English practice of excluding from literature subjects and references
that are unfit for boys and girls, has something to recommend it, but it
undeniably leads to a certain narrowness and thinness, and to some most
nauseous hypocrisy. All subjects are evidently not to be discussed by
all; and one result in our case is that some of the most important
subjects in the world receive no discussion whatever.

[5] See, however, above, vol. i. p. 274.

The position which Diderot takes up in the present dialogue may be
inferred from the following extract. The ship-chaplain has been
explaining to the astonished Otaheitan the European usage of strict
monogamy, as the arrangement enjoined upon man by the Creator of the
universe, and vigilantly guarded by the priest and the magistrate. To
which, Orou thus:

"These singular precepts I find opposed to nature and contrary to
reason. They are contrary to nature because they suppose that a
being who thinks, feels, and is free, can be the property of a
creature like itself. Dost thou not see that in thy land they have
confounded the thing that has neither sensibility, nor thought, nor
desire, nor will; that one leaves, one takes, one keeps, one
exchanges, without its suffering or complaining--with a thing that
is neither exchanged nor acquired, that has freedom, will, desire,
that may give or may refuse itself for the moment; that complains
and suffers; and that cannot become a mere article of commerce,
unless you forget its character and do violence to nature? And they
are contrary to the general law of things. Can anything seem more
senseless to thee than a precept which proscribes the law of change
that is within us, and which commands a constancy that is
impossible, and that violates the liberty of the male and the
female, by chaining them together in perpetuity;--anything more
senseless than are oaths of immutability, taken by two creatures of
flesh, in the face of a sky that is not an instant the same, under
vaults that threaten ruin, at the base of a rock crumbling to
dust, at the foot of a tree that is splitting asunder?... You may
command what is opposed to nature, but you will not be obeyed. You
will multiply evil-doers and the unhappy by fear, by punishment,
and by remorse; you will deprave men's consciences; you will
corrupt their minds; they will have