This impulse of nature in people of strict morals, and rigid modesty, often disturbs the body for a considerable time before it is understood or known to be what it is, and it is remarkable, that the most polished, and best instructed, are generally the most ignorant as to this affair; and here I can but observe the difference between man in the wild state of nature, and the same creature in the civil society. In the first, men and women, if left rude and untaught in the sciences of modes and manners, would quickly find out the cause of that disturbance, and be at a loss no more than other animals for a present remedy: besides, that it is not probable they would want either precept or example from the more experienced. But, in the second, where the rules of religion, law, and decency, are to be followed, and obeyed, before any dictates of nature, the youth of both sexes are to be armed and fortified against this impulse, and from their infancy artfully frightened from the most remote approaches of it. The appetite itself, and all the symptoms of it, though they are plainly felt and understood, are to be stifled with care and severity, and, in women, flatly disowned, and if there be occasion, with obstinacy denied, even when themselves are affected by them. If it throws them into distempers, they must be cured by physic, or else patiently bear them in silence; and it is the interest of the society to preserve decency and politeness; that women should linger, waste, and die, rather than relieve themselves in an unlawful manner; and among the fashionable part of mankind, the people of birth and fortune, it is expected that matrimony should never be entered upon without a curious regard to family, estate, and reputation, and, in the making of matches, the call of nature be the very last consideration.