FIRST EDITION. XiX 



quence, from facts confidently asserted; he suspects not, or, 

 -if he suspects, is cautious of asserting, that the foundation it- 

 self (as it frequently happens) is without support; that no 

 such facts actually exist, or, if existing, are accidental and lo- 

 cal peculiarities only, not premises of sufficient extent and 

 importance whereon to ground general conclusions and sys- 

 tematical combination. 



I have been induced to make this remark from perusing the 

 speculations of Mons. Buffon and some other French theorists, 

 on the condition and character of the American nations. Whe- 

 ther from a desire to lessen the strong abhorrence of all man- 

 kind at the cruelties exercised by the Spaniards in the conquest 

 of the New World, or from a strange affectation of paradox 

 and singularity, falsely claiming the honours of philosophy, 

 those writers have ventured to assert, that the air and climate, 

 or other -physical phenomena, retar4 the growth of animated 

 nature in the New Hemisphere, and prevent the natives from 

 attaining to that perfection at which mankind arrive in the 

 other quarters of the globe. Notwithstanding the variety of 

 soil, climate, and seasons, which prevail in -the several great 

 provinces of North and South America ; --notwithstanding 

 that the aboriginal inhabitants were divided into a great many 

 different tribes, and distinguished also by many different lan- 

 guages; it is pretended that ali those various tribes were uni- 

 formly inferior, in the faculties of the mind and the capacity 

 of improvement, to the rest of the human species; that they 

 were creatures of no consideration in the book of nature; de- 

 nied the refined invigorating sentiment of love, -and not pos- 

 sessing even any very powerful degree of animal desire to- 

 wards multiplying their species. The author of a system in- 

 titled * Recherches Philosophiques sur Ics Americains\ de- 

 clares, with unexampled arrogance, that there n&y*ir has been 

 found, throughout the whole extent of the New World, a 

 single individual of superior sagacity to the rest. And the 

 scope of his treatise is to demonstrate, that the poor savages 

 were actuated not -by re?.son, but by a sort of animal instinct; 



