thanks to early debauchery, ſcarcely men in their outward form—and if the blind lead the blind, one need not come from heaven to tell us the conſequence.
Many are the cauſes that, in the preſent corrupt ſtate of ſociety, contribute to enſlave women by cramping their underſtandings and ſharpening their ſenſes. One, perhaps, that ſilently does more miſchief than all the reſt, is their diſregard of order.
To do every thing in an orderly manner, is a moſt important precept, which women, who, generally ſpeaking, receive only a diſorderly kind of education, ſeldom attend to with that degree of exactneſs, that men, who from their infancy are broken into method, obſerve. This negligent kind of gueſs-work, for what other epithet can be uſed to point out the random exertions of a ſort of inſtinctive common ſenſe, never brought to the teſt of reaſon? prevents their generalizing matters of fact—ſo they do to-day, what they did yeſterday, merely becauſe they did it yeſterday.
This contempt of the underſtanding in early life has more baneful conſequences than is commonly ſuppoſed; for the little knowledge which women of ſtrong minds attain, is, from various circumſtances, of a more deſultory kind than the knowledge of men, and it is acquired more by ſheer obſervations on real life, than from comparing what has been individually obſerved with the reſults of experience generalized by ſpeculation. Led by their dependent ſituation and domeſtic employments more into ſociety, what they
