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| Men Not Excluded from These Remarks on Personal Adornment.
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Chapter VIII.—Men
Not Excluded from These Remarks on Personal Adornment.
Of course, now, I, a man, as being
envious205
of women, am banishing them quite from their
own (domains). Are there, in our case too, some things which, in
respect of the sobriety206
we are to maintain on
account of the fear207
due to God, are
disallowed?208
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
sobriety209
her assistant and
ally. How, then, shall we practise modesty without her
instrumental mean,210
| 210 Comp. de
Pa., c. xv. ad fin. | that is, without
sobriety?211
How, moreover,
shall we bring sobriety212
to bear on the
discharge of (the functions of) modesty, unless seriousness in
appearance and in countenance, and in the general aspect213
of the entire man, mark our
carriage?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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