Even from the beginning of Diderot's document, the author hints to
             the reader that he questions the strict veracity of the record of the
             original voyage, penned by Bouganville as the unvarnished truth of his
             encounters with savages' in Tahiti. B, speaking on behalf of the author,
             notes, "Man is born with love for the marvelous and exaggerates everything
             round him. How should he then keep his sense of proportion about things,
             when he has, so to speak, to justify his journey and the trouble he has
             Bouganville is an unreliable narrator, B suggests. Long before
             postmodern discussions of authorial bias, Diderot, upon quoting the truth
             of the "Old Man's Farewell," states that yes, while it is a "vehement
             discourse," but "for all its somewhat abrupt and savage style I seem to
             detect in it European ideas and turns of speech," despite the fact it
             supposedly comes from the mouth of a savage.'
             In B's dialogue with the Chaplain regarding his interaction with Orou,
             B states it is not so much that one group is wrong, sexually, and other is
             right, nor that the savages are more noble or conversely less moral than
             Europeans. Rather, "The Tahitian is near the origin of the world, the
             European near its old age. The interval which separates him and us is
             greater than that between the child at birth and the tottering old man. He
             understands nothing of our laws and customs or only sees in them
             impediments disguised in a hundred forms, impediments which can excite only
             the indignation and contempt of a being in whom the sentiment of liberty is
             In other words, all of humanity, in the author's view, ages at a
             particular rate from a societal as well as an individual and biological
             fashion. Chronologically, the Tahitian are simply at a different stage of
             development in terms of their sexual mores, and it is best not to disturb
             ...