and nieces, for a like reason, might marry at Athens, but neither these nor half-brothers and sisters could contract that alliance at Rome, where the intercourse was more open between the sexes. Public utility is the cause of all these variations.
To repeat to a man’s prejudice anything that escaped him in private conversation, or to make any such use of his private letters, is highly blamed. The free and social intercourse of minds must be extremely checked where no such rules of fidelity are established.
Even in repeating stories, whence we can see no ill consequences to result, the giving one’s authors is regarded as a piece of indiscretion, if not of immorality. These stories, in passing from hand to hand and receiving all the usual variations, frequently come about to the persons concerned and produce animosities and quarrels among people whose intentions are the most innocent and inoffensive.
To pry into secrets, to open or even read the letters of others, to play the spy upon their words and looks and actions—what habits more inconvenient in society? what habits, of consequence, more blameable?
This principle is also the foundation of most of the laws of good manners, a kind of lesser morality calculated for the ease of company and conversation. Too much or too little ceremony are both blamed, and everything which promotes ease without an indecent familiarity is useful and laudable.
Constancy in friendships, attachments, and intimacies is {p251} commonly very commendable, and is requisite to support trust and good correspondence in society. But in places of general though casual concourse, where the pursuit of health and pleasure brings people promiscuously together, public conveniency has dispensed with this maxim, and custom there promotes an unreserved conversation for the time by indulging the privilege of dropping afterwards every indifferent acquaintance without breach of civility or good manners.