Transcript of paragraph 11 of On Cannibals that reads “Now, to return to my subject, I find, from what I have been told about these people, that there is nothing barbarous and savage about them, except that everyone calls things which he does not practise himself barbaric. For, in fact, we have no test of truth and of reason other than examples and ideas of the opinions and customs in the country where we live. There we always have the perfect religion, the perfect political arrangements, the perfect and most accomplished way of dealing with everything. Those natives are savages in the same way we call “wild” the fruits which nature produces on her own by her usual processes; whereas, the ones we should really call “wild” instead are those we have altered artificially and whose ordinary behaviour we have modified. The former contain vital and vigorous virtues and properties, the most genuinely beneficial and natural qualities which we have bastardized in the latter, by adapting them to gratify our corrupt taste. Nonetheless the flavour and delicacy in various uncultivated fruits from those countries over there are excellent even to our taste—they even rival the fruit we produce. It is unreasonable that art should win the place of honour over our great and powerful mother nature. We have overburdened the beauty and richness of her works with our inventions to such an extent that we have suffocated everything. Yet wherever she shines out in her own purity, her marvels put our vain and frivolous enterprises to shame.”