Beelzebubs-Tales-to-His-Grandson-by-G-I-Gurdjieff

shame," or at least the disposition to it, a feeling that in my opinion is thebasis of what is called "wifely duty" and that helps her to refrain instinctivelyfrom those actions which make a woman immoral.'That is why at any favorable opportunity any woman here can veryeasily, without suffering and without any remorse of conscience, betray herlegal husband.'In my opinion, it is the absence of this shame in European women thathas gradually effaced the line dividing the "woman-mother" from the"woman-prostitute", and now these two categories of women have long sincemerged into one, and neither in their minds nor in their feelings do men makethat distinction between women which almost every Persian man makes.'Here one can distinguish the "woman-mother" from the "womanfemale"only if one sees all her manifestations with one's own eyes.'In the European conditions of family life, owing to the absence of thebeneficent institution of polygamy—an institution which in my opinionshould long ago have been introduced here, if only for the simple reason that,as statistics show, women here far outnumber men—there are thousands ofother inconveniences and controversies that need not exist at all." 'And so, respected Doctor, the fundamental cause of my second vice wasthat having been born and brought up in traditions of morality diametricallyopposed to those prevailing here, I came here at an age when the animalpassions in a man are especially strong To my misfortune I came to Europewhile still very young, and was considered, according to the notions here, veryhandsome My Persian type attracted a great many young women who saw inme a new and original variety of male, and started up a regular hunt after me.'They hunted me like big game