Every thing that they see or hear serves to fix impressions, call
forth emotions, and associate ideas, that give a sexual character
to the mind. False notions of beauty and delicacy stop the growth
of their limbs and produce a sickly soreness, rather than
delicacy of organs; and thus weakened by being employed in
unfolding instead of examining the first associations, forced on
them by every surrounding object, how can they attain the vigour
necessary to enable them to throw off their factitious character?
-- where find strength to recur to reason and rise superiour to a
system of oppression, that blasts the fair promises of spring?
This cruel association of ideas, which every thing conspires to
twist into all their habits of thinking, or, to speak with more
precision, of feeling, receives new force when they begin to act
a little for themselves; for they then perceive that it is only
through their address to excite emotions in men, that pleasure
and power are to be obtained. Besides, the books professedly
written for their instruction, which make the first impression on
their minds, all inculcate the same opinions. Educated then in
worse than Egyptian bondage, it is
unreasonable, as well as cruel, to upbraid them with faults that
can scarcely be avoided, unless a degree of native vigour be
supposed, that falls to the lot of very few amongst mankind.
