notion of the historical method, but the fact that history itself at
that time had never been subjected to scientific examination made his
effort valueless. He accumulates testimony which would be excellent
evidence, if only it had been sifted, and had come out of the process
substantially undiminished. Yet even Goguet, who thus carefully
followed the accounts of early societies given in the Bible and other
monuments, intersperses abstract general statements about man being
born free and independent (i. 25), and entering society as the result
of deliberate reflection.

[185] _Cont. Soc._, II. xi. Also III. viii.

[186] II. xi. Also ch. viii.

[187] II. viii.

[188] II. ix.

[189] _Politics_, VII. iv. 8, 10.

[190] _Cont. Soc._, II. x.

[191] Plato's _Laws_, v. 737.

[192] _Ib._, iv. 705.

[193] _Projet de Constitution pour la Corse_, p. 75.

[194] _Gouvernement de Pologne_, ch. xi.

[195] _Cont. Soc._, II. vii.

[196] Goguet was much nearer to a true conception of this kind; see,
for instance, _Origine des Lois_, i. 46.

[197] Decree of the Committee, April 20, 1794, reported by
Billaud-Varennes. Compare ch. iv. of Rousseau's _Considerations sur le
Gouvernement de Pologne_.

[198] Here are some of Saint Just's regulations:--No servants, nor
gold or silver vessels; no child under 16 to eat meat, nor any adult
to eat meat on three days of the decade; boys at the age of 7 to be
handed over to the school of the nation, where they were to be brought
up to speak little, to endure hardships, and to train for war; divorce
to be free to all; friendship ordained a public institution, every
citizen on coming to majority being bound to proclaim his friends, and
if he had none, then to be banished; if one committed a crime, his
friends were to be banished. Quoted in Von Sybel's _Hist. French
Rev._, iv. 49. When Morelly dreamed his dream of a model community in
1754 (see above, vol. i. p. 158) he little supposed, one would think,
that within forty years a man would be so near trying the experiment
in France as Saint Just was. Baboeuf is pronounced by La Harpe to have
been inspired by the Code de la Nature, which La Harpe impudently set
down to Diderot, on whom every great destructive piece was
systematically fathered.

[199] I forget where I have read the story of some member of the
Convention being very angry because the library contained no copy of
the laws which Minos gave to the Cretans.

[200] III. xiii.