The world declaims, and with reason, against the futility of women, against their love of approbation, and what is called their coquetry. But is not this futility produced and propagated by the fear of making them learned, of too fully developing their intelligence?--as if such a thing were possible, as if that true development through which one better understands duty, and learns to calculate consequences, could be injurious. Are not women who have serious tastes obliged to hide them or make excuses for them by every means in their power, as if they were concealing a fault? Or if, indeed, a woman is allowed to educate herself, it is only within very restricted limits, and merely, according to the wishes of M. de Maistre, that she may understand the conversation of men, or that she may be more amusing, and set off her trilling talk in a more piquant fashion by mingling it with odds and ends of wisdom. With such a dread does the learned woman inspire idle and frivolous men who will neither work themselves nor let any one else work. In plainer terms still: does not the present system of education create and foster coquetry and a love of admiration, by making man the only end of woman's destiny? It is vain to tell her that she is destined for one alone, and that all others should be to her as if they existed not. This is perfectly true from a Christian point of view, which embraces at once all rights and all duties; but apart from Christian virtue, when that one proves tedious, vicious, and absolutely unworthy of affection, and when temptation presents itself under the traits of another, a superior being, (or one who seems to be superior,) for whom alone she believes herself created, how, I ask, can you persuade her to fly from the latter and live only for the former? Imprudent and fatal guide that you are, you have taught her that she is an incomplete being, who cannot suffice to herself, who must lean upon the superiority of another; and then you complain because, when she meets this support, this other and truer half of herself, she clings to it, and cannot fly from the fatal attraction! Undeniably she violates the holiest of obligations; but have you not yourselves been blind and guilty? Are you not so still? I have no hesitation in asserting that only Christian morality can teach a woman with absolute and decisive authority her true rights and her true duties in their necessary correlation. Until you have persuaded a woman that she is first created for God, for herself, for her own soul, and in the second place for her husband and children, to value them next to God, with God, and for God, you will have done nothing either for the happiness or the honor of families.