BOOK III PART II
the fair sex in their infancy. And when a gen-
eral rule of this kind is once established, men
are apt to extend it beyond those principles,
from which it first arose. Thus batchelors, how-
ever debauched, cannot chuse but be shocked
with any instance of lewdness or impudence in
women. And though all these maxims have a
plain reference to generation, yet women past
child-bearing have no more privilege in this re-
spect, than those who are in the flower of their
youth and beauty. Men have undoubtedly an
implicit notion, that all those ideas of mod-
esty and decency have a regard to generation;
since they impose not the same laws, with the
same force, on the male sex, where that reason
takes nor place. The exception is there obvi-
ous and extensive, and founded on a remark-
able difference, which produces a clear separa-
tion and disjunction of ideas. But as the case is