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.
CHAPTER 8.
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.
>From whence arises the easy fallacious behaviour of a courtier?
>From this 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 in the same way 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.
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