In all Seas are met numerous Incidents and Appearances, worthy our Reflection. I have therefore gone on to Observations more instructive and amusing. If the Solutions are not every where Standard, they may strike out Hints to better Capacities; among those, I can perceive two more liable to Objection.
First, The Pythagorean Soliloquy I set out with (p. 18.) which may be deemed too foreign for the Subject: To which I answer——A Voyage to Sea is a Type of that dark and unknown one we are to make in Death: Wherefore it is not unnatural with a Departure from the Land’s End of England, shooting into an Abyss of Waters, to consider a little on that Life, which lost is a Departure from the World’s End, and to launch into a greater Abyss, Eternity;—The Principle, in what is material of us, I think, highly consonant to Reason, and continues still the Doctrine of the Eastern Sages.
Diversæ autem corpora formæ non sunt nisi diversæ modificationes ejusdem materiæ, &c.
(Keil de legibus naturæ.)
E. G. Vapors condensed to Rain, we see descend on Earth; and both enter and pass into the Seeds and Forms of all Plants. From them, either taken alone, or amassed in animal Food, is what constitutes and repairs by a daily Eating, our own Bodies; which if there be any Trust to Sense or Reason, moulds, decays, and turns again to Dust and Air, in order for Regeneration.
What only can destroy this Philosophy (as I observe at that place) and maintain a Resurrection of the same Body, is Revelation, and the Immortality of the Soul; for Sameness, or Identity then, will not consist in the same individual Particles being united, that makes our Bodies here, (which we are sure are continually fluctuating, and changing while we live;) but on that Consciousness which the immaterial Part will give, though joined to Matter, taken from the Top of Olympus.
Secondly, The Denial of Canibals against the Authority of grave Authors, has proceeded from a Persuasion, that the Charge carries the highest Reproach on Humanity, and the Creator of it. My Aim, therefore, was to shew in the best manner I could, that the Accusation every where has probably proceeded from Fear in some, to magnify the Miracle of escaping an inhospitable and strange Country, and from Design in others, to justify Dispossession, and arm Colonies with Union and Courage against the supposed Enemies of Mankind. Conquest and Cruelty, by that means go on with pleasure on the People’s side, who are persuaded they are only subduing of brutish Nature, and exchanging, for their mutual Good, Spiritual for Temporal Inheritances. By particular and private Men, this may have been fixed on a People, to allay some base or villainous Actions of their own, that could not any other way be excused, or bear the Light: And for this, I appeal to the discerning part of our Traders, acquainted with Guinea, whether they do not think the Reports of Cape St. Mary’s Inhabitants, Cape Mont, Montzerado, Drewin, and Callabar, down-right Falsities, and impolitick ones; for the multiplying of Places, like Plots, in a great measure destroys the Use of them.
At the Caribbees again, it is full as preposterous; for on small Islands, had their Women bred like Rabbits, they must have been desolated Ages before the Europeans Arrival; unless we can suppose human Flesh was eat only on their Feast-Days; or that they just commenced Monsters upon our Discovery.——La Hontan, or some other French Translation I have read, talking of Canibals bordering on Canada, flies into a strange Gallicism, and makes them commend the Flesh of a Frenchman (sad Partiality) in Eating, as of finer Taste than that of an Englishman.
These, with Europeans neglecting to charge the East-Indians thus, who have more Power than simple Americans or Negroes to resent the Indignity and Reproach, makes me disbelieve the whole of what I have hitherto heard; and that the true Anthropophagi are only the diverse Insects infesting us in diverse Countries; the Pediculose Kind do not live in hot Climates; instead thereof, they are assaulted with a ravenous Fly called Muskito; Legions that live wild in the Woods, and seize with every Opportunity, human Flesh, like Lions.