enevolent person, when the disputes about a
southern continent shall have ceased to engage the attention and to
divide the judgment of philosophers."[56]

[Footnote 56: 34: Cook's second voyage.]

5. But while our late voyages have opened so many channels to an
increase of knowledge in the several articles already enumerated; while
they have extended our acquaintance with the contents of the globe;
while they have facilitated old tracks, and opened new ones for
commerce; while they have been the means of improving the skill of the
navigator, and the science of the astronomer; while they have procured
to us so valuable accessions in the several departments of natural
history, and furnished such opportunities of teaching us how to preserve
the healths and lives of seamen, let us not forget another very
important object of study, for which they have afforded to the
speculative philosopher ample materials; I mean the study of human
nature in various situations, equally interesting as they are uncommon.

However remote or secluded from frequent intercourse with more polished
nations the inhabitants of any parts of the world be, if history or our
own observation should make it evident that they have been formerly
visited, and that foreign manners and opinions, and languages, have been
blended with their own, little use can be made of what is observed
amongst such people toward drawing a real picture of man in his natural
uncultivated state. This seems to be the situation of the inhabitants of
most of the islands that lie contiguous to the continent of Asia, and of
whose manners and institutions the Europeans, who occasionally visit
them, have frequently given us accounts. But the islands which our
enterprising discoverers visited in the centre of the South Pacific
Ocean, and are indeed the principal scenes of their operations, were
untrodden ground. The inhabitants, as far as could be observed, were
unmixed with any different tribe, by occasional intercourse, subsequent
to their original settlement there; left entirely to their own powers
for every art of life, and to their own remote traditions for every
political or religions custom or institution; uninformed by science;
unimproved by education; in short, a fit soil from whence a careful
observer could collect facts for forming a judgment, how far unassisted
human nature will be apt to degenerate, and in what respects it can ever
be able to excel. Who could have thought,