ations 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. 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.

To pry into secrets, to open or even read the letters of others, to
play the spy upon their words and looks and actions; what habits more
inconvenient in society? What habits, of consequence,