"So ductile is the understanding, and yet so stubborn, that the associations which depend on adventitious circumstances, during the period that the body takes to arrive at maturity, can seldom be disentangled by reason."
— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for J. Johnson
Date
1792
Metaphor
"So ductile is the understanding, and yet so stubborn, that the associations which depend on adventitious circumstances, during the period that the body takes to arrive at maturity, can seldom be disentangled by reason."
Metaphor in Context
Education thus only supplies the man of genius with knowledge to give variety and contrast to his associations; but there is an habitual association of ideas, that grows 'with our growth,' which has a great effect on the moral character of mankind; and by which a turn is given to the mind that commonly remains throughout life. So ductile is the understanding, and yet so stubborn, that the associations which depend on adventitious circumstances, during the period that the body takes to arrive at maturity, can seldom be disentangled by reason. One idea calls up another, its old associate, and memory, faithful to the first impressions, particularly when the intellectual powers are not employed to cool our sensations, retraces them with mechanical exactness.
This habitual slavery, to first impressions, has a more baneful effect on the female than the male character, because business and other dry employments of the understanding, tend to deaden the feelings and break associations that do violence to reason. But females, who are made women of when they are mere children, and brought back to childhood when they ought to leave the go-cart for ever, have not sufficient strength of mind to efface the superinductions of art that have smothered nature.
This habitual slavery, to first impressions, has a more baneful effect on the female than the male character, because business and other dry employments of the understanding, tend to deaden the feelings and break associations that do violence to reason. But females, who are made women of when they are mere children, and brought back to childhood when they ought to leave the go-cart for ever, have not sufficient strength of mind to efface the superinductions of art that have smothered nature.
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
7 entries in ESTC (1792, 1793, 1794, 1796).
See A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. by Mary Wollstonecraft. (London: Printed for J. Johnson, No 72, St. Paul's Church Yard, 1792). <Link to ECCO-TCP>
Reading Wollstonecraft, M. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Modern Library (New York: Random House, 2001). Also The Vindications, eds. D. L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf (Toronto: Broadview Press, 2001).
See also Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (London: J. Johnson, 1792). <Link to OLL>
See A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. by Mary Wollstonecraft. (London: Printed for J. Johnson, No 72, St. Paul's Church Yard, 1792). <Link to ECCO-TCP>
Reading Wollstonecraft, M. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Modern Library (New York: Random House, 2001). Also The Vindications, eds. D. L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf (Toronto: Broadview Press, 2001).
See also Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (London: J. Johnson, 1792). <Link to OLL>
Date of Entry
10/28/2013
