To rise in the world, and
have the liberty of running from pleasure to pleasure, they must marry
advantageously, and to this object their time is sacrificed, and their
persons often legally prostituted. A man when he enters any profession
has his eye steadily fixed on some future advantage (and the mind
gains great strength by having all its efforts directed to one point),
and, full of his business, pleasure is considered as mere
relaxation; whilst women seek for pleasure as the main purpose of
existence. In fact, from the education, which they receive from
society, the love of pleasure may be said to govern them all; but does
this prove that there is a sex in souls? It would be just as
rational to declare that the courtiers in France, when a destructive
system of despotism had formed their character, were not men,
because liberty, virtue, and humanity, were sacrificed to pleasure and
vanity.- Fatal passions, which have ever domineered over the whole
race!
The same love of pleasure, fostered by the whole tendency of their
education, gives a trifling turn to the conduct of women in most
circumstances: for instance, they are ever anxious about secondary
things; and on the watch for adventures, instead of being occupied
by duties.
A man, when he undertakes a journey, has, in general, the end in
view; a woman thinks more of the incidental occurrences, the strange
things that may possibly occur on the road; the impression that she
may make on her fellow-travellers; and, above all, she is anxiously
intent on the care of the finery that she carries with her, which is
more than ever a part of herself, when going to figure on a new scene;
when, to use an apt French turn of expression, she is going to produce
a sensation.
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