36 cook's first voyage march, 



the necessity that produced it: after the practice 

 has been once begun on one side by hunger, it 

 will naturally be adopted on the other by revenge. 

 Nor is this all, for though it may be pretended, by 

 some who wish to appear speculative and philoso- 

 phical, that whether the dead body of an enemy 

 be eaten or buried is in itself a matter perfectly 

 indifferent; as it is, whether the breasts or thighs of 

 a woman should be covered or naked ; and that pre- 

 judice and habit only make us shudder at the vio- 

 lation of custom in one instance, and blush at it in 

 the other : yet, leaving this as a point of doubtful 

 disputation, to be discussed at leisure, it may safely 

 be affirmed, that the practice of eating human flesh, 

 whatever it may be in itself, is relatively, and in its 

 consequences, most pernicious ; tending manifestly 

 to eradicate a principle which is the chief security 

 of human life, and more frequently restrains the hand 

 of murder than the sense of duty, or even the fear 

 of punishment. 



Among those who are accustomed to eat the dead, 

 death must have lost much of its horror ; and where 

 there is little horror at the sight of death, there will 

 not be much repugnance to kill. A sense of duty, 

 and fear of punishment, may be more easily sur- 

 mounted than the feelings of nature, or those which 

 have been ingrafted upon nature by early prejudice 

 and uninterrupted custom. The horror of the mur- 

 derer arises less from the guilt of the fact, than its 

 natural effect ; and he who has familiarised the ef- 

 fect, will consequently lose much of the horror. By 

 our laws, and our religion, murder and theft incur 

 the same punishment, both in this world and the 

 next , yet, of the multitude who would deliberately 

 steal, there are but very few who would deliberately 

 kill, even to procure much greater advantage. But 

 there is the strongest reason to believe, that those who 

 nave been so accustomed to prepare a human body 

 for a meal, that they can with as little feeling cut 



