contrary to Nature, is the life now
imposed upon women in this matter of chastity!" wrote James
Hinton forty years ago. "Think of that line: 'A woman who
deliberates is lost.' We _make_ danger, making all womanhood hang
upon a point like this, and surrounding it with unnatural and
preternatural dangers. There is a wanton unreason embodied in the
life of woman now; the present 'virtue' is a morbid unhealthy
plant. Nature and God never poised the life of a woman upon such
a needle's point. The whole modern idea of chastity has in it
sensual exaggeration, surely, in part, remaining to us from other
times, with what was good in it in great part gone."

"The whole grace of virginity," wrote another philosopher,
Guyau, "is ignorance. Virginity, like certain fruits, can only
be preserved by a process of desiccation."

Merimee pointed out the same desiccating influence of virginity.
In a letter dated 1859 he wrote: "I think that nowadays people
attach far too much importance to chastity. Not that I deny that
chastity is a virtue, but there are degrees in virtues just as
there are in vices. It seems to be absurd that a woman should be
banished from society for having had a lover, while a woman who
is miserly, double-faced and spiteful goes everywhere. The
morality of this age is assuredly not that which is taught in the
Gospel. In my opinion it is better to love too much than not
enough. Nowadays dry hearts are stuck up on a pinnacle" (_Revue
des Deux Mondes_, April, 1896).

Dr. H. Paul has developed an allied point. She writes: "There are
girls who, even as children, have prostituted themselves by
masturbation and lascivious thoughts. The purity of their souls
has long been lost and nothing remains unknown to them, but--they
have preserved their hymens! That is for the sake of the future
husband. Let no one dare to doubt their innocence with that
unimpeachable evidence! And if another girl, who has passed her
childhood in complete purity, now, with awakened senses and warm
impetuous womanliness, gives herself to a man in love or even
only in passion, they all stand up and scream that she is
'dishonored!' And, not least, the prostituted girl with the
hymen. It is she indeed who screams loudest and throws the
biggest stones. Yet the 'dishonored' woman, who is sound and
wholeso