He Spoke For A Full Hour In
Support Of This Particular Suggestion Of Maupertuis, And When He Had
Finished His
Fellow-members assured him that what he had advanced was so
novel and interesting that he would do well to
Expand his ideas into an
essay, to be read at the next meeting. De Brosses did more: for he wrote
two solid quarto volumes, published at Paris in 1756 - "avec approbation
et privilege du Roy," as the title page says - in which he related all
that he could learn about previous voyages to the south, and pointed out,
with generous amplitude, in limpid, fluent French, the desirableness of
pursuing further discoveries there. Incidentally he coined a useful word:
to Monsieur le President Charles de Brosses we owe the name
"Australasia."* (* De Brosses, Histoire des Navigations aux Terres
Australes 1 426 and 2 367. Max Muller, in his Lectures on the Origin of
Religion page 59, stated that De Brosses coined three valuable words,
"fetishism," "Polynesia," and "Australia." He certainly did not originate
the word Australia, which does not occur anywhere in his book. Quiros, in
1606, named one of the islands of the New Hebrides group Austrialia del
Espiritu Santo, though he seems to have done so in compliment to Philip
III, who ruled Austria as well as Spain. See Markham, Voyages of Quiros
volume 1 page 30 Hakluyt Society. "Australasia" was De Brosses' new name
for a broad division of the globe. He derived it from the Latin australis
= southern + Asia.)
A work written over one hundred and fifty years ago, recommending a
project long since completed, can hardly be expected to be full of living
interest. Yet this book of De Brosses, apart from the research which it
evinced, was infused with a large, humane spirit that lifted it high
above the level of a prospectus. The author had a sense of patriotism
that looked beyond the aggrandisement that might accrue from extensive
acquisitions, to the ideal of spreading French civilisation as a
beneficent force. He wished his country to share in a great work of
discovery that would redound to its glory as well as to its influence.
Glory, he wrote, in a fine piece of French prose, is the dominant passion
of kings; but their common and inveterate error is to search for it in
war - that is to say, in the reciprocal misfortunes of their subjects and
their neighbours. But there never is any true glory for them unless the
happiness of nations is the object of their enterprises. In the task
which he recommended, the grandeur of the object was joined to utility.
To augment the lands known to civilised mankind by a new world, and to
enrich the old world with the natural products of the new - this would be
the effect of the fresh discoveries that he anticipated. What comparison
could there be between such a project and the conquest - it might be the
unjust conquest - of some ravaged piece of territory, of two or three
fortresses battered by cannon and acquired by the massacre, the ruin, the
desolation, and the regrets of the vanquished people; bought, too, at a
price a hundred times greater than would suffice for the entire voyage of
discovery proposed.
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