And the baffled demon shrinks back,—
| “Woman, thou hast subdued me Only by not owning thyself subdued!” |
A friend of mine was once using some mincing elegancies of language to describe a high degree of moral turpitude, when a man near her interposed, with stern sarcasm, “Speak out! Give things their proper names! Half words are the perdition of women!”
“I observe,” said Sydney Smith, “that generally about the age of forty, women get tired of being virtuous and men of being honest.” This was said and received with a laugh as one of his good things; but, like many of his good things, how dreadfully true! And why? because, generally, education has made the virtue of the woman and the honesty of the man a matter of external opinion, not a law of the inward life.
Dante, in his lowest hell, has placed those who have betrayed women; and in the lowest deep of the lowest deep those who have betrayed trust.
Inveterate sensuality, which has the effect of utterly stupifying and brutifying lower minds, gives to natures more sensitively or more powerfully organised a horrible dash of ferocity. For there is an awful relation between animal blood-thirstiness and the proneness to sensuality, and in some sensualists a sort of feline propensity to torment and lacerate the prey they have not the appetite to devour.