Chapter VI
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who touched at Hitiaa, on the eastern side of Tahiti, only eight months afterward, in April, 1768, remain long enough to see much of the place or the people; but both these explorers returned to Europe with such glowing accounts of Tahiti as created lively interest. At that moment Europe, and especially France, happened to be looking for some bright example of what man had been, or might be, in a state of nature, and the philosophers seized on Tahiti to prove that, if man would only rid himself of restraints, he would be happy. This is an account of our family, not a history of the island, and I am not well acquainted even with the names of the philosophers who brought about the French Revolution by trying to apply to France the state of nature which Bougainville described in what he called the island of New Cytherea; but I know that Diderot wrote a "Supplement to Bougainville’s Travels" in the form of a dialogue between the ship’s chaplain and a Tahitian supposed to be named Orou, and that Orou overwhelmed the chaplain by showing the superiority of Tahiti over Paris, and the immorality of constancy in marriage.
One of my friends has pointed out to me another French book, printed in 1779, an "Essai sur I’isle d’Otahiti", which oifers a pleasant jumble of Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Hawkesworth: "II est doux de penser que la philanthropic semble naturelle à tous les hommes, et que les idées sauvages de défiance et de haine ne sont que la suite de la dépravation de moeurs, qui ne peut exister chez un peuple qui n’en a pas même l’idée."
The naturalist, Commerson, who accompanied Bougainville, was the source of most of the pretty French illusions about Tahiti. His letter, published in the "Mercure de France", in November, 1769, was a romance in the style and in the spirit of Rousseau. It is too long to quote in full, but some of its passages are marvels of literature and science. He began by calling the island Utopia, not then knowing that his chief, Bougainville, had called it New Cytherea:
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© Derived from the revised Paris edition of 1901 page 53, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
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