Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/281

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HE good effects reulting from attention to private education will ever be very confined, and the parent who really puts his own hand to the plow, will always, in ome degree, be diappointed, till education become a grand national concern. A man cannot retire into a deart with his child, and if he did he could not bring himelf back to childhood, and become the proper friend and play-fellow of an infant or youth. And when children are confined to the ociety of men and women, they very oon acquire that kind of premature manhood which tops the growth of every vigorous power of mind or body. In order to open their faculties they hould be excited to think for themelves; and this can only be done by mixing a number of children together, and making them jointly purue the ame objects.

A child very oon contracts a benumbing indolence of mind, which he has eldom ufficient vigour afterwards to hake off, when he only aks a quetion intead of eeking for information, and then relies implicitly on the anwer he receives. With his equals in age this could never be the cae, and the ubjects of inquiry, though they might be influenced, would not be entirely under the direction of men, who frequently damp, if not detroy, abilities, by bringing them forward too hatily: and too hatily they will infallibly Rh