Chap. Vill. AN TIENT METAPHYSICS. 85 



affociated, cannot be happy in any clrcumflances or fituation ; bur, 

 in certain circumftances, may be moft miferable, and at the fame 

 time the wildeft and moft lavage animal on this earth. This I will 

 fhow, by the example of a people in South America, known by the 

 name of Paraguaife ; from whofe hiftory we may alfo learn this moft 

 important leffon, how men are to be recovered from fo defperate a.- 

 ftate, and arts and civility introduced among them. It is an event, 

 the moft remarkable, I think, in modern hiftory ; and we have an 

 account of it from two authors, firft Charlevoix the Jefuit, who 

 has given a very full and circumftantial account of it in three 

 quarto volumes ; and then Muratori^ who has given us a (hort, 

 but very diftin(£l account of the civilifing, or as it may be called^ 

 the humanifing of thofe favages. His hiftory I confider as an ex- 

 cellent abridgment of Charlevoix, though it was publiflied feveral 

 years before Charlevoix's work; and by many he will be thought 

 an author more worthy of credit, as he was no Jefuit, wheieas 

 Charlevoix, as I have faid, was a Jefuit, and on that account may 

 be thought partial to his brethern of that order, who were the prin- 

 cipal adors in this great work of making men and chriftians of the 

 moft favage people that I believe ever exifted. But, he has fup- 

 ported the truth of his hiftory by co[)ies of original ;vriting3, which 

 he has fubjoined to his 2d and 3d volumes, under the name of Fie- 

 ces yujiijicati'ues ; nor do I think that there is any good reafon to 

 doubt of any of the fads he relates, unlefs, perhaps, the miracles, 

 which he fays were wrought for the converfion of the favages, and 

 which, whether true or falfe, it was proper they ftiould believe^ 



The country of Paraguay, as defcribed by Charlevoix, is of prodJf 

 gious extent ; ftretching all the way from the lake Xarcies^ where the 

 river Paraguay rifes, (which gives its name to the people), along that 

 river, and as far fouth as the Straits of Magellan, and bop.nded by 



Brazil 



