Selene, for that was her name, soon acquired a
dexterity in all these rustic employments which I considered with
equal pleasure and admiration. If women are in general feeble both
in body and mind, it arises less from nature than from education.
We encourage a vicious indolence and inactivity, which we falsely
call delicacy; instead of hardening their minds by the severer
principles of reason and philosophy, we breed them to useless arts,
which terminate in vanity and sensuality. In most of the countries
which I had visited, they are taught nothing of an higher nature
than a few modulations of the voice, or useless postures of the
body; their time is consumed in sloth or trifles, and trifles
become the only pursuits capable of interesting them. We seem to
forget, that it is upon the qualities of the female sex, that our
own domestic comforts and the education of our children must
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 bestow? To touch a musical
instrument with useless skill, to exhibit their natural or affected
graces, to the eyes of indolent and debauched young men, who
dissipate their husbands' patrimony in riotous and unnecessary
expenses: these are the only arts cultivated by women in most of
the polished nations I had seen.
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