entrusted with money except on the same terms. Would it not, then,
be more honourable to be deceived by some than to suspect all men
of dishonesty? To fill up the measure of avarice one thing only is
lacking, that we should bestow no benefit without a surety. To
help, to be of service, is the part of a generous and noble mind;
he who gives acts like a god, he who demands repayment acts like a
money-lender. Why then, by trying to protect the rights of the
former class, should we reduce them to the level of the basest of
mankind?

XVI. "More men," our opponent argues, "will be ungrateful, if no
legal remedy exists against ingratitude." Nay, fewer, because then
benefits will be bestowed with more discrimination, In the next
place, it is not advisable that it should be publicly known how
many ungrateful men there are: for the number of sinners will do
away with the disgrace of the sin, and a reproach which applies to
all men will cease to be dishonourable. Is any woman ashamed of
being divorced, now that some noble ladies reckon the years of
their lives, not by the number of the consuls, but by that of their
husbands, now that they leave their homes in order to marry others,
and marry only in order to be divorced? Divorce was only dreaded as
long as it was unusual; now that no gazette appears without it,
women learn to do what they hear so much about. Can any one feel
ashamed of adultery, now that things have come to such a pass that
no woman keeps a husband at all unless it be to pique her lover?
Chastity merely implies ugliness. Where will you find any woman so
abject, so repulsive, as to be satisfied with a single pair of
lovers, without having a different one for each hour of the day;
nor is the day long enough for all of them, unless she has taken
her airing in the grounds of one, and passes the night with