Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/14

viii Contending for the rights of woman, my main argument is built on this imple principle, that if he be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, he will top the progres of knowledge, for truth mut be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with repect to its influence on general practice. And how can woman be expected to co-operate unles he know why he ought to be virtuous? unles freedom trengthen her reaon till he comprehend her duty, and ee in what manner it is connected with her real good? If children are to be educated to undertand the true principle of patriotim, their mother mut be a patriot; and the love of mankind, from which an orderly train of virtues pring, can only be produced by conidering the moral and civil interet of mankind; but the education and ituation of woman, at preent, huts her out from uch invetigations.

In this work I have produced many arguments, which to me were concluive, to prove that the prevailing notion repecting a exual character was ubverive of morality, and I have contended, that to render the human body and mind more perfect, chatity mut more univerally prevail, and that chatity will never be repected in the male world till the peron of a woman is not, as it were, idolized, when little virtue or ene embellih&ensp;