tless action. Even the clergy, because of the
blind acquiescence required from them to certain forms of belief, have
their faculties cramped. This being the case, it follows that society,
"as it becomes more enlightened, should be very careful not to establish
bodies of men who must necessarily be made foolish or vicious by the very
constitution of their profession." Now women, that is to say, one half of
the human race, have hitherto, on account of their sex, been absolutely
debarred from the exercise of reason in forming their conduct. As women
it has been supposed that they cannot have the same ideals as men. What
is vice for the latter is for them virtue. Their duty is to acquire
"cunning, softness of temper, _outward_ obedience, and a scrupulous
attention to a puerile kind of propriety." They are to render themselves
"gentle domestic brutes." In their education the training of their
understanding is to be neglected for the cultivation of corporeal
accomplishments. They are bidden to obey no laws save those of behavior,
to which they are as complete slaves as soldiers are to the commands of
their general, or the clergy to the _ex cathedra_ utterances of their
church. Fondness for dress, habits of dissimulation, and the affectation
of a sickly delicacy are recommended for their cultivation as essentially
feminine qualities; yet if virtue have but one eternal standard, it
should be the same in quality for the two sexes, even if there must be a
difference in the degree acquired by each. If women be moral beings, they
should aim at unfolding all their faculties, and not, as Rousseau and his
disciples would have them do, labor only to make themselves pleasing
sexually. Even if this be counted a praiseworthy end, and they succeed
in it, to what or how long will it avail them? The result proves the
unsoundness of such doctrines:--

"The woman who has only been taught to please will soon find that
her charms are oblique sunbeams, and that they cannot have much
effect on her husband's heart when they are seen every day, when
the summer is past and gone. Will she then have sufficient native
energy to look into herself for comfort, and cultivate her dormant
faculties; or is it not more rational to expect, that she will try
to please other men, and, in the emotions raised by the expectation
of new conquests, endeavor to forget the mortification her love or
pride has received? When the