Women, as well as despots, have now, perhaps, more power than
they would have if the world, divided and subdivided into
kingdoms and families, were governed by laws deduced from the
exercise of reason; but in obtaining it, to carry on the
comparison, their character is degraded, and licentiousness
spread through the whole aggregate of society. The many become
pedestal to the few. I, therefore, will venture to assert, that
till women are more rationally educated, the progress of human
virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual
checks. And if it be granted that woman was not created merely to
gratify the appetite of man, or to be the upper servant, who
provides his meals and takes care of his linen, it must follow,
that the first care of those mothers or fathers, who really
attend to the education of females, should be, if not to
strengthen the body, at least, not to destroy the constitution by
mistaken notions of beauty and female excellence; nor should
girls ever be allowed to imbibe the pernicious notion that a
defect can, by any chemical process of reasoning, become an
excellence. In this respect, I am happy to find, that the author
of one of the most instructive books, that our country has
produced for children, coincides with me in opinion; I shall
quote his pertinent remarks to give the force of his respectable
authority to reason.*
* 'A respectable old man gives the following sensible account of
the method he pursued when educating his daughter. "I endeavoured
to give both to her mind and body a degree of vigour, which is
seldom found in the female sex. As soon as she was sufficiently
advanced in strength to be capable of the lighter labours of
husbandry and gardening, I employed her as my constant companion.
Selene, for that was her name, soon acquired a dexterity in all
these rustic employments, which I considered with equal pleasure
and admiration. If women are in general feeble both in body and
mind, it arises less from nature than from education. We
encourage a vicious indolence and inactivity, which we falsely
call delicacy; instead of hardening their minds by the severer
principles of reason and philosophy, we breed them to useless
arts, which terminate in vanity and sensuality. In most of the
countries which I had visited, they are taught nothing of an
higher nature than a few modulations of the voice, or useless
postures of the body; their time is consumed in sloth or trifles,
and trifles become the only pursuits capable of interesting them.
We seem to forget, that it is upon the qualities of the female
sex that our own domestic comforts and the education of our
children must depend. And what are the comforts or the education
which a race of beings, corrupted from their infancy, and
unacquainted with all the duties of life are fitted to bestow? To
touch a musical instrument with useless skill, to exhibit their
natural or affected graces to the eyes of indolent and debauched
young men, to dissipate their husband's patrimony in riotous and
unnecessary expences, these are the only arts cultivated by women
in most of the polished nations I had seen. And the consequences
are uniformly such as may be expected to proceed from such
polluted sources, private misery and public servitude.
'"But Selene's education was regulated by different views, and
conducted upon severer principles; if that can be called severity
which opens the mind to a sense of moral and religious duties,
and most effectually arms it against the inevitable evils of
life."' Mr. Day's Sandford and
Merton, Vol. III.
