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"So many are the imperfections that attend the loss of virtue in women, and so greatly are their minds depraved when this principal guard is removed, that in a popular state (a republic or democracy) public incontinency (failure to restrain sexual appetite and dearth of modesty) may be considered as the last of miseries, and as a certain forerunner in the change in the constitution (the health and condition of the people and thus the nation). Hence it is that the sage legislators of states have ever required of women a particular gravity of manners. They have proscribed (forbidden) not only vice, but the very appearance of it. They have banished even all commerce of gallantry -- a commerce that produces idleness, that renders the women corrupters even before they are corrupted, that gives a value to trifles and debases things of importance: a commerce, in fine, that makes people act entirely by the maxims of ridicule, in which the women are so perfectly skilled."
-- Baron de Montesquieu, 'The Spirit of Laws' pg.132. (Parenthetical clarity added by Me)
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[–] TheSecretShakespeare 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago (edited ago)
"So many are the imperfections that attend the loss of virtue in women, and so greatly are their minds depraved when this principal guard is removed, that in a popular state (a republic or democracy) public incontinency (failure to restrain sexual appetite and dearth of modesty) may be considered as the last of miseries, and as a certain forerunner in the change in the constitution (the health and condition of the people and thus the nation). Hence it is that the sage legislators of states have ever required of women a particular gravity of manners. They have proscribed (forbidden) not only vice, but the very appearance of it. They have banished even all commerce of gallantry -- a commerce that produces idleness, that renders the women corrupters even before they are corrupted, that gives a value to trifles and debases things of importance: a commerce, in fine, that makes people act entirely by the maxims of ridicule, in which the women are so perfectly skilled."
-- Baron de Montesquieu, 'The Spirit of Laws' pg.132. (Parenthetical clarity added by Me)