Chapter VI: Morelly and the “Code de la Nature“

The “Basiliad”—Sexual Morality—Principles of the “Code de la Nature”—Their application: Babeuf and Darthé—Property and the Revolution.

In 1753 Morelly, an author of whom few details are known, published two volumes in duodecimo, entitled “An Heroic Poem,” translated from the Indian, and “Wreck of the Floating Isles, or Basiliad of the Celebrated Pilpaï.” I confess that I have not read them. Villegardelle has published extracts from them at the end of an edition of the “Code de la Nature,” which were quite enough for me. But, judging by the passages cited by Von Kirchenheim, Morelly exhibits himself even more boldly in his prose poem as regards sexual morality than would appear in the pages of Villegardelle. “They knew not the infamous names of incest, adultery and prostitution: these peoples had no conception of these crimes: a sister received the tender embraces of a brother without any feeling of horror….” From the moment when these acts ceased to be denominated by ugly words all was for the best.

The “Code de la Nature” appeared in 1754, a year after Rousseau's essay, “L'Origine de l'inegalité parmi les hommes.” The author starts with the same idea, “The earth belongs to no man.” He sets up a model of legislation “in conformity with the designs of nature.” His inspiration is derived from Moore and Campanella and he is entitled to be considered as having inspired all the communists and collectivists who have succeeded him, including our contemporaries. The essential conditions of his system are as follows:—

Essential unity of property and of living in common: establishing the common use of instruments of labour and of products: rendering education equally accessible to all: distribution of work according to capacity and of its produce according to needs: preservation round the city of land sufficient for those who dwell in it.

Association of at least one thousand persons in order that, while every one works in accordance with his power and capacity, and consumes according to his needs and his tastes, there may be set up for a sufficient number of individuals an average of consumption which does not exceed the common resources, and a total resultant of work which supplies them in sufficient abundance.

No privilege to be accorded to talent other than that of directing labour in the common interest and no regard to be had, in dividing the proceeds of labour, to capacity, but only to needs, which exist before capacity and survive it.

Pecuniary rewards to be excluded; first, because capital is an instrument of labour which must remain wholly at the disposal of those who administer it, and secondly because every grant in money is useless where labour, being freely and willingly adopted, would render the variety and abundance of its produce more extended than our wants, and injurious where inclination and taste failed to fulfil all useful functions, for this would be to enable individuals to avoid payment of the debt of labour and of obtaining exemption from the duties of society without renouncing the privileges which society ensures.

Morelly has codified this system, and I reproduce certain provisions of his code which it is desirable to compare with actual conceptions.