If
women are in general feeble both in body and mind, it arises less from
nature than from education. We encourage a vicious indolence and
inactivity, which we falsely call delicacy; instead of hardening their
minds by the severer principles of reason and philosophy, we breed
them to useless arts, which terminate in vanity and sensuality. In
most of the countries which I had visited, they are taught nothing
of an higher nature than a few modulations of the voice, or useless
postures of the body; their time is consumed in sloth or trifles,
and trifles become the only pursuits capable of interesting them. We
seem to forget, that it is upon the qualities of the female sex that
our own domestic comforts and the education of our children must
depend. And what are the comforts or the education which a race of
beings, corrupted from their infancy, and unacquainted with all the
duties of life are fitted to bestow? To touch a musical instrument
with useless skill, to exhibit their natural or affected graces to the
eyes of indolent and debauched young men, to dissipate their husband's
patrimony in riotous and unnecessary expences, these are the only arts
cultivated by women in most of the polished nations I had seen. And
the consequences are uniformly such as may be expected to proceed from
such polluted sources, private misery and public servitude.
'"But Selene's education was regulated by different views, and
conducted upon severer principles; if that can be called severity
which opens the mind to a sense of moral and religious duties, and
most effectually arms it against the inevitable evils of life.
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