Page:A voyage round the world, in His Britannic Majesty's sloop, Resolution, commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the years 1772, 3, 4, and 5 (IA b30413849 0001).pdf/21

Rh to censure and mutilation, before it is offered to the public.

The philosophers of the present age, to obviate the seeming contradictions in the accounts of different travellers, have been at the trouble to select certain authors in whom they have placed confidence, and rejected as fabulous the assertions of all the rest. Without being competent judges of the subject, they have assumed a few circumstances as facts; and wresting even those to suit their own systems, have built a superstructure which pleases at a distance, but upon nearer examination partakes of the illusive nature of a dream. The learned, at last grown tired of being deceived by the powers of rhetoric, and by sophistical arguments, raised a general cry after a simple collection of facts. They had their wish; facts were collected in all parts of the world, and yet knowledge was not increased. They received a confused heap of disjointed limbs, which no art could reunite into a whole; and the rage of hunting after facts soon rendered them incapable of forming and resolving a single proposition; like those minute enquirers, whose life is wholly spent in the anatomical dissection of flies, from whence they never draw a single conclusion for the use of mankind, or even of brutes. Besides this, two travellers seldom saw the same object in the same manner, and each reported the fact differently, according to his sensa- tions,