He brings cooling to the flame (of the social conflagration?). It is said he is the shepherd of all men. There is no evil in his heart. When his herds are few he passes the day to gather them together, their hearts being fevered. Would that he had discerned their character in the first generation. Then would he have smitten evil. He would have stretched forth his arm against it. He would have smitten the seed thereof and their inheritance. . . . Where is he today? Doth he sleep perchance? Behold, his might is not seen.225
This already is the voice of the prophets; the lines are cast into strophic form, like the prophetic writings of the Jews; and Breasted properly acclaims these “Admonitions†as “the earliest emergence of a social idealism which among the Hebrews we call ‘Messianism.’â€226 Another scroll from the Middle Kingdom denounces the corruption of the age in words that almost every generation hears: