Ripley.
'Women are now taught, at school, all that men are; they run
over, superficially, even _more_ studies, without being really
taught anything. When they come to the business of life, they
find themselves inferior, and all their studies have not given
them that practical good sense, and mother wisdom, and wit,
which grew up with our grandmothers at the spinning-wheel.
But, with this difference; men are called on, from a very
early period, to reproduce all that they learn. Their college
exercises, their political duties, their professional studies,
the first actions of life in any direction, call on them to
put to use what they have learned. But women learn without any
attempt to reproduce. Their only reproduction is for purposes
of display.
'It is to supply this defect,' Miss Fuller said, 'that these
conversations have been planned. She was not here to teach;
but she had had some experience in the management of such a
conversation as was now proposed; she meant to give her view
on each subject, and provoke the thoughts of others.
'It would be best to take subjects on which we know words, and
have vague impressions, and compel ourselves to define those
words.
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