CHAP. XIV.: Other Effects of the Climate.

OUR ancestors, the ancient Germans, lived under a climate where the passions were extremely calm. Their laws decided only in such cases where the injury was visible to the eye, and went no farther. And, as they judged of the outrages done to men from the greatness of the wound, they acted with no other delicacy in respect to the injuries done to women. The law of Chap. 58. §. 1. and 2. ^†514 the Germans, on this subject, is very extraordinary. If a person uncovers a woman’s head, he pays a fine of fifty sous; if he uncovers her leg up to the knee, he pays the same; and double from the knee upwards. One would think that the law measured the insults offered to women as we measure a figure in geometry; it did not punish the crime of the imagination, but that of the eye. But, upon the migration of a German nation into Spain, the climate soon found a necessity for different laws. The law of the Visigoths inhibited the surgeons to bleed a free woman, except either her father, mother, brother, son, or uncle, was present. As the imagination of the people grew warm, so did that of the legislators; the law suspected every thing when the people were become suspicious.

These laws had, therefore, a particular regard for the two sexes. But, in their punishments, they seem rather to humour the revengeful temper of private persons, than to administer public justice. Thus, in most cases, they reduced both the criminals to be

slaves to the offended relations or to the injured husband: a free-born woman Law of the Visigoths, book 3. tit. 4. §. 9. ^†515, who had yielded to the embraces of a married man, was delivered up to his wife to dispose of her as she pleased. They obliged the slaves Ibid. book 3. tit. 4. §. 6. ^†516, if they found their master’s wife in adultery, to bind her, and carry her to her husband; they even permitted her children Ibid. book 3. tit. 4. §. 13. ^†517 to be her accusers, and her slaves to be tortured in order to convict her. Thus their laws were far better adapted to refine, even to excess, a certain point of honour, than to form a good civil administration. We must not, therefore, be surprized, if count Julian was of opinion, that an affront of that kind ought to be expiated by the ruin of his king and country: we must not be surprized, if the Moors, with such a conformity of manners, found it so easy to settle and to maintain themselves in Spain, and to retard the fall of their empire.