So voluptuous,
indeed, often grows the lustful prowler, that he refines on female
softness.
To satisfy this genius of men, women are made systematically
voluptuous, and though they may not all carry their libertinism to
the same height, yet this heartless intercourse with the sex, which
they allow themselves, depraves both sexes, because the taste of
men is vitiated; and women, of all classes, naturally square their
behaviour to gratify the taste by which they obtain pleasure and
power. Women becoming, consequently weaker, in mind and body, than
they ought to be, were one of the grand ends of their being taken
into the account, that of bearing and nursing children, have not
sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and
sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection, that ennobles
instinct, either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast it off
when born. Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who
violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity. The weak
enervated women who particularly catch the attention of libertines,
are unfit to be mothers, though they may conceive; so that the rich
sensualist, who has rioted among women, spreading depravity and
misery, when he wishes to perpetuate his name, receives from his
wife only an half-formed being that inherits both its father's and
mother's weakness.
Contrasting the humanity of the present age with the barbarism of
antiquity, great stress has been laid on the savage custom of
exposing the children whom their parents could not maintain; whilst
the man of sensibility, who thus, perhaps, complains, by his
promiscuous amours produces a most destructive barrenness and
contagious flagitiousness of manners.
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