The Quakers think it unnecessary to teach their children dancing, as an accomplishment, because they can walk, and carry their persons with sufficient ease and propriety without it.

They think it unnecessary also, because, however the practice of it may be consistent with the sprightliness of youth, they could never sanction it in maturer age.  They expect of the members of their society, that they should abandon amusements, and substitute useful and dignified pursuits, when they become men.  But they cannot consider dancing but as an employment that is useless, and below the dignity of the christian-character in persons, who have come to years of discretion.  To initiate therefore a youth of twelve or thirteen years of age into dancing, when he must relinquish it at twenty, would, in their opinion, be a culpable waste of his time.

The Quakers, again, cannot view dancing abstractedly, for no person teaches or practises it abstractedly; but they are obliged to view it, in connection with other things.  If they view it with its usual accompaniment of music, it would be inconsistent, they think, to encourage it, when they have banished music from their republic.  If they view it as connected with an assemblage of persons, they must, they conceive, equally condemn it.  And here it is in fact, that they principally level their arguments against it.  They prohibit all members of their society from being present at balls, and assemblies; and they think, if their youth are brought up in ignorance of the art of dancing, that this ignorance will operate as one preventative at least against attendances at amusements of this nature.

The Quakers are as strict in their inquiry with respect to the attendances of any of their members at balls, as at theatrical amusements.  They consider balls and assemblies among the vain amusements of the world.  They use arguments against these nearly similar to those which have been enumerated on the preceding subjects.

They consider them in the first place, as productive of a kind of frivolous levity, and of thoughtlessness with respect to the important duties of life.  They consider them, in the second place, as giving birth to vanity and pride.  They consider them, again, as powerful in the excitement of some of the malevolent passions.  Hence they believe them to be injurious to the religious interests of man; for, by depriving him of complacency of mind, and by increasing the growth of his bad feelings, they become impediments in the way of his improvement as a moral being.

SECT.  II.

Arguments of the Quakers examined—­three cases made out for the determination of a moral philosopher—­case the first—­case the second—­case the third.

I purpose to look into these arguments of the Quakers, and to see how far they can be supported.  I will suppose therefore a few cases to be made out, and to be handed, one by one, to some moral philosopher for his decision.  I will suppose this philosopher (that all prejudice of education may be excluded) to have been ignorant of the nature of dancing, but that he had been made acquainted with it, in order that he might be enabled to decide the point in question.