I know it was Rousseau's opinion that the first years of youth
should be employed to form the body, though in educating Emilius he
deviates from this plan; yet, the difference between strengthening the
body, on which strength of mind in a great measure depends, and only
giving it an easy motion, is very wide.
Rousseau's observations, it is proper to remark, were made in a
country where the art of pleasing was refined only to extract the
grossness of vice. He did not go back to nature, or his ruling
appetite disturbed the operations of reason, else he would not have
drawn these crude inferences.
In France boys and girls, particularly the latter, are only educated
to please, to manage their persons, and regulate their exterior
behaviour; and their minds are corrupted, at a very early age, by
the wordly and pious cautions they receive to guard them against
immodesty. I speak of past times. The very confessions which mere
children were obliged to make, and the questions asked by the holy
men, I assert these facts on good authority, were sufficient to
impress a sexual character; and the education of society was a
school of coquetry and art. At the age of ten or eleven; nay, often
much sooner, girls began to coquet, and talked, unreproved, of
establishing themselves in the world by marriage.
In short, they were treated like women, almost from their very
birth, and compliments were listened to instead of instruction. These,
weakening the mind, Nature was supposed to have acted like a
step-mother, when she formed this after-thought of creation.
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