wn of the arts among
them, before the invention of nets, and before the cultivation of
potatoes, the means of subsistence may have been more difficult, but
then the number of inhabitants must likewise have been infinitely
smaller. Single instances are not conclusive in this case, though they
prove how far the wants cf the body may stimulate mankind to
extraordinary actions. In 1772, during a famine which happened
throughout all Germany, a herdsman was taken on the manor of Baron
Boineburg, in Hessia, who had been urged by hunger to kill and devour
a boy, and afterwards to make a practice of it for several months.
From his confession, it appeared, that he looked upon the flesh of
young children as a very delicious food; and the gestures of the New
Zealanders indicated exactly the same thing. An old woman, in the
province of Matogrosso, in Brazil, declared to the Portuguese
governor, M. de Pinto, afterwards ambassador at the British court,
that she had eaten human flesh several times, liked it very much, and
should be very glad to feast upon it again, especially if it was part
of a little boy. But it would be absurd to suppose from such
circumstances, that killing men for the sake of feasting upon them,
has ever been the spirit of a whole nation; because it is utterly
incompatible with the existence of society. Slight causes have ever
produced the most remarkable events among mankind, and the most
trifling quarrels have fired their minds with incredible inveteracy
against each other. Revenge has always been a strong passion among
barbarians, who are less subject to the sway of reason, than civilized
people, and has stimulated them to a degree of madness, which is
capable of all kinds of excesses. The people who first consumed the
body of their enemies, seem to have been bent upon exterminating their
very inanimate remains, from an excess of passion; but, by degrees,
finding the meat wholesome and palatable, it is not to be wondered at
that they should make a practice of eating their enemies as often as
they killed any, since the action of eating human flesh, whatever our
education may teach us to the contrary, is certainly neither unnatural
nor criminal in itself. It can only become dangerous as far as it
steels the mind against that compassionate fellow-feeling, which is
the great basi