ion; if he found inhabitants
cultivated with arts and sciences, though even upon that supposition
there are odds against their being theists, yet could he not safely,
till further enquiry, pronounce any thing on that head; but if he found
them ignorant and barbarous, he might beforehand declare them idolaters;
and there is scarcely a possibility of his being mistaken." He might
have said with perfect confidence, that a traveller would scarcely find
one person in a thousand amid all the tribes of the earth, who was
entitled to be considered as a pure theist, or at least, who was
single-minded in the exercise of his religious devotion. The generality
of mankind, in short, are like a certain people of old,--they fear the
Lord, and worship their own gods. Then again as to the disinterestedness
of the Otaheitan devotees, Dr Hawkesworth egregiously blunders--as if it
were conceivable, or any way natural, that they or any other people
could possibly serve their divinities without entertaining the hope that
they should be served by them in turn. This were to exceed even Homer in
his exaggerating human nature at the expence of the gods. That poet puts
a curious speech in the mouth of Dione, the mother of Venus, when
addressing her daughter, who had been wounded by Diomede:--

My child! how hard soe'er thy sufferings seem,
Endure them patiently, since many a wrong
From human hands profane the gods endure,
And many a painful stroke mankind from ours.

But Dr H. it is probable, had embraced the fanatical and monstrous
notion of some specialists, that God and religion were to be loved for
their own sakes; not because of the benefits they confer; and he wished
to exalt the characters of these islanders by representing them as
acting on it. This, however, is as irrational in itself, as it is
impracticable by such a creature as man. Self-love, directed by wisdom,
is perhaps the best principle that can actuate him. Considering
scripture as an authority, there is a high degree of commendation
implied in what is said of Moses by an apostle, when speaking of his
faith and obedience, and accounting for it, "he had respect unto the
recompence of reward;" and of one higher than Moses it is related, that,
"for the joy set before him, (certainly not then possessed,) he endured
the cross." Were man always to act from a sense of what he has received,
and the hope of what he may receive, he would never do wrong. He, on the
other hand