Besides, when love,
even innocent love, is the whole employ of your lives, your hearts
will be too soft to afford modesty that tranquil retreat, where she
delights to dwell, in close union with humanity.
Chap. VIII.
Morality Undermined by Sexual Notions of the Importance of
a Good Reputation.
It has long since occurred to me that advice respecting behaviour,
and all the various modes of preserving a good reputation, which
have been so strenuously inculcated on the female world, were specious
poisons, that incrusting morality eat away the substance. And, that
this measuring of shadows produced a false calculation, because
their length depends so much on the height of the sun, and other
adventitious circumstances.
Whence arises the easy fallacious behaviour of a courtier? From
his situation, undoubtedly: for standing in need of dependents, he
is obliged to learn the art of denying without giving offence, and, of
evasively feeding hope with the chameleon's food: thus does politeness
sport with truth, and eating away the sincerity and humanity natural
to man, produce the fine gentleman.
Women likewise acquire, from a supposed necessity, an equally
artificial mode of behaviour. Yet truth is not with impunity to be
sported with, for the practised dissembler, at last, becomes the
dupe of his own arts, loses that sagacity, which has been justly
termed common sense; namely, a quick perception of common truths:
which are constantly received as such by the unsophisticated mind,
though it might not have had sufficient energy to discover them
itself, when obscured by local prejudices.
Pages:
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220