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Note. That idiom, a mixture of the idiom of profound souls and the idiom of civil life, which presupposes on the one hand great assiduity in meditation, and on the other great familiarity with men and experience of life.
When we blame men, we must prove to them that we have had the opportunity to know them and have not judged lightly. The style in which these two facts are, as it were, imprinted is the one best suited to the philosopher. And this is what makes the eloquence of this kind. Etc...
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Those Eastern seats where women sit with their legs stretched out are far more voluptuous than ours, where the body presents only its bust down to the root of the trunk and its legs up to the knee. On our European chairs, man seems fit only to move his tongue, as if his sole purpose were to speak.
Our instruments of rest make it plain that we are an idle people with no need of rest, for they are in no way suited to relieving weariness.
The common people among us sit on the ground (especially the women). The prince among the Asians always sits on the ground. The only difference is that a laborer in France sits on bare earth, while the sultan in Turkey sits on covered earth. A few cushions form his throne at little expense. Etc., etc.
[August 1783.]
In their manner and on their faces they bear an imprint of the innocence and candor of the children who constantly surround them.
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One can see from the lower part of their legs that they would like to show everything beautiful they have. And this pleasure in showing one’s beauty is natural especially to women whose forms are more beautiful than their faces. Etc.
“Let us walk, and make men wish they could look at us lying down.”
Uncover me and...
This is what they seem to say.
[1783?]
Nothing too earthly or too material should occupy young girls. Only light materials should be in their hands. As nature in some way frees them from the earth and forms them slender to make them beautiful, education must do for their souls what nature does for their bodies. Everything that fully exercises touch, especially upon living things, is ill suited to their purity and would destroy it. They feel this so well by instinct that they look much and touch little; they touch even the most delicate things only with the tips of their fingers. They resemble the imagination and, like it, should only brush the surface. The least virginal of our senses is touch. Notice, too, that a young girl touches nothing as a woman does, nor a woman chaste in her soul as one who is not. By this sign alone one might know women’s moral temperament. At least be certain, when you see women who take everything by the handful, that there is nothing in the world they would refuse to grasp.
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A woman must have modesty not only for herself but for her whole sex; that is to say, she must be zealous that all women observe the laws of modesty, for what wounds one woman’s modesty wounds the modesty of all. A fallen woman who strips naked before men’s eyes undresses all respectable women before their eyes; by showing herself unveiled, she shows all the others unveiled. Seeing her thus, each man may say, and perhaps involuntarily does say: “This is how my mother, my sister, my mistress, my neighbor are made.”
A girl, a newborn child, must be covered decently, if it is useful that her mother and her wet nurse be covered decently, etc.
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At Dallyre’s, on the occasion of the little girl.
“It is contrary to beautiful nature.” Every action, every custom, every institution, every feeling, every idea of which this judgment can be made is a blameworthy action, a pernicious custom, a baleful institution, an unjust feeling, a false idea. What is contrary to beautiful nature is always contrary to sound morals.
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Note. A young woman who shows herself naked to her lover does not thereby offend public modesty. 1. An unfailing effect of secrecy and mystery in this case is to inspire restraint even in her lover’s imagination, if her lover has a delicate heart. 2. He will not say to himself, either at that moment or in the moments that follow: “This is how the others are made.” That would be, in a way, to give witnesses to pleasures whose value solitude increases, to distract oneself from a sensual delight that demands inward concentration, and to betray his mistress’s trust by thus bringing her before her whole sex in his mind. Etc.
(All these reflections need to be better digested and better written.)
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As the intelligence by which man enters into relations with society develops in the child, the organ by which one sex communicates with the other also develops. Take two children of the same age: the more reflective, the wiser is always the less innocent. If he has not yet performed the acts of a man, he at least has a man’s passions. And of all the objects upon which dawning intelligence can exercise itself, those most apt to hasten sexual inclinations are the objects naturally reserved for maturity and marriageable age.
Thus little girls charged with caring for infants become women at heart sooner than others. They readily take on the air and attentions of mothers, but at the same time they take on a premature desire to become mothers and a curiosity, which they know well how to satisfy, about the means by which one becomes a mother.
As they always have human individuals before their eyes, their own species is their only subject of observation; they soon study its purpose, body part by body part. And as they give themselves, in their own eyes, the importance and role of grown women, they soon experience their appetites.
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One can easily say to a wise man, “You are mad.” One can easily say to a man of wit, “You are a fool.” But how is one to tell a fool he is a fool, and a madman he is mad?
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The only way to have friends is to throw everything out the windows, lock nothing away, and never know where one will sleep that night.
There are few people mad enough to take this course, you will tell me. Well, then, let them not complain if they have no friends; they do not want any.
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Is not this poor creature who makes herself happy by watching the flowing water truly touching? She hums a tune she has heard sung in the house of the rich, and each of its tones recalls to her some particular object of their opulence. And the imagined sight of a multitude of luxurious objects destroys for a moment her sense of her extreme poverty.
Taste the pleasure of doing nothing, innocent creature, all the more worthy of tasting it because you are a woman. Forget your rags, your pallet, your lowly station. — See with what magnificence the earth clothes itself in its robe of green and lays flowers at your feet to tread upon. The sky serves as your ceiling, the sun looks upon you, and no being at this moment is favored with a more splendid spectacle than the one spread before your eyes.