Chapter VIII.—Men Not Excluded from These Remarks on Personal Adornment.

Of course, now, I, a man, as being envious126    Æmulus. of women, am banishing them quite from their own (domains).  Are there, in our case too, some things which, in respect of the sobriety127    Gravitatis. we are to maintain on account of the fear128    Metus. due to God, are disallowed?129    Detrahuntur.  If it is true, (as it is,) that in men, for the sake of women (just as in women for the sake of men), there is implanted, by a defect of nature, the will to please; and if this sex of ours acknowledges to itself deceptive trickeries of form peculiarly its own,—(such as) to cut the beard too sharply; to pluck it out here and there; to shave round about (the mouth); to arrange the hair, and disguise its hoariness by dyes; to remove all the incipient down all over the body; to fix (each particular hair) in its place with (some) womanly pigment; to smooth all the rest of the body by the aid of some rough powder or other:  then, further, to take every opportunity for consulting the mirror; to gaze anxiously into it:—while yet, when (once) the knowledge of God has put an end to all wish to please by means of voluptuous attraction, all these things are rejected as frivolous, as hostile to modesty.  For where God is, there modesty is; there is sobriety130    Gravitas. her assistant and ally.  How, then, shall we practise modesty without her instrumental mean,131    Comp. de Pa., c. xv. ad fin. that is, without sobriety?132    Gravitate.  How, moreover, shall we bring sobriety133    Gravitatem. to bear on the discharge of (the functions of) modesty, unless seriousness in appearance and in countenance, and in the general aspect134    Contemplatione. of the entire man, mark our carriage?

CAPUT VIII.

1325A

Videlicet nunc et vir et sexus aemulus foeminas a suis depello . An et nobis quaedam respectu obediendae gravitatis propter metum debitum Domino detrahuntur siquidem et viris propter foeminas, ut foeminis propter viros, vitio naturae ingenita est placendi voluntas, propriasque praestigias formae et hic sexus sibi agnoscit, barbam acrius caedere, intervellere , circumradere , capillum disponere, etiam colorare canitiem, primam quamque subducere totius corporis lanuginem, pigmento quoque muliebri distinguere , caetera pulveris cujusdam asperitudine laevigare, tum speculum omni occasione consulere, anxie inspicere, cum tamen, cognito Deo adempta placendi voluntate, per luxuriae vacationem 1325B omnia illa ut otiosa, ut hostilia pudicitiae recusantur. Nam ubi Deus, ibi pudicitia, ibi gravitas adjutrix et socia ejus. Quo ergo pacto pudicitiam sine instrumento suo, id est, sine gravitate tractabimus? quomodo autem gravitatem administrandae pudicitiae adhibemus, nisi et in facie et in cultu et in totius hominis contemplatione severitas circumferatur?