In _Samson Agonistes_ Dalila comes in, "Like a stately ship ...
With all her bravery on and tackle trim Sails frilled and streamers waving Courted by all the winds that hold them play." and Samson speaks of himself as one who, "Like a foolish pilot have shipwracked My vessel trusted to me from above Gloriously rigged." The influence of the voyages of discovery persisted long after the first bloom of the Renaissance had flowered and withered.

On the reports brought home by the voyagers were founded in part those conceptions of the condition of the "natural" man which form such a large part of the philosophic discussions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Hobbes's description of the life of nature as "nasty, solitary, brutish, and short," Locke's theories of civil government, and eighteenth century speculators like Monboddo all took as the basis of their theory the observations of the men of travel.

Abroad this connection of travellers and philosophers was no less intimate.

Both Montesquieu and Rousseau owed much to the tales of the Iroquois, the North American Indian allies of France.

Locke himself is the best example of the closeness of this alliance.