Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/211

Rh Education thus only upplies the man of genius with knowledge to give variety and contrat to his aociations; but there is an habitual aociation of ideas, that grows 'with our growth,' which has a great effect on the moral character of mankind; and by which a turn is given to the mind that commonly remains throughout life. So ductile is the undertanding, and yet o tubborn, that the aociations which depend on adventitious circumtances, during the period that the body takes to arrive at maturity, can eldom be dientangled by reaon. One idea calls up another, its old aociate, and memory, faithful to the firt impreions, particularly when the intellectual powers are not employed to cool our enations, retraces them with mechanical exactnes.

This habitual lavery, to firt impreions, has a more baneful effect on the female than the male character, becaue buines and other dry employments of the undertanding, tend to deaden the feelings and break aociations that do violence to reaon. But females, who are made women of when they are mere children, and brought back to childhood when they ought to leave the go-cart for ever, have not ufficient trength of mind to efface the uperinductions of art that have mothered nature.

Every thing that they ee or hear erves to fix impreions, call forth emotions, and aociate ideas, that give a exual character to the mind. Fale notions of beauty and delicacy top the growth of their limbs and produce a ickly orenes, rather than delicacy of organs; and thus weakened&ensp;