become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of
knowledge, for truth must be common to all, or it will be
inefficacious with respect to its influence on general practice.
And how can woman be expected to co-operate, unless she know why
she ought to be virtuous? Unless freedom strengthen her reason
till she comprehend her duty, and see in what manner it is
connected with her real good? If children are to be educated to
understand the true principle of patriotism, their mother must be a
patriot; and the love of mankind, from which an orderly train of
virtues spring, can only be produced by considering the moral and
civil interest of mankind; but the education and situation of
woman, at present, shuts her out from such investigations.

In this work I have produced many arguments, which to me were
conclusive, to prove, that the prevailing notion respecting a
sexual character was subversive of morality, and I have contended,
that to render the human body and mind more perfect, chastity must
more universally prevail, and that chastity will never be respected
in the male world till the person of a woman is not, as it were,
idolized when little virtue or sense embellish it with the grand
traces of mental beauty, or the interesting simplicity of
affection.

Consider, Sir, dispassionately, these observations, for a glimpse
of this truth seemed to open before you when you observed, "that to
see one half of the human race excluded by the other from all
participation of government, was a political phenomenon that,
according to abstract principles, it was impossible to explain."
If so, on what does your constitution rest? If the abstract rights
of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of woman, by a