An enquiry into the duties of the female sex / By Thomas Gisborne.

  • Gisborne, Thomas, 1758-1846.
Date:
1813
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An enquiry into the duties of the female sex / By Thomas Gisborne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    50/254 (page 36)
    of knowledge acquired at the school, and so far to counter- act the very object in i romoting of which the whole ex- cellence of emulation is confessedly j^laced by those who are loudest in its praise. For when a spirit of competition has seized a school, how often does it happen that, while girls of talents and resolution are pushed on by their ardour to exertions which would not otherwise have been excited; and to exertions, be it remembered, which not unfrequently impair their health, constrain them to a cessation fiom the business of the class, and may prove ultimately to have im- peded rather than to have accelerated their progress; those who are distinguished by diffidence and timidity, and those whose abilities are but slender, are depressed below their natural level ? Conceiving, or learning by ineffectual trials, that they are unable to keep pace with the augmented speed of their former companions; and, too often, finding the encouraging favour of their teachers diminished in pro- portion as they need it the more, they become less and less anxious for the acquisition of knowledge, giow remiss and languid in the pursuit of it, and sink into listlessness, inac- tivity, and despondence. Emulation, however, which from its influence on the acquisition of knowledge has necessarily called for attention in this part of our enquiry, must not be coldly dismissed without additional notice. Those of its effects, favourable and unfavourable, which have been already mentioned, are by far the least important of the consequences with which it is accompanied. Whatever may be thought by different obseners, as to the cases and the degrees in which it en- larges the sum of intellectual attainments ; yet, among those who possess and improve opportunities of judging from experience, there surely can be but one opinion as to the general result of its operation on the dispositions of the heart. The truth is, that of all principles of action it is one of the most dangerous. It stimulates and nourishes