The love of women sometimes excites virtue in men. CHAP. IX. A JUSTICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES ADMITTED IN THE TREATISE ON THE MIND. WHEN the Treatise on the Mind appeared, the theologians regarded me as a corruptor of morals. They reproached me with having maintained, after Plato, Plutarch, and experience, that the love of women had sometimes excited virtue in men. The fact, however, is notorious: their reproach, therefore, is ridiculous. If bread, it has been said to them, be a recompence for labour and industry, why not women? Every object of desire may become an * If hunger be the principle of so many actions, and has so much power over men, how can we imagine that the desire for women can have no effect on them? At the moment a youth is heated with the first fires of love, let its enjoyments be proposed to him as the recompence of his application : let him be reminded, even in the arms of his mistress, that it is to his talents and his virtues that he owes her favours. The young man, docile, assiduous, virtuous, will then enjoy in a manner agreeable to his health, to his soul, and to the public good, the same delight that he would not enjoy, in another situation, without exhausting his strength, debasing his mind, and dissipating his fortune, by living in a state of stupid ebriety. encouragement Valour inspired by women in the barbarous ages. encouragement to virtue, when it is not to be obtained but by services rendered to our country. In those ages, when the invasions of the Northern nations, and the incursions of swarms of plunderers, kept the inhabitants continually in arms, when the women being frequently exposed to the insults of ravagers, were in continual want of protectors, the virtue then in highest esteem was valour. The favours of the women, therefore, were the recompence of the most valiant, and consequently every man ambitious of those favours, endeavoured to elevate himself to that enthusiastic courage, which about four centuries since animated the renowned knight-errants. The love of pleasure was therefore in those ages the productive principle of the only virtue then known; that is, valour. When the manners changed, and a more improved policy relieved the timid virgin from insult, then beauty (for in government all things depend on each other) less exposed to outrages of the ravagers, held its defenders in less esteem. If the enthusiasm of women for valour then decreased in preportion to their fear; if the esteem preserved to this day, for that sort of courage be only the esteem of tradition; if in this age the youngest, most assiduous, obsequious, and above all, the most opulent lover is commonly preferred, it is not surprising; all is as it ought to be. The favours of women, therefore, according to the changes that happen in manners and governments, ei-, ther The love of women not incompatible with virtue. ther are, or cease to be, the encouragements to certain virtues. Love in itself is no evil. Why should we regard pleasures as the cause of the political corruption of manners? Men have had in all ages nearly the same wants, and in all ages have satisfied those wants. The ages, or the nations most addicted to love, have been those in which men were the strongest and most robust. Edda, the Erse poets, in short, all history informs us, that the ages esteemed heroic and virtuous, have not been the most temperate. Youth are strongly attracted by women: they are more eager after pleasure than persons of riper years; they are, however, commonly more humane and vittuous, at least more active, and activity is a virtue. It was neither love nor pleasures that corrupted Asia, enervated the manners of the Medes, the Assyrians, Indians, &c. The Greeks, the Saracens, and Scandinavians, were neither more reserved nor more chaste than the Persians and Medes, and yet the former have never been cited among effeminate nations. If there be a time when the favours of women can become a principle of corruption, it is when they are venal *; when money, far from being the recompence of merit and talents, becomes that of intrigue and flattery; in short, when a satrap or a nabob can, by * It may be asked by some, perhaps, when the time was that the favours of women were not venal? means Power of women to incite to virtue or vice. means of injustice and crimes, obtain from the sovereign the right of pillaging the people, and applying the spoil to his own emolument. It is with women as with honours, they are the common objects of the desire of men. If honours be the price of iniquity; if to attain them the great must be flattered; if the weak must be sacrificed to the powerful, and the interest of a nation to that of a sultan; then honours, so justly invented as a recompence and decoration of merit and talents, become the source of corruption. Women, like honours, may, therefore, according to times and manners, become the alternate incitements to vice or virtue. The political corruption of manners therefore consists only in the depravation of the means employed to procure pleasures. The rigid moralist who preaches incessantly against pleasures, is nothing more than the echo of his ghostly father. How can we extinguish every desire in man without destroying every principle of action? He who is affected by no interest, can have no motive to produce any action worthy of a man. CHAP. Hunger the most habitual principle of activity in man. CHAP. X. THE PLEASURES OF THE SENSES ARE, IN A MANNER EVEN UNKNOWN TO NATIONS THEMSELVES, THEIR MOST POWERFUL MOTIVES. THE springs of action in man are corporeal pains and pleasures. Why is hunger the most habitual principle of his activity? Because among all his wants it is that which returns the most frequently and commands the most imperiously. It is hunger and the difficulty of appeasing it, that gives the carnivorous animals of the forest so much superiority of intellect over the grazing herds. It is hunger that furnishes the former with a hundred ingenious methods of attacking and surprising their game. It is hunger that keeps the savages for six months together on the lakes, and in the woods: teaches them to bend the bow, to weave their nets, and set the snares for their prey. It is hunger also that among polished nations puts the people in action, teaches them to cultivate the land, learn a mechanical trade, and fill a difficult employ. But in the exercise of these employs, each individual forgets the motive that led him to undertake it; for the mind is occupied, not with the want, but with the VOL. I. L means |