Give no heed, therefore, to all those mysterious doctrines which are words without ideas for us, all those strange teachings, the study of which is too often offered as a substitute for virtue, a study which more often makes men mad rather than good.  Keep your children ever within the little circle of dogmas which are related to morality.  Convince them that the only useful learning is that which teaches us to act rightly.  Do not make your daughters theologians and casuists; only teach them such things of heaven as conduce to human goodness; train them to feel that they are always in the presence of God, who sees their thoughts and deeds, their virtue and their pleasures; teach them to do good without ostentation and because they love it, to suffer evil without a murmur, because God will reward them; in a word to be all their life long what they will be glad to have been when they appear in His presence.  This is true religion; this alone is incapable of abuse, impiety, or fanaticism.  Let those who will, teach a religion more sublime, but this is the only religion I know.

Moreover, it is as well to observe that, until the age when the reason becomes enlightened, when growing emotion gives a voice to conscience, what is wrong for young people is what those about have decided to be wrong.  What they are told to do is good; what they are forbidden to do is bad; that is all they ought to know:  this shows how important it is for girls, even more than for boys, that the right people should be chosen to be with them and to have authority over them.  At last there comes a time when they begin to judge things for themselves, and that is the time to change your method of education.

Perhaps I have said too much already.  To what shall we reduce the education of our women if we give them no law but that of conventional prejudice?  Let us not degrade so far the set which rules over us, and which does us honour when we have not made it vile.  For all mankind there is a law anterior to that of public opinion.  All other laws should bend before the inflexible control of this law; it is the judge of public opinion, and only in so far as the esteem of men is in accordance with this law has it any claim on our obedience.

This law is our individual conscience.  I will not repeat what has been said already; it is enough to point out that if these two laws clash, the education of women will always be imperfect.  Right feeling without respect for public opinion will not give them that delicacy of soul which lends to right conduct the charm of social approval; while respect for public opinion without right feeling will only make false and wicked women who put appearances in the place of virtue.

It is, therefore, important to cultivate a faculty which serves as judge between the two guides, which does not permit conscience to go astray and corrects the errors of prejudice.  That faculty is reason.  But what a crowd of questions arise at this word.  Are women capable of solid reason; should they cultivate it, can they cultivate it successfully?  Is this culture useful in relation to the functions laid upon them?  Is it compatible with becoming simplicity?