456 ORIGIN OF CHASTITY. 



for the future, is extended over the past. Thus 

 women from their earliest childhood are subjected by 

 the selfishness of man to severe but salutary laws. 

 Chastity becomes the rule of female life. At first it 

 is preserved by force alone. Male slaves are appointed 

 to guard the women, who, except sometimes from 

 momentary pique, never betray one another, and 

 are allied against the men. But as the minds of 

 men are gradually elevated and refined through the 

 culture of the intellect, there rises within them a 

 sentiment which is unknown in savage life. They 

 conceive a contempt for those pleasures which they 

 share with the lowest of mankind, and even with the 

 brutes. They feel that this instinct is degrading : 

 they strive to resist it ; they endeavour to be pure. 

 But that instinct is strong with the accumulated 

 power of innumerable generations ; and the noble 

 desire is weak and newly born : it can seldom be sus- 

 tained except by the hopes and fears of religion, or 

 by the nobler teaching of philosophy. But in women 

 this new virtue is assisted by laws and customs which 

 were established, long before, by the selfishness of 

 men. Here, then, the abhorrence of the impure, 

 the sense of duty, the fear of punishment, all 

 unite and form a moral law which women them- 

 selves enforce, becoming the guardians of their own 

 honour, and treating as a traitor to her sex the 

 woman who betrays her trust. For her the most com- 

 passionate have no mercy : she has broken those laws 

 of honour on which society is founded. It is for- 

 bidden to receive her ; it is an insult to women to 

 allude to her existence, to pronounce her name. 

 She is condemned without inquiry, as the officer is 

 condemned who has shown cowardice before the foe. 



