“I tell you again that you would become furious.”

“Bellino, that which has made me furious is the sight of your charms, either too real or too completely deceiving, the power of which you cannot affect to ignore.  You have not been afraid to ignite my amorous fury, how can you expect me to believe you now, when you pretend to fear it, and when I am only asking you to let me touch a thing, which, if it be as you say, will only disgust me?”

“Ah! disgust you; I am quite certain of the contrary.  Listen to me.  Were I a girl, I feel I could not resist loving you, but, being a man, it is my duty not to grant what you desire, for your passion, now very natural, would then become monstrous.  Your ardent nature would be stronger than your reason, and your reason itself would easily come to the assistance of your senses and of your nature.  That violent clearing-up of the mystery, were you to obtain it, would leave you deprived of all control over yourself.  Disappointed in not finding what you had expected, you would satisfy your passion upon that which you would find, and the result would, of course, be an abomination.  How can you, intelligent as you are, flatter yourself that, finding me to be a man, you could all at once cease to love me?  Would the charms which you now see in me cease to exist then?  Perhaps their power would, on the contrary, be enhanced, and your passion, becoming brutal, would lead you to take any means your imagination suggested to gratify it.  You would persuade yourself that you might change me into a woman, or, what is worse, that you might change yourself into one.  Your passion would invent a thousand sophisms to justify your love, decorated with the fine appellation of friendship, and you would not fail to allege hundreds of similarly disgusting cases in order to excuse your conduct.  You would certainly never find me compliant; and how am I to know that you would not threaten me with death?”

“Nothing of the sort would happen, Bellino,” I answered, rather tired of the length of his argument, “positively nothing, and I am sure you are exaggerating your fears.  Yet I am bound to tell you that, even if all you say should happen, it seems to me that to allow what can strictly be considered only as a temporary fit of insanity, would prove a less evil than to render incurable a disease of the mind which reason would soon cut short.”

Thus does a poor philosopher reason when he takes it into his head to argue at those periods during which a passion raging in his soul makes all its faculties wander.  To reason well, we must be under the sway neither of love nor of anger, for those two passions have one thing in common which is that, in their excess, they lower us to the condition of brutes acting only under the influence of their predominating instinct, and, unfortunately, we are never more disposed to argue than when we feel ourselves under the influence of either of those two powerful human passions.