[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.

[184] As if sin really came by the law in this sense; as if a law defining and prohibiting a malpractice were the cause of the commission of the act which it constituted a malpractice.  As if giving a name and juristic classification to any kind of conduct were adding to men’s motives for indulging in it.

[185] P. 269.

[186] P. 278.

[187] Pp. 285-287.

[188] P. 273.

[189] P. 250.

[190] Politicus, 268 D-274 E.

[191] Here for instance is D’Alembert’s story:—­“The necessity of shielding our own body from pain and destruction leads us to examine among external objects those which are useful and those which are hurtful, so that we may seek the one and flee the others.  But we hardly begin our search into such objects before we discover among them a great number of beings which strike us as exactly like ourselves; that is, whose form is just like our own, and who, so far as we can judge at the first glance, appear to have the same perceptions.  Everything therefore leads us to suppose that they have also the same wants, and consequently the same interest in satisfying them, whence it results that we must find great advantage in joining with them for the purpose of distinguishing in nature what has the power of preserving us from what has the power of hurting us.  The communication of ideas is the principle and the stay of this union, and necessarily demands the invention of signs; such is the origin of the formation of societies.” Discours Preliminaire de l’Encyclopedie. Contrast this with Aristotle’s sensible statement (Polit. I. ii. 15) that “there is in men by nature a strong impulse to enter into such union.”