I see nothing in all this to defile the imagination, or to make one
shudder.

ARM. O heavens! Can such ties have charms for you?

HEN. And what at my age can I do better than take a husband who loves
me, and whom I love, and through such a tender union secure the
delights of an innocent life? If there be conformity of tastes, do you
see no attraction in such a bond?

ARM. Ah! heavens! What a grovelling disposition! What a poor part you
act in the world, to confine yourself to family affairs, and to think
of no more soul-stirring pleasures than those offered by an idol of a
husband and by brats of children! Leave these base pleasures to the
low and vulgar. Raise your thoughts to more exalted objects; endeavour
to cultivate a taste for nobler pursuits; and treating sense and
matter with contempt, give yourself, as we do, wholly to the
cultivation of your mind. You have for an example our mother, who is
everywhere honoured with the name of learned. Try, as we do, to prove
yourself her daughter; aspire to the enlightened intellectuality which
is found in our family, and acquire a taste for the rapturous
pleasures which the love of study brings to the heart and mind.
Instead of being in bondage to the will of a man, marry yourself,
sister, to philosophy, for it alone raises you above the rest of
mankind, gives sovereign empire to reason, and submits to its laws the
animal part, with those grovelling desires which lower us to the level
of the brute. These are the gentle flames, the sweet ties, which
should fill every moment of life. And the cares to which I see so many
women given up, appear to me pitiable frivolities.