For men of the greatest
abilities have seldom had sufficient strength to rise above the
surrounding atmosphere; and, if the page of genius has always been
blurred by the prejudices of the age, some allowance should be made
for a sex, who, like kings, always see things through a false
medium.
In this manner may the fondness for dress, conspicuous in women, be
easily accounted for, without supposing it the result of a desire
to please the sex on which they are dependent. The absurdity, in
short, of supposing that a girl is naturally a coquette, and that a
desire connected with the impulse of nature to propagate the
species, should appear even before an improper education has, by
heating the imagination, called it forth prematurely, is so
unphilosophical, that such a sagacious observer as Rousseau would
not have adopted it, if he had not been accustomed to make reason
give way to his desire of singularity, and truth to a favourite
paradox.
Yet thus to give a sex to mind was not very consistent with the
principles of a man who argued so warmly, and so well, for the
immortality of the soul. But what a weak barrier is truth when it
stands in the way of an hypothesis! Rousseau respected--almost
adored virtue--and yet allowed himself to love with sensual
fondness. His imagination constantly prepared inflammable fuel for
his inflammable senses; but, in order to reconcile his respect for
self-denial, fortitude and those heroic virtues, which a mind like
his could not coolly admire, he labours to invert the law of
nature, and broaches a doctrine pregnant with mischief, and
derogatory to the character of supreme wisdom.
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