But who are these "ἄριστοι"? Who shall judge? Who shall select these choice spirits from the rest of the congregation? Themselves? We must first find out and determine who themselves are. Shall the congregation choose? Ask Xenophon; perhaps hereafter I may quote you Greek. Too much in a hurry at present, English must suffice. Xenophon says that the ecclesia always chooses the worst men they can find, because none others will do their dirty work. This wicked motive is worse than birth or wealth. Here I want to quote Greek again. But the day before I received your letter of June 27th, I gave the book to George Washington Adams, going to the academy at Hingham. The title is Ηθικη ποιησις, a collection of moral sentences from all the most ancient Greek poets. In one of the oldest of them, I read in Greek, that I cannot repeat, a couplet, the sense of which was: "Nobility in men is worth as much as it is in horses, asses, or rams; but the meanest blooded puppy in the world, if he gets a little money, is as good a man as the best of them." Yet birth and wealth together have prevailed over virtue and talents in all ages. The many will acknowledge no other "ἄριστοι" Your experience of this truth will not much differ from that of your best friend. MR ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON. QUINCY, July 13, 1813. DEAR SIR,--Let me allude to one circumstance more in one of your letters to me, before I touch upon the subject of religion in your letters to Priestley. The first time that you and I differed in opinion on any material question, was after your arrival from Europe, and that point was the French revolution. You were well persuaded in your own mind, that the nation would succeed in establishing a free republican government. I was as well persuaded in mine, that a project of such a government over five and twenty millions of people, when four and twenty millions and five hundred thousand of them could neither read nor write, was as unnatural, irrational and impracticable as it would be over the elephants, lions, tigers, panthers, wolves and bears in the royal menagerie at Versailles. Napoleon has lately invented a word which perfectly expresses my opinion, at that time and ever since. He calls the project Ideology; and John Randolph, though he was, fourteen years ago, as wild an enthusiast for equality and fraternity as any of them, appears to be now a regenerated proselyte to Napoleon's opinion and mine, that it was all madness.