Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/108

102 heart. This I do not allow to be coquetry, if is the artles impule of nature, I only exclaim againt the exual deire of conquet when the heart is out of the quetion.

This deire is not confined to women; 'I have endeavoured,' ays Lord Cheterfield, 'to gain the hearts of twenty women, whoe perons I would not have given a fig for.' The libertine, who, in a gut of paion, takes advantage of unupecting tendernes, is a faint when compared with this cold-hearted racal; for I like to ue ignificant words. Yet only taught to pleae, women are always on the watch to pleae, and with true heroic ardour endeavour to gain hearts merely to reign, or purn them, when the victory is decided, and conpicuous.

I mut decend to the minutiæ of the ubject.

I lament that women are ytematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions, which men think it manly to pay to the ex, when, in fact, they are inultingly upporting their own uperiority, It is not condecenion to bow to an inferiour. So ludicrous, in fact, do thee ceremonies appear to me, that I carcely am able to govern my mucles, when I ee a man tart with eager, and erious olicitude to lift a handkerchief, or hut a door, when the lady could have done it herelf, had he only moved a pace or two.

A wild wih has jut flown from my heart to my head, and I will not tifle it though it may excite a hore-laugh.—I do earnetly wih to ee the ditinction of ex confounded in ociety, unles where love animates the behaviour. For this ditinction&ensp;