their sisters' desire; the very fables of Thyestes, Oedipus, and
Macareus, having with the harmony of their song, infused this
wholesome opinion and belief into the tender brains of children.
Chastity is, in truth, a great and shining virtue, and of which the
utility is sufficiently known; but to treat of it, and to set it off
in its true value, according to nature, is as hard as 'tis easy to
do so according to custom, laws, and precepts. The fundamental and
universal reasons are of very obscure and difficult research, and
our masters either lightly pass them over, or not daring so much as to
touch them, precipitate themselves into the liberty and protection
of custom, there puffing themselves out and triumphing to their
heart's content: such as will not suffer themselves to be withdrawn
from this original source, do yet commit a greater error, and
subject themselves to wild opinions; witness Chrysippus who, in so
many of his writings, has strewed the little account he made of
incestuous conjunctions, committed with how near relations soever.

    Whoever would disengage himself from this violent prejudice of
custom, would find several things received with absolute and
undoubting opinion, that have no other support than the hoary head and
riveled face of ancient usage. But the mask taken off, and things
being referred to the decision of truth and reason, he will find his
judgment as it were altogether overthrown, and yet restored to a
much more sure estate. For example, I shall ask him, what can be
more strange than to see a people obliged to obey laws they never
understood; bound in all their domestic affairs, as marriages,
donations, wills, sales and purchases to rules they cannot possibly
know, being neither written nor published in their own language, and
of which they are of necessity to purchase both the interpretation and
the use? Not according to the ingenious opinion of Isocrates, who
counseled his king to make the traffics and negotiations of his
subjects, free, frank, and of profit to them, and their quarrels and
disputes burdensome, and laden with heavy impositions and penalties;
but, by a prodigious opinion, to make sale of reason itself, and to
give to laws a course of merchandise. I think myself obliged to
fortune that, as our historians report, it was a Gascon gentleman, a
countryman of mine, who first opposed Charlemagne, when he attempted
to impose upon us Latin and imperial laws.

    What can be more savage, than to see a nation where, by lawful
custom, the office of a judge is bought and sold, where judgments
are paid for with ready money, and where justice may legitimately be
denied to him that has not wherewithal to pay; a merchandise in so
great repute, as in a government to create a fourth estate of
wrangling lawyers, to add to the three ancient ones of the church,
nobility and people; which fourth estate, having the laws in their own
hands, and sovereign power over men's lives and fortunes, makes
another body separate from nobility: whence it comes to pass, that
there are double laws, those of honor and those of justice, in many
things altogether opposite one to another; the nobles as rigorously
condemning a lie taken, as the other do a lie revenged: by the law
of arms, he shall be degraded from all nobility and honor who puts
up with an affront; and by the civil law, he who vindicates his
reputation by revenge incurs a capital punishment; he who applies
himself to the law for reparation of an offense none to his honor,
disgraces himself; and he who does not, is censured and punished by
the law. Yet of these two so different things, both of them
referring to one head, the one has the charge of peace, the war; these
have the profit, these the honor; those the wisdom, these the
virtue; those the word, these the action; those justice, these
valor; those reason, these force; those the long robe, these the
short: divided between them.

    For what concerns indifferent things, as clothes, who is there
seeking to bring them back to their true use, which is the body's
service and convenience, and upon which their original grace and
fitness depend; for the most fantastic, in my opinion, that can be
imagined, I will instance among others, our flat caps, that long
tail of velvet that hangs down from our women's heads, with its
party-colored trappings; and that vain and futile model of a member we
cannot in modesty so much as name, which nevertheless we make show and
parade of in public. These considerations, notwithstanding, will not
prevail upon any understanding man to decline the common mode; but, on
the contrary, methinks, all singular and particular fashions are
rather marks of folly and vain affectation, than of sound reason,
and that a wise man ought, within, to withdraw and retire his soul
from the crowd, and there keep it at liberty and in power to judge
freely of things; but, as to externals, absolutely to follow and
conform himself to the fashion of the time. Public society has nothing
to do with our thoughts, but the rest, as our actions, our labors,
our fortunes, and our lives, we are to lend and abandon them to its
service, and to the common opinion; as did that good and great
Socrates who refused to preserve his life by a disobedience to the
magistrate, though a very wicked and unjust one: for it is the rule of
rules, the general law of laws, that every one observe those of the
place wherein he lives.

                  Nomoiz epesthai toisin egchorioiz kalon.

    And now to another point. It is a very great doubt, whether any so
manifest benefit can accrue from the alteration of a law received, let
it be what it will, as there is danger and inconvenience in altering
it; forasmuch as government is a structure composed of divers parts
and members joined and united together, with so strict connection,
that it is impossible to stir so much as one brick or stone, but the
whole body will be sensible of it. The legislator of the Thurians
ordained, that whosoever would go about either to abolish an old
law, or to establish a new, should present himself with a halter about
his neck to the people to the end, that if the innovation he would
introduce should not be approved by every one, he might immediately be