[164] _Rép. à M. Bordes_, 147. In the same spirit he once wrote the more wholesome maxim, "We should argue with the wise, and never with the public." _Corr._, i. 191. [165] _Rép. au Roi de Pologne_, 128, 129. [166] _Rép. à M. Bordes_, 150-161. [167] P. 174. [168] Egger's _Hellénisme en France_, 28ième leçon, p. 265. [169] Voltaire to J.J.R. Aug. 30, 1755. [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. [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.