Is love not a passion?  Do not very strict minded people pretend that the passions and vices mean the same things?  Is vice ever more seductive than when it wears the cloak of virtue?  Wherefore in order to corrupt virtuous souls it is sufficient for it to appear in a potential form.  This is the form in which the Platonicians deified it.  In all ages, in order to justify the passions, it was necessary to apotheosize them.  What am I saying?  Am I so bold as to play the iconoclast with an accredited superstition?  What temerity!  Do I not deserve to be persecuted by all women for attacking their favorite cult?

I am sorry for them; it was so lovely, when they felt the movements of love, to be exempt from blushing, to be able even to congratulate themselves, and lay the blame upon the operations of a god.  But what had poor humanity done to them?  Why misunderstand it and seek for the cause of its weakness in the Heavens?  Let us remain on earth, we shall find it there, and it is its proper home.

In truth, I have never in my letters openly declaimed against love; I have never advised you not to take the blame of it.  I was too well persuaded of the uselessness of such advice; but I told you what love is, and I therefore diminished the illusion it would not have failed to create in your mind; I weakened its power over you and experience will justify me.

I am perfectly well aware that a very different use is made of it in the education of females.  And what sort of profit is there in the methods employed?  The very first step is to deceive them.  Their teachers strive to inspire them with as much fear of love as of evil spirits.  Men are depicted as monsters of infidelity and perfidy.  Now suppose a gentleman appears who expresses delicate sentiments, whose bearing is modest and respectful?  The young woman with whom he converses will believe she has been imposed upon; and as soon as she discovers how much exaggeration there has been, her advisers will lose all credit so far as she is concerned.  Interrogate such a young woman, and if she is sincere, you will find that the sentiments the alleged monster has excited in her heart are far from being the sentiments of horror.

They are deceived in another manner also, and the misery of it is, it is almost impossible to avoid it.  Infinite care is taken to keep from them the knowledge, to prevent them from having even an idea that they are liable to be attacked by the senses, and that such attacks are the most dangerous of all for them.  They are drilled in the idea that they are immaculate spirits, and what happens then?  Inasmuch as they have never been forewarned of the species of attacks they must encounter, they are left without defense.  They have never mistrusted that their most redoubtable enemy is the one that has never been mentioned:  how then can they be on their guard against him?  It is not men they should be taught to fear, but themselves?  What could a lover do, if the woman he attacks were not seduced by her own desires?