Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/143

Rh me in the opinion that trifling employments have rendered woman a trifler. Men, taking her body, the mind is left to rut; o that while phyical love enervates man, as being his favourite recreation, he will endeavour to enlave woman:—and, who can tell, how many generations may be neceary to give vigour to the virtue and talents of the freed poterity of abject laves ?

In tracing the caues that, in my opinion, have degraded woman, I have confined my obervations to uch as univerally act upon the morals and manners of the whole ex, and to me it appears clear that they all pring from want of undertanding. Whether this arie from a phyical or accidental weaknes of faculties, time alone can determine; for I hall not lay any great tres on the example of a few women who, from having received a maculine education, have acquired courage and reolution; I only contend that the men who have been placed in imilar ituations, have acquired a imilar character—I peak of bodies of men, and that men of genius and talents have tarted out of a clas, in which women have never yet been placed. .&ensp;