Book V - After age 20

BOOK V - After age 20 (marriage, family, and the education of females)

We have reached the last act of youth's drams; we are approaching
its closing scene.

It is not good that man should be alone. Emile is now a man, and
we must give him his promised helpmeet. That helpmeet is Sophy.
Where is her dwelling-place, where shall she be found? We must
know beforehand what she is, and then we can decide where to look
for her. And when she is found, our task is not ended. "Since our
young gentleman," says Locke, "is about to marry, it is time to leave
him with his mistress." And with these words he ends his book. As
I have not the honour of educating "A young gentleman," I shall
take care not to follow his example.

SOPHY, OR WOMAN

Sophy should be as truly a woman as Emile is a man, i.e., she
must possess all those characters of her sex which are required to
enable her to play her part in the physical and moral order. Let
us inquire to begin with in what respects her sex differs from our
own.

But for her sex, a woman is a man; she has the same organs, the
same needs, the same faculties. The machine is the same in its
construction; its parts, its working, and its appearance are similar.
Regard it as you will the difference is only in degree.

Yet where sex is concerned man and woman are unlike; each is the
complement of the other; the difficulty in comparing them lies in
our inability to decide, in either case, what is a matter of sex,
and what is not. General differences present themselves to the
comparative anatomist and even to the superficial observer; they
seem not to be a matter of sex; yet they are really sex differences,
though the connection eludes our observation. How far such differences
may extend we cannot tell; all we know for certain is that where man
and woman are alike we have to do with the characteristics of the
species; where they are unlike, we have to do with the characteristics
of sex. Considered from these two standpoints, we find so many
instances of likeness and unlikeness that it is perhaps one of the
greatest of marvels how nature has contrived to make two beings so
like and yet so different.

These resemblances and differences must have an influence on the
moral nature; this inference is obvious, and it is confirmed by
experience; it shows the vanity of the disputes as to the superiority
or the equality of the sexes; as if each sex, pursuing the path
marked out for it by nature, were not more perfect in that very
divergence than if it more closely resembled the other. A perfect
man and a perfect woman should no more be alike in mind than in
face, and perfection admits of neither less nor more.

In the