paradox.

Yet thus to give a sex to mind was not very consistent with the
principles of a man who argued so warmly, and so well, for the
immortality of the soul. But what a weak barrier is truth when it
stands in the way of an hypothesis! Rousseau respected--almost
adored virtue--and yet allowed himself to love with sensual
fondness. His imagination constantly prepared inflammable fuel for
his inflammable senses; but, in order to reconcile his respect for
self-denial, fortitude and those heroic virtues, which a mind like
his could not coolly admire, he labours to invert the law of
nature, and broaches a doctrine pregnant with mischief, and
derogatory to the character of supreme wisdom.

His ridiculous stories, which tend to prove that girls are
NATURALLY attentive to their persons, without laying any stress on
daily example, are below contempt. And that a little miss should
have such a correct taste as to neglect the pleasing amusement of
making O's, merely because she perceived that it was an ungraceful
attitude, should be selected with the anecdotes of the learned
pig.*

(*Footnote. "I once knew a young person who learned to write
before she learned to read, and began to write with her needle
before she could use a pen. At first indeed, she took it into her
head to make no other letter than the O: this letter she was
constantly making of all sizes, and always the wrong way.
Unluckily one day, as she was intent on this employment, she
happened to see herself in the looking glass; when, taking a
dislike to the constrained attitude in which she sat while writing,