in Ethics, is sometimes used to denote humility, and sometimes to express chastity or purity of sentiments and manners. The idea of modesty is not a chimera, a popular prejudice, or an illusion arising from laws and education. Nature, which speaks the same language to all men, has, with the unanimous consent of nations, annexed contempt to female incontinence. To resist and to attack are laws of her appointment; and whilst she bestows desires on both parties, they are in the one accompanied with boldness, in the other with shame. To individuals she has allotted long spaces of time for the purposes of self-preservation, and but moments for the propagation of their species. What arm more gentle than modesty could she have put into the hands of that sex which she designed to make resistance?

If it were the custom for both sexes to make and receive advances indiscriminately, vain importunity would not be prevented. The fire of passion would never be stirred up, but languish in tedious liberty; the most amiable of all feelings would scarcely warm the human breast, and its object would with difficulty be attained. That obstacle which seems to remove this object to a distance, in fact brings it nearer. The veil of shame only makes the desires more attractive. Modesty kindles that flame which it endeavours to suppress; its fears, its evasions, its caution, its timid avowals, its pleasing and affecting finesses, speak more plainly what it wishes to conceal than passion could ever do without it.