Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/81

Rh his linen, it mut follow, that the firt care of thoe mothers or fathers, who really attend to the education of females, hould be, if not to trengthen the body, at leat, not to detroy the contitution by mitaken notions of beauty and female excellence; nor hould girls ever be allowed to imbibe the pernicious notion that a defect can, by any chemical proces of reaoning, become an excellence. In this repect, I am happy to find, that the author of one of the mot intructive books, that our country has produced for children, coincides with me in opinion; I hall quote his pertinent remarks to give the force of his repectable authority to reaon A repectable old man gives the following enible account of the method he purued when educating his daughter. 'I endeavoured to give both to her mind and body a degree of vigour, which is eldom found in the female ex. As oon as he was ufficiently advanced in trength to be capable of the lighter labours of hubandry and gardening, I employed her as my contant companion. Selene, for that was her name, oon acquired a dexterity in all thee rutic employments, which I conidered with equal pleaure and admiration. If women are in general feeble both in body and mind, it aries les from nature than from education. We encourage a vicious indolence and inactivity, which we falely call delicacy; intead of hardening their minds by the everer principles of reaon and philoophy, we breed them to ueles arts, which terminate in vanity and enuality. In mot of the countries which I had viited, they are taught nothing of an higher nature than a few modulations of the voice, or ueles potures of the body; their time is conumed in loth or trifles, and trifles become the only puruits capable of interesting them. We eem to forget, that it is upon the qualities of the female ex that our own dometic comforts and the education of our children mut depend. And what are the comforts or the education which a race of beings, corrupted from their infancy, and unacquainted with all the duties of life, are fitted to betow? To touch a muical intrument with ueles kill, to exhibit their natural or affected graces to the eyes of indolent and debauched young men, to diipate their huband's patrimony in riotous and unneceary expenes, thee are the only arts cultivated by women in mot of the polihed nations I had een. And the conequences are uniformly uch as may be expected to proceed from uch polutedpolluted [sic] ources, private miery and public ervitude.

'But Selene's education was regulated by different views, and conducted upon everer principles; if that can be called everity which opens the mind to a ene of moral and religious duties, and mot effectually arms it againt the inevitable evils of life.' Mr. Day's Sanford and Merton, Vol. III. . But&ensp;