, shameful (mine, truly, are now shameful and pitiful). The
Essenians, of whom Pliny speaks, kept up their country for several ages
without either nurse or baby-clouts, by the arrival of strangers who,
following this pretty humour, came continually to them: a whole nation
being resolute, rather to hazard a total extermination, than to engage
themselves in female embraces, and rather to lose the succession of men,
than to beget one. 'Tis said, that Zeno never had to do with a woman but
once in his life, and then out of civility, that he might not seem too
obstinately to disdain the sex.

[Diogenes Laertius, vii. 13.--What is there said, however, is that
Zeno seldom had commerce with boys, lest he should be deemed a very
misogynist.]

Every one avoids seeing a man born, every one runs to see him die; to
destroy him a spacious field is sought out in the face of the sun, but,
to make him, we creep into as dark and private a corner as we can: 'tis a
man's duty to withdraw himself bashfully from the light to create; but
'tis glory and the fountain of many virtues to know how to destroy what
we have made: the one is injury, the other favour: for Aristotle says
that to do any one a kindness, in a certain phrase of his country, is to
kill him. The Athenians, to couple the disgrace of these two actions,
having to purge the Isle of Delos, and to justify themselves to Apollo,
interdicted at once all births and burials in the precincts thereof:

"Nostri nosmet paenitet."

["We are ashamed of ourselves."--Terence, Phoymio, i. 3, 20.]

There are some nations that will not be seen to eat. I know a lady, and
of the best quality, who has the same opinion, that chewing disfigures
the face, and takes away much from the ladies' grace and beauty; and
therefore unwillingly appears at a public table with an appetite; and I
know a man also, who cannot endure to see another eat, nor himself to be
seen eating, and who is more shy of company when putting in than when
putting out. In the Turkish empire, there are a great number of men who,
to excel others, never suffer themselves to be seen when they make their
repast: who never have any more than one a week; who cut and mangle their
faces and limbs; who never speak to any one: fanatic people who think to
honour their nature by disnaturing themselves; who value themselves upon
their contempt of themselves, and purport to grow better by being