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This stubborn Enlightenment faith in firsthand observation, rather than in received opinion, extended to everything Cook did. As a navigator, he remained unswayed by “expert” theories about the existence of a southern continent. So, too, as an observer of strange lands, he suspended judgment about cannibalistic Maori or naked Aborigines whom men of superior education and social standing regarded as “brutes.” Also, having experienced class prejudice, Cook may have seen value in a life undisturbed “by the Inequality of Condition” in a way that Banks could not.
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