or attrition, was discovered by chance: But its first effects
would naturally strike those to whom it was a new object, with
consternation and terror: It would appear to be an enemy to life and
nature, and to torment and destroy whatever was capable of being
destroyed or tormented; and therefore it seems not easy to conceive
what should incline those who first saw it receive a transient existence
from chance, to reproduce it by design. It is by no means probable that
those who first saw fire, approached it with the same caution, as those
who are familiar with its effects, so as to be warmed only and not
burnt; and it is reasonable to think that the intolerable pain which, at
its first appearance, it must produce upon ignorant curiosity, would sow
perpetual enmity between this element and mankind; and that the same
principle which incites them to crush a serpent, would incite them to
destroy fire, and avoid all means by which it would be produced, as soon
as they were known. These circumstances considered, how men became
sufficiently familiar with it to render it useful, seems to be a problem
very difficult to solve: Nor is it easy to account for the first
application of it to culinary purposes, as the eating both animal and
vegetable food raw, must have become a habit, before there was fire to
dress it, and those who have considered the force of habit will readily
believe, that to men who had always eaten the flesh of animals raw, it
would be as disagreeable dressed, as to those who have always eaten it
dressed, it would be raw. It is remarkable that the inhabitants of Terra
del Fuego produce fire from a spark by collision, and that the happier
natives of this country, New Zealand and Otaheite, produce it by the
attrition of one combustible substance against another: Is there not
then some reason to suppose that these different operations correspond
with the manner in which chance produced fire in the neighbourhood of
the torrid and frigid zones? Among the rude inhabitants of a cold
country, neither any operation of art, or occurrence of accident, could
be supposed so easily to produce fire by attrition, as in a climate
where every thing is hot, dry, and adust, teeming with a latent fire
which a slight degree of motion was sufficient to call forth; in a cold
country therefore, it is natural to suppose that fire was produced by
the accidental collision of two metallic substances, and in a cold
country, for that reason, th