n about _morale universelle_
and the like in _Mem. de Mdme. d'Epinay_, i. 217-226.
[176] Often described as Morelly the Younger, to distinguish him from
his father, who wrote an essay on the human heart, and another on the
human intelligence.
[177] _Code de la Nature, ou le veritable esprit de ses loix, de tout
tems neglige ou meconnu._
[178] P. 169. Rousseau did not see it then, but he showed himself on
the track.
[179] At the end of the _Code de la Nature_ Morelly places a complete
set of rules for the organisation of a model community. The base of it
was the absence of private property--a condition that was to be
preserved by vigilant education of the young in ways of thinking, that
should make the possession of private property odious or
inconceivable. There are to be sumptuary laws of a moderate kind. The
government is to be in the hands of the elders. The children are to be
taken away from their parents at the age of five; reared and educated
in public establishments; and returned to their parents at the age of
sixteen or so when they will marry. Marriage is to be dissoluble at
the end of ten years, but after divorce the woman is not to marry a
man younger than herself, nor is the man to marry a woman younger than
the wife from whom he has parted. The children of a divorced couple
are to remain with the father, and if he marries again, they are to be
held the children of the second wife. Mothers are to suckle their own
children (p. 220). The whole scheme is fuller of good ideas than such
schemes usually are.
[180] P. 218.
[181] This is obviously untrue. Animals do not know death in the sense
of scientific definition, and probably have no abstract idea of it as
a general state; but they know and are afraid of its concrete
phenomena, and so are most savages.
[182] This is one of the passages in the Discourse, the harshness of
which was afterwards attributed by Rousseau to the influence of
Diderot. _Conf._, viii. 205, _n._
[183] P. 261.
[184] As if sin really came by the law in this sense; as if a law
defining and prohibiting a malpractice were the cause of the
commission of the act which it constituted a malpractice. As if giving
a name and juristic classification to any kind of conduct were adding
to men's motives for indulging in it.
[185] P. 269.
[186] P. 278.
[187] Pp. 285-287.
[188] P. 273.
[189] P. 250.
[190] _Politicus_, 268 D-274 E.
[191] Here for instance is D'Alembe
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