Hence it would be no less absurd than dangerous to require thatthose who are to insure the perpetual immoral subversion of theestablished order themselves be moral beings: for the state of amoral man is one of tranquility and peace, the state of an immoralman is one of perpetual unrest that pushes him to, and identifieshim with, the necessary insurrection in which the republican mustalways keep the government of which he is a member. We may nowenter into detail and begin by analyzing modesty, that faintheartednegative impulse of contradiction to impure affections. Were itamong Nature's intentions that man be modest, assuredly she wouldnot have caused him to be born naked; unnumbered peoples, lessdegraded by civilization than we, go about naked and feel no shameon that account; there can be
