I perceive, however, that some may say to me, it is not only of civil and penal laws that we mean to speak, when we maintain that good public institutions would be an efficacious substitute for the influence of religion; it would be necessary to introduce laws of education, proper to modify, beforehand, the mind and form the character. But they have not explained, and I am ignorant that there are such laws, which they wish to distinguish from the general doctrines we are acquainted with; doctrines susceptible, undoubtedly, of different degrees of perfection, which, before instructing us not only in the virtues simple and real, but in all those mixed and conventional, have necessarily a vague character, and could not separate themselves from the support that they borrow from the fixed and precise ideas of religion. They may cite the example of Sparta, where the state undertook the education of the citizens, and formed by laws the extraordinary manners which history has delineated; but that government, aided in this enterprize by all the influence of paternal authority, nevertheless proposed but two great objects, the encouragement of martial qualities, and the maintenance of liberty: morality was not made interesting, though among us it requires so much application; and it was rendered less necessary, as every institution tended to introduce a perfect equality of rank and fortune, and opposed all kind of communication with foreigners. In short, it was, after all, a religious opinion which subjected the Spartans to the authority of their legislator; and without their confidence in the oracle of Delphos, Lycurgus had only been a celebrated philosopher.