The most successful method
of exciting them, is, to render such exertion necessary by resistance;
as, in that case, self-love is added to desire, and the one triumphs
in the victory which the other obliged to acquire. Hence arise the
various modes of attack and defence between the sexes; the boldness of
one sex and the timidity of the other; and, in a word, that
bashfulness and modesty with which nature hath armed the weak, in
order to subdue the strong.'- Rousseau's Emilius.
I shall make no other comment on this ingenious passage, than just
to observe, that it is the philosophy of lasciviousness.
This is not an overcharged picture; on the contrary, it is a very
possible case, and something similar must have fallen under every
attentive eye.
I have, however, taken it for granted, that she was well-disposed,
though experience shews, that the blind may as easily be led into a
ditch as along the beaten road. But supposing, no very improbable
conjecture, that a being only taught to please must still find her
happiness in pleasing;- what an example of folly, not to say vice,
will she be to her innocent daughters! The mother will be lost in
the coquette, and, instead of making friends of her daughters, view
them with eyes askance, for they are rivals- rivals more cruel than
any other, because they invite a comparison, and drive her from the
throne of beauty, who has never thought of a seat on the bench of
reason.
It does not require a lively pencil, or the discriminating outline
of a caricature, to sketch the domestic miseries and petty vices which
such a mistress of a family diffuses.
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