Studies in Frankness (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Studies in Frankness Though reticence was our first and heaviest punish ment, it did not come upon us without compensations. The mere command that man should clothe his naked ness was sufficient to create the love of adornment and its attendant vanity. So the manifold arts of dandyism and coquetry came into being 5 and man, by giving a separate colour to his life, distinguished himself from the beasts who know neither ornament nor shame. Then, also, was born sin, then lawlessness, which hitherto had recognised vice as little as virtue, became law, and parcelled out all the possible actions of mankind into right and wrong, involving the pristine simplicity in unnumbered complications. Modesty was in vented to keep pace with restraint, licence dogged the footsteps of obedience and the presence of death gave man his first lesson in the value of life. And with sin was born humour, which could not breathe in a perfect Paradise - humour which sweetens misery with a laugh, and sets our heaviest misfortunes in a just relation. But, that the new-made sinners might not too loudly exult, prudery was appointed the watch dog of humour, and it is from the tangled combat of these opposites that wit and adventure, joyousness and romance, come forth victorious. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.