n, wishful for every man
she sees."--Catullus, lxvi. 125.]

So that if the natural violence of their desire were not a little
restrained by fear and honour, which were wisely contrived for them, we
should be all shamed. All the motions in the world resolve into and tend
to this conjunction; 'tis a matter infused throughout: 'tis a centre to
which all things are directed. We yet see the edicts of the old and wise
Rome made for the service of love, and the precepts of Socrates for the
instruction of courtezans:

"Noncon libelli Stoici inter sericos
Jacere pulvillos amant:"

["There are writings of the Stoics which we find lying upon
silken cushions."--Horace, Epod., viii. 15.]

Zeno, amongst his laws, also regulated the motions to be observed in
getting a maidenhead. What was the philosopher Strato's book Of Carnal
Conjunction?--[ Diogenes Laertius, v. 59.]--And what did Theophrastus
treat of in those he intituled, the one 'The Lover', and the other 'Of
Love?' Of what Aristippus in his 'Of Former Delights'? What do the so
long and lively descriptions in Plato of the loves of his time pretend
to? and the book called 'The Lover', of Demetrius Phalereus? and
'Clinias', or the 'Ravished Lover', of Heraclides; and that of
Antisthenes, 'Of Getting Children', or, 'Of Weddings', and the other,
'Of the Master or the Lover'? And that of Aristo: 'Of Amorous Exercises'
What those of Cleanthes: one, 'Of Love', the other, 'Of the Art of
Loving'? The amorous dialogues of Sphaereus? and the fable of Jupiter
and Juno, of Chrysippus, impudent beyond all toleration? And his fifty
so lascivious epistles? I will let alone the writings of the
philosophers of the Epicurean sect, protectress of voluptuousness. Fifty
deities were, in time past, assigned to this office; and there have been
nations where, to assuage the lust of those who came to their devotion,
they kept men and women in their temples for the worshippers to lie with;
and it was an act of ceremony to do this before they went to prayers:

"Nimirum propter continentiam incontinentia necessaria est;
incendium ignibus extinguitur."

["Forsooth incontinency is necessary for continency's sake; a
conflagration is extinguished by fire."]

In the greatest part of the world, that member of our body was deified;
in the same province, some flayed off the skin to offer and consecrate a
piece;