MORELLY. - French political writer, of whom it is known only that he lived around the middle of the 18th century and resided at Vitry-le-François.
Various works of doubtful attribution are published under his name. Certainly by the same author are the two best-known writings, the Naufrage des îles flottantes ou la Basiliade, (Messina [but Paris] 1753), and the Code de la Nature (Amsterdam 1755) « Partout chez le vrai sage », as the Code explicitly states. The former recounts, in poetic form, the happy life of an egalitarian society against which the prejudices (le îles flottantes) of men are shipwrecked. In the Code, attributed to Diderot and Toussaint, the communist ideal is taken up again with scientific aims. Starting from the premise of man’s natural goodness, absolute equality, achieved by assigning all property to the State, is regarded as the sole solution capable of preventing man from falling into evil. Education and religion, founded upon nature, abandon every metaphysical inquiry or notion. A complex system of elections ensures the government of the most experienced and wisest. This conception exercised great influence upon Babeuf and the Egalitarians during the French Revolution.
philosophiques, économiques et politiques, Poitiers 1909. Cf. also the translation of the Code by M. E. Landau and the introduction by V. Volgin (Mosca 1947, in Russian). Sergio Cotta