[170] Rép. au Roi de Pologne, 105.
[171] In 1753 the French Academy, by way no doubt of summoning a counter-blast to Rousseau, boldly offered as the subject of their essay the thesis that "The love of letters inspires the love of virtue," and the prize was won fitly enough by a Jesuit professor of rhetoric. See Delandine, i. 42.
[172] Preface to Narcisse, 251.
[173] Rép. à M. Bordes, 167.
[174] P. 187.
[175] See for instance a strange discussion about morale universelle and the like in Mém. 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 véritable esprit de ses loix, de tout tems négligé ou méconnu.
[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.