essary to the support, order, and comfort
of society. But it is a state that subjects the women to a great variety
of solicitude and pain. Nothing could carry them through it with any
tolerable satisfaction or spirit, but very strong and almost
unconquerable attachments. To produce these, is it not fit they should
be peculiarly sensible to the attention and regards of the men? Upon the
same ground, does it not seem agreeable to the purposes of Providence,
that the securing of this attention, and these regards, should be a
principal aim? But can such an aim be pursued without frequent
competition? And will not that too readily occasion jealousy, envy, and
all the unamiable effects of mutual _rivalship_? Without the restraints
of superior worth and sentiment, it certainly will. But can these be
ordinarily expected from the prevailing turn of female education; or
from the little pains that women, as well as other human beings,
commonly take to _control_ themselves, and to act nobly? In this _last_
respect, the sexes appear pretty much on the same footing.

This reasoning is not meant to justify the indulgence of those little
and sometimes base passions towards one another, with which females
have been so generally charged. It is only intended to represent such
passions in the first approach; and, while not entertained, as less
criminal than the men are apt to state them; and to prove that, in their
attachments to each other, the latter have not always that merit above
the women, which they are apt to claim. In the mean time, let it be the
business of the ladies, by emulating the gentlemen, where they appear
good-natured and disinterested, to disprove their imputation, and to
show a temper open to _friendship_ as well as to _love_.

To talk much of the latter is natural for both; to talk much of the
former, is considered by the men as one way of doing themselves honor.
Friendship, they well know, is that dignified form, which, in
speculation at least every heart must respect.

But in friendship, as in religion, which on many accounts it resembles,
speculation is often substituted in the place of practice. People fancy
themselves possessed of the thing, and hope that others will fancy so
too, because they are fond of the name, and have learned to talk about
it with plausibility. Such talk indeed imposes, till experience give it
the lie.

To say the truth, there seems in either sex but little of what a fond
imagination, u