In one word, from hence we acquire the
most intimate acquaintance, both with ourselves and others, of which
our nature is capable; and it is thus that art has a constant tendency
to perfect those endowments which nature has bestowed,- The world is
the book of women.'- Rousseau's Emilius.
I hope my readers still remember the comparison, which I have
brought forward, between women and officers.
But, if strength of body be, with some shew of reason, the boast
of men, why are women so infatuated as to be proud of a defect?
Rousseau has furnished them with a plausible excuse, which could
only have occurred to a man, whose imagination had been allowed to run
wild, and refine on the impressions made by exquisite senses;- that
they might, forsooth, have a pretext for yielding to a natural
appetite without violating a romantic species of modesty, which
gratifies the pride and libertinism of man.
Women, deluded by these sentiments, sometimes boast of their
weakness, cunningly obtaining power by playing on the weakness of men;
and they may well glory in their illicit sway, for, like Turkish
bashaws, they have more real power than their masters: but virtue is
sacrificed to temporary gratifications, and the respectability of life
to the triumph of an hour.
Women, as well as despots, have now, perhaps, more power than they
would have if the world, divided and subdivided into kingdoms and
families, were governed by laws deduced from the exercise of reason;
but in obtaining it, to carry on the comparison, their character is
degraded, and licentiousness spread through the whole aggregate of
society.
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