Such books and others, utopian fictions or embellished tales of travelers or missionnaires, will help to create a tradition which makes the savage the representative of an innocent humanity, spared by blemishes of civilization, free and pure.
In a spirit of generosity, openness to others, and contesting its own social models, the West will gradually abandon its ethnocentric reflexes in favour of an natural man.
Voltaire, with " L'Ingenú " - exploits the fashion for exotic works of American inspiration, by influencing the debate around the state of nature. To the idyllic image of " natives " endowed with all the qualities, he opposes a savage ( who, by the way - is only half so, by his Bretton ancestry ) - certainly seductive by its straightforwardness and frankness, but unable to adapt to the demands of social life. His Huron can confirm, by his vitality and his good sense, the superiority of the " natural man", but also shows - by his rustic brutality and his extravagances - the benefits of civilized manners observed by civilized societies, even if the freshness of his naive gaze should encourage advanced societies to strive for more justice and tolerance.
There is also religious controversies, excesses of justice, philosophical speculations on the state of nature. One could also consider dated the exploitation of the theme of the "good savage" .
The confrontation of the natural state and civilized life no longer seems relevant at the time of the shrinking of the planet, the development of communications and globalization.
However, the question still concern us, if we consider it from the ethnological point of view of the relationship with others and the relativism of cultures.
Rather than asking, as the novel invites, if human laws make man better, ( as Voltaire thinks ) , or if they help to corrupt him - I only can ask myself what makes it possible to identify human nature, on the comparative merits of the various modes of being, on the right to be different, sometimes flouted by European ethnocentrism.
All in all - a small book, with a large introspective dose.
Voltaire's book can be agreed, though, by a wide range of readers, the plot being built multilaterally, and can be enjoyed even in the absence of a possible power of introspective assimilation of the reader.