y the charge.

[Footnote 177: In two or three preceding notes, extracts have been made
from the Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses, as marking a strong
resemblance between some of the customs of the inhabitants of the
Caroline Islands, and those which Captain Cook describes as prevailing
at an immense distance, in the islands which he visited in the South
Pacific Ocean. Possibly, however, the presumption arising from this
resemblance, that all these islands were peopled by the same nation, or
tribe, may be resisted, under the plausible pretence, that customs very
similar prevail amongst very distant people, without inferring any other
common source, besides the general principles of human nature, the same
in all ages, and every part of the globe. The reader, perhaps, will not
think this pretence applicable to the matter before us, if he attends to
the following very obvious distinction: Those customs which have their
foundation in wants that are common to the whole human species, and
which are confined to the contrivance of means to relieve those wants,
may well be supposed to bear a strong resemblance, without warranting
the conclusion, that they who use them have copied each other, or have
derived them from one common source; human sagacity being the same every
where, and the means adapted to the relief of any particular natural
want, especially in countries similarly uncultivated, being but few.
Thus the most distant tribes, as widely separated as the Kamtschadales
are from the Brazilians, may produce their fire by rubbing two sticks
upon each other, without giving us the least foundation for supposing,
that either of them imitated the other, or derived the invention from a
source of instruction common to both. But this seems not to be the case,
with regard to those customs to which no general principle of human
nature has given birth, and which have their establishment solely from
the endless varieties of local whim and national fashion. Of this latter
kind, those customs obviously are, that belong both to the North and to
the South Pacific Islands, from which we would infer, that they were
originally one nation; and the men of Mangeea, and the men of the New
Philippines, who pay their respects to a person whom they mean to
honour, by rubbing his hand over their faces, bid fair to have learnt
their mode of salutation in the same school. But if this observation
should not have removed the doubts of the sceptical refiner,