Introduction
After considering the historic page, and viewing the living world
with anxious solicitude, the most melancholy emotions of
sorrowful indignation have depressed my spirits, and I have
sighed when obliged to confess, that either nature has made a
great difference between man and man, or that the civilization
which has hitherto taken place in the world has been very
partial. I have turned over various books written on the subject
of education, and patiently observed the conduct of parents and
the management of schools; but what has been the result? -- a
profound conviction that the neglected education of my
fellow-creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore; and
that women, in particular, are rendered weak and wretched by a
variety of concurring causes, originating from one hasty
conclusion. The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently
prove that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the
flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strength and
usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves,
after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the
stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at
maturity. -- One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a
false system of education, gathered from the books written on
this subject by men who, considering females rather as women than
human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring
mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers; and the
understanding of the sex has been so bubbled by this specious
homage, that the civilized women of the present century, with a
few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought
to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues
exact respect.
