The only example I know which might be quoted as a recognised exception to these remarks is Mlle. de L’Enclos; and she was considered a prodigy.  In her scorn for the virtues of women, she practised, so they say, the virtues of a man.  She is praised for her frankness and uprightness; she was a trustworthy acquaintance and a faithful friend.  To complete the picture of her glory it is said that she became a man.  That may be, but in spite of her high reputation I should no more desire that man as my friend than as my mistress.

This is not so irrelevant as it seems.  I am aware of the tendencies of our modern philosophy which make a jest of female modesty and its so-called insincerity; I also perceive that the most certain result of this philosophy will be to deprive the women of this century of such shreds of honour as they still possess.

On these grounds I think we may decide in general terms what sort of education is suited to the female mind, and the objects to which we should turn its attention in early youth.

As I have already said, the duties of their sex are more easily recognised than performed.  They must learn in the first place to love those duties by considering the advantages to be derived from them—­that is the only way to make duty easy.  Every age and condition has its own duties.  We are quick to see our duty if we love it.  Honour your position as a woman, and in whatever station of life to which it shall please heaven to call you, you will be well off.  The essential thing is to be what nature has made you; women are only too ready to be what men would have them.

The search for abstract and speculative truths, for principles and axioms in science, for all that tends to wide generalisation, is beyond a woman’s grasp; their studies should be thoroughly practical.  It is their business to apply the principles discovered by men, it is their place to make the observations which lead men to discover those principles.  A woman’s thoughts, beyond the range of her immediate duties, should be directed to the study of men, or the acquirement of that agreeable learning whose sole end is the formation of taste; for the works of genius are beyond her reach, and she has neither the accuracy nor the attention for success in the exact sciences; as for the physical sciences, to decide the relations between living creatures and the laws of nature is the task of that sex which is more active and enterprising, which sees more things, that sex which is possessed of greater strength and is more accustomed to the exercise of that strength.  Woman, weak as she is and limited in her range of observation, perceives and judges the forces at her disposal to supplement her weakness, and those forces are the passions of man.  Her own mechanism is more powerful than ours; she has many levers which may set the human heart in motion.  She must find a way to make us desire what she cannot achieve unaided and what she considers