Selected quad for the lemma: knowledge_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
knowledge_n	natural_a	nature_n	supernatural_a	1,381	5	10.6365	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A70052	A new discovery of Terra incognita Australis, or, The southern world, by James Sadeur, a French-man, who being cast there by a shipwrack, lived 35 years in that country and gives a particular description of the manners, customs, religion, laws, studies and wars of those southern people, and of some animals peculiar to that place ... translated from the French copy ...; Terre australe connue. English	Foigny, Gabriel de, ca. 1630-1692.	1693 (1693)	Wing F1395; ESTC R20648	83,070	196

enlarged much to prove that the Subjection of one Man to another was a Subjection of the humane Nature and making a Man a sort of Slave to himself which Slavery implyed such a Contradiction and violence as was impossible to conceive He added that the Essence of Man consisting in Liberty it could not be taken away without destroying him and therefore he that would take away anothers Liberty did tacitly bid him to subsist without his own Essence Our Conference lasted above four hours and if the hour of publick Assembly had not interrupted as we were in a disposition to have discours'd much longer I entred the Hab with a mind full of ●ll the reasoning which I had heard admiring the Knowledge and great Light wherewith this People were endu'd The strength of this Mans Reasons suspended my Senses and I past the time of this Assembly in a kind of an Astonishment it seem'd to me that I saw things after another Fashion than before I was for above Eight Hours as it were forc'd to make continual Comparisons betwixt what I was and what I saw I could not but admire a Conduct so apposite to our defective one that I was asham'd to remember how far we were from the perfection of these People I said in my self can it be true that we are not all made Men but added I If it is not so what is the difference of these People from us They are by the ordinary state of Life elevated to a pitch of a Vertue which we cannot attain but by the greatest efforts of our most noble Ideas Our best Morality is not capable of better Reasoning nor more exactness than what they practice Naturally without Rules and without Precepts this Vnion which nothing can alter this distance from Worldly Goods this inviolable Purity in a word this adherence to strict Reason which unites them amongst themselves and carries them to what is good and just can't but be the Fruits of a consummate Vertue than which we can conceive nothing more perfect but on the contrary how many Vices and Imperfections are we not subject to This insatiable thirst after Riches these continual dissentions these black Treasons bloody Conspiracies and cruel Butcheries which we are continually exercising towards one another don 't these things force us to acknowledge that we are guided by Passion rather than Reason Is it not to be wisht that in this Estate one of these Men which we may call Barbarians would come to disabuse us and appear in so much Vertue as they practice purely by their Natural Light to confound the Vanity which we draw from our pretended Knowledge and by the assistance of which we only live like Beasts CHAP. VI. Of the Religion of the Australians THere is no Subject more curious and secret among the Australians than that of their Religion 't is a crime of Innovation even to speak of it either by Dispute or a Form of Explanation even the Mothers do with the first Principles of Knowledge inspire into the Child that of the Hab that is to say incomprehensible They believe that this Incomprehensible Being is every where and they have all imaginable Veneration for him but they recommend carefully to the young Men to Adore him always without speaking of him and they are perswaded that it was a very great Crime to make his Divine Perfections the Subject of their Discourses so that one may in a manner say that their great Religion is not to speak of Religion As I had been brought up in Maxims very different from theirs I could have no gust in a Worship without Ceremonies nor accommodate my self to a Religion where I never heard the Name of God mentioned This caused great disquiet in me for some time but at length I discover'd my troubles to my Old Phylosopher who having heard me took me by the hand and conducting me into a Walk he said to me with a very gave Air Is it possible that you should be more a Man in the knowledge of the Hab than in your other Actions open thy Heart and I promise thee to conceal nothing from thee I was ravisht to find such a favourable opportunity to learn the particular Faith of these People I then told my Old Man that we had two sorts of the Knowledge of God in Europe the one Natural the other supernatural Nature instructed us that there was a Soveraign Being the Author and Preserver of all things I can see this Truth added I with my Eyes when I behold the Earth view tbe Heavens or reflect upon my self when I see such things as are not made but by a Superiour Cause I am obliged to acknowledge and adore a Being which cannot be made and which made all things else When I consider my self I am assured that I could not be without a beginning therefore it follows that a person like me would not give me to be and by consequence this puts me upon seeking out a first Being who having had no Beginning must be the Original of all other things When my Reason conducted me to this first Principle I concluded evidently that this Being cannot be limited because limits suppose a necessity of production and dependance The Old Man interrupting my discourse in my last words told me with many fine Remarks that if our Europeans could form this reasoning they were not altogether depriv'd of the most solid Knowledge I always reasoned thus with my self added he as thou hast done and altho' the way of ariving to this Truth by these kind of Reflections be extreamly long yet I am perswaded that 't is feasible I confess nevertheless that the great Revolutions of many thousand Ages may have caused great Alteration in what we see but my Mind permits me not from hence either to conceive an Eternity or apprehend a General production without the Conduct of a Soveraign Being who is the Supream Governour for this would be an Abuse upon him and charge him with Error amongst a thousand Revolutions if we averr that all we see happned by the fortuitous rancounters which have had no other principles but that of local motion and the justling together of little small Bodies This is to perplex one's self in such difficulties as we can never resolve and to put us in danger of committing an Execrable Blasphemy this is to give to the Creature what belongs to the Creator and by consequence to repay him with an insupportable ingratitude to whom we are obliged for what we are and have Even at what time we conceive that the Eternity of Atoms is possible it is certain the contrary opinion is no less not to say more probable This would be as wilful a Crime as to admit that Atoms are capable of sentiment and knowledge 'T was these Considerations that oblig'd us about 45 Revolutions since to suppose a first Being and to teach it as the foundation of all our Principles without suffering that any one should teach any Doctrine which

A New Discovery OF Terra Incognita Australis OR THE Southern World BY James Sadeur a French-man WHO Being Cast there by a Shipwrack lived 35 years in that Country and gives a particular Description of the Manners Customs Religion Laws Studies and Wars of those Southern People and of some Animals peculiar to that Place with several other Rarities These Memoirs were thought so curious that they were kept Secret in the Closet of a late Great Minister of State and never Published till now since his Death Translated from the French Copy Printed at Paris by Publick Authority April 8. 1693. Imprimatur Charles Hein London Printed for John Dunton at the Raven in the Poultry 1693. THE PREFACE OF THE French Publisher THO the surprising Adventures of Mr. Sadeur and the Discovery of the Country of which you are going to read the particulars be things very Extraordinary yet 't is supposed the Reader will not much scruple to believe them when he shall be informed that a Southern unknown Land has been talkt of these 200 Years He will only wonder that since the world is now so well furnished with numbers of such skillful and curious Travellers how it should have continued so long undiscover'd and he will judge not without sufficient Grounds that they which have attempted this discovery have either been Lost in their Voyage or been Killed by the Inhabitants of the Country after they had entred it as Sadeur had been himself had it not been for the signal he gave of a prodigious Bravery and Courage before the eyes of the Australians by fighting against animals of a monstrous strength and bigness which so charmed those people who are naturally very brave themselves that they granted him the priviledge to live among them contrary to the most solemn Laws of their Country The Birth of Sadeur and his Education his Misfortunes and Shipwracks will appear to all the World as effects of a Destiny that designed him to be born for no other purpose but to be conducted afterward into that unknown Country of which we had no true Relation before his time It is true that Magellan attributed to himself the honour of having discovered this Country in the year 1520 under the name of Terra de Fugo or the Land of Five But the Hollanders have clearly convinced us that he discovered certain Islands that depend rather upon America than Australia Mark Paul the Venetian has likewise enjoyed for a considerable time the Glory of this Discovery because that being driven by a Tempest a great way beyond the Island of Java he discovered the Kingdom of Maletur the Province of Beach the Isle of Petau and another Isle which he named the Lesser Java But the Hollanders which have since settled themselves in the Greater Java and who drive all the Commerce there assure us by all their Relations that all the Countries that Pilot saw are nothing but a great cluster of many Islands that no where joyn to the Southern Continent and that is so much the more probable because Ferdinando Galego having Roved all about that Great Sea from the Strait of Magellan to the Molucca Islands reports that it is stowed with such a multitude of Islands that he counted above a thousand It is likewise true that upon comparing the Description that Ferdinando de Quir a Portugal gives of the Southern Continent with that which is contained in this Book it must needs be allowed that he hath made some Discovery of that Country For we read in his eighth Request to the King of Spain that in the Discoveries which he made in the year 1610 of the Southern Country called here Australia he found a Country much more Fertile and Populous than any in Europe that the inhabitants were much Biger and Taller than the Europeans and that they lived much longer than they And Lewis Paes de Morres who was Admiral of the Fleet of the said Ferdinando confirmed to the Councel of Spain the truth of Doaduir's Relation adding that the Air was so healthy in that Country and so conformable to the Temper of Man that people there as freely slept by Moon-light as by Day-light on the bare Earth and that not only without any incommodity but with pleasure That the Fruits there were so excellent and nourishing that the inhabitants sought no other food that they drank a much more pleastant Liquor than Wine that they knew not the use of Cloaths and that the study of Natural Knowledge was there very much Cultivated But notwithstanding all that we must needs grant on the other hand that they had but a very superficial knowledge of that Country and that what they have said of it might serve indeed to stir up the Curiosity that many had already to know it but could no way satisfie the Appetite it had raised in them with any solid and particular Account 'T is therefore to our Sadeur whose Relation here follows that we are wholly obliged for the Discovery of this before Unknown Country And I doubt not but many persons will be surprized that the name of a man to whom the World is so much beholding should lye so long concealed in obscurity as well as the particulars of his Rare Discovery But their surprize will undoubtedly cease when they shall know that the Memoirs from which this Relation was composed were long kept private in the Cabinet of a Late Great Minister of State from whence they could not be had till after his Death A Table of the Chapters CHap. 1. Of Sadeur's Birth and Education Chap. 2. Of Sadeur's Voyage to Congo Chap. 3. Of the accidents which brought Sadeur into Australia Chap. 4. A Description of Australia with a Geographical Map of the said-Country Chap. 5. Of the Constitution of the Australians and of their Customs Chap. 6. Of the Religion of the Australians Chap. 7. Of the Opinion of the Australians concerning this Life Chap. 8. Of the Exercises of the Australians Chap. 9. Of the Australian Tongue and of their Studies Chap. 10. Of the Animals or living Creatures peculiar to Australia Chap. 11. Of Australian Commodities and Rarities that might be useful to Europe Chap. 12. Of the ordinary Wars of the Australians Chap. 13. Of the Return of Sadeur to the Island of Madagascar Chap. 14. Of the stay that Sadeur made in Madagascar and the occurrences that happened in that time A New Discovery OF THE Southern World CHAP. I. Of the Birth and Education of Sadeur AS 't is impossible to reflect upon all the adventures of my Life without admiring the prodigious variety of Events which have accompanied it so I believed I ought to make a Collection and from thence remark all the most considerable Instances for altho I have yet no opportunities to send them into my own Countrey nor see any probability of returning thither yet I believe I cannot do better than commit them to writing for the frequent assistance of my Memory and