " fifherman. The Camel was alone fufficient " to throw him into paftoral life, the man- " ners of which have determined his cha- " rafter: finding, at hand, a light and " moderate nourifhment, he has acquired the " habit of frugality; content with his milk " and his dates, he has not defired flefh; he " has fried no blood; his hands are not ac- " cuflomed to {laughter, nor his ears to the " cries of torture; he has preferved a hu-, " mane and fenfible heart." There would be nothing wanting to this eulogium, were it founded on fad. But where jhall we finely except in romances^ or the de fer ipt ions of poets , that paftoral manners are of a nature to cherijh the Jine feelings of huma nity* Through all ages, in every quarter of the globe i rapine and bloodfhed have marked the fteps of the pajior tribes. When thefe very Arabs, EGYPTIANS AND CHINESE. 169 Arabs , at an early period , made the conqueft of Egypt , the tyranny and cruelty of the pq/ior kings ) as they were called, were beyond exam ple intolerable. M. Volney proceeds : " To obferve the manner in which the " Arabs conduct themfelves towards each " other, one would imagine that they poiTefs " all their goods in common; neverthelefs, " they are no fir angers to property; but it " has nothing of that felfiihnefs which the " increafe of the imaginary wants of luxury " has given it among polifhed nations. It " may be alledged, that they owe this mo- " deration to the impojffibility of greatly " multiplying their enjoyments: but if it be " acknowledged, that the virtues of the mofl " civilized are only to be afcribed to the ne- " ceflity of circumftances, the Arabs, per- " haps, are not for this the lefs worthy of " our efteem: they are fortunate, at leaft, " that I/O EGYPTIANS AND CHINESE. " that this neceffity ftiould have eftablifhed " among them a ftate of things, which has " appealed to the wifeft legiilators as the " perfection of human policy; I mean, a kind " of equality in the partition of property, " and the variety of conditions." The legiflator, who would confine a growing property within the bounds of equality, muftbe at once ajiranger to human nature, and to the nature of the thing. But did not Julius Cafar publijh fumptuary laws, at the time that Rome was the emporium of all the riches of the earth? Tes, and among the few foolijh things which he did, this was by far the mojl foolijh: unlefs we may fuppofe that he did it with a 'view to fatter the plebeians, and to mortify the nobles. But the Arab, itfeems, has found the means to diveft lucrative purjuits offeifijhnefs, and to unite EGYPTIANS AND CHINESE. unite the Importance of property 'with the in difference of equality, thefe things are not in nature: without feffijhnefs there would be no motive to aft ion; equality excludes diftincJion; take away diftincJion, property lofes its objecJ, and with that its exigence: the Arab, content with his milk and dates, had not aimed at any thing more than the necejfary. No matter , the Arabs , at all events, mufl be a nation of worthies : we know that, like their brethren of Algiers, they are a nation of robbers. From the moment that their panegyrift touched on the barrennefs of their deferts, and their attention to property, it was eafy to forefee what his eulogium mufl come to: for how can there be property, where there are no productions at home? and if imported from abroad, how Jhould this be, but by plunder, where there can be no exchange? Thus it is, that things often pafs for inconjtftencies in nature, which in fad are nothing elfe than the reveries of the writer. Independence^ 172 EGYPTIANS AND CHINESE. Independence, his fyjlem; in/tin ft, his legif- lation; the man of nature is free, becaufe he is a Jiranger to property \ Would you cheat him out of > his freedom foment competition; extend his felfijhncfs ; give him a relifh of property ; to fecure its enjoyment he willfubmit to laws : he is no longer independent, but he is civilized. Were the procefs to end here, it would be well; but property is power; it commands fer- vice, it creates dependence: accumulation ad mitted, the great proprietor will become majier of the little: not content with a comparative advantage, he will think that he has nothing while others have any thing ; he is a defpot, his dependents arejlaves. I return to my f elections. The Epoch of Chatai, the moft followed in China, rifes higher than eighty millions of EGYPTIANS AND CHINESE. 173 of years before our asra. It is faid, in Eu rope, that one muft be mad to adopt fuch a period; in China, that one muft be a fool to rejet it. It is fuppofed that the Chinefe borrowed this period from the people of Thibet. All that can be faid with certainty is, that the Chinefe are a people of high antiquity: their language and manner of writing prove this better than any records. That the Chinefe firft came down into the fouthern provinces from the heights of Tartary, proved by the barometer to be the higheft ground of the globe, is incon- teftible; as likewife, that the Egyptians de- fcended from the heights of Ethiopia. As to the hiflory of Egypt, it would not be fo obfcure and embarraffed as we now find it, had not modern chronologifts made it a point to accommodate the annals of the Egyptians with thofe of the Jews; chan ging 174 EGYPTIANS AND CHINESE. ging at every turn from one mode of calcu lation to another; in fo much, that we have ' ; at this day ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN different fyftems ; that is to fay, no chro nology at all. In the 'Afiatic Refearches* all thefe difcords are harmonized : from them we learn, that the Indian , Egyptian, Perjlc, Arabic, all the chro nologies of all the nations on the earth, are in aperfecJ agreement with the Mofaic: the proofs, it muft be conf effect, are borrowed from books written in old Sanfcrit; a language, almoft loft to the Bramins them/elves; and, to the reft of the world, totally unknown. Certain it is, that the Egyptians engraved the pietre dure, or gems, two thoufand years before our asra. What ages muft have preceded their arrival at this point in an art of fo great difficulty! In EGYPTIANS AND CHINESE. 175 .In like manner, the mofl difficult opera tions in mechanics muft have taken place in the building of their pyramids, and the ereftion of thofe ftupendous obelilks. It fliould feem that the errors into which we have fallen, touching the developement of the arts, have their fource in a paffage of Varro, who afferts, that all the arts were invented in Greece in the courfe of a thou- fand years: but, inftead of being followed, he fliould have been corre&ed: the truth is, the Greeks did not invent either arts or fciences; they went abroad to learn them, or they were brought to them: had they been confined to their own country, and had no communication with Egypt and Phenicia^ it would have taken them up a thoufand years to compleat an alphabet; which was brought to them in a day, and that by mere accident. The 1/6 EGYPTIANS AND CHINESE. The flow progrefs of fcience is evinced in the following inftance: The priefts of Thebes and Heliopolk, who thought that they had difcovered the precife term of a tropical year, made a miflake of fome mi nutes, as is feen in the defeft of the Julian year; it was but the other day that this miflake was corre&ed, and this branch of fcience brought to perfe&ion. >'"' >.\ '. . ' ' Caftration, male and female, pra&ifed in Egypt from the earlieft times ; unknown to the Chinefe in the cafe of females. * - - Strange that this ufage fhould not have pafled with the Egyptian colonies into Greece, if any fuch were. Cufloms, cere monies, feafts, &c. paffing from Egypt into Greece, are accounted for, by fuch men as Lycurgus and Solon fludying legiflation in Egypt: this fame obfervation holds with refpeft to philofophers and artifts. Pauw EGYPTIANS AND CHINESE. 177 Pauw ridicules the notion of China having been colonized by the Egyptians; he denies there being the" lead conformity between the Phenician letters and the radical cha- ra&ers of the Chinefe,* who are totally ignorant of the hieroglyphic language of the Egyptians. The blunders of modern -anti quarians furnifh our author with frequent fubjefts of pleafantry x ; of this the following is a curious fpecimen: Nos Antiquaires J. d' Europe ont etc extremement embar- ; rafles au fujet de la croix a.anfe. M. Clay ton Eveque de Clogher foutenoit que c'eft un inftrument a planter des laitues; le pere Kircher * The Chinefe characters are ligns, not only of primary ideas, but of every fubdivifion and modifica tion of each idea; they amount in number to 70,000. The firft thought was truly philosophical, and has been carried on with infinite perfeverance : it feems to be peculiar to the Chinefe, being quite different from the Egyptian Hieroglyphic, or Mexican Picture. 178 EGYPTIANS AND CHINESE. Kircher en faifoit le Createur; et le fameux Herwart en faifoit la bouffole aujourd-hui il n'y a pas de favant qui ne fache, que c'eft une reprefentation de la partie genitale de 1'homme: c'eft enfin le phallus the lingam of the Indoos fomewhat more difguifed. According to the beft calculation, the Monks in China amount to a million, in the proportion of one to eighty of the in habitants. To keep their women at home, and pre vent intrigue, the Chinefe cripple them in their feet; the Egyptians did not allow them the ufe of {hoes: What a fubjeft would Ms have been for the wit of Ovid! Met h inks I hear him exclaim Simpletons/ Do ye not know that Love has wings, and that Venus never wore Jhoes? Our EGYPTIANS AND CHINESE. 179 Our author has juft now told us that the Chinefe firft came down into the Jouthern pro~ vinces fram the heights of ^artary, and Jup- ports his opinion by a proof in the true Jpirit of philofophy. A great Jcholar, and universal linguift* is of a different opinion ; and affirms ', that China was peopled by colonies from India, and that at a very late period; but, unhappily > to obviate the objection of a total diflimilarity in the languages of the two people, he ajjerts, that the Chinefe monofyllable was nothing elfe than a clipping of the Indian polyfy liable* fo that the Indian colonift, in pojjeffion of a rich and Jonorous language, cafts it away, to take up with one Jo miferably poor, that every fingle word is the fign of jive different ideas. Of all the literati, the linguifl is the moft enterprifmg; mafler of many languages, feme Sir William Jones. N 2 living, l8o EGYPTIANS AND CHINESE. living, fome dead, and Jome, like the Sanjcrit, half dead, he looks down on thoje who are acquainted with but one-, a temperance to which men are led from the confideration that knowledge depends on the clear conception of the idea, not on the number of its figns. Locke was not a linguifl, and the Greeks, the firft of mankind, in the finer exertions of intelleft, never troubled their heads about any other language than their own. OF OF THE DIET OF THE EGYPTIANS. IN other nations diet is nothing more than a left of opulence, or of the progrefs of luxury; in Egypt it becomes an inlet into the religion, manners, and character of this Jingular people. The peculiar circumftances of their cli- jnate and foil made it expedient for the Egyptians to have a particular attention to their diet; hence moil of their religious obfervances: Mofes adopted many of thefe, but wifely deferted the fyftem.in fome points, confuking the character of his people, and the circumftances of the country in which they were to live. Pythagoras wa^s not fo wife; having pafTed into Egypt, and fubmitted to 1 82 DIET OF THE EGYPTIANS. to circumcifion, he, in the true fpirit of a fanatic, would have all or none, fo adopted the intire dietetic fyftem: after this, travel ling into India, he embraced without referve the regimen of the Bramins, forbidding al animal food, as the Egyptian had done that of fiih, and of many vegetables: thus his fyftem became an abfurd union of the two; each of which had been calculated for a different climate; and neither, for. that in which he and his followers were to obferve it. -To a genuine bigot, doffrine is every thing; common fenfe. is nothing. Leprofy, fore eyes, and gonorrhea, en demic in Egypt: the elephantiafis, a fpecies of leprofy peculiar to the Egyptians, above -|#all corrupts the fpermatic juices; this ac- v i ~'--' tff ^ "- '-^^*- counts for the origin of the gonorrhea in Egypt ; as likewife for the invention of cir- cumcifion. The DIET OF THE EGYPTIANS. 183 The priefts abftained from all kinds of mil, as produ&ive of fcurvy; the people were indulged in the ufe of fuch ; as were lead fo: fhell-fifh., and in general thofe of the fcaly tribe, were deemed the moil innocent. The firft magiflrates, efpecially the Pha raohs, were not allowed to drink wine. Py thagoras adopted the prohibition: fuch a feft could not lad long. Apollonius Tya- nceus, a bigot worthy of his matter, endea voured to revive it, but in vain. The flefh of fwine was totally prohibited, except twice <*-* **K^*"*'"'h-'*-* > "t^>M..^rf*' f a year, when the common people were indul ged in the ufe of it. The flefh of goofe and pigeon was the moft efleemed ; and therefore referved for the priefls and the King. The Egyptian Lent of forty days, a die tetic inftitution: they had feveral fmaller Lents of fix days: during all thefe the huf- hand 184 DIET OF THE EGYPTIANS. band was not allowed to fleep with his wife. Their Lent was kept in the hotted feafon of the yeaiy at this day, the better fort of the inhabitants, in the hot months, take their meals in the cool of the morning and even ing. Mahomet borrowed his Lent, the I time of keeping it, and the abftaining from wine, from the Egyptians c'efl en Egypte qu'il faut chercher la racine de la plus-part des inftitutions religieufes. -if Mofes was not fo bold as Mahomet ; he knew his people too well to venture on the prohibition of wine. 2> The Egyptians confecrated onions, that is, prohibited the eating of them, on ac count of their being flimulating and hurtful . to the eyes: it is in this point of view that we are to confider their confecrations in general. The DIET OF THE EGYPTIANS. 185 The Chinefe have never confecrated either vegetables or animals, therefore eat of all. The Egyptians hated (hangers, and there fore fair hair, by which they were diftin- guifhed: it is remarkable that the Chinefe have the fame averfion. OF OF THE FINE ARTS. 1 HE Egyptians, Chinefe, aud Afiatics, tmiverfally delight in fimple and contrafted colours; they have no knowledge of mixed tints; accordingly, we never hear amongft the ancients of an Egyptian painter, though Plato allures us that they cultivated the art ten thoufand yearts before his time. As to the Chinefe, we know, that they arc ftrangers at this day to the firil rudiments of ddign. The flatuaries of Egypt were confined by the priefls to certain forms and modes of re- prefentation : henc Plato obferves, that they were, in his time, juft where they were at their OF THE FINE ARTS. 187 their firfl fetting out. The ftyle of drawing was improved under the Ptolemies. The Jlatuaries of Egypt were compelled to reprefent their Gods junftis pedibus, bra- chiis in latera demiffis this was to preclude, at once, all ideas of grace: accordingly the Gra ces had no place among the Egyptian Deities : it was referred for the Greeks to give them a Jlation, by beftowing divinity on their own feel ings. Was not this the general origin of the worjliip paid by Heathens to the moral virtues, as likewise to their fever al predilections in the pursuits of life? So that this becomes a teft of the characters of nations. It is remarkable,, that, with the Graces, the Egyptians gave an exclufion to Neptune-, they detejled the fea; and yet, with a ftrange in- I confiftency, they made their Nephthis, or Venus, V ' to fpring out of its froth, whence the Aphro dite of the Greeks. ,, ,, n " Almojj; l88 OF THE FINE ARTS. <* cc Almoft all the names of the Gods (fays Herodotus) came out of Egypt into Greece*"' 1 The Greeks changed the names, and made the gods their own. We are often furprifed at the extreme igno rance of the Greeks, touching ancient hijlory, and the origin of things: the cafe was, deter mined by their vanity to make every thing of importance originate with themf elves, they gave themf elves no further trouble about them. Immediately after the above quotation, He rodotus adds, " For this information I am in- J " debted to the Barbarians^ Is it not ridiculous, it will be faid, to hear him call thofe very people barbarians, whom, in OF THE FINE ARTS. 189 in the moment, he acknowledges to be better informed than himfelf? I anfwer, No ; if the opinion of fome learned critics be founded, that, in the life of the word barbarian, the Greeks eft en meant , fimply , aftranger. After juch examples of the candour andjimpli- city of Herodotus, in what light Jhall we conjider the attacks made by Plutarch on his veracity f This invective, for fuch it is, is the work of a heavy writer in a violent pajjion', of a thick- wit ted Beotian, who, miftaking rancour for fpi- rit, and anger for argument, thought fit to enter the lifts with the father of hiftory, and one of the fin eft f pints of antiquity. In China, a great belly is a beauty in the men, the reverfe in the women in dire ft oppofition to the fine forms of nature: the Chi- nefe artift will chicane on the words beauty and nature. Be it fo, your figure has beauty, now plant I9O OF THE FINE^ARTS. 'plant it; let the parts reft and depend on one common center : in this, nature is unwerfa/, and has but one law ; ignorant of this, you are but a bungler. Have we not too often occafion to apply this censure- at home? Intent on the colouring of the Lombard fchool, we flip over the draw ing of the Roman: it expired with Vandyke. We write metaphyjical differtations on the prin ciples of painting, but cannot make an arm grow out of the Jhoulder^ or Jet a man on his legs. All the princes of Alia, the Emperor of China included, have had from the earlieft times manufactures and fabricks of their own fatal to the arts; which fhould be long to the public, not to the prince. Hence e arts fell to decay under the Emperors of Conftantinople. t - The fuppofed legiflator Juflinian could not f write his own name; Tet he certainly fuper in- tended OF THE FINE ARTS. tended the compilation of the code which bears his name. Mahomet could neither read nor & write; Tet the Jiyle of the Koran is allowed to be beautiful; nay, he refied on this beauty the proof of its being infpired. Pauw delights, at times, to take afwim again/I the tide. The Egyptians excelled in works of glafs; caft large plates, but ftopt fliort of the mir ror: they caft ftatues' of coloured glafs, and counterfeited the murine vafes now un known what thofe vafes were; but fuppofed to be of the nature of the onyx. No ftatues in China older than the age of Confucius, contemporary with Herodotus, who faw ftatues in Egypt many thoufand years old. The Egyptian priefts banifhed mufic from their temples j they fang their facred hymns without' , 192 OF THE FINS ARTS. without accompaniment. As they prefided in matters of tajle, as well as of fcience, we may judge from hence of the lowjlate of their mufic. The pipe and drum the favourite inftru- ments in all hot climates; the Orientals hardly know any other. // Jhould feem that, as in colours, fo in founds , their organs are formed for fimple and conirajied impref- fions. Our author affirms, that there is not a man in all Afia who can paint the foliage of a tree. 1 Jhould conclude from this, that there is not an tear in all Afia that can feel the blended founds, the compound harmony, of Eu ropean miific. OF OF THE EGYPTIAN AND CHINESE ARCHITECTURE. X HE Egyptian buildings were of marble, the Chinefe of wood. Tet the Chinefe wall is ajiupendous monument of the folid and du^ rable: as to the great and fublime, that's another matter. Compare the wall of China with the pyramid of Geeza; the greatnefs of the former is in the fcale and ex ten/ion; of the latter, in the firft conception of a fublime idea. Let us obferve this diftinclion in our decifions in works in architecture^ and there will be no difference of opinion, except, between thoft who have tajle, and thofe who have it not. Obeliiks and pyramids, the wonders of Egypt, works totally unknown to the Chi- o nefe, 194 OF THE EGYPTIAN AND nefe, who had no conception of building for duration, the great obje& of the Egyp tians; a difference of views and tafte which precludes every idea of connexion between the two people. The fame objection does not hold again/I a fuppofed connection between the Egyptians and Indians. When from the account given by the fpirited and elegant Savary of the temples and fubterraneous excavations in Egypt, I pafs to defer iptions of fimllar works In India, from the flill more elegant pen of our incomparable Orme, I fancy myfelf travelling through diftant provinces of the fame empire: by this, and other points of refemblance, fome have been led to conclude that the Egyptians and Indians were originally one and the fame people-, but to this there is an infuperable objection Alas ! the Egyptians were Negroes. Negroes! O ye Mufes, can ye pardon the profanation f To the inventors CHINESE ARCHITECTURE. 195 inventors of letters ye owe your divinity. I have this moment in my, fancy, a picture of Plato taking his lecJure in philosophy under a Negro Profejjor. But how /hall we look up to a Negro Mufe? Dii Dexque! were ye not almoft all of Egyptian origin, and had ye not your firft altars on the banks of the Nile? So much for the firft view of this fubjeft: but as the notion in quejlion is ferioujly urged., it is fit it foould have aferious anfwer. It is founded on a^pajjage in Herodotus^ thus ren dered by an author in high efteem: " For " my part, I believe the Colchi to be a " colony of Egyptians; becaufe, like them, " they have a black Ikin and frizzled " hair/'* To which M. Volney adds, " That , (Herod.) Aov ro o^vffa/(A/xyov, (Hefyc) intorqueri; which, applied to the hair, we fliould render curled', unlefs, to ferve a turn, it fhould be tor tured into frizzled. 02 IS, 196 OF THE EGYPTIAN AND " is, that the ancient Egyptians were " real Negroes." The- beft anjwer to this pajjage, or rather to its comment*, will be another from Herodotus, by which the deci/iv.e article of frizzled hair is quite done away. " The " priefts of other nations have long hair, " thofe of Egypt are clofe fhaved: in " mourning for near relations, all other " people cut their hair ihort ; but the Egyp- " tians, mourning for the dead, fuffer the " hair of the head and chin to grow long."f A change, which, from the nature of the thing, could not take place on the woolley head or chin of a Negroe And now, my good M. Volney, the furprife is all over. As to the complexion of the Egyptian make it as black as you pleafe, but for the honour of letters, in which few men are more inter efled than yourfelf, reft ore to the f Avieto-i rots r^i^as av&sQat, rxs re fy y,ot,t ru ytjvu;. Herod. preceptor CHINESE ARCHITECTURE. 197 preceptor of Solon and of Plato, a face with fome meaning, and a decent head of 'hair. It has been admitted that the Egyptian was black, Herodotus is decijive on the point, when, Jpeaking of a certain prophetess, con cerning whoje country there was fome doubt, he obferves " In faying fhe was black, " they mark that the woman was an Egyptian."! // is probable, that the Negro was not known to the Greeks fo early as the age of this hiftorian. Certain it is, that the ancients do not appear to have entertained the leajl dijlike of a black complexion-, nor /Jiould we, after thefirft furprife, did zve not connect with it the image, and, with that, the character of the Negro. M&xtvtzv $s Xeyovrss etvtxi, vv w. Herod, There 198 OF THE EGYPTIAN AND There are throughout Afia numerous tribes of blacks, but with European features and abundant hair. From among thofe tribes muft have come that Sable Beauty, who thus offer ts her pretenfions in the Song of Songs " I am black, but " comely, O ye daughters of Jerufalem!" It is fuppofed by fome, that the trunk of the palm-tree was the model of the Egyptian column ; the mojl celebrated of thefe is thus defer ibed by Salary : " It is of red granite, the capital Corin- " thian, 9 feet high; the fhaft and upper " member of the bafe of one piece, 90 feet " long and 9 in diameter; the whole co- " lumn 114 feet high; the mod beautiful " monument on the face of the earth." : '"ft'". Among CHINESE ARCHITECTURE. 199 Among the Egyptian works of art, a block of marble hollowed into a chamber Jtxty feet fquare^ is efteemed a wonder. 'The trunk of a tree hollowed into a canoe ^ without hatchet or chifel, will be tofome more an objetl of admira tion. "The Naturalift turns from both^ to gaze on the beaver, while he is. felling the tree def ined for the conftruftion of his cabin. The roofs of the Egyptian temples and houfes are flat, derived from the early habit of dwelling in caverns, in the mountains of Ethiopia;. hence too the paflion of the priefts for fubterraneous chambers, fuch found 1 60 feet under ground. The cuftom of dwel ling and ftudying in thofe gloomy manfions gave birth to the Egyptian myfteries, and to the obfcure communications of their notions in religion and philofophy. There 1OO OF THE EGYPTIAN AND There are no certain remains of their ce lebrated labyrinth. Antiquarians are much divided touching the deftination of pyramids; Pauw thinks they were raifed in honour to the fun. This feems to be confirmed by the word pyramue, which >, according to Savary, fignifies in Arabic the rays of the fun. It is enough for us to know, that they are the nobleft monuments of the fab- lime in architecture; and that, by the corref- pondence of their faces with the four cardinal points, they prove to a certainty, that the poles of the earth have not changed in the courfe of four thoufand years. It is fuggefted by Ariftotle, that the agri culture of Egypt being eafy, and of little labour, and the confequent idlenefs of the people thought hurtful to their health and morals, they were conftantly employed in fome CHINESE ARCHITECTURE, 2OI fome great work. Thus the policy of the ru lers became the pajfion of the people; this was a mafter-ftroke in police. It is certain that the Egyptians had little employment in navigation and commerce; what they wanted from other countries was brought to them. It is very remarkable, that they neither coined, nor made ufe of money, till fome time after the Perfian inva- iion. Tet Montefquieu makes this the teji of civilization. i A great wall was built by Sefoflris to defend Egypt againft the Arabs; a proof that he was not the mighty conqueror pre tended. The raifmg of fuch walls common in early times to all civilized nations bounded by barbarians; there were many in feveral parts of Afia, efpecially againfl the Tartars, but always ineffe&ual; an extenfive fortifica tion 202 OF THE EGYPTIAN AND tion requires an army to defend it; that army better in the field. According to our author, were all the walls of this kind ftretched in a ftraight line they would be equal to the di ameter of the earth. The power of the barbarians is to be dated from the time of Adrian, who began to for tify the bounds of the empire. Was not the maxim of Auguftus, that the bounds of the empire Jhould not be enlarged, a political blunder? Dominion founded in conqueji can not be ftationary -, it muft be either progrejpve or retrograde. The grand canal, extending from one extremity of China to the other, on which depends the interior commerce of the coun try, was made by Koublai-Can, in 1280 of our aera; by him archite&s, aftronomers, geographers, called in from diflant coun tries ; CHINESE ARCHITECTURE. 203 tries; the improvements introduced by this Tartar conqueror in thefe matters, and in police, were aimed loft af the time of the fecond conqueft in 1 640, at which time they were revived; fo that the Chinefe owe all to their Tartar conquerors. This is going a little too far. The Chinefe monarchy is allowed to be the moft ancient on the earth; it is difficult to conceive that a go- Vjf vernment could fubjift 4000 years without the fupport of wife laws ; we want no other proofs of this than the records which afcertain the duration of the monarchy ^ and this Is admitted by Freret, and thofe who are moft converfant in Oriental erudition. The Chinefe furround the tombs of their emperors and great men with extenfive plantations; the Egyptians prohibited inter ments wherever a tree could grow. This, brought 204 OF THE EGYPTIAN &C. brought to prove a Jinking contrqft in the cuftoms of the two people, perhaps is nothing more than a proof of the different 'value of land in the two countries. OF OF THE RELIGION OF THE EGYPTIANS. A HE Egyptians acknowledged an intelli gent Being, diftinft from matter, by the name of PHTHA, fabricator of the world, but not the creator of matter. Here our author flops Jhort^fo far as relates to the origin and government of the world, the firfl fprings of religion. A principle of this kind could not have been unproductive; if its fruits have perifhed in their native foil we mufl look for them in the regions into which they were tranfplanted. Anaxagoras pajfed into Egypt to fludy philofophy, as was the cuflom with his countrymen; on his return to Greece, he brought with him a fyflem fo entirely new, that 206 OF THE RELIGION that the Greeks, ever delighting in novelties, ralfed ftatues to his honour, and dijiinguifhed him by the title of N,-/fo Intelligence. The heads of his fyjiem are the following: Two things were from eternity, Mind and Matter. Thefe two beings clearly diftincJ. Matter extended without thought, motion, or order; but divided into parts extremely minute, and pojfeffed of qualities contrary and unalterable. Mind was Jtmple, without material extenjlon, having In itfelf thought, activity, and an exe cutive power over matter. An infinite time had pajffed before the for mation of the world. The Sovereign Mind, feeing that order was better than confufion, refolved at loft on the meafure. " Anaxa- " goras mentis infinite vi et ratione rerum " omnium OF THE EGYPTIANS. 207 " omnium modum et defcriptionem defignari " et confici voluit." The Mind watches over men with a parti cular attention ',for them it was that the world was made. Their country is heaven, to which they are to be recalled, if by their virtue they deferve it. The bodies of the firft animals, confequently that of man, were formed out of earth, tem pered with moifture and heat; after this, the individuals generated others, each in their 'own kind.* Neither fun, moon, nor Jiars, are gods or demons, or animated bodies', they are folid majfesfet in motion by Intelligence, thefole caufe of motion. Diog. Laer. TTr7 Why 208 OF THE RELIGION Why did GOD form the world at fo late a -period how^ imprefs motion how could mat ter conform Itfelf to order- what is that which continues the motion of Jtars, earthy .and heaven? Preffed on t-hefe points, Anax- agoras refolded all Into the will and pleafure cftheFirft Caufe. So Newton, when preffed to explain the nature of attraction. It muft be confeffed, that there is a Jinking 4 agreement (the creation of matter excepted} be tween this and the Mofalc-fyftem. Whether the Jews borrowed from the Egyptians, or the Egyp tians from the Jews, is a quejllon Into which I Jhall not enter further, than to exprefs my fur- prife that this ever Jhould have been a queftlon. Let us pafs to a more pleafing invejligation. OS-I-RIS, in Coptic, fignifies Conformator; I-sis, Formarum Receptaculum perfonifica- tions of Mind and Matter By which, the firft OF THE EGYPTIANS. 209 Jirji principles of tKeir philofophy 'were ralfed by the Egyptians into the highejl objeds of their ip.*. The fublime of Pagan theology. * Setting out onthefe principles, of which they were the inventors, tHe Egyptians muft have followed them throughout their confequences, and. of courfe, have credit for whatever is contained in the preceding flate- ments by Anaxagoras. Plato followed Anaxagoras, in his obligations to the Egyptians : but, too confcious of his powers to confine himfej ^wholly to the thoughts of others, he added many of his own, and in this courfe, "being often at va riance. with'his originals, and as often with himfelf, his philofophy became a feries of incoherences. But he well knew that, with his countrymen, vivacity in the' conception, and elegance in the diftion, would fully fupply the want of confiftency, and of fyftem. Was }t not one of the eccentricities of the Greek character, that the Athenians, ever conftant to truth and nature in matters of tafte, mould be addicted to levity in matters of reafoning? Hence their predilec tion for Plato, in oppofition to Ariflotle, whom they did not love ; yet in whom was united, to their reproach and his own honour, an exquifite tafle, with the molt profound ratiocination. p The 210 OF THE RELIGION The Gymnofophifts of Africa acknow ledged one Creator, incomprehenfibie in his nature, but intelligible in his works; this was the origin of fymbolic worfhip. The worfhip of ferpents, very general throughout Africa, obtains at this day in many parts. The eneph, a fnake, emblem of 'divine goodnefs the viper, of power; hence the diadem of the Pharaohs was adorned with this emblem. The Egyptians perfonified the divine wif- dom under the name of Nciph, reprefemed fpringing out of the body of a lion; the manifeft prototype of the Greek Minerva fpringing from the head of "Jupiter emblem of the union of uiposy* and the tircum* fion of the Egyptians** JL O thefe points of coincidence I fhall here add two or three more of a chara&er more curious and interefling* a M. De Guines, by his proficiency in Chinefe lite rature, has been enabled to clear up many obfcure points in the hiftory of the Orientals ; among the reft, he has difcovered that the Chinefe, in the 6th and 7th century, . vifited the coafts of America from California down to Peru ; the Chinefe being timid and confined navigators, in later ages, is no material objection : fimilar changes in the characters of nations are not unfrequent in the hiftory of the world. b The learned Sir John Marfham has proved, that was a common practice of the Egyptians many C 4 3 It is the opinion of the natives of fome iflands in the South Seas, [fee Cooke's Voyage] that the fouls of thpfe whofe flelh is devoured by the enemy are doomed to burn for ever> in the next world: hence they fight with the utmoft fury to carry off the bodies of the flain. The Greeks and Trojans did the fame, and, it is probable j that this ufage had its origin in the fame principle; refined by time into a point of honour. oio/n *D}jjt"u;do r> 'io -K^'iorn tj^ifl? io ovn bbj; But, who could expeft to find among the fame Iflanders a perfeft coincidence with the dramatic Saltatio of the Greeks and Romans, and, which is (till more furprifing, a precife counterpart of the Greek dramatic chorus? many ages before Abraham vifited Egypt. It is not for me to point out the objeft or confequence of this proof; it is well known to the learned; and, for the un lettered, it is better they mould know nothing more about it ol< 5 ^^ ms/fttfiM nIo[ 118 enshqv^a ttfo lq Vnfc' c 5 : On firft reading the account ^given by Capt. Cooke of the imitative dances of thofe Iflanders, I fancied that I had before me a defcription by Scaliger or Voffius of the mi metic powers of a Pylades, or a Bathyllus. A chorus expreffing in a mufical recita tive, governed by a ftrift obfervance of time and meafure, its fentiments on fome interefl- ing action or event: its movements in a femi- circle, from right to left, and from left to right, (the ftrophe and anthtrophe of the Greek:) the refponfes of actors, from the profcenium, now, to the chorus; now, to its prolocutor: and laftly, the afliftants join ing in a general accompaniment, when mod affected by what was palling on the fcene : all thefe form a whole, a happy image of the early Drama, jufl as x it came out of the waggon of Thefpis, PAGE C 6 3 PAGE v ' *? i. -", ., Eternal no Firft Caufe. JL HE earliefl philofophers, wedded to their maxim ex nihilo nihilfit^ would not hear of a creation of matter: hence they fell into the fimple and obvious conception of a world exifting from all eternity. With refpeft to. a diflin&ion between fpirit and matter, they were of opinion, that matter, fo modified as to be pofTeffed of motion and thought, might as well be a caufafui^ or firft exiflence, as a fpirit, which fhould have the power of be* flowing thought and motion on matter ; this led them to the conclufion that fpirit and mas ter, that is, all things, were one; and that one was the world, which they called God * the TO iv of the Greeks, borrowed by them from C 7 3 from the Egyptians, and thus fet off by -a Roman poet: Eftne Dei fedes niii terra, ct pontus, et aer, Et ccelum, et virtus? Superos quid quaerimus ultra? Jupiter eft quodcunque vides, quocunque moveris. Luc. PHAR. The anima mundi was but an apparent feparation of caufe and effeft; a fimple copy of the human exiftence, confiding of two principles, foul and body, mind and matter, yet making, in faft, but one being i totamq; infufa per artus Mens agitat molem, et magno fe corpore mifcet. This, however, was a flep towards the di vine intelligence, or va?, which was introdu ced into Greece by Anaxagoras, and which, to the happy c conception of Plato, accordr c Happy, indeed, had he not difgraced his better thoughts by repeated inconfiftencies and contradi&ions 2 but, C 8 ] ing to his admirers, came little fliort of Re velation. ' ' t 'i''i*i 3S-' r ?".i)jtOG 1"> t&TiiJ} . 5I It is obvious, that the admiflion of a Firft Caufe under any form or defcription, tnuft be incompatible with the idea of a felf-exift- ing world: this flood full in the way of Spinoza, as it hac)done of the earlieft phi- lofophers : but he could not enter into the proofs of his hypothecs without feparating but, his countrymen were fanatics in thecaufe of Poly- theifm; and he did not choofe to take hemlock. Yet, it is remarkable, that the Athenians never per- fecuted the Stoic or Epicurean for his theological opi nions; they owed their chief glory in the fciences to thofe two fchools : Socrates was of neither ; they put him to death. They would have done the fame by Anaxagoras, for having advanced that the fun was larger than Peloponnefus, had not his protector Pericles fnatched him out of their hands. the C 9 3 the author* 1 or agent from his work; that is, without making them two, while he pro- fefTed to prove that they are but one: no matter; in defiance to the contradiction, he adopts the meafure, and involves himfelf in a d This has involved him in another grofs contradic tion, having aflerted, in one of his preliminary propofi- tions, that action is incompatible with the divine nature for, fays he, aftion implies choice; choice, doubt; and there cannot be doubt where intelligence is infinite: thus by a fmgle ftroke of his logic, he reduces the Su preme Being into an abfolute cypher. Epicurus was not fo deep in mataphyfics : the quiet- ifm of his gods was the refult, not of neceffity, but of Scilicet is fuperis labor eft, ex cura quietos Solicitat Was it not rather too bold an anachronifm to make Dido, at the era of the Trojan war, an epicurean in her philofophy? In her morals, well and good; they be long to all ages; there could be no violation of the coftume in them. procefs, C 10 ] procefs, which proclaims, at its outfet, that his fyftem is founded in an abfurdity, pir :!>oo jfjd. W .. ysifa ;&&% s&cn ^ o^-ibsS:*? Obferve the tenor of this procefs : " Somc- " thing muft have exifted from all eternity; cc it is acknowledged, that fpirit is that Ifr ?Vi "?G 'V">'fl* '-, / f> >i < X,- 6^ x - J-? / '* p?/y^ ^ C^v^^i^ 2.1 I i /V / /i j - . Afc '4/. ^