Natural relations remain the same throughout the centuries, their good or evil effects are unchanged; prejudices, masquerading as reason, can but change their outward seeming; self-mastery, even at the behest of fantastic opinions, will not cease to be great and good.  And the true motives of honour will not fail to appeal to the heart of every woman who is able to seek happiness in life in her woman’s duties.  To a high-souled woman chastity above all must be a delightful virtue.  She sees all the kingdoms of the world before her and she triumphs over herself and them; she sits enthroned in her own soul and all men do her homage; a few passing struggles are crowned with perpetual glory; she secures the affection, or it may be the envy, she secures in any case the esteem of both sexes and the universal respect of her own.  The loss is fleeting, the gain is permanent.  What a joy for a noble heart—­the pride of virtue combined with beauty.  Let her be a heroine of romance; she will taste delights more exquisite than those of Lais and Cleopatra; and when her beauty is fled, her glory and her joys remain; she alone can enjoy the past.

The harder and more important the duties, the stronger and clearer must be the reasons on which they are based.  There is a sort of pious talk about the most serious subjects which is dinned in vain into the ears of young people.  This talk, quite unsuited to their ideas and the small importance they attach to it in secret, inclines them to yield readily to their inclinations, for lack of any reasons for resistance drawn from the facts themselves.  No doubt a girl brought up to goodness and piety has strong weapons against temptation; but one whose heart, or rather her ears, are merely filled with the jargon of piety, will certainly fall a prey to the first skilful seducer who attacks her.  A young and beautiful girl will never despise her body, she will never really deplore sins which her beauty leads men to commit, she will never lament earnestly in the sight of God that she is an object of desire, she will never be convinced that the tenderest feeling is an invention of the Evil One.  Give her other and more pertinent reasons for her own sake, for these will have no effect.  It will be worse to instil, as is often done, ideas which contradict each other, and after having humbled and degraded her person and her charms as the stain of sin, to bid her reverence that same vile body as the temple of Jesus Christ.  Ideas too sublime and too humble are equally ineffective and they cannot both be true.  A reason adapted to her age and sex is what is needed.  Considerations of duty are of no effect unless they are combined with some motive for the performance of our duty.

     “Quae quia non liceat non facit, illa facit.” 
          Ovid, Amor.  I. iii. eleg. iv.

One would not suspect Ovid of such a harsh judgment.