a sober people before Socrates recommended sobriety;
before he had even defined virtue Greece abounded in virtuous men.

But where could Jesus learn, among His competitors, that pure and
sublime morality, of which He only hath given us both precept and
example? The greatest wisdom was made known amongst the most bigoted
fanaticism, and the simplicity of the most heroic virtues did honor to
the vilest people on earth. The death of Socrates, peaceably
philosophizing with his friends, appears the most agreeable that could
be wished for; that of Jesus, expiring in the midst of agonizing
pains, abused, insulted, and accused by a whole nation, is the most
horrible that could be feared. Socrates, in receiving the cup of
poison, blest, indeed, the weeping executioner who administered it;
but Jesus, in the midst of excruciating torments, prayed for His
merciless tormentors. Yes, if the life and death of Socrates were
those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God. Shall
we suppose the evangelic history a mere fiction? Indeed, my friend, it
bears not the marks of fiction; on the contrary, the history of
Socrates, which nobody presumes to doubt, is not so well attested as
that of Jesus Christ. Such a supposition, in fact, only shifts the
difficulty without obviating it: it is more inconceivable that a
number of persons should agree to write such a history, than that one
only should furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were
incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in
the Gospel, the marks of whose truth are so striking and inimitable
that the inventor would be a more astonishing character than the
hero.

II

OF THE MANAGEMENT OF CHILDREN[46]

I have thought that the most essential part in the education of
children, and which is seldom regarded in the best families, is to
make them sensible of their inability, weakness, and dependence, and,
as my husband called it, the heavy yoke of that necessity which nature
has imposed upon our species; and that, not only in order to show them
how much is done to alleviate the burden of that yoke, but especially
to instruct them betimes in what rank Providence has placed them, that
they may not presume too far above themselves, or be ignorant of the
reciprocal duties of humanity.

[Footnote 46: From the "New Heloise." The passage here given is from a
letter supposed to have been written by a person who was visiting
Heloise. One of