timentalities that it is their nature, to live for
others; to make complete abnegation of themselves, and to have no
life but in their affections. And by their affections are meant the
only ones they are allowed to have--those to the men with whom they
are connected, or to the children who constitute an additional and
indefeasible tie between them and a man. When we put together three
things--first, the natural attraction between opposite sexes;
secondly, the wife's entire dependence on the husband, every
privilege or pleasure she has being either his gift, or depending
entirely on his will; and lastly, that the principal object of human
pursuit, consideration, and all objects of social ambition, can in
general be sought or obtained by her only through him, it would be a
miracle if the object of being attractive to men had not become the
polar star of feminine education and formation of character. And,
this great means of influence over the minds of women having been
acquired, an instinct of selfishness made men avail themselves of it
to the utmost as a means of holding women in subjection, by
representing to them meekness, submissiveness, and resignation of all
individual will into the hands of a man, as an essential part of
sexual attractiveness. Can it be doubted that any of the other yokes
which mankind have succeeded in breaking, would have subsisted till
now if the same means had existed, and had been as sedulously used,
to bow down their minds to it? If it had been made the object of the
life of every young plebeian to find personal favour in the eyes of
some patrician, of every young serf with some seigneur; if
domestication with him, and a share of his personal affections, had
been held out as the prize which they all should look out for, the
most gifted and aspiring being able to reckon on the most desirable
prizes; and if, when this prize had been obtained, they had been shut
out by a wall of brass from all interests not centering in him, all
feelings and desires but those which he shared or inculcated; would
not serfs and seigneurs, plebeians and patricians, have been as
broadly distinguished at this day as men and women are? and would not
all but a thinker here and there, have believed the distinction to be
a fundamental and unalterable fact in human nature?

The preceding considerations are amply sufficient to show that
custom, however universal it may be, affords in this case no
presumption, and ought no