Had He Lived To Be The Historian Of The
Expedition, His Work Would Have Been Very Different In Character From
That of Peron; though it is hardly likely that an elaboration of the
views expressed in the personal letter to
King would have been favoured
with the imprint "de l'Imprimerie Imperiale." Peron's anthropological
studies among Australian aboriginals led him to conclusions totally at
variance with the nebulous "state of nature" theories of the time, which
pictured the civilised being as a degenerate from man unspoiled by law,
government, and convention. The tests and measurements of blacks which he
made, and compared with those of French and English people, showed him
that even physically the native was an inferior animal; his observations
of ways of life in the wild Bush taught him that organised society, with
all its restraints, was preferable to the supposed freedom of savagery;
and he deduced the philosophical conclusion that the "state of nature"
was in truth a state of subjection to pitiless forces, only endurable by
beings who felt not the bondage because they knew of no more ennobled
condition.* (* A more distinguished man was cured of his early
Rousseauism by an acquaintance with peoples far higher in the scale of
advancement than Australian aboriginals. "Up to sixteen years of age,"
said Napoleon in a scrap of conversation recorded by Roederer, "I would
have fought for Rousseau against all the friends of Voltaire. Now it is
the contrary. I have been especially disgusted with Rousseau since I have
seen the East.
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