I shall not go back to the remote annals of antiquity to trace the
history of woman; it is sufficient to allow that she has always been
either a slave, or a despot, and to remark, that each of these
situations equally retards the progress of reason. The grand source of
female folly and vice has ever appeared to me to arise from narrowness
of mind; and the very constitution of civil governments has put almost
insuperable obstacles in the way to prevent the cultivation of the
female understanding:- yet virtue can be built on no other foundation!
The same obstacles are thrown in the way of the rich, and the same
consequences ensue.
Necessity has been proverbially termed the mother of invention-
the aphorism may be extended to virtue. It is an acquirement, and an
acquirement to which pleasure must be sacrificed- and who sacrifices
pleasure when it is within the grasp, whose mind has not been opened
and strengthened by adversity, or the pursuit of knowledge goaded on
by necessity?- Happy is it when people have the cares of life to
struggle with; for these struggles prevent their becoming a prey to
enervating vices, merely from idleness! But, if from their birth men
and women be placed in a torrid zone, with the meridian sun of
pleasure darting directly upon them, how can they sufficiently brace
their minds to discharge the duties of life, or even to relish the
affections that carry them out of themselves?
Pleasure is the business of woman's life, according to the present
modification of society, and while it continues to be so, little can
be expected from such weak beings.
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