ive power, the appreciation of the faculty by which we seem to
have an independent power of bodily movement, so as to transport
ourselves whither we will and to see without the aid of bodily organs,
--in a word the laws of thought's dynamic and those of its physical
influence,--these things will fall to the lot of the next century, as
their portion in the treasury of human sciences. And perhaps we, of
the present time, are merely occupied in quarrying the enormous blocks
which later on some mighty genius will employ in the building of a
glorious edifice.

Thus the error of Rousseau is simply the error of his age. He explains
modesty by the relations of different human beings to each other
instead of explaining it by the moral relations of each one with
himself. Modesty is no more susceptible of analysis than conscience;
and this perhaps is another way of saying that modesty is the
conscience of the body; for while conscience directs our sentiments
and the least movement of our thoughts towards the good, modesty
presides over external movements. The actions which clash with our
interests and thus disobey the laws of conscience wound us more than
any other; and if they are repeated call forth our hatred. It is the
same with acts which violate modesty in their relations to love, which
is nothing but the expression of our whole sensibility. If extreme
modesty is one of the conditions on which the reality of marriage is
based, as we have tried to prove [See _Conjugal Catechism, Meditation
IV._], it is evident that immodesty will destroy it. But this
position, which would require long deductions for the acceptance of
the physiologist, women generally apply, as it were, mechanically; for
society, which exaggerates everything for the benefit of the exterior
man, develops this sentiment of women from childhood, and around it
are grouped almost every other sentiment. Moreover, the moment that
this boundless veil, which takes away the natural brutality from the
least gesture, is dragged down, woman disappears. Heart, mind, love,
grace, all are in ruins. In a situation where the virginal innocence
of a daughter of Tahiti is most brilliant, the European becomes
detestable. In this lies the last weapon which a wife seizes, in order
to escape from the sentiment which her husband still fosters towards
her. She is powerful because she had made herself loathsome; and this
woman, who would count it as the greatest misfortune that her love