Education. 287 



most immoral consequences. Let us suppose young 

 females to mingle promiscuously with the youth 

 of the other sex, in their studies, in their amuse- 

 ments, and in all the means adopted to strengthen 

 the bodies and the minds of each. Let us suppose, 

 that after the elements of knowledge were ac- 

 quired, the same employments were assigned to 

 each sex. Let us suppose the various stations of civil 

 trust to be rilled indifferently by men and women; 

 the places destined for the instruction of lawyers, 

 physicians and surgeons to be occupied by a jumb- 

 led crowd of male and female students; the clerk- 

 ships in counting-houses, and public offices, ex- 

 ecuted by a joint corps of male and female pen- 

 men; and the bands of labourers in manufactories 

 formed without any distinction of sex. What 

 would be the consequences of these arrangements? 

 It would convert society into hordes of seducers 

 and prostitutes. Instead of the regularity, the 

 order, the pleasing charities, and the pure delights 

 of wedded love, a system of universal concubinage 

 would prevail. Seminaries of learning would be 

 changed into nurseries of licentiousness and dis- 

 ease; the proceedings of deliberative assemblies 

 would be perverted or arrested by the wiles of 

 amorous intrigue; the places of commercial or 

 mechanical business would become the haunts of 

 noisy and restless lewdness; and all sober employ- 

 ment would yield to the dominion of brutal appetite. 

 The far-famed author of the Rights of Wo- 

 man, in the introduction to a book designed for 

 the use of young ladies, does not scruple to say, 

 that <c in order to lay the axe at the root of cor- 

 ruption, it would be proper to familiarize the 

 sexes to an unreserved discussion of those topics 

 which are generally avoided in conversation, from 

 a principle of false delicacy; and that it would be 

 right to speak of every part of the body, as freely 



