Bougainville, Diderot and The Earthly Paradise

Denis Diderot accompanied Louis Antoine de Bougainville, the explorer, navigator and mathematician, on his global circumnavigation/ voyage to the South Pacific. I became interested in Bougainville's voyage because my father walked in his footsteps as a Marine in World War II and was part of the first wave attack on Bougainville's eponymous island. Diderot's essay takes Bougainville's arrival at Tahiti as its point of departure.

Diderot's essay, with its colorful dialogues, seems to be a mixture of French Utopianism (many of the French, including Gaugin, regarded the South Pacific islands as the real Earthly Paradise), social satire of European mores, and philosophical/ anthropological observations. Bougainville's voyage and Diderot's commentary sparked Jean-Jacques Rousseau's thinking and led to the sterotype of the "noble savage." Pointed observations regarding sex and religion are particularly interesting and often amusing. The entire essay can be found here or collected in The Libertine Reader.

As this excerpt opens, the ship's chaplain has succumbed to the charms of Orou's youngest daughter, despite earlier protestations. His exchange with Orou continues:

OROU: "I see my daughter is well satisfied with thee and I thank thee. But pray tell me what is this word religion, that thou didst repeat so often and with so much pain?"

The chaplain, after reflecting for a moment, answered: "Who made thy cabin and its articles of furniture?"
OROU: I did.
CHAPLAIN: Very well. We believe that this world and all it contains is the work of a workman.
OROU: Then he has feet, hands and a head?
CHAPLAIN: No.
OROU: Where does he live?
CHAPLAIN: Everywhere.
OROU: Here too?
CHAPLAIN: Yes.
OROU: We have never seen him.
CHAPLAIN: He is not to be seen.
OROU: A poor sort of father! He must be old. For he must be at least as old as his handiwork.
CHAPLAIN: He never grows old. He has spoken to our ancestors: he has given them laws: and has prescribed the manner in which he would be honoured. He has ordained for them certain actions as good and forbidden them others as bad.
OROU: I see, and one of those actions he has forbidden as bad is to sleep with a woman or girl. Why then has he made two sexes?
CHAPLAIN: For union, but on certain fixed conditions and after certain preliminary ceremonies, as a result of which a man belongs to a woman and belongs to her alone. A woman belongs to a man and belongs to a man alone.
OROU: For their whole life?
CHAPLAIN: For their whole life.
OROU: So that if a woman slept with anyone else than her husband and a husband with anyone else than his wife -- but the case can never arise, for since the workman is there and disapproves of it, he knows how to stop them.
CHAPLAIN: No, he lets them go their way, and they sin against the law of God (for that is what we call the great workman) and the law of the land; and they commit a crime.
OROU: I should hate to offend you with my remarks, but with your permission, I will give you my opinion.
CHAPLAIN: Go on.
OROU: I find these singular precepts opposed to nature and contrary to reason: they needs must multiply the number of crimes and continually annoy the old workman, who has made everything without the help of head, hands, or tools, who exists everywhere and is to be seen nowhere: who endures to-day and to-morrow and is never a day the older: who commands and is never obeyed: who can prevent and does not do so. These precepts are contrary to nature because they presuppose that a thinking, feeling, free being can be the property of another like himself. Upon what can this right be founded? Do you not see that, in your country, you have mixed up two different things? That which has neither feeling, thought, desire nor will, and which one can take, keep or exchange, without its suffering or complaining; and that which cannot be exchanged or acquired: which has liberty, will, desires: which can give itself and refuse itself for a single instant, or for ever: which complains and suffers: which could not become a mere article of commerce without its character being forgotten and violence done to its nature? These precepts are contrary to the general law of existence. Does anything really appear to thee more senseless than a precept which refuses to admit the change which is in ourselves: which insists on a constancy which has no counterpart in us and which violates the liberty of male and female, by chaining them for ever one to the other: more senseless than a constancy which confines the most capricious of pleasures to a single person: than an oath of immutability between two fleshly beings in the face of a heaven which is not a moment the same: under caverns that threaten ruin: beneath a rock that falls in powder: at the foot of a tree that cracks: upon a stone that breaks in pieces? Believe me, you have made the condition of men worse than that of animals. I know not who thy great workman is. But I am glad he has never spoken to our fathers and I hope he never speaks to our children. For he might say the same silly things to them and they might be silly enough to believe him. Yesterday at supper thou toldest of magistrates and priests, whose authority rules your conduct. But tell me, are they lords of good and evil? Can they make what is just unjust, and what is unjust just? Does it rest with them to label good actions harmful and harmful actions innocent or useful? Thou canst not well admit it, for then there would be neither true nor false, good nor bad, beautiful nor ugly, except in so far as thy great workman, thy magistrates and priests thought good to say so. Then from one moment to another thou wouldst be compelled to change thy opinion and thy conduct. One day one of thy three masters would give the order kill and thou wouldst be obliged, in conscience, to kill. Another day steal and thou wouldst have to steal; or, Do not eat this fruit and thou wouldst not dare eat it; or, I forbid thee this fruit or animal and thou couldst not touch it. There is no goodness they could not forbid thee: no wickedness they could not order. And where wouldst thou be if thy three masters, falling out among themselves, took it into their heads to permit, enjoin and forbid the same thing as I am sure often happens? Then to please the priest, thou must needs quarrel with the magistrate: to satisfy the magistrate, thou must anger the great workman; and to be agreeable to the great workman, turn thy back on nature. Knowest thou what will happen? Thou willst get to despise all three! be neither man, citizen, nor pious person: thou wilt be nothing: on bad terms with all sorts of authority and with thyself: wicked, tormented in heart: persecuted by thy insensate masters: and wretched as I saw thee yesterday evening when I presented my wife and daughters to thee and thou didst cry out: "But my religion, but my calling." Dost thou wish to know what is good and bad in all times and all places? Cling to the nature of things and actions: to thy relations with those like thee: to the influence of thy conduct on thy private convenience and the public good. Thou art mad if thou thinkest there be anything, high or low, in the universe which can supplement or be subtracted from the law of nature. Her eternal will is that good be preferred to evil and public to private good. Thou mayest aver the opposite but thou wilt not be obeyed. Thou wilt multiply the number of malefactors and those made wretched by fear, punishment or remorse. Thou wilt deprave men's consciences and corrupt their minds. They will no longer know what to do or what to avoid. Troubled in their state of innocence, calm in sin, they will have lost their pole-star on their journey. Answer me frankly. In spite of the express order of thy three legislators, does a young man in your country never sleep with a girl without their permission?
CHAPLAIN: I should lie, if I asserted it.
OROU: And does the woman, who has sworn to belong only to her husband, never give herself to another?
CHAPLAIN: Nothing is commoner.
OROU: In these cases thy legislators either do or do not take action. If they do, they are wild beasts who make war on nature. If not, they are imbeciles, who have exposed their authority to contempt by a useless prohibition.
CHAPLAIN: The guilty ones, when they escape the severity of the law, are chastised by public disapproval.
OROU:: You mean that justice functions through the absence of common sense in a whole nation: that a maniacal public opinion does duty for the laws.
CHAPLAIN: The girl who has been dishonoured can no longer find a husband.
OROU: Dishonoured! Why?
CHAPLAIN: The faithless wife is more or less despised.
OROU:: Despised! Why?
CHAPLAIN: The young man is called a cowardly seducer.
OROU: Cowardly! A seducer! Why?
CHAPLAIN: Father, mother and children are heart-broken: the flighty husband is a libertine: the betrayed husband shares his wife's disgrace.
OROU:: What a monstrous tissue of extravagances are you detailing to me! And even now thou hast not yet told me everything. For the moment men are allowed to regulate at will notions of justice and property, to endow things with some particular character or deprive them of it arbitrarily, to associate good and bad with certain actions or the reverse, then, by consulting only their own caprice, the men become censorious, vindictive, suspicious, tyrannical, envious, jealous, deceitful, uncomfortable, secretive, dissimulating. They spy, they cheat, they quarrel, they lie. Daughters impose on their parents, husbands on their wives, wives on their husbands. Girls, yes, I am sure of it, girls will suffocate their children: suspicious parents will despise and neglect theirs; mothers will abandon them to the mercy of fate: crime and debauchery will appear in all their forms. I know it all, as well as if I had lived among you. It is so, because it cannot be otherwise: and thy society, which your chief praises for its order, turns out to be only a collection of hypocrites, who secretly stamp the laws under foot: or unfortunates who are themselves the instruments of their own torture by submitting to such laws: or imbeciles in whom prejudice has completely stifled the law of nature: or beings of feeble organism, in whom nature does not claim her rights.
CHAPLAIN: There is a resemblance certainly. So you have no marriage then?
OROU: Yes, we marry.
CHAPLAIN: What is marriage with you?
OROU: Agreement to share the same hut and sleep in the same bed as long as we wish to do so.
CHAPLAIN: And When you wish to no longer?
OROU: We separate.
CHAPLAIN: And what happens to the children?
OROU: Ah, stranger! Thy last question finally reveals to me the profound misery of thy country. Know, my friend, that here the birth of a child is always a source of happiness and its death a subject for regrets and tears. A child is a precious possession because it will become a man. So our care for them is quite different from our care for our plants and animals. The birth of a child is the occasion of domestic and public joy. It means an increase of fortune for the cabin and of strength for the nation, arms and hands the more in Tahiti. We see in him a farmer, a fisherman, a hunter, a soldier, a husband, a father. When a wife passes back from the cabin of her husband to that of her parents, she brings with her the children she had taken as a dowry: a division is made of those born during cohabitation: and as far as possible we share out the males and females so that each one may have about the same number of boys and girls.
CHAPLAIN: But children are for a long time a source of expense before doing any service in return.
OROU: We put aside for their upkeep and as provision for old people one-sixth of all the country's fruits. This tribute follows them everywhere. So you see a Tahitien family becomes richer the larger it grows.
CHAPLAIN: A sixth part!
OROU: Yes. It is a sure way of increasing the population and of interesting it in the respect due to old age and the rearing of children.
CHAPLAIN: Do your married couples sometimes take each other back again?
OROU: Very often. Meanwhile the shortest period of a marriage is from one moon to another.
CHAPLAIN: Unless the woman is with child; then cohabitation lasts at least nine months.
OROU: Thou art mistaken. Paternity like the tribute follows the child everywhere.
CHAPLAIN: Thou hast told me that a woman brings her children as a dowry to her husband?
OROU: Certainly. Take my eldest child, who has three children: they walk: they are healthy: they are handsome: they promise to be strong: when she takes it into her head to marry, she will take them with her; they are hers: her husband will receive them joyfully; and he would be all the more pleased with his wife were she about to have a fourth.
CHAPLAIN: By himself, I presume.
OROU: By himself or somebody else. The more children our daughters have, the more they are in demand. The robuster and stronger our boys are, the richer they are: and so we pay as much attention to preserving our girls from the approach of men and men from dealings with women before the fruitful age as to exhorting them to have children, when the boys have reached the age of puberty and the girls are nubile. You cannot imagine the importance of the service you will have rendered my daughter Thia if you have got her with child. Her mother will no longer say to her each month, "But Thia, what are you thinking about? You do not become pregnant. You are nineteen. You should have had two children already and you have not got any. Who is going to look after you? If you waste your youth like this, what will you do when you are old? Thia, you must have some fault that keep men away. Take yourself in hand, my child. By your age I had had three children."