In pursuing the directions of nature, they ought
indeed to act in concert, but they should not be engaged in the same
employments: the end of their pursuits should be the same, but the
means they should take to accomplish them, and of consequence their
tastes and inclinations, should be different.'
'Whether I consider the peculiar destination of the sex, observe
their inclinations, or remark their duties, all things equally
concur to point out the peculiar method of education best adapted to
them. Woman and man were made for each other; but their mutual
dependence is not the same. The men depend on the women only on
account of their desires; the women on the men both on account of
their desires and their necessities: we could subsist better without
them than they without us.'
'For this reason, the education of the women should be always
relative to the men. To please, to be useful to us, to make us love
and esteem them, to educate us when young, and take care of us when
grown up, to advise, to console us, to render our lives easy and
agreeable: these are the duties of women at all times, and what they
should be taught in their infancy. So long as we fail to recur to this
principle, we run wide of the mark, and all the precepts which are
given them contribute neither to their happiness nor our own.'
'Girls are from their earliest infancy fond of dress. Not content
with being pretty, they are desirous of being thought so; we see, by
all their little airs, that this thought engages their attention;
and they are hardly capable of understanding what is said to them,
before they are to be governed by talking to them of what people
will think of their behaviour.
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