As time went on, I
recognised that this virtue was as vain as all the others; and more
especially I noted that nature does not in the least encourage man
to be chaste. I none the less persevered in the mode of life I had
selected, and I deliberately imposed upon myself the morals of a
Protestant clergyman. A man should never take two liberties with
popular prejudice at the same time. The freethinker should be very
particular as to his morals. I know some Protestant ministers, very
broad in their ideas, whose stiff white ties preserve them from all
reproach. In the same way I have, thanks to a moderate style and
blameless morals, secured a hearing for ideas which, in the eyes of
human mediocrity, are advanced.
The worldly views in regard to the relations between the sexes are as
peculiar as the biddings of nature itself. The world, whose; judgments
are rarely altogether wrong, regards it as more or less ridiculous
to be virtuous, when one is not obliged to be so as a matter of
professional duty. The priest, whose place it is to be chaste as it
is that of the soldier to be brave, is, according to this view,
almost the only person who can, without incurring ridicule, stand by
principles over which morality and fashion are so often at variance.
There can be no doubt that, upon this point, as on many others,
adherence to my clerical principles has been injurious to me in the
eyes of the world. These principles have not affected my happiness.
Women have, as a rule, understood how much respect and sympathy for
them my affectionate reserve implied.
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