A woman who is naturally weak, and does
not carry her ideas to any great extent, knows how to judge and make a
proper estimate of those movements which she sets to work, in order to
aid her weakness; and these movements are the passions of men. The
mechanism she employs is much more powerful than ours; for all her
levers move the human heart. She must have the skill to incline us
to do every thing which her sex will not enable her to do herself, and
which is necessary or agreeable to her; therefore she ought to study
the mind of man thoroughly, not the mind of man in general,
abstractedly, but the dispositions of those men to whom she is
subject, either by the laws of her country or by the force of opinion.
She should learn to penetrate into their real sentiments from their
conversation, their actions, their looks, and gestures. She should
also have the art, by her own conversation, actions, looks, and
gestures, to communicate those sentiments which are agreeable to them,
without seeming to intend it. Men will argue more philosophically
about the human heart; but women will read the heart of man better
than they. It belongs to women, if I may be allowed the expression, to
form an experimental morality, and to reduce the study of man to a
system. Women have most wit, men have most genius; women observe,
men reason: from the concurrence of both we derive the clearest
light and the most perfect knowledge, which the human mind is, of
itself, capable of attaining.
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