so far from minding chimeras, and fantastical images made in
the mind, that none of them could comprehend what we meant when we
talked to them of a man in the abstract, as common to all men in
particular (so that though we spoke of him as a thing that we could
point at with our fingers, yet none of them could perceive him), and yet
distinct from every one, as if he were some monstrous Colossus or
giant. Yet for all this ignorance of these empty notions, they knew
astronomy, and were perfectly acquainted with the motions of the
heavenly bodies, and have many instruments, well contrived and divided,
by which they very accurately compute the course and positions of the
sun, moon, and stars. But for the cheat, of divining by the stars by
their oppositions or conjunctions, it has not so much as entered into
their thoughts. They have a particular sagacity, founded upon much
observation, in judging of the weather, by which they know when they may
look for rain, wind, or other alterations in the air; but as to the
philosophy of these things, the causes of the saltness of the sea, of
its ebbing and flowing, and of the original and nature both of the
heavens and the earth; they dispute of them, partly as our ancient
philosophers have done, and partly upon some new hypothesis, in which,
as they differ from them, so they do not in all things agree among
themselves.

As to moral philosophy, they have the same disputes among them as we
have here: they examine what are properly good both for the body and the
mind, and whether any outward thing can be called truly good, or if that
term belong only to the endowments of the soul. They inquire likewise
into the nature of virtue and pleasure; but their chief dispute is
concerning the happiness of a man, and wherein it consists? Whether in
some one thing, or in a great many? They seem, indeed, more inclinable
to that opinion that places, if not the whole, yet the chief part of a
man's happiness in pleasure; and, what may seem more strange, they make
use of arguments even from religion, notwithstanding its severity and
roughness, for the support of that opinion so indulgent to pleasure; for
they never dispute concerning happiness without fetching some arguments
from the principles of religion, as well as from natural reason, since
without the former they reckon that all our inquiries after happiness
must be but conjectural and defective.

These are their religious principles, that the soul