Incest, therefore, being PERNICIOUS in a superior
degree, has also a superior turpitude and moral deformity annexed
to it.
What is the reason, why, by the Athenian laws, one might marry a
half-sister by the father, but not by the mother? Plainly this:
The manners of the Athenians were so reserved, that a man was
never permitted to approach the women's apartment, even in the
same family, unless where he visited his own mother. His step-
mother and her children were as much shut up from him as the
woman of any other family, and there was as little danger of any
criminal correspondence between them. Uncles and nieces, for a
like reason, might marry at Athens; but neither these, nor half-
brothers and sisters, could contract that alliance at Rome, where
the intercourse was more open between the sexes. Public utility
is the cause of all these variations.
To repeat, to a man's prejudice, anything that escaped him in
private conversation, or to make any such use of his private
letters, is highly blamed. The free and social intercourse of
minds must be extremely checked, where no such rules of fidelity
are established.
Even in repeating stories, whence we can foresee no ill
consequences to result, the giving of one's author is regarded as
a piece of indiscretion, if not of immorality. These stories, in
passing from hand to hand, and receiving all the usual
variations, frequently come about to the persons concerned, and
produce animosities and quarrels among people, whose intentions
are the most innocent and inoffensive.
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