virtue

The Adams text is probably not especially inspiring for us. However, it has inspired some people in the past. While Mary Wollstonecraft is represented as having cast a somewhat jaded eye over it (immediately below), the text is represented, somewhat begrudgingly, as having influenced Maria Stewart in her fight for women’s rights and the abolition of slavery. Adams’ work doubtless has many flaws, but read through the eyes of someone in the early nineteenth century, apparently it could have an empowering effect. Personally, for all its flaws, I think that that past potential to empower does emerge from the text, and that is one reason why I thought it might be nice to put it on the web - not as a work of great inspiration for us, but as a resource to allow us to see an unusual text that people in the past used for their own inspiration.

But why here? Well, the goody-two-shoes reason is that Adams is all about what makes virtue. This appears, largely, to be chastity. But the real reason for putting it on this site is that Adams keeps his audience’s interest by his ever-present hints towards salaciousness - I mean, if you are going to elevate chastity, think of all those examples of the unchaste that need to be brought to the readers’ attention to serve as examples. Adams’ work is a very refined kind of pornography, serving as a stimulus to the imagination. It appears to have sold well.

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Excerpt above from Jane Rendall, “The Grand Causes Which Combine to Carry Mankind Forward - Wollstonecraft, History and Revolution” in Wollstonecraft on Adams, in Mary Wollstonecraft and the critics, 1788-2001, ed. Harriet Divine Jump.

(Article originally published in Women’s Writing 4, 2, 1997; 155-72)

See remainder of article at Google Books.

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The following excerpt is from the chapter ‘Maria W. Stewart—An African
American Woman Speaks’ in Lift Ev’ry Voice 1830-1860, 3rd in the series Making Freedom, African Americans in U.S. History.

See at Heinemann

[108] Starting in 1831, Maria W. Stewart became a controversial writer and lecturer who raised the issues of black rights and self-determination later taken up by Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, the Grimke sisters, and the many influential champions of human rights throughout the nineteenth century. Maria W. Stewart read widely. She studied history, enjoyed poetry, and read the major newspapers of her day to stay informed about national and international events. She declared her major influences to be the Bible, the work of radical black abolitionist David Walker (1785–1830), author of Walker’s Appeal . . . to the Coloured Citizens of the World 1829, and studies of women’s lives such as the 1790 volume, Woman, Sketches of the History, Genius, Disposition, Accomplishments. . . of the Fair Sex in all Parts of the World . . . by the British historian John Adams (1750–1814).

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The following is from A Greater Awakening - Women’s Intellect as a Factor in Early Abolishionist Movements, 1824-1834 by Jennifer Rycenga, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 2005, vol 21, issue 2, p31.

Writings such as Dymond’s that could have offered women both intellectual succor and substance were rare in two ways - they were rarely written and rarely accessible. The very real limitations placed on women’s education that Dymond pointed out created and reinforced further limitations. For any woman, to break through these limitations to a place of self-knowledge, self-development, and self-expression required that combination of emotion and reason discussed earlier. The dulling conformity of school textbooks and compendiums posed yet another obstacle.

One of the more prolific compilers of such schoolbooks in this era was an Englishman named John Adams, a pedant who flourished from 1785 to 1810. His many books, such as The Flowers of Ancient History (1788), A View of Universal History (1795, in three volumes), and Elegant Anecdotes and Bon Mots (1790), were used in select academies (roughly equivalent to a high school level), and most went through multiple editions. Adams was a writer whose knowledge was broad rather than deep, and whose likely effect on his readers was more exhaustive than enlightening. His Sketches of the History, Genius, Disposition, Accomplishments, Employments, Customs, Virtues, and Vices of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World, first published in England in 1790, was published in Boston in 1807. Adams’s rhetoric is laced with condescension. He never hesitates before passing judgment on entire religions, civilizations, and cultures, including giving a racist appraisal of Africa most noteworthy for its reversal claiming that Africans were “robbing and murdering all other inhabitants of the globe” while they wallowed in “their idleness, ignorance, superstition, [and] treachery.”

This work of Adams’s, through some obscure path, wound up in the hands and mind of the abolitionist and feminist orator Maria Stewart. Born a free black woman in Connecticut in 1803, Stewart lived as a servant, thirsting for [48] education but never attaining the circumstance to quench her desire. In the aftermath of Nat Turners rebellion, she offered her writings to William Lloyd Garrison, who published them first as a pamphlet, later printing her speeches directly in the Liberator. These public speeches generated a great deal of controversy, even within Boston’s black community An unwanted prophet in her own land, Stewart retired her jeremiadic voice from public speaking in 1833. Her farewell speech, from September of that year, utilized Adams’s text to justify women’s right to speak in public on religious and political matters.

It is only by profoundly conscious acts of intelligence that Maria Stewart was able to get beyond Adams’s patronizing tone and use him as the highly potent (albeit highly edited) source that she does. It is unclear at what point in her oft-interrupted and self-guided education Stewart discovered Adams’s text, but she surely used it with aplomb. She begins by retelling her internal conversion, her willingness to surrender herself to God’s will. She recounts her prophetic calling in Boston and her sense that God has commanded her to speak. She then commences a remarkable summary of women’s involvement in religion; even today it could serve as a reasonable starting point for a syllabus on women and religion. She compares herself to Deborah, Esther, Mary Magdalene, and women who “ministered unto Christ”. In the midst of this, she sweeps aside any sexist objections from Pauline texts by trumping Paul with Jesus, then asserting that if Paul knew how much black women were suffering, “I presume he would make no objections to our pleading in public for our rights”. Her bold woman-handling of Paul outstrips much feminist theologizing, then and now, and is another example of women’s questioning the literal truth (and internal consistency) of scripture.

To convince her hearers that women were called to sacred vocations in the [49] past, she turns to Adams’s text. She quotes him exactly and then follows with shorter paragraphs of her own commentary. Adams’s text is transformed in Stewart’s voice. His compendium of prominent women in ancient cultures becomes strong evidence to Stewart that women are meant to do spiritual work. She quotes from Adams that, “in the most barharous nations, all things that have the appearance of being supernatural, the mysteries of religion, the secrets of physic, and the rites of magic, were in the possession of women”. Rather than seeing the presence of women religious leaders in pagan cultures as an ancient practice, contemptible and condemned, Stewart refigures these women as rich spiritual instruments merely awaiting the virtuoso touch of the Deity: “[B]e no longer astonished then, my brethren and friends, that God at this eventful period should raise up your own females to strive”. Her theological audacity escalates when she declares that those who want women silenced now are offending against God’s plan: “No longer ridicule their efforts, it will be counted for sin”

The next two pairs of paragraphs likewise alternate Adams’s voice with Stewart’s. First Adams outlines the late medieval period. What to him is merely an impressive list of accomplishments by medieval European women mystics and thinkers becomes for Stewart an empowering intellectual legacy. These accomplishments demonstrate to Stewart what is possible for women who combine education with Christian piety and political activity. She rhetorically demands to know, “Why cannot a religious spirit animate us now? Why cannot we become divines and scholars?” Even so, Stewart knows better than to call formal education a necessity, given that formal schooling was an institution from which she was doubly excluded as a black woman (even triply excluded, as a working-class servant as well). She reminds her hearers that God does not require a degree to make use of a person.”

Rhetorically, Stewart’s glosses on Adams’s information demonstrate once again the unity of rationality and emotion by marginalized intellectual activists such as the early women abolitionists examined here. Stewart vividly underlines the points she draws out from Adams’s nonchalance. He speaks of women prophets “obtain[ing] much credit at Rome”, whereas she magnifies her points with imperatives - “No longer ridicule their [i.e., Stewart’s] efforts” - and emphatics -”to stop the strong current of prejudice that flows so profusely against us”. As with her mentor, David Walker, Stewart’s urgency enables her reason, and her social location triggers the need to detect larger patterns [50] that underlie those “strong current[s] of prejudice.” Whatever the intent and attitude of Adams, to have read those words from the pen of Maria Stewart was to see the legacy of women intellectuals, striving for public honors and responsibilities, embodied in a black woman.

CHAP. XII.

Of the Eastern Women.

THE women of the East have, in general, always exhibited the same appearance. Their manners, customs, and fashions, unalterable like their rocks, have stood the test of many revolving ages. Though the kingdoms of their country have often changed masters, though they have submitted to the arms of almost every invader, yet the laws by which their sex are governed and enslaved, have never been revised nor amended.

Had the manners and customs of the Asiatic women been subject to the same changes as they are in Europe, we might have expected the same changes in the sentiments and writings of their men. But, as this is not the case, we have reason to presume that the sentiments entertained by Solomon, by the apocryphal writers, and by the ancient Bramins, are the sentiments of this day.

Though the confinement of women be an unlawful exertion of superior power, yet it affords a proof that the inhabitants of the East are advanced some degrees farther in civilization than mere savages, who have hardly any love, and consequently as little jealousy.

This confinement is not very rigid in the empire of the Mogul. It is, perhaps, less so in China, and in Japan hardly exists.

Though women are confined in the Turkish empire, they experience every other indulgence. They are allowed, at dated times, to go to the public baths; their apartments are richly, if not elegantly [39] furnished; they have a train of female slaves to serve and amuse them ; and their persons are adorned with every costly ornament which their fathers or husbands can afford.

Notwithstanding the strictness of confinement in Persia, their women are treated with several indulgences. They are allowed a variety of precious liquors, of costly perfumes, and beautiful slaves: their apartments are furnished with the most elegant hangings and carpets; their persons ornamented with the finest silks, and even loaded with the sparkling jewels of the East. But all these trappings, however elegant, or however gilded, are only like the golden chains sometimes made use of to bind a royal prisoner.

Solomon had a great number of queens and concubines; but a petty Hindoo chief has been known to have two thousand women confined within the walls of his harem, and appropriated entirely to his pleasure. Nothing less than unlimited power in the husband is able to restrain women so confined, from the utmost disorder and confusion. They may repine in secret, but they must clothe their features with cheerfulness when their lord appears. Contumacy draws down on them immediate punishment: they are degraded, chastised, divorced, shut up in dark dungeons, and sometimes put to death.

Their persons, however, are so sacred, that they must not in the least be violated, nor even looked at by any one but their husband. This female privilege has given an opportunity of executing many conspiracies. Warriors, in such vehicles as are usually employed to carry women, have been often conveyed, without examination, into the apartments of the great; from whence, instead of issuing forth in the smiles of beauty, they have rushed out in the terror of arms, and laid the tyrants at their feet.

No stranger is ever allowed to see the women of Hindostan, nor can even brothers visit their sisters in private. To be conscious of the existence of a man’s [40] wives seems a crime; and he looks surly and offended, if their health is inquired after. In every country, honour consists in something upon which the possessor sets the highest value. This, with the Hindoo, is the chastity of his wives; a point without which he must not live.

In the midst of slaughter and devastation, throughout all the East, the harem is a sanctuary. Ruffians, covered with the blood of a husband, shrink back with veneration from the secret apartment of his wives.

At Constantinople, when the sultan sends an order to strangle a state-criminal, and seize on his effects, the officers who execute it enter not into the harem, nor touch any thing belonging to the women.

Mr. Pope is very far from doing justice to the fair sex, when he says –

“Most women have no character at all.”

The character, however, of the Asiatic ladies cannot be easily ascertained. The narrow and limited sphere in which they move, almost entirely divests them of every characteristic distinction which arises from liberty and society. Shut up for ever in impenetrable harems, they can hardly be called creatures of the world, having no intercourse with it, and no use for the social and oeconomical virtues which adorn its citizens. Frugality and industry are entirely out of their power To the joys of friendship they are, perhaps, entire strangers. The men treat them in such a manner, that it is impossible they can esteem them. The women are their constant rivals. As they are not allowed to attend public worship, they can have no other religion than the silent adoration of the heart. With respect to chastity, the manner in which they are disposed of to their husbands, and the treatment they meet with from them, are the most unlikely methods in the world to make them famous for that virtue.

Those females who are the least exposed to feel [41] the oppressive effects of despotism, employ themselves in a manner well adapted to the sex. To the women of Hindostan we owe a great part of those works of taste, so elegantly executed on the manufactures of the East; the beautiful colorings and exquisite designings of their printed cottens; all the embroidery, and a part of that fillagree work, which so much exceeds any thing in Europe. The deficiency of taste, therefore, with which we so commonly charge them, does not seem to be so much a defect of nature, as of education. Brought up in luxurious indolence, excluded from all the busy scenes of life, and, like children, provided with all those things, the acquisition of which calls forth the powers of the mind and body, they seldom have any motive to exert themselves but, when such a motive exists, they have often exhibited the most convincing proofs of their ability.

Every Turkish seraglio and harem has a garden adjoining to it, and in the middle of this garden a large room, more or less decorated, according to the wealth of the proprietor. Here the ladies spend most of their time, with their attendant nymphs around them, employed at their music, embroidery, or loom.

In these retreats, perhaps, they find more real pleasure and enjoyment, than in the unbounded freedom of Europe, where love, interest, and ambition so often destroy their peace; and where Scandal, with her envenomed shafts, too often strikes equally at guilt and innocence.

It has long been a custom among the grandees of Asia, to entertain story-tellers of both sexes, who like the bards of ancient Europe, divert them with tales, and little histories, mostly on the subject of bravery and love. These often amuse the women, and beguile the cheerless hours of the harem, by calling up images to their minds, which their eyes are for ever barred from seeing.

All their other amusements, as well as this, are indolently voluptuous. They spend a great part of [42] their time in lolling on silken sofas; while a train of female slaves, scarcely less voluptuous, attend to sing to them, to fan them, and to rub their bodies; an exercise which the Easterns enjoy with a sort of placid ecstacy, as it promotes the circulation of their languid blood.

They bathe themselves in rose-water, and other baths, prepared with the precious odours of the East. They perfume themselves with costly essences, and adorn their persons, that they may please the tyrant with whom they are obliged to live.

At the court of the Mogul, women are frequently admitted into a gallery, with a curtain before them through which, without being seen, they can see and hear what passes. It has sometimes happened that the throne has been occupied by a woman, who never appearing; in open court, issued her imperial, mandates from behind this curtain, like an invisible being, producing the greatest effects, while the cause of them was wrapt in darkness and obscurity.

CHAP. XI

Of Women in Savage Life,

MAN, in a state of barbarity, equally cruel and indolent, active by necessity, but naturally inclined to repose, is acquainted with little more than the physical effects of love; and, having none of those moral ideas which only can soften the empire of force, he is led to consider it as his supreme law, subjecting to his despotism those whom reason had made his equals, but whose imbecility betrayed them to his strength.

Cast in the lap of naked nature, and exposed to every hardship, the forms of women, in savage life, are but little engaging. With nothing that deserves the name of culture, their latent qualities, if they have any, are like the diamond, while inclosed in the rough flint, incapable of shewing any luster. Thus destitute of everything by which they can excite love, or acquire esteem; destitute of beauty to charm, or art to soothe, the tyrant man; they are by him destined to perform every mean and servile office. In this the American and other savage women differ widely from those of Asia, who, if they are destitute of the qualifications [34] necessary for gaining esteem, have beauty, ornaments, and the art of exciting love.

In civilized countries a woman acquires some power by being the mother of a numerous family, who obey her maternal authority, and defend her honour and her life. But, even as a mother, a female savage has not much advantage. Her children, daily accustomed to see their father treat her nearly as a slave, soon begin to imitate his example, and either pay little regard to her authority, or shake it off altogether.

Of this the Hottentot boys afford a remarkable proof. They are brought up by the women, till they are about fourteen years of age. Then, with several ceremonies, they are initiated into the society of men. After this initiation is over, it is reckoned manly for a boy to take the earliest opportunity of returning to the hut of his mother, and beating her in the most barbarous manner, to show that he is now out of her jurisdiction. Should the mother complain to the men, they would only applaud the boy, for shewing so laudable a contempt for the society and authority of women.

“Nothing,’” says Professor Miller, speaking of the women of barbarous nations, “can exceed the dependence and subjection in which they are kept, or the toil and drudgery which they are obliged to undergo. The husband, when he is not engaged in some warlike exercise, indulges himself in idleness, and devolves upon his wife the whole burden of his domestic affairs. He disdains to assist her in any of those servile employments. She sleeps in a different bed, and is seldom permitted to have any conversation or correspondence with him.”

In the Brazil, the females are obliged to follow their husbands to war, to supply the place of beasts of burden, and to carry on their backs their children, provisions, hammocks, and every thing wanted in the field.

In the Isthmus of Darien, they are sent along with warriors and travellers, as we do baggage horses. Even their Queen appeared before some English gentlemen, carrying her sucking child wrapt in a red blanket.

The women among the Indians of America are what the Helots were among the Spartans, a vanquished people obliged to toil for their conquerors. Hence on the banks of the Oroonoko we have heard of mothers slaying their daughters out of compassion, and smothering them in the hour of their birth. They consider this barbarous pity as a virtue.

Father Joseph Gumilla, reproving one of them for this inhuman crime, received the following answer: -

I wish to God, Father, I wish to God, that my mother had, by my death, prevented the manifold distresses I have endured, and have yet to endure as long as I live. Had she kindly stifled me in my birth, I should not have felt the pain of death, nor the numberless other pains to which life has subjected me. Consider, Father, our deplorable condition. Our husbands go to hunt with their bows and arrows, and trouble themselves no farther: we are dragged along with one infant at our breast, and another in a basket. They return in the evening without any burden: we return with the burden of our children. Though tired with long walking, we are not allowed to deep, but must labor the whole night, in grinding maize to make chica for them. They get drunk, and in their drunkenness beat us, draw us by the hair of the head, and tread us under foot. What then have we to comfort us for slavery, perhaps of twenty years ? - A young wife is brought upon us and permitted to abuse us and our children.

Can human nature endure such tyranny? What kindness can we shew to our female children, equal to that of relieving them from such servitude, more bitter a thousand times than death? I repeat again, would to God my mother had put me under ground, the moment I was born.”

[36] If the great outlines of this complaint be true, they fully evince the deplorable condition of savage women; and that they are propable, [sic] similar instances among barbarous nations will not permit us to doubt.

“The men” says Commodore Byron, in his account of the inhabitants of South America, “exercise a most despotic authority over their wives, whom, they confider in the same view they do any other part of their property, and dispose of them accordingly. Even their common treatment of them is cruel. For, though the toil and hazard of procuring food lies entirely on the women, yet they are not suffered to touch any part of it, until the husband is satisfied; and then he assigns them their portion, which is generally very scanty, and such as he has not a stomach for himself.”

The Greenlanders, who live mostly upon seals, think it sufficient to catch and bring them on shore; and would almost rather submit to starve, than assist their women in skinning, dressing, or dragging the cumbrous animals home to their huts.

In some parts of America, when the men kill any game in the woods, they lay it at the root of a tree, fix a mark there, and travelling until they arrive at their habitation, send their women to fetch it; a task which their own laziness and pride equally forbid.

Among many of the tribes of wandering Arabs, the women are not only obliged to do every domestic and every rural work, but also to feed, to dress, and saddle the horses, for the use of their husbands.

The Moorish women, besides doing all the same kinds of drudgery, are also obliged to cultivate the fields, while their husbands stand idle spectators of the toil, or sleep inglorious beneath a neighbouring shade.

In Madura the husband generally speaks to his wife in the most imperious tone; while she with fear and trembling approaches him, waits upon him while at meals, and pronounces not his name, but with the addition of every dignifying title she can devise. In return for all this submission, he frequently beats and abuses her in the most barbarous manner. Being asked the reason of such a behaviour, one of them answered, “As our wives are so much our inferiors why should we allow them to eat and drink with us? Why should they not serve us with whatever we call for, and afterwards sit down and eat up what we leave? If they commit faults, why should they not suffer correction? It is their business only to bring up our children, pound our rice, make our oil, and do every other kind of drudgery, purposes to which only their low and inferior natures are adapted.”

In several parts of America women are not suffered to enter into their temples, or join in their religious assemblies. In the houses where the chiefs meet to consult on the affairs of state, they are only permitted to enter and seat themselves on the floor on each fide of the passage.

The Circassian custom of breeding young girls, on purpose to be sold in the public market to the highest bidder, is generally known. Perhaps, however, upon minute examination, we shall find that women are, in some degree, bought and sold in every country whether savage or civilized.

The following remark may very properly conclude this chapter: As, among savages, we almost constantly find women condemned to every species of slavish drudgery; so we as constantly find them emerging from this state, in the same proportion as we find the men emerging from ignorance and brutality. The rank, therefore, and condition in which we find women in any country, mark out to us with the greatest precision the exact point in the scale of civil society, to which the people of such country have arrived. And, indeed, were their history silent on every other subject, and only mentioned the manner in which they treated their women, we should from thence be enabled to form a tolerable judgment of the barbarity or culture of their manners.

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Ch 11/75. To be continued…

SKETCHES of the History, Genius, Disposition, Accomplishments, Employments, Customs, Virtues, and Vices, of the FAIR SEX in All Parts of the World, Interspersed with Many Singular and Entertaining ANECDOTES

by John Adams, 1807

SKETCHES of the History, Genius, Disposition, Accomplishments, Employments, Customs, Virtues, and Vices, of the FAIR SEX in All Parts of the World, Interspersed with Many Singular and Entertaining ANECDOTES

By a Friend to the Sex.

“Graceful in all her steps - Heaven in her eyes - In every gesture

dignity and love—–”

BOSTON: PRINTED FOR JOSEPH BUMSTEAD, (Printer and Bookseller)

Sold by him at No. 20, Union-Street, and by Booksellers in Various Parts of the United States

1807

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ADVERTISEMENT.

TO give a brief detail of the history of the Fair Sex - to excite them to Laudable pursuits - to teach them that

“Virtue alone is happiness below—”

that an amiable conduct can only secure love and esteem - and to furnish them with innocent amusement - is the design of this work.

The following authors have been consulted for materials, viz - Drs. Robertson, Alexander, Hawkesworth, Goldsmith, Gregory, Fordyce, and Schomberg - Professors Ferguson and Miller - Fenelon, Montaigne, Thomas, Grosley, Knox, and Hayley - Lady Pennington, Mrs. Kindersley, and others.

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[1]

HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF THE FAIR SEX.

CHAP. I.

Of the First Woman and her Antediluvian Descendants.

The great Creator, having formed man of the dust of the earth, “made a deep sleep to fall upon him, and took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.” Hence the fair sex, in the opinion of some authors, being formed of matter doubly refined, derive their superior beauty and excellence.

Not long after the creation, the first woman was tempted by the serpent to eat of the fruit of a certain tree, in the midst of the garden of Eden, with regard to which God had said, “Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.”

This deception, and the fatal consequences arising from it, furnish the most interesting story in the whole history of the sex.

[pages 2-5 missing]

[6] On the offerings being brought, and that of Abel accepted, Cain’s jealousy and resentment rose to such a pitch, as soon as they came down from the mount where they had been sacrificing, he fell upon his brother and slew him.

For this cruel and barbarous action Cain and his posterity, being banished from the rest of the human race, indulged themselves in every species of wickedness. On this account, it is supposed, they were called the Sons and Daughters of Men. The posterity of Seth, on the other hand, became eminent for virtue, and a regard to the divine precepts. By their regular and amiable conduct, they acquired the appellation of Sons and Daughters of God.

After the deluge there is a chasm in the history of women, until the time of the patriarch Abraham. They then begin to be introduced into the sacred story. Several of their actions. are recorded. The laws, customs, and usages, by which they were governed, are. frequently exhibited.

CHAP. II.

Of the Women in the Patriarchal Ages

The condition of women, among the ancient patriarchs, appears to have been but extremely indifferent. When Abraham entertained the angels, sent

to denounce the destruction of Sodom, he seems to have treated his wife as a menial servant: “Make ready quickly,” said he to her, “three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes on the hearth.”

In many parts of the East, water is only to be met with deep in the earth, and to draw it from the wells is, consequently, fatiguing and laborious. This however was the task of the daughters of Jethro [7] the Midianite; to whom so little regard was paid either on account of their sex, or the rank of their father, as high-priest of the country, that the neighboring shepherds not only insulted them, but forcibly took from them the water they had drawn.

This was the talk of Rebecca, who not only drew water for Abraham’s servant, but for his camels also, while the servant stood an idle spectator of the toil. Is it not natural to imagine, that, as he was on an embassy to court the damsel for Isaac, his master’s son, he would have exerted his utmost efforts to please, and become acceptable?

When he had concluded his bargain, and was carrying her home, we meet with a circumstance worthy of remark. When she first approached Isaac, who had walked out into the fields to meet her, she did it in the most submissive manner, as if she had been approaching a lord and master, rather than a fond and passionate lover. From this circumstance, as well as from several others, related in the sacred history, it would seem that women, instead of endeavouring, as in modern times, to persuade the world that they confer an immense favour on a lover, by deigning to accept of him, did not scruple to confess, that the obligation was conferred on themselves.

This was the case with Ruth, who had laid herself down at the feet of Boaz; and being asked by him who she was, answered, “I am Ruth, thine handmaid; spread, therefore, thy skirt over thine handmaid, for thou art a near kinsman.”

When Jacob went to visit his uncle Laban, he met Rachel, Laban’s daughter, in the fields, attending on the flocks of her father.

In a much later period, Tamar, one of the daughters of king David, was sent by her father to perform the servile office of making cakes for her brother Amnon.

The simplicity of the times in which these things happened, no doubt, very much invalidates the strength [8] of the conclusions that naturally arise from them. But, notwithstanding, it still appears that women were not then treated with the delicacy which they have experienced among people more polished and refined.

Polygamy also prevailed; which is so contrary to the inclination of the sex, and so deeply wounds the delicacy of their feelings, that it is impossible for any woman voluntarily to agree to it, even where it is authorized by custom and by law. Whereever therefore, polygamy takes place, we may assure ourselves that women have but little authority, and have scarcely arrived at any consequence in society.

CHAP. III.

Of the Women of Ancient Egypt.

WHEREVER the human race live solitary and unconnected with each ether, they are savage and barbarous. Wherever they associate together, that association produces softer manners, and a more engaging department.

The Egyptians, from the nature of their country, annually overflowed by the Nile, had no wild beasts to hunt, nor could they procure any thing by fishing. On these accounts, they were under a necessity of applying themselves to agriculture, a kind of life which naturally brings mankind together, for mutual convenience and assistance.

They were, likewise, every year, during the inundation of the river, obliged to assemble together, and take shelter, either on the rising grounds, or in the houses, which were raised upon piles, above the reach of the waters. Here, almost every employment being suspended; and the men and women long confined [9] together, a thousand inducements, not to be found in a solitary state, would naturally prompt them to render themselves agreeable to each other. Hence their manners would begin, more early, to assume a softer polish, and more elegant refinement, than those of the other nations who surrounded them.

The practice of confining women, instituted by jealousy, and maintained by unlawful power, was not adopted by the ancient Egyptians. This appears from the story of Pharoah’s daughter, who was going with her train of maids to bathe in the river, when she found Moses hid among the reeds. It is still more evident, from that of the wife of Potiphar, who, if she had been confined, could not have found the opportunities she did, to solicit Joseph to her adulterous embrace.

The queens of Egypt had the greatest attention paid to them. They were more readily obeyed than the kings. It is also related, that the husbands were in their marriage-contracts, obliged to promise obedience to their wives; “an obedience,” says an ingenious author, “which, in our modern times, we are often obliged to perform, though our wives entered into the promise.”

The behaviour of Solomon to Pharoah’s daughter is a convincing proof that more honor and respect was paid to the Egyptian women, than to those of any other people. Solomon had many other wives besides this princess, and was married to several of them before her, which, according to the Jewish law, ought to have entitled them to a preference. But, notwithstanding this, we hear of no particular palace having been built for any of the others, nor of the worship of any of their gods having been introduced into Jerusalem. But a magnificent palace was permitted, though expressly contrary to the laws of Israel, to worship the gods of her own country.

[10]

CHAP. IV.

Of the Modern Egyptian Women.

THE women of modern Egypt are far from being on so respectable a footing as they were in ancient times, or as the European women are at present.

In Europe, women act parts of great consequence, and often reign sovereigns on the world’s vast theatre. They influence manners and morals, and decide on the most important events. The fate of nations is frequently in their hands.

How different is their situation in Egypt! There they are bound down by the fetters of slavery, condemned to servitude, and have no influence in public affairs. Their empire is confined within the walls of the Harem.* [*The Women’s apartment.] There are their graces and charms entombed. The circle of their life extends not beyond their own family and domestic duties.

Their first care is to educate their children; and a numerous posterity is their most fervent wish. Mothers always suckle their children. This is expressly commanded by Mahomet: Let the mother suckle her child full two years if the child does not quit the breast; but she shall be permitted to wean it with the consent of her husband.

The harem is the cradle and school of infancy. The new-born feeble being is not there swaddled and filletted up in a swathe, the source of a thousand diseases. Laid naked on a mat, exposed in a vast chamber to the pure air, he breathes freely, and with his delicate limbs sprawls at pleasure. The new element, in which he is to live, is not entered with pain and tears. Daily bathed beneath his mother’s eye, he grows apace. Free to act, he tries his coming powers ; rolls, crawls, rises ; and, should he fall, cannot [11] much hurt himself on the carpet or mat which covers the floor.

The daughter’s education is the fame. Whale- bone and bulks, which martyr European girls, they know not. They are only covered with a shirt until six years old: and the dress they afterwards wear confines none of their limbs, but suffers the body to take its true form ; and nothing is more uncommon than ricketty children, and crooked people. In Egypt, man rises in all his majesty, and woman displays every charm of person.

Subject to the immutable laws by which custom governs the East, the women do not associate with the men, not even at table, where the union of sexes produces mirth and wit, and makes food more sweet. When the great incline to dine with one of their wives, she is informed, prepares the apartment, perfumes it with precious essences, procures the most delicate viands, and receives her lord with the utmost attention and respect.

Among the common people, the women usually stand, or sit in a corner of the room, while the husband dines. They often hold the bason for him to wash, and serve him at table.

Customs like these, which the Europeans rightly call barbarous, and exclaim against with justice, appear so natural in Egypt, that they do not suspect it can be otherwise elsewhere. Such is the power of habit over men. What has been for ages, he supposes a law of nature.

The Egyptian women, once or twice a week, are permitted to go to the bath, and visit female relations and friends. They receive each other’s visits very affectionately. When a lady enters the harem, the mistress rises, takes her hand, presses it to her bofom, kisses, and makes her sit down by her side; a slave hastens to take her black mantle; she is entreated to be at ease. quits her veil, and discovers a floating robe tied round the waist with a sash, which perfectly displays [12] her shape. She then receives compliments according to their manner: “Why, my mother, or my, sister, have you been so long absent? We sighed to see you! Your presence is an honour to our house. It is the happiness of cur lives!’”

Slaves present coffee, sherbet, and confectionary. They laugh, talk and play. A large dish is placed on the sofa, on which are oranges, pomegranates, bananas, and excellent melons. Water, and rose-water mixed are brought in an ewer, and with them a silver bason to wash the hands; and loud glee and merry conversation season the meal. The chamber is perfumed by wood of aloes, in a brazier; and, the repast ended, the slaves dance to the found of cymbals, with whom the mistresses often mingle. At parting they several times repeat, “God keep you in health! Heaven grant you a numerous offspring! Heaven preserve your children ; the delight and glory of your family!”

When a visitor is in the harem, the husband must not enter. It is the asylum of hospitality, and cannot be violated without fatal consequences ; a cherished right, which the Egyptian women carefully maintain, being interested in its preservation. A lover, disguised like a woman, may be introduced into the harem, and it is necessary he should remain undiscovered ; death would otherwise be his reward. In that country, where the passions are excited by the climate, and the difficulty of gratifying them, love often produces tragical events.

The Egyptian women, guarded by their eunuchs, go also upon the water, and enjoy the charming prospects of the banks of the Nile. Their cabins are pleasant, richly embellished, and the boats well carved and painted. They are known by the blinds over the windows, and the music by which they are accompanied.

When they cannot go abroad, they endeavor to be merry in their prison. Toward sun-setting they [13] go on the terrace, and take the fresh air among the flowers which are there carefully reared. Here they often bathe; and thus, at once, enjoy the cool, limpid water, the perfume of odoriferous plants, the balmy air, and the starry host, which shine in the firmaments

Thus Bathsheba bathed, when David beheld her from the roof of his palace.

Such is the usual life of the Egyptian women. Their duties are to educate their children, take care of their houshold, and live retired with their family: their pleasures, to visit, give feasts, in which they often yield to excessive mirth and licentiousness, go on the water, take the air in orange groves, and listen to the Almai. They deck themselves as carefully to receive their acquaintance, as European women do to allure the men. Usually mild and timid, they become daring and furious, when under the dominion of violent love. Neither locks nor grim keepers can then prescribe bounds to their passions; which, though death be suspended over their heads, they search the means to gratify, and are seldom unsuccessful.

CHAP. V.

Of the Persian Women.

SEVERAL historians, in mentioning the ancient Persians, have dwelt with peculiar severity on the manner in which they treated their women. Jealous, almost to distraction, they confined the whole sex with the strictest attention, and could not bear that the eye of a stranger should behold the beauty whom they adored.

When Mahomet, the great legislator of the modern Persians, was just expiring, the last advice that he gave his faithful adherents, was, “Be watchful [14] of your religion, and your wives.” Hence they pretend to derive not only the power of confining, but also of persuading them, that they hazard their salvation, if they look upon any other man besides their husbands. The Christian religion informs us, that in the other world they neither marry, nor are given in marriage. The religion of Mahomet teaches us a different doctrine, which the Persians believing, carry the jealousy of Asia to the fields of Elysium, and the groves of Paradise ; where, according to them, the blessed inhabitants have their eyes placed on the crown of their heads left they should see the wives of their neighbors.

Every circumstance in the Persian history tends to persuade us, that the motive, which induced them to confine their women with so much care and solicitude, was only exuberance of love and affection. In the enjoyment of their smiles, and their embraces, the happiness of the men consisted, and their approbation was an incentive to deeds of glory and of heroism.

For thase [sic] reasons they are said to have been the first who introduced the custom of carrying their wives and concubines to the field, “That the sight,” said they, “of all that is dear to us, may animate us to fight more valiantly.”

To offer the least violence to a Persian woman, was to incur certain death from her husband or guardian. Even their kings, though the most absolute in the universe, could not alter the manners or customs of the country, which related to the fair sex.

Widely different from this is the present state of Persia. By a law of that country, their monarch is now authorized to go. whenever he pleases, into the harem of any of his subjects; and the subject, on whose prerogative he thus encroaches, so far from exerting his usual jealousy, thinks himself highly honored by such a visit.

A laughable story, on this subject, is told of Shah Abbas who having got drunk at the house of one of [15] his favourites, and intending to go into the apartment of his wives, was slopped by the door-keeper, who bluntly told him, “Not a man. Sir, besides my master, shall put a mustacho here, so long as I am porter.” “What,” said the king, “dost thou not know me? “Yes,” answered the fellow, “I know you are king of the men, but not of the women.” Shah Abbas, pleased with the answer, and the fidelity of the servant, retired to his palace. The favorite, at whose house the adventure happened, as soon as he heard it, went and fell at his master’s feet, intreating that he would not impute to him the crime committed by his domestic. He likewise added, “I have already turned him away from my service for his presumption.” - “I am glad of it,” answered the king; “I will take him into my service for his fidelity.”

CHAP. VI

Of the Grecian Women.

IT is observed by an able panegyrist for the fair “that the greatest respect has always been paid them by the wisest and best of nations. “If this be true, the Greeks certainly forfeited one great claim to that wisdom which has always been attributed to them; for we have good reason to believe, that they regarded their women only as instruments of raising up members to the state.

In order to esteem the sex, we must do more than see them. By social intercourse, and a mutual reciprocation of good offices, we must become acquainted with their worth and excellence. This, to the G reeks, was a pleasure totally unknown. As the

women lived retired in their own apartments, if they had any amiable qualities, they were buried in perpetual obscurity. Even husbands were, in Sparta, [16] limited as to the time and duration of the visits made to their wives ; and it was the custom at meals for the two sexes always to eat separately.

The apartments destined for the women, in order to keep them more private, were always in the back, and generally in the upper part of the house. The famous Helen is said to have had her chamber in the loftiest part of it; and so wretched were their dwellings, that even Penelope, queen of Ulysses, seems to have descended from hers by a ladder.

Unmarried women, whether maids or widows, were under the strictest confinement. The former, indeed, were not allowed to pass without leave from one part of the house to another, left they should be seen.

New married women were almost as strictly confined as virgins. Hermoine was severely reproved by her old duenna, for appearing out of doors; a freedom, which, she tells her, was not usually taken by women in her situation, and which would endanger her reputation should she happen to be seen.

Aristophanes introduces an Athenian lady, loudly complaining, that women were confined to their chambers, under lock and key, and guarded by mastiffs, goblins, or any thing that could frighten away admirers.

The confinement however of the Grecian women, does not appear, in some cases, to have been so much the effect of jealousy, as of indifference. The men did not think them proper companions; and that ignorance, which is the result of a recluse life,

gave them too good reason to think so. Nothing in Greece was held in estimation, but valor and eloquence. Nature had disqualified the fair sex for both. They were therefore considered as mean and contemptible beings, much beneath the notice of heroes and of orators, who seldom favored them with their company. Thus deserted by a sex which ought to be the source of knowledge, the understandings of the [17] women were but shallow, and their company uninteresting; circumstances which invariably happen in every country where the two sexes have little communication with each other.

In perusing the Grecian history, we every where meet with the most convincing proofs of the low condition of their women. Homer considers Helen, the wife of Menelaus, of little other value than as a part of the goods which were stolen along with her; and the restitution of these, and of her, are commonly mentioned in the same sentence, in such a manner, as to shew, that such restitution would be considered a full reparation of the injury sustained.

The same author, in celebrating Penelope, the wife of Ulysses, for refusing in his absence so many suitors, does not appear to place the merit of her conduct, in a superior regard to chastity, or in love to her husband; but in preserving to his family the dowry she had brought along with her, which, on a second marriage, must have been restored to her father Icarius.

Telemachus is always reprefented as a most dutiful son. But, notwithstanding this, we find him reproving his mother in a manner which shows that the sex, in general, were not treated with softness and delicacy, however dignified, or with whatever authority invested.

“Your widowed hours, apart with female toil,
“And various labors of the loom, beguile.
“There rule, from palace cares remote and free;
“That care to man belongs, and most to me.”

If we take a view of the privileges bestowed by law or custom on the Grecian women, we shall find, that, in the earlier ages, they were allowed a vote in the public assemblies. This privilege, however, was afterwards taken from them. They succeeded equally with brothers to the inheritance of their fathers; and to the whole of that inheritance, if they had no brothers. [18] But to this last privilege was always annexed a circumstance, which must have been extremely disagreeable to every woman of sentiment and feeling. An heiress was obliged, by the laws of Greece, to marry her nearest relation,’ that the estate might not go out of the family; and this relation, in case of a refusal, had a right to sue for the delivery of her person, as we do for goods and chattels.

He who divorced his wife was obliged either to return her dowry, or pay her so much per month, by way of maintenance. He who ravished a free woman was obliged in some states to marry her, in others to pay a hundred, and in others again, a thousand drachmas.

But, when we impartially consider the good and ill treatment of the Grecian women, we find that the balance was much against them, and may therefore conclude, that, though the Greeks were eminent in arts, and illustrious in arms; yet, in politeness and elegance of manners, the highest pitch to which they ever arrived, was only a few degrees above savage barbarity.

In the different areas of Grecian history, however, we must not suppose that the women were always the same. It appears that the manners in the Isles of Greece, in general, were much purer than on the continent. Those islanders, by being less exposed to foreign intercourse, could more easily preserve their laws and their virtues. The war-like convents of Lacedemon, the nurseries only of soldiers, would be

much more rigid than the smiling retreats of Athens, whence politeness was propagated, and fashion announced; and the city of Thebes, where a rustic grossness supplied the place of an elegant luxury, must have been very different from Corinth, which on account of its situation and commerce, obtained the name of the “The two seats of Wealth and Pleasure.”

[19]

CHAP. VII

Of the Grecian Courtezans.

THE rank which the courtezans enjoyed, even in the brightest ages of Greece, and particularly at Athens, is one of the greatest singularities in the manners of any people. By what circumstances could that order of women, who debase at once their own sex and ours - in a country, where the women were possessed of modesty, and the men of sentiment, arrive at distinction, and sometimes even at the highest degree of reputation and consequence ? - Several reasons may be assigned for that phenomenon in society.

In Greece, the courtezans were in some measure connected with the religion of the country. The goddess of Beauty had her altars; and she was supposed to protect prostitution, which was to her a species of worship. The people invoked Venus in times of danger; and, after a battle, they thought they had done honor to Miltiades and Themistocles, because the Laifes and the Glyceras of the age had chaunted hymns to their goddess.

The courtezans were likewise connected with religion, by means of the arts. Their persons afforded models for statues, which were afterwards adored in the temples. Phrine [Phryne] served as a model to Praxiteles, for his Venus [Aphrodite] of Cnidus.

During the feasts of Neptune, near Eleusis, Appeles [sic] having seen the same courtezan on the sea-shore, without any other veil than her loose and flowing hair, was so much struck with her appearance, that he borrowed from it the idea of his Venus rising from the waves [Venus Anadyomene].

They were, therefore connected with statuary and painting, as they furnished the pactisers of those arts with the means of embellishing their works.

The greater part of them were skilled in music; [20] and, as that art was attended with higher effects in Greece, than it has ever been in any other country, it must have possessed, in their hands, an irresistible charm.

Every one knows how enthusiastic the Greek’s were of beauty. They adored it in the temples. They admired it in the principal works of art. They studied it in the exercises and the games. They thought to perfect it by their marriages. They offered rewards to it at the public festivals. But virtuous beauty was seldom to be seen. The modest women were confined to their own apartments, and were visited only by their husbands and nearest relations. The courtezans offered themselves every where to view; and their beauty, as might be expected, obtained universal homage.

Society only can unfold the beauties of the mind. Modest women were excluded from it. The courtezans of Athens, by living in public, and conversing freely with all ranks of people, upon all manner of subjects, acquired by degrees, a knowledge of history,

of philosophy, of policy, and a taste in the whole circle of the arts. Their ideas were more extensive and various, and their conversation was more sprightly and entertaining, than any thing that was to be found among the virtuous part of the sex. Hence their houses became the schools of elegance. The poets and the painters went there to catch the fleeting forms of grace and the changeable features of ridicule; the musicians, to perfect the delicacy of harmony ; and the philosophers, to collect those particulars of human life, which had hitherto escaped their observation.

The house of Aspasia was the resort of Socrates and Pericles, as that of Ninon was of St. Evremont and Conde. They acquired from those fair libertines taste and politeness, and they gave them in exchange knowledge and reputation.

Greece was governed by eloquent men ; and [21] the celebrated courtezans, having an influence over those orators, must have had an influence on public affairs. There was not one, not even the thundering, the inflexible Demosthenes, so terrible to tyrants, but was subjected to their sway. Of that great master of eloquence it has been said, “What he had been a whole year in erecting, a woman overturned in a day.” That influence augmented their consequence; and their talent of pleasing increased with the occasions of exerting it.

The laws and the public institutions, indeed, by authorizing the privacy of women, set a high value on the sanctity of the marriage vow. But in Athens, imagination, sentiment, luxury, the taste in arts and pleasures, was opposite to the laws. The courtezans, therefore, may be said to have come in support of the manners.

There was no check upon public licentiousness; but private infidelity, which concerned the peace of families, was punished as a crime. By a strange and perhaps unequalled singularity, the men were corrupted, yet the domestic manners were pure. It seems as if the courtezans had not been considered to belong to their sex; and, by a convention to which the laws and the manners bended, while other women were estimated merely by their virtues, they were estimated only by their accomplishments.

These reasons will, in some measure, account for the honours, which the votaries of Venus often received in Greece. Otherwise we should have been at a loss to conceive, why six or seven writers had exerted their talents to celebrate the courtezans of Athens - why three great painters had uniformly devoted their pencils to represent them on canvass - and why so many poets had strove to immortalize them in verses. We should hardly have believed that so many illustrious men had courted their society - that Aspasia had been consulted in deliberations of peace and war - that Phrine had a statue of gold placed [22] between the statues of two kings at Delphos - that, after death, magnificent tombs had been erected to their memory.

“The traveler,” says a Greek writer, “who, approaching to Athens, sees on the side of the way a monument which attracts his notice at a distance, will imagine that it is the tomb of Miltiades or Pericles, or of some other great man, who has done honour to his country by his services. He advances, he reads, and he learns that it is a courtezan of Athens who is interred with so much pomp.”

Theopompus, in a letter to Alexander the Great, speaks also of the same monument in words to the following effect - “Thus, after her death, is a prostitute honoured; while not one of those brave warriors who fell in Asia, fighting for you and for the safety of Greece, has so much as a stone erected to his memory, or an inscription to preserve his ashes from insult.”

Such was the homage which that enthusiastic people, voluptuous and passionate, paid to beauty. More guided by sentiment than by reason, and having laws rather than principles, they banished their great men, honored their courtezans, murdered Socrates, permitted themselves to be governed by Aspasia, preserved inviolate the marriage bed, and. placed Phrine in the temple of Apollo!

CHAP. VIII.

Of the Roman Women

AMONG the Romans, a grave and austere people, who, during five hundred years, were unacquainted with the elegancies and the pleasures of life, and who, in the middle of furrows and field of battle, were employed in tillage or in war, the manners of the women were a long time as solemn and severe as those of the men, and without the smallest: mixture of corruption, or of weakness.

The time when the Roman women began to appear in public, marks a particular era in history.

In the infancy of the city, and even until the conquest of Carthage, shut up in their houses, where a simple and rustic virtue paid every thing to instinct, and nothing to elegance - so nearly allied to barbarism, as only to know what it was to be wives and mother - chaste without apprehending they could be otherwise - tender and affectionate, before they had learned the meaning of the words - occupied in duties, and ignorant that there were other pleasures; they spent their life in retirement, in domestic economy, in nursing their children, and in rearing to the republic a race of labourers, or of soldiers.

The Roman women, for many ages, were respected over the whole world. Their victorious husbands re-visited them with transport, at their return from battle. They laid at their feet the spoils of the enemy, and endeared themselves in their eyes, by the wounds which they had received for them and for the state. Those warriors often came from imposing commands upon kings ; and in their own houses accounted it an honour to obey. In vain the too rigid laws had made them the arbiters of life and death. More powerful than the laws, the women ruled their judges. In vain the legislature, foreseeing the wants which exist only among a corrupt people, permitted divorce. The indulgence of the polity was proscribed by the manners.

Such was the influence of beauty at Rome before the licentious intercourse of the sexes had corrupted both.

The Roman matrons do not seen to have possessed that military courage which Plutarch had praised in certain Greek and Barbarian women: they partook more of the nature of their sex; or, at least, they [24] departed less from its character. Their first quality was decency. Every one knows the story of Cato the censor, who stabbed a Roman Senator for killing his own wife in the presence of his daughter.

To these austere manners, the Roman women joined an enthusiastic love of their country, which discovered itself upon many great occasions. On the death of Brutus, they all cloathed themselves in mourning. In the time of Coriolanus they saved the city. That incensed warrior who had insulted the senate and the priests, and who was superior even to the pride of pardoning, could not resist the tears and entreaties of the women. They melted his obdurate heart. The senate decreed them public thanks, ordered the men to give place to them upon all occasions, caused an altar to be erected for them on the spot where the mother had softened her son, and the wife her husband; and the sex were permitted to add another ornament to their head-dress.

It is to be wished that our modern ladies could assign as good a reason for the size of their caps.

The Roman women saved the city a second time, when besieged by Brennus. They gave up all their gold as its ransom. For that instance of their generosity, the senate granted them the honour of having funeral orations pronounced in the rostrum, in common with patriots and heroes.

After the battle of Cannae, when Rome had no other treasures but the virtues of their citizens, the women sacrificed both their gold and their jewels. A new decree rewarded their zeal.

Valerius Maximus, who lived in the reign of Tiberius, informs us that, in the second triumvirate, the three assassins, who governed Rome, thirsting after gold, no less than blood. and having already practised every species of robbery, and worn out every method of plunder resolved to tax the women. They imposed a heavy contribution upon each of them. The women sought an orator to defend their cause, [25] but found none. Nobody would reason against those who had the power of life and death. The daughter of the celebrated Hortensius alone appeared. She revived the memory of her father’s abilities, and supported with intrepidity her own cause, and that of her sex. The ruffians blushed, and revoked their orders.

Hortensia was conducted home in triumph, and had the honour of having given, in one day, an example of courage to men, a pattern of eloquence to women, and a lesson of humanity to tyrants.

But the era of the talents of women at Rome is to be found under the emperors. Society was then more perfected by opulence, by luxury, by the use and abuse of the arts, and by commerce. Their retirement was then less strict; their genius, being more active, was more exerted; their heart had new wants ; the idea of reputation sprung up in their minds ; their leisure increased with the division of employments.

During upwards of six hundred years, the virtues had been found sufficient to please. They now found it necessary to call in the accomplishments. They were desirous to join admiration to esteem, ‘till they learned to exceed esteem itself. For in all countries, in proportion as the love of virtue diminishes, we find the love of talents to increase.

A thousand causes concurred to produce this revolution of manners among the Romans. The vast inequality of ranks, the enormous fortunes of individuals, the ridicule, affixed by the imperial court to moral ideas, all contributed to hasten the period of corruption. There were still, however, some great and virtuous characters among the Roman women. Portia, the daughter of Cato, and wife of Brutus, in the conspiracy against Caesar, shewed herself worthy to be associated with the first of human kind, and crafted [?] with the fate of empires. After the battle of Philippi [26] she would neither survive liberty nor Brutus, but died with the bold intrepidity of Cato.

The example of Portia was followed by that of Arria, who seeing her husband hesitating and afraid to die, in order to encourage him, pierced her own breast, and delivered to him the dagger with a smile.

The name of Arria’s hufband was Paetus. The manner of their death has furnished Martial with the subject of an elegant epigram, which may be thus paraphrased:

“When to her husband Arria gave the sword,
“Which from her chast, her bleeding breast she drew;
“She said, My Paetus, this I do not fear;
“But, O! the wound that must he made by you!
“She could no more - but on her Paetus still
“She fix’d her feeble, her expiring eyes;
“And when she saw him raise the pointed steel,
“She sunk, and seem’d to say Now Arria dies!”

Paulinia too, the wife of Seneca, caused her veins to be opened at the same time with her husband’s; but being forced to live, during the few years which she survived him, “she bore in her countenance” says Tacitus, “the honourable testimony of her love, a paleness, which proved that part of her blood had sympathetically issued with the blood of her spouse.”

The same exalted virtues were displayed, though in a different manner, by Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus; who, naturally haughty and sensible, after the death of that great man, buried herself in retirement in all the bloom. of youth; and who, neither bending her stateliness under Tiberius, nor allowing herself to be corrupted by the manners of her age - as implacable in her hatred to the tyrant, as she had been faithful to her husband - spent her life in lamenting the one, and in detesting the other. Nor should the celebrated Epiniana be forgot, whom Vespasian ought to have admired, but whom he so basely put to death. [27] To take notice of all the celebrated women of the empire, would much exceed the bounds of the present undertaking. But the empress Julia, the wife of Septimius Severus, possessed a species of merit so very different from any of those already mentioned, as to claim particular attention.

This lady was born in Syria, and the daughter of a priest of the sun. It was predicted that she should rise to sovereign dignity ; and her character justified the prophecy.

Julia, while on the throne, loved, or pretended passionately to love, letters. Either from taste, from a desire to instruct herself, from a love of renown, or possibly from all these together, she spent her life with philosophers. Her rank of empress would not, perhaps, have been sufficient to subdue those bold spirits ; but she joined to that the more powerful influences of wit and beauty. These three kinds of empire rendered less necessary to her that which consists only in art ; and which, attentive to their lades and their weaknesses, governs great minds by little means.

It is fact that she was a philosopher. Her philosophy, however, did not extend so far as to give chastity to her manners. Her husband, who did not love her, valued her understanding so much, that he consulted her upon all occasions. She governed in the same manner under his son.

Julia was, in short, an empress and a politician, occupied at the fame time about literature and affairs of state, while she mingled her pleasures freely with both. She had courtiers for her lovers, scholars for her friends, and philosophers for her counsellors. In the midst of a society, where she reigned and was instructed, Julia arrived at the highest celebrity; but as, among all her excellencies, we find not those of her sex, the virtues of a woman, our admiration is lost in blame. In her life time she obtained more praise than respect: and posterity, while it has done [28] justice to her talents and her accomplishments, has agreed to deny her esteem.

At last, in following the course of history, the famous Zenobia presents herself: she was worthy to have been a pupil of Longinus; for she knew how to write, as well as how to conquer. When she was afterward unfortunate, she was so with dignity. She consoled herself for the loss of a throne, and the pleasures of grandeur, with the sweets of solitude and the joys of reason.

CHAP. IX.

Laws and Customs respecting the Roman Women.

THE Roman women, as well as the Grecian, were under perpetual guardianship; and were not at any age, nor in any condition, ever trusted with the management of their own fortunes.

Every father had a power of life and death over his own daughters : but this power was not restricted to daughters only; it extended also to sons.

The Oppian law prohibited women from having more than half an ounce of gold employed in ornamenting their persons, from wearing clothes of divers colours, and from riding in chariots, either in the city, or a thousand paces round it.

They were strictly forbid to use wine, or even to have in their possession the key of any place where it was kept. For either of these faults they were liable to be divorced by their husbands. So careful were the Romans in restraining their women from wine, that they are supposed to have first introduced the custom of saluting their female relations and acquaintances, on entering into the house of a friend or neighbor, that they might discover by their breath, whether they had tasted any of that liquor.

This strictness, however, began in time to be relaxed [29] until at last, luxury becoming too strong; for every law, the women indulged themselves in equal liberties with the men.

But such was not the case in the earlier ages of Rome. Romulus even permitted husbands to kill their wives, if they found them drinking wine. And if we may believe Valerius Maximus, Egnatius Metellus, having detected his wife drinking out of a cask, actually made use of this permission and was acquitted by Romulus.

Fabius Pictor relates, that the parents of a Roman lady, having detected her picking the lock of a chest which contained some wine, shut her up and starved her to death.

Women were liable to be divorced by their husbands almost at pleasure, provided the portion was returned which they had brought along with them. They were also liable to be divorced for barrenness, which, if it could be construed into a fault, was at least the fault of nature, and might sometimes be that of the husband.

A few sumptuary laws, a subordination to the men, and a total want of authority, do not so much affect the sex, as to be coldly and indelicately treated by their husbands.

Such a treatment is touching them in the tenderest part. Such, however, we have reason to believe, they often met with from the Romans, who had not yet learned, as in modern times, to blend the rigidity of the patriot, and roughness of the warrior, with that soft and indulging behaviour, so conspicuous in our modern patriots and heroes.

Husbands among the Romans not only themselves behaved roughly to their wives, but even sometimes permitted their servants and slaves to do the same. The principal eunuch of Justinian the Second, threatened to chastise the Empress, his master’s wife, in the manner that children are chastised at school, if she did not obey his orders. [30]

With regard to the private diversions of the Roman ladies, history is silent. Their public ones were such as were common to both sexes; as bathing, theatrical representations, horse-races, shows of wild beasts, which fought against one another, and sometimes against men, whom the emperors, in the plenitude of their despotic power, ordered to engage them.

The Romans, of both sexes, spent a great deal of time at the baths ; which at first, perhaps, were interwoven with their religion, but at last were only considered as refinements in luxury. They were places of public resort, where all the news of the times were to be heard, where people met with their acquaintances and friends, where public libraries were kept for such as chose to read, and where poets recited their works to such as had patience to hear.

In the earlier periods of Rome, separate baths were appropriated to each sex. Luxury by degrees getting the better of decency, the men and women at last bathed promiscuously together. Though this indecent manner of bathing was prohibited by the emperor Adrian; yet, in a short time, inclination overcame the prohibition, and, in spite of every effort, promiscuous bathing continued until the time of Constantine, who, by the coercive force of the legislative authority, and the rewards and terrors of the Christian religion, put a final stop to it.

CHAP. X.

Of the Effects of Christianity on the Manners of Women

PHILOSOPHY had no fixed principles for women. The religion of antiquity was only a kind of sacred policy, which had rather ceremonies than precepts- The ancients honored their gods as we honour [31] our great men: they offered them incense, and expected their protection in exchange. The gods were their guardians, not their legislators.

Christianity on the other hand, was a legislation : it imposed laws for the regulation of manners ; it strengthened the marriage knot; to the political it added a sacred tie, and placed the matrimonial engagements under the jurisdiction of Heaven.

Not satisfied with regulating the actions, Christianity extended its empire even to the thoughts. Above all, it combated the senses. It waged war even with such inanimate objects as might be the objects of seduction, or were the means of seduction.

In a word, routing vice in her secret cell, it made her become her own tormentor.

The legislation of the Greeks and Romans referred the motive of every action to the political interest of society. But the new and sacred legislation, inspiring only contempt for this world, referred all things to a future and very different state of existence.

The detachment of the senses, the reign of the soul, and an inexpressibly sublime and supernatural something, which blended itself with both, became the doctrine of a body of the people. Hence the vow of continence, and the consecration of celibacy.

Life was a combat. The sanctity of the manners threw a veil over nature and over society; Beauty was afraid to please; Valor dropt his spear; the passions were taught to submit ; the severity of the soul increased every day, by the sacrifices of the senses.

The women, who generally possess a lively imagination, and a warm heart, devoted themselves to virtues, which were as flattering as they were difficult, and no less elevated than austere.

The disciples of christianity were taught to love and comfort one another, like children of the same family. In consequence of this doctrine, the more tender sex, converting to pity the sensibility of nature, [32] devoted their lives to the service of indigence and distress. Delicacy learned to overcome disgust. The tears of pity were seen to flow in the huts of misery, and in the cells of disease, with the friendly sympathy of a sister.

The persecutions which arose in the empire, soon after the introduction of christianity, afforded that religion a new opportunity of discovering its efficacy. To preserve the faith, it was often necessary to suffer imprisonment, banishment, and death. Courage then became necessary.

There is a deliberate courage which is the result of reason, and which is equally bold and calm: it is the courage of philosophers and of heroes. There is a courage which springs from the imagination, which is ardent and precipitate; such is most commonly the courage of martyrs, or religious courage.

The courage of the Christian women was founded upon the noblest motives. Animated by the glorious hope of immortality, they embraced flames and gibbets, and offered their delicate and feeble bodies to the most excruciating tortures.

This revolution in the ideas, and in the manners, was followed by another in the writings. Such as made women their subject became as austere and seraphic as they.

Almost all the doctors of those times, raised by the church both to the rank of orators and of saints, emulated each other in praising the Christian women. But he who speaks of them with most eloquence and with most zeal, is Saint Jerome ; who, born with a soul of fire, spent twenty-four years, in writing, in combating, and in conquering himself.

The manners of this saint were probably more severe than his thoughts. He had a number of illustrious women at Rome among his disciples. Thus surrounded with beauty, though he escaped weakness, yet he was not able to escape calumny. At last, flying from the world, from women, and from [33] himself, he retired to Palestine; where all that he had fled from still pursued him, tormented him under the penitential sackcloth, and, in the middle of solitary desarts, re-echoed in his ears the tumult of Rome.

Such was Saint Jerome, the most eloquent panegyrist of the Christian women of the fourth century. That warm and pious writer, though generally harsh and obscure, softens his style, in a thousand places, to praise a great number of Roman women, who at the Capitol, had embraced christianity, and studied in Rome the language of the Hebrews, that they might read and understand the books of Moses.

This blog operates under the motto of ‘virtue, happiness and erotica‘. I contend that we are currently living in an age where, in the West, happiness is the guiding principle, having displaced virtue around the end of the 1700s. While the timeline is somewhat more complex than that, I happen to come from a society where, after around 1830, there can be little doubt that most of the institutions were built from a foundation of Benthamite happiness rather than the old model of virtue - be it the virtuous citizen, or the virtuous aristocracy. Virtue was important to happiness, but happiness was primary.

Soon I will be posting chapters from John Adams’ “Sketches of the History, Genius, Disposition, Accomplishments, Employments, Customs, Virtues, and Vices, of the Fair Sex in All Parts of the World, Interspersed with Many Singular and Entertaining Anecdotes,” published in 1807. The advertisement page (directly after the title page) declares the guiding principle of the book to be:

“Virtue alone is happiness below—”

According to this motto (is ‘motto’ the right word?) virtue is primary, happiness follows. In fact Western history can be understood as a battle between virtue and happiness, with virtue having been the primary guiding principle for most of the last 2,500 years.(1) Epicurus v Stoicism, and also Epicurus v the Platonic philosopher king, who is a character of ultimate virtue (think the Pope, or a monarch).

In Georges Bataille’s The Story of the Eye there is an episode that occurs in a church in Seville. The priest, a representative of the culture of virtue, is thoroughly destroyed and desecrated by three characters (trinity!!??) indulging in a lusty pursuit of the culture of pleasure. (The politics of happiness are (broadly) built on the idea that we pursue pleasure for our happiness, and are (generally) repelled from that which causes us pain.)

Here is the relevant text. I put it up believing that it will not destroy the book for you. The book is short and masterful and would itself survive any desecration!

One can readily imagine my stupor at watching Simone kneel down by the cabinet of the lugubrious confessor. While she confessed her sins, I waited, extremely anxious to see the outcome of such an unexpected action. I assumed this sordid creature was going to burst from his booth, pounce upon the impious girl, and flagellate her. I was even getting ready to knock the dreadful phantom down and treat him to a few kicks; but nothing of the sort happened: the booth remained closed, Simone spoke on and on through the tiny grilled window, and that was all.

I was exchanging sharply interrogatory looks with Sir Edmund when things began to grow clear: Simone was slowly scratching her thigh, moving her legs apart; keeping one knee on the prayer stool, she shifted one foot to the floor, and she was exposing more and more of her legs over her stockings while still murmuring her confession. At times she even seemed to be tossing off. I softly drew up at the side to try and see what was happening: Simone really was masturbating, the left part of her face was pressed against the grille near the priest’s head, her limbs tensed, her thighs splayed, her fingers rummaging deep in the fur; I was able to touch her, I bared her cunt for an instant. At that moment, I distinctly heard her say:

“Father, I still have not confessed the worst sin of all.”

A few seconds of silence.

“The worst sin of all is very simply that I’m tossing off while talking to you.”

More seconds of whispering inside, and finally almost aloud:

“If you don’t believe me, I can show you.”

And indeed, Simone stood up and spread one thigh before the eye of the window while masturbating with a quick, sure hand.

“All right, priest,” cried Simone, banging away at the confessional, “what are you doing in your shack there? Tossing off, too?”

But the confessional kept its peace.

“Well, then I’ll open.”

And Simone pulled out the door.

Inside, the visionary, standing there with lowered head, was mopping a sweat-bathed brow. The girl groped for his cock under the cassock: he didn’t turn a hair. She pulled up the filthy black skirt so that the long cock stuck out, pink and hard: all he did was throw back his head with a grimace, and a hiss escaped through his teeth, but he didn’t interfere with Simone, who shoved the bestiality into her mouth and took long sucks on it.

Sir Edmund and I were immobile in our stupor. For my part, I was spellbound with admiration, and I didn’t know what else to do, when the enigmatic Englishman resolutely strode to the confessional and, after edging Simone aside as delicately as could be, dragged the larva out of its hole by its wrists, and flung it brutally at our feet: the vile priest lay there like a cadaver, his teeth to the ground, not uttering a cry. We promptly carried him to the vestry.

His fly was open, his cock dangling, his face livid and drenched with sweat, he didn’t resist, but breathed heavily: we put him in a large wooden armchair with architectural decorations.

“Señores,” the wretch snivelled, “you must think I am a hypocrite.”

“No,” replied Sir Edmund with a categorical intonation.

Simone asked him: “What’s your name?”

“Don Aminado,” he answered.

Simone slapped the sacerdotal pig, which gave him another hard-on. We stripped off all his clothes, and Simone crouched down and pissed on them like a bitch. Then she wanked and sucked the pig while I urinated in his nostrils. Finally, to top off this cold exaltation, I fucked Simone in the arse while she violently sucked his cock.

Meanwhile, Sir Edmund, contemplating the scene with his characteristic poker face, carefully inspected the room where we had found refuge. He glimpsed a tiny key hanging from a nail in the woodwork.

“What is that key for?” he asked Don Aminado.

From the expression of dread on the priest’s face, Sir Edmund realised it was the key to the tabernacle.

The Englishman returned a few moments later, carrying a ciborium of twisted gold, decorated with a quantity of angels as naked as cupids. The wretched Don Aminado gaped at this receptacle of consecrated hosts on the floor, and his handsome moronic face, already contorted because Simone was flagellating his cock with her teeth and tongue, was now fully gasping and panting.

After barricading the door, Sir Edmund rummaged through the closets until he finally lit upon on a large chalice, whereupon he asked us to abandon the wretch for an instant.

“Look,” he explained to Simone, “the eucharistic hosts in the ciborium, and here the chalice where they put white wine.”

“They smell like come,” said Simone, sniffing the unleavened wafers.

“Precisely,” continued Sir Edmund. “The hosts, as you see, are nothing other than Christ’s sperm in the form of small white biscuits. And as for the wine they put in the chalice, the ecclesiastics say it is the blood of Christ, but they are obviously mistaken. If they really thought it was the blood, they would use red wine, but since they employ only white wine, they are showing that at the bottom of their hearts they are quite aware that this is urine.”

The lucidity of this logic was so convincing that Simone and I required no further explanation. She, armed with the chalice and I with the ciborium, the two of us marched over to Don Aminado, who was still inert in his armchair, faintly agitated by a slight quiver through his body.

Simone began by slamming the base of the chalice against his skull, which jolted him and left him utterly dazed. Then she resumed sucking him, which provoked his ignoble rattles. After bringing his senses to a height of fury with Sir Edmund ’s help and mine, she gave him a hard shake.

“That’s not all,” she said in a voice that brooked no reply. “It’s time to piss.”

And she struck his face again with the chalice, but at the same time she stripped naked before him and I finger-fucked her.

Sir Edmund’s gaze, fixed on the stunned eyes of the young cleric, was so imperious that the thing went off with barely any hitch; Don Aminado noisily poured his urine into the chalice, which Simone held under this thick cock.

“And now, drink,” commanded Sir Edmund.

The paralysed wretch drank with a well-nigh filthy ecstasy at one long gluttonous draft. Again Simone sucked and wanked him; he continued gurgling desperately and revelling in it. With a demented gesture, he bashed the sacred chamber pot against a wall. Four robust arms lifted him up and, with open thighs, his body erect, and yelling like a pig being slaughtered, he spurted his come on the hosts in the ciborium, which Simone held in front of him while masturbating him.

In the next chapter things get even more extreme for the priest.

With a wonderful symmetry all this occurs in Seville, the same location as for Fénelon’s golden age society in Télémaque (Telemachus) (Vol 1, p150), written in 1699, one of the most influential political works during the following century. Télémaque is all about the virtuous ruler, and Fénelon’s golden age in southern Spain is the ultimate virtuous society. Note that Fénelon is one of those referred to in the above Advertisment.

Many thanks to Jahsonic for introducing me to this book via his wiki, art and popular culture. At his entry on Bataille he states: ‘ Along with Gilles Deleuze, Bataille is a patron saint of this wiki.’ Rightly so.

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(1) There is a nice little use of the virtue/happiness dichotomy in Alexander Dumas (père), Pictures of Travel in the South of France, London, Offices of the National Illustrated Library, p 109 (no date, but the travels were between 1834 and 1836, and the book was originally published in French around 1842 ):

[After seeking refuge from the rain at an inn at St. Péray, on the road between Vienne and Valence, Dumas and his travelling companion Jadin, prepare themselves for the dubious benefit of some house wine, having previously that day sampled a very pleasing hermitage.]

[The inn] was full of people who, caught like us in the storm, were treating themselves to some nice looking white wine, and waiting for the storm to pass over. While we were drying our clothes, Jadin and I looked at each other to know whether we should do the same. The hermitage we had drank in the morning prepared us badly for the wine of a public-house; however, as the external damp went off, we felt the necessity of warmth inside. We therefore determined to ask our hostess, half from necessity and half in payment for her hospitality, for the usual bit of bread and cheese and bottle of new wine, which were brought us immediately. In all doubtful cases, like the present, it was always Jadin who sacrificed himself. He half filled his glass, held it to the light, turned it round, examined it in every way, and, satisfied with his inspection, raised it to his mouth with more confidence. As for me, I followed his movements with the anxiety of a man who, without putting himself forwards, must share the good or bad fate of his travelling companion. I saw Jadin silently taste his first mouthful, then a second, then a third, then empty his glass and fill it again, all without uttering a word, and with an increasing astonishment which had something religious and grateful about it. Then he began to try it again, with the same precautions, and appeared to finish it with the same enjoyment.

“Well!” said I, still waiting.

“True happiness is only to be found in virtue,” answered Jadin, gravely; “we are virtuous, and heaven rewards us; taste the wine.”

I have often wondered what happened to the 1960s and 70s idea of rebirth.

Rebirth?

I don’t mean the facile doctrines of evangelical Christianity, in which, if you pay a fee to the TV man you will go to heaven. I don’t even mean, I think, the pseudo-Christian idea of being reborn in some slightly more meaningful fashion, discovering god etc. Nor do I mean, exactly, the various non-Christian paths to rebirth, like being convinced that buying some quartz, or something, makes you a better person. I don’t even mean, necessarily, what happens when a seeker takes off to some guru’s hideout in India for a session in immortality.

I mean something more along these lines:

I recall a small segment on BBC radio where a physicist was describing sitting on a beach. He was busy minding his own business, in his physicist’s kind of way, with, presumably, a decent knowledge of how the universe and everything is constructed. Suddenly he felt himself becoming super-aware of his surroundings. Suddenly every grain of sand, every molecule, every ripple in the water, became super-real to him. The universe was around him, and he was a part of it, a part of every tiny particle of it, every sparkle of energy was part of him… He came from that beach a man renewed. What previously had been to him the somewhat abstract and ignored reality of the universe had become part of his being.

Now that is a rebirth experience - an experience of super-consciousness, intense understanding beyond reason. He could never be the same.

Or, of course, there are the chemically-induced experiences of Aldous Huxley reported in his short book, The Doors of Perception. Again, the world, under hallucinogens, became a place of wonder and enchantment, super-real, and super-beautiful.

David Bowie sang of it in ‘After All‘:

I sing with impertinence, shading impermanent chords, with my words.
I’ve borrowed your time and I’m sorry I called
But the thought just occurred that we’re nobody’s children at all,
after all.
Live till your rebirth and do what you will, Oh by jingo.
Forget all I’ve said, please bear me no ill, Oh by jingo.
After all, after all

Not to be outdone, here is something of the kind from Brian Eno, Moebius and Roedelius, with the song The Belldog from After the Heat:

Most of the day
We were at the machinery
In the dark sheds
That the seasons ignore
I held the levers that guided the signals to the radio
But the words I receive, random code, broken fragments from before.
Out in the trees
My reason deserting me
All the dark stars
Cluster over the bay.
Then in a certain moment
I lose control and at last I am part of the machinery.
Where are you?
And the light disappears
As the world makes its circle through the sky.

Now this was something to aspire to.

And then its ambitions kind of faded away. Rebirth was taken up by various purveyors of snake oil, and gradually lost its power as a vision of possibility. Anyhow, the whole idea was probably nothing more than the privileging of some form of minor psychotic experience. But an experience with a positive nature, I would suggest.

It is now, so far as I know, almost absent from the ambitions of the age, except perhaps where the poor or needy need solace, and a salesman sees a happy niche for a costless product.

My question extended further though. I wondered not just where it went, but where it came from.

Huxley (left) and Gerald Heard

Well, I wonder if I have found the source? That it might have been tied up with Huxley hardly comes as a shock, but I was surprised to see the connection to Alcoholics Anonymous, and just as surprised to see that it could be so precisely located. I do not mean to pretend that one or a few people are responsible for the mystical ambitions of an era - there is more at work here than that. But it seems reasonable to propose that here you will find an important reference point for the twentieth century emergence of a new ambition of consciousness.

I love this stuff. I have always loved this stuff. I wish it could be true. That it might not be true, or possible, is an awful thought. That we might be reaching into a new state of enhanced emotional and perceptive capacity is a wonderful idea. That, on the ground, such an idea seems entirely unsupportable is a terrible shame. But there you are. That’s life - as we yet know it…

The changes that we make are more likely to come from the more mundane, but, let’s face it, still magical, development and use of new technologies.

Happiness is the new era

For those who seek some kind of new era… Well, we had an era change 200 years ago, when the European world shifted from a virtue based culture to a happiness based culture - democracy, satisfying self-interest, individual freedoms, all that. It goes under other names, such as Epicureanism, hedonism, eudaimonia, utilitarianism. Keywords for the previous era include Stoicism, honour, duty, and, of course, virtue.

Around the end of the 18th century theorists were developing how to free up the satisfaction of self-interest in economic activity, and in political structures. This brought about a most profound revolution in human social organisation. It took up to 150 years to implement institutionally - think of the lag in the implementation of women’s voting, or the long standing differing legal position of people with differing skin colour.

The fabled sixties (which probably really happened as much during the fifties and the seventies) was a time of shrugging off (or at least beginning to shrug off) some of the remaining detritus of the preceding era. The world was just catching up with itself, or learning how to live better within its new skin. Taking risks.

Even still, we are working out how to live within this brave new world.

For a little more on Gerald Heard, see here.

  A little more about rebirth …

David Bowie again: -

Memory Of A Free Festival

Oh, to capture just one drop of all the ecstasy that swept that afternoon
To paint that love upon a white balloon
And fly it from the toppest top of all the tops that man has pushed beyond his brain
Satori must be something just the same

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Is it just that the term ‘rebirth’ has gone out of fashion? For a discussion of the modern quest see iamyouasheisme on The Unbearable Pain of Mindfulness.

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This excellent video on 2001 by robag88 discusses the symbolism of Kubrick’s film in relation to intellectual expansion (or rebirth). Should the video be removed see http://www.collativelearning.com (Thanks to Jahsonic for this link)

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iamyouasheisme’s The Unbearable Pain of Mindfulness brings to mind a passage or two from Huysmans’ 1884 novel, Against Nature. The main character, Des Esseintes, rails against the utilitarian world, and, it appears, the (capital U) Utilitarians - the political movement that played a pivotal role in ushering in democracy, legal reforms, capitalism, universal education, and liberalism during the nineteenth century.

[55] Like a hermit he [Des Esseintes] was ripe for seclusion, worn out by life and expecting nothing more of it; and also like a monk, he was overcome [56] by a tremendous lassitude, by a need for contemplation, by a longing no longer to have anything in common with the heathen - which was what he called Utilitarians and fools.

(I’m using the 1998 Oxford University Press edition translated by Margaret Mauldon.)

The following chapter builds on the theme. Des Esseintes takes on the role of corrupter. First he encourages a man to marry to test his theory of  the ‘inexorable power of petty vexations - more disastrous than great ones to the well-tempered mind’. [57-58] Vindicated, the marriage fails. Then he tries to create a murderer by giving a poor youth, Auguste Langlois, the pleasures of a high class brothel, then removing the privilege, and seeing if the youth will turn to crime to sustain his new-found pleasures, to sustain access to what he never before had dreamed existed. [58-60] As Des Esseintes leaves the youth he says:

[60] ‘…keep in mind this quasi-biblical saying: “Do unto others as you would not have them do unto you”; you’ll go far with that precept.”

This, of course, is the inverse of the usual formula, a formula adopted by JS Mill in his utilitarian moral philosophy.

Finally he fully expostulates his theory:

[61] ‘…I was putting into practice the layman’s parable, the allegory of universal education which aims at nothing less than transforming all men into Langloises, by  - instead of permanently and mercifully putting out the eyes of the poor - by striving to force them to open their eyes wide,* so that they may notice that some of their neighbours have destinies that are quite undeservedly more merciful, and enjoy pleasures that are keener and more multi-faceted and, consequently, more desirable, and more precious.

 ’And the fact is,’ continued Des Esseintes, following his train of thought, ‘the fact is that since pain is an effect of education, since it deepens and sharpens in proportion as ideas spring up, the more one tries to polish the intelligence and to refine the nervous system of those poor devils, the more one will develop in them those fiercely long-lasting seeds of moral suffering and of hatred.’

[*Eyes Wide Shut?]

What, I wonder, of the pain of the path to rebirth? The pain of mindfulness? And what of the quest itself? As we adjust to our Utilitarian-inspired world are we groping through the thickets of jealous rage to reach yet a new pinnacle of human existence beyond the horrors of inequality in a (relatively, compared with aristocratic society) equal opportunity world, a world of education and knowledge, a world of awareness of the privileges of others. Is nirvana, or rebirth, like some desert isle which will give us respite and the happiness we crave. I am reminded of the cover of Fripp and Eno’s Evening Star.

If this is the era of happiness, where happiness is agglomerated via the vote, and, prior to around 1800 the major preoccupation was virtue (in major part as a path to happiness), then it might be suggested that this is an era where subjective experience predominates, whereas, during the period where virtue was predominant, objective behavioural rules predominated. This matches the idea of the virtue culture being headed by the philosopher king, as represented by Plato in The Republic, and echoed, for example, in Fenelon’s Telemachus, written in 1699. It also matches the idea of the happiness culture referring its decisions to the people, via democracy.

Plato (left) looks above for inspiration for moral philosophy and social organisation, while Aristotle (right) looks to the world around him. Aristotle was Plato’s student, who was, in turn, the student of Socrates. (“School of Athens,” fresco by Raphael, 1508–11; in the Stanza della Segnatura, the Vatican)

A competing doctrine during this period when the virtue culture was dominant was that of Epicureanism, which gave happiness primacy. After the US and French revolutions (which were both largely conducted to implement a new virtue culture), happiness emerged in Britain (particularly) as a key analytical concept. British democratic political philosophy formed the foundation for the democratic revolution that swept the world during the 19th century. We are living in an age of Epicureanism, compared with the virtue culture of Stoicism.

Interestingly, also, Fenelon creates a distinction between the warrior culture of Aeneas (and the Iliad characters generally, other than Ulysses), and the peace oriented culture of Telemachus (Ulysses’ son). Fenelon relates the warrior culture to Mars, and the peaceful culture to Minerva. He sees a return to the golden age, if only the wisdom and guidance of Minerva are followed.

I am undecided as to whether both these cultures are virtue based cultures. The Iliad’s warrior culture is a cruder version, perhaps of Fenelon’s Telemachean/Minervan culture.

Fenelon’s Telemachus

In the 19th century some British philosophers looked back to the Stoic virtue culture and saw it as being built upon the foundations of a military society. This they sought to change, and one result of this theoretical platform was to give the vote to women.

The various cultures can be read as:

These cultures are in transition. Texts can be drawn on by each age for a variety of elements. For example Telemachus can be seen as the epitome of the virtue culture, or its mention of democracy and peace can be seen as an inspiration for the later Epicurean age. No age exists independently of the preceding age/s either. For example the British democratic writings owe much to 18C French writing.

Postscript

City of Words: Alberto Manguel. 2007 Massey lectures in print.

Manguel was interviewed here - should be available for download.

This book seems to privilege the idea of virtue. While useful, doubtless, Manguel seems not to have addressed the fundamental conflict between the happiness-oriented culture and the virtue-based culture, by, at least, recognising the distinction, and also by recognising the great improvements wrought to life of a happiness-oriented culture. The grass is not greener in a virtue based culture, though of course, it is useful to draw lessons of virtue from it to guide us in our pursuit of happiness.

He says:

Don Quixote - the underlying proposition is that acting justly is more important than the effect on the individual actor of acting justly.

Gilgamesh - the sacrifice of self.

So, I am amazed that the last topic took so damn long to work through.

Now it is time to relax and do another transcription, this time of a story written by a thirteen year old boy, Henry Peter Brougham, in 1792. Having read Johnson’s Rasselas (or here for full download) the young Brougham was moved to write Memnon, or Human Wisdom. The piece would seem also to have been inspired by Leibniz (and/or Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide), with its reference to the idea that everything is for the best. The story is to be found in volume one of Lord Brougham’s autobiography.

Apart from the amusing condemnation of the virtuous ideal in the opening paragraphs, the tale is memorable for its inclusion of a character from another planet in the closing paragraphs.

As I seem to be in summary mode at the moment, I should point out again (see also here) that the idea of do unto others as one would have done unto oneself appears to be the core moral philosophy of the West. In fact it is known as the ‘golden rule‘.

It appears just about everywhere. For example, just yesterday I found the idea (though not expressed in the usual formula) in Fenelon’s Telemachus, at vol 2. I don’t have the chapter reference, but it is half way through vol 2, where Telemachus goes into the underworld to discover whether his father is dead. There he is told that kings who have treated their subjects as they themselves would like to be treated are given an eternal life of happiness. These kings also possess, as shades, all the beauties of youth. That is a neat gathering together of many of the themes discussed so far.

The theme of ‘do unto others’ is also mentioned in (no proper referencing details at present)

Confronting the constitution, Bloom, p33: Montesquieu - The basic rule is to do unto others and we would have done unto us. These are fundamental laws, akin tothe laws of geometry.

Confronting the constitution, Bloom, p49 - Locke denies do unto others as it is not innate and is too often broken but… (p56) …components of pursuit of happiness includes being brought into a created order, for example by education, and this includes to do to others as one would be done unto.

Hobbes (in English Philosophers) p163-5 - do unto others = Law Of Nature = articles of peace agreed on.

JS Mill, Utilitarianism: p908 ‘The golden rule of Jesus contains the spirit of utilitarianism: To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbour as yourself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.’

Hard Times, Dickens, p163 … after eight weeks of induction into the elements of Political Economy, she had only yesterday been set right by a prattler three feet high, for returning to the question, ‘What is the first principle of this science?’ the absurd answer, ‘To do unto others as I would that they should do unto me.’

Julien Offray de La Mettrie, Man a Machine, 1748, Source: Cosma Rohilla Shaliz, L’Homme Machine, 31 March 1995, p328 Now how shall we define natural law? It is a feeling that teaches us what we should not do, because we would not wish it to be done to us.

Grote, An Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy, Thoemmes, Bristol, p92 - Grote discusses ‘do unto others’ in Mill, finding it inverse and out of place.

Two other constant themes of the west are those of happiness and virtue. Following Darrin McMahon’s book Pursuit of Happiness, and other works, it appears that we are currently in an age where happiness, as a core foundation of our politicial philosophy, is ascendant. It is expressed through democracy, where people vote according to their self-interest. A virtue culture is one where nobility, acting virtuously, seek to create happiness for the people.

A happiness culture is regulated by Mill’s harm principle and the idea of ‘do unto others’, and with state action being determined by the aggregation of the people’s wishes, via the vote. A virtue culture is regulated by the philosopher king under a strict code of ethics.

It is useful to understand Islam v the West through this lens.

Reading Darrin McMahon’s Pursuit of Happiness - A History from the Greeks to the Present invites the suggestion that a primary quest of western civilization has been to follow a path to happiness. This is a theme which informs political movements, both left and right, and both past and present, even if the awareness of that theme (or foundation stone) has in some instances diminished.

Moreover, from the random deliberations below it appears that beauty has informed western mysticism to a high degree, being a central theme, a central point of departure, and a central core with which mystical contemplation accords.

This leads to the tempting and satisfying conclusion that beauty and happiness are two key, perhaps the two key, foundations of the west. It also invites the conclusion that in fact happiness is the dominant of the two, but that they do indeed go hand in hand.

There is one other element which cannot be dismissed though, and which has received no attention in the posts below, and that is virtue. Happiness and virtue have long fought each other (somewhat symbiotically) for dominance in western philosophy.

See the 4,000,000 pictures for happiness on Google.

See the 30,000,000 pictures for beauty on Google

See the 1,000,000 pictures for virtue on Google

Perhaps it is by virtue or happiness that we attempt to live with our fellow beings, but by beauty we seek to overcome our intrinsic separation from them, and create meaning for life itself.