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That did not mean, of course, that he intended to live a virtuous life; such was the custom among young men of his class, not had it probably ever occurred to his father that it was possible for a young man to do such a thing. The French have a phrase, "l'homme moyen sensuel" the average sensual man. And George was such a man. He had no noble idealisms, no particular reverence for women.
I mean merely the peaceful, progressive, orderly triumph of l'homme sensuel moyen; the gradual adaptation of hopes and occupations to a purely terrestrial standard; the calculated pleasures of the cynic who is resolved to be a dupe no more."
Shakespeare, unless severely adapted, and, in fact, treated as the book for a picturesque musico-dramatic performance, does not appeal very movingly to l'homme moyen sensuel, nor do the sentimental puppet stories which form the stock of our theatre fascinate him. A rousing farce will serve, but then the womenfolk do not want that.
It is all very well for a high-minded philosopher to avoid a pleasure in order to avoid its pain, and to realize that a pleasure of the mind is worth more than a pleasure of the body, but one cannot expect the ordinary pupil the homme moyen sensuel to comprehend this attitude with heartiness sufficient to put it into practice.
She did not, indeed. How should she faint and fail before her time, because of a world out of joint, because of the reign of stupidity, because of the passions of youth, because of the difficulties and disgusts of married life in the native seats of the homme sensuel moyen, the average sensual man, she who could feel so well the power of those eternal consolers, nature and beauty?
"It depends on how it's done," said Kitty. Ashe declared that Cliffe was just an ordinary person, "l'homme sensuel moyen" with a touch of genius. Except for that, no better and no worse than other people. What then? the world was not made up of persons of enormous virtue like Lord Althorp and Mr. Gladstone.
But most of them kept their benefices and their sweethearts both, though we find it noted as worthy of mention in the epitaph of the composer and canon, Pierre de la Rue, in the 16th century, that as an "adorateur diligent du Très-Haut, ministre du Christ, il sut garder la chastété et se preserver du contact de l'amour sensuel."
Chantry was a feminist; a bit of an æsthete but canny at affairs; good-looking, and temperate, and less hipped on the matter of sex than feminist gentlemen are wont to be. That is to say, while he vaguely wanted l'homme moyen sensuel to mend his ways, he did not expect him to change fundamentally. He rather thought the women would manage all that when they got the vote.
For the present standard of what Sainte Beuve calls "l'homme sensuel moyen," which we have accepted and tacitly endorsed, we women are largely to blame. In my conferences with the clergy and earnest laity held in all our large towns it was always this that men spoke of as the greatest stumbling-block in their way.
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