Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/134

Rh or all of the feminine graces. Of these, Margaret deeply knows the value. But, in her view, these duties will never be noble, these graces sincere, until women stand as firmly as men do upon the ground of individual freedom and legal justice.

“If principles could be established, particulars would adjust themselves aright. Ascertain the true destiny of woman; give her legitimate hopes, and it standard within herself. . . . What woman needs is not as a woman to act or .mula but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded."

She would have “every arbitrary barrier thrown down, every path laid open to woman as freely as to man." And she insists that this " inward and outward freedom shall be acknowledged as a right, not yielded as a concession."

The limits of our present undertaking do not allow us to give here an extended notice of this work, which has long belonged to general literature, and is, perhaps, the most widely known of Margaret's writings. We must, however, dwell sufficiently upon its merits to commend it to the men and women of to-day, as equally interesting to both, and as entirely appropriate to the standpoint of the present time.

Nothing that has been written or said, in later days, has made its teaching superfluous. It demands all that is asked to-day for women, and that on the broadest and most substantial ground. The usual arguments against the emancipation of women from a position of political and social inferiority are all carefully considered and carefully answered. Much study is shown of the prominent women of history, and of the condition of the sex at different periods. Much