Rouſſeau's obſervations, it is proper to remark, were made in a country where the art of pleaſing was refined only to extract the groſſneſs of vice. He did not go back to nature, or his ruling appetite diſturbed the operations of reaſon, elſe he would not have drawn theſe crude inferences.
In France boys and girls, particularly the latter, are only educated to pleaſe, to manage their perſons, and regulate their exterior behaviour; and their minds are corrupted, at a very early age, by the worldly and pious cautions they receive to guard them againſt immodeſty. I ſpeak of paſt times. The very confeſſions which mere children were obliged to make, and the queſtions aſked by the holy men, I aſſert theſe facts on good authority, were ſufficient to impreſs a ſexual character; and the education of ſociety was a ſchool of coquetry and art. At the age of ten or eleven; nay, often much ſooner, girls began to coquet, and talked, unreproved, of eſtabliſhing themſelves in the world by marriage.
In ſhort, they were made women, almoſt from their very birth, and compliments were liſtened to inſtead of inſtruction. Theſe, weakening the mind, Nature was ſuppoſed to have acted like a ſtep-mother, when ſhe formed this after-thought of creation.
Not allowing them underſtanding, however, it was but conſiſtent to ſubject them to authority independent of reaſon; and to prepare them for this ſubjection, he gives the following advice:
'Girls ought to be active and diligent; nor is that all; they ſhould alſo be early ſubjected to reſtraint. This misfortune, if it really be one,
