Men are, however, often gratified by this kind of fondness, which is
confined in a beastly manner to themselves; but should they ever
become more virtuous, they will wish to converse at their fire-side
with a friend, after they cease to play with a mistress.
Besides, understanding is necessary to give variety and interest
to sensual enjoyments, for low, indeed, in the intellectual scale,
is the mind that can continue to love when neither virtue nor sense
give a human appearance to an animal appetite. But sense will always
preponderate; and if women be not, in general, brought more on a level
with men, some superiour woman, like the Greek courtezans, will
assemble the men of abilities around them, and draw from their
families many citizens, who would have stayed at home had their
wives had more sense, or the graces which result from the exercise
of the understanding and fancy, the legitimate parents of taste. A
woman of talents, if she be not absolutely ugly, will always obtain
great power, raised by the weakness of her sex; and in proportion as
men acquire virtue and delicacy, by the exertion of reason, they
will look for both in women, but they can only acquire them in the
same way that men do.
In France or Italy, have the women confined themselves to domestic
life? though they have not hitherto had a political existence, yet,
have they not illicitly had great sway? corrupting themselves and
the men with whose passions they played. In short, in whatever light I
view the subject, reason and experience convince me that the only
method of leading women to fulfil their peculiar duties, is to free
them from all restraint by allowing them to participate in the
inherent rights of mankind.
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