See _Du Contrat Social_ of John James Rousseau. Voltaire has censured this assertion. Example, more powerful than authority, produced, in Spain, what it had not been able to bring about in Russia without great difficulty. Philip V. ascended the throne with a shaved chin. The courtiers imitated the prince, and the people, in turn, the courtiers. However, though this revolution was brought about without violence and by degrees, it caused much lamentation and murmuring: the gravity of the Spaniards lost by the change. The favourite custom of a nation can never be altered without incurring displeasure. They have this old saying in Spain: _Desde que no hay barba, no hay mas alma. Since we lost our beards, we have no more souls._ Well, it’s now a whole century since we wore beards. Have we gained by the change? This well merits an investigation. The Spanish proverb, which might very well be applied to us, seems to account justly for our state of abasement. If, as a modern philosopher said, _stupor reigns_, it is, no doubt, because we no longer wear our beards. But let us console ourselves; the source of these evils is nearly dried up. The fashion of long beards is on the point of being renewed, an epoch which I pronounce to be nearer than people think. All our present fashions and customs are nothing more than old ones revived, and which will disappear in their turn. The revolution is just at an end: the rapidity of our changes has accelerated its course, and a new reign is at hand. You pretty fellows of the present day, Jemmy-Jessamy parsons, jolly bucks, and all you with smock-faces and weak nerves, be dumb with astonishment, I foretel it, you will soon resemble men. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAP. IV. _Of BEARDED WOMEN._ A Woman with a beard on her chin is one of those extraordinary deviations with which nature presents us every day; as to those women who, in order to pass for men, have put on false beards, it was in consequence of some particular circumstance: that there have been others whose character, seconded by nature, made them regard a long beard as an honourable phenomenon for their sex, must seem at this time more extraordinary; but it would appear almost incredible that the eagerness of women to command should prompt them to make use of artificial means to have a beard on their chin, and, by this usurpation, to dispute with man the symbol of his sovereignty, and that, to put a stop to this disorder, the laws should have interfered, if the authenticity of the evidence which we have left did not put it beyond a doubt.