Page:Thoughts on civil liberty, on licentiousness and faction.djvu/55

the Care of their Children; and adopt a contrary System, so abhorrent from the Desires of civilized Man." And indeed, supposing the Fact, it should seem a Paradox utterly unaccountable.—The true Solution seems of a quite different Nature.—Plutarch leads me to it.—"There is so much Uncertainty (saith he) in the Accounts which Historians have left us of Lycurgus, that scarce any Thing is asserted by one, which is not contradicted by others. Their Sentiments are quite different as to the Family he came of, the Voyages he undertook, the Place and Manner of his Death: But most of all, when they speak of the Laws he made, and the Commonwealth he founded.—They cannot be brought to agree, as to the very Age when he lived.—Timæus conjectures, that there were two of his Name, and in different Times; but that the one being more famous than the other, Men gave to Him the Glory of both their Ex-