GENERAL RULES
are often extended beyond the principle whence they first arise;
and this in all matters of taste and sentiment. It is a vulgar
story at Paris, that, during the rage of the Mississippi, a hump-
backed fellow went every day into the Rue de Quincempoix, where
the stock-jobbers met in great crowds, and was well paid for
allowing them to make use of his hump as a desk, in order to sign
their contracts upon it. Would the fortune, which he raised by
this expedient, make him a handsome fellow; though it be
confessed, that personal beauty arises very much from ideas of
utility? The imagination is influenced by associations of ideas;
which, though they arise at first from the judgement, are not
easily altered by every particular exception that occurs to us.
To which we may add, in the present case of chastity, that the
example of the old would be pernicious to the young; and that
women, continually foreseeing that a certain time would bring
them the liberty of indulgence, would naturally advance that
period, and think more lightly of this whole duty, so requisite
to society.
Those who live in the same family have such frequent
opportunities of licence of this kind, that nothing could prevent
purity of manners, were marriage allowed, among the nearest
relations, or any intercourse of love between them ratified by
law and custom.
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