* It will be thought you assume a
superiority over the rest of the company- But if you happen to have
any learning, keep it a profound secret, especially from the men who
generally look with a jealous and malignant eye on a woman of great
parts, and a cultivated understanding.' If men of real merit, as he
afterwards observes, be superior to this meanness, where is the
necessity that the behaviour of the whole sex should be modulated to
please fools, or men, who having little claim to respect as
individuals, choose to keep close in their phalanx. Men, indeed, who
insist on their common superiority, having only this sexual
superiority, are certainly very excusable.
* Let women once acquire good sense- and if it deserve the name,
it will teach them; or, of what use will it be? how to employ it.
There would be no end to rules for behaviour, if it be proper always
to adopt the tone of the company; for thus, for ever varying the
key, a flat would often pass for a natural note.
Surely it would have been wiser to have advised women to improve
themselves till they rose above the fumes of vanity; and then to let
the public opinion come round- for where are rules of accommodation to
stop? The narrow path of truth and virtue inclines neither to the
right nor left- it is a straightforward business, and they who are
earnestly pursuing their road, may bound over many decorous
prejudices, without leaving modesty behind. Make the heart clean,
and give the head employment, and I will venture to predict that there
will be nothing offensive in the behaviour.
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