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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
by beinjfc myaelf admitted into it . I say tfab mam way nation once ; but Goo- ktJQW » it was one of the errors of my youth . For , coming newer to look , I saw the maimed , the blind , and the halt * enter in } the crooked and the dwarf , the ugly , the old and impotent , the man of pleasure and the man of the world , the dapper and
the pert , the vain and shallow boaster , the fool and the pedant , the ignorant and brutal , and all that is farthest removed from earth s fairest born , and the pride of human life . Seein g all these enter the courts of Love , and thinking that I also might venture in , tinder favour of the crowd , but finding myself rejected , I fancied ( 1 might be wrong ) that it was not so much because I was below , as above the common standard . I did feel , but I was
ashamed to feel , mortified at my repulse , when I saw the meanest of mankind , the very scum and refuse , all creeping things and every obscene creature , enter in before me , I seemed a species by myself . I took a pride in my disgrace , and concluded that I had elsewhere my inheritance . '
Immediately after this pathetic portraiture of adverse fate , which he requests the reader , with a mixture of self-contempt and proud refusal of sympathy , to look upon as a * mere specimen of the mock-heroic style , ' he adds , in the bitterness of wounded feeling , ' The only thing I ever piqued myself upon , was the writing the " Essay on the Principles of Human Action ; " a work no
woman ever read , or would ever comprehend the meaning of . But if I do not build my claim to regard on the pretensions 1 have , how can I build it on those I am totally without ? Or why da I complain , and expect to gather grapes of thorns , and figs of thistles ? Thought has in me cancelled pleasure ; and this dark forehead * bent upon truth , is the rock on which all affection has split . And thus I waste my life in one long sigh . '
That no woman ever read the * Principles of Human Action / we can easily believe : that no woman would ever comprehend the argument ! is by no means a fair corollary . Nor would it be impertinent to inquire how many men have read and understood it ? Very few , we fear ; for nobod y has ever breathed a syllable of the matter . Though written without any of the usual
jargon of scientific nomenclature , we confess that the Essay requires a long labour of patient thought . It may , however , be very feasibly assumed , that a book which is never spoken of , is scarcely read by anybody . But as to the author ' s allusion to women in general , in the other essay previously quoted , we
plainly see the time advancing when a very different education will both render all those who possess the requisite germ of mind competent to understand the most abstract subjects , and induced to find an interest in the study for the same reason ; choosing the direction of such studies according to the peculiar bent of feeling and tenacity , Wai not Madame Dacier * as great a man' as Dr . PartT—ta * Mi * . 8 * m * rvilU brokon through a law of nature ,
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489 HmMt * JPtut Mmo * .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 1, 1835, page 482, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2647/page/46/
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