To begin, you should cast overboard that inclination to frivolity
wherever you meet with it. But since a bad plant is more quickly and
radically destroyed by pulling it out of the roots than by simply
lopping of the tops as they appear over ground, so do we likewise
succeed better in correcting a bad habit, or destroying an evil
inclination by attacking it at its source than by being satisfied
with arresting its bad effects, allowing the cause to remain. And
since it is in the mind that frivolity takes up its abode, it is
there that it must be sought for and destroyed.
There exists among the different faculties of the soul a certain
order, a species of hierarchy which gives a certain preponderance to
some of them over the others; consequently some of them are of an
inferior while others are of a superior order. You will labor in vain
to give a serious cast to your sentiments and actions if you feed
your mind on frivolous thoughts, while serious thoughts are the
progenitors of enduring affections and noble deeds. Hence the culture
of the mind is an important factor to the acquisition of a taste for
those things which are the true ornament of woman.
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