CHKISTIAN MARRIAGE AND MORALITY 55 



Es de vidrio la mnjer 

 Pero no se ha de probar 

 Si se puede, o no, quebrar 

 Porqud todo podria ser — ^ 



and then proceeds to prove it by his story of " El 

 Curioso Impertinente." This may have been an apt 

 illustration of feminine weakness in the Spanish 

 society of the sixteenth century, but it does not 

 follow that it applies uniformly to the English 

 womanhood of to-day. The sense of honour in both 

 sexes is so essentially a thing of cultivation that we 

 have only to consult the social history of a people in 

 order to learn whether that virtue may be looked for 

 in a general or in an exceptional form, or whether it 

 will be entirely non-existent. The morals of a nation 

 are determined by its experience. If among certain 

 peoples of antiquity virginity has been prized, others 

 have set a stigma upon it, the former being governed 

 by a secret sense of the evils of unbridled commerce 

 as affecting their social constitution, and the latter 

 feeling more particularly the necessity of recruiting 

 their population for warlike or other purposes. The 

 licentiousness of England at the Restoration was a 

 reaction against the pernicious straitlacedness of 



^ "Woman is of glass, but it is unwise to try whether she will 

 break or not, because anything may happen." 



