he cannot fail to hear.  His ears are not yet dulled by vice, he is still sensitive only to the passions of nature.  Self-love, the first of these, delivers him into your hands; habit confirms this.  If a passing transport tears him from you, regret restores him to you without delay; the sentiment which attaches him to you is the only lasting sentiment, all the rest are fleeting and self-effacing.  Do not let him become corrupt, and he will always be docile; he will not begin to rebel till he is already perverted.

I grant you, indeed, that if you directly oppose his growing desires and foolishly treat as crimes the fresh needs which are beginning to make themselves felt in him, he will not listen to you for long; but as soon as you abandon my method I cannot be answerable for the consequences.  Remember that you are nature’s minister; you will never be her foe.

But what shall we decide to do?  You see no alternative but either to favour his inclinations or to resist them; to tyrannise or to wink at his misconduct; and both of these may lead to such dangerous results that one must indeed hesitate between them.

The first way out of the difficulty is a very early marriage; this is undoubtedly the safest and most natural plan.  I doubt, however, whether it is the best or the most useful.  I will give my reasons later; meanwhile I admit that young men should marry when they reach a marriageable age.  But this age comes too soon; we have made them precocious; marriage should be postponed to maturity.

If it were merely a case of listening to their wishes and following their lead it would be an easy matter; but there are so many contradictions between the rights of nature and the laws of society that to conciliate them we must continually contradict ourselves.  Much art is required to prevent man in society from being altogether artificial.

For the reasons just stated, I consider that by the means I have indicated and others like them the young man’s desires may be kept in ignorance and his senses pure up to the age of twenty.  This is so true that among the Germans a young man who lost his virginity before that age was considered dishonoured; and the writers justly attribute the vigour of constitution and the number of children among the Germans to the continence of these nations during youth.

This period may be prolonged still further, and a few centuries ago nothing was more common even in France.  Among other well-known examples, Montaigne’s father, a man no less scrupulously truthful than strong and healthy, swore that his was a virgin marriage at three and thirty, and he had served for a long time in the Italian wars.  We may see in the writings of his son what strength and spirit were shown by the father when he was over sixty.  Certainly the contrary opinion depends rather on our own morals and our own prejudices than on the experience of the race as a whole.