Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/167

Rh when confidence is unchecked by upicion, and rendered intereting by ene?

The man who can be contented to live with a pretty, ueful companion, without a mind, has lot in voluptuous gratifications a tate for more refined enjoyments; he has never felt the calm atisfaction, that refrehes the parched heart, like the ilent dew of heaven,—of being beloved by one who could undertand him.—In the ociety of his wife he is till alone, unles when the man is unk in the brute. 'The charm of life,' ays a grave philoophical reaoner, is 'ympathy; nothing pleaes us more than to oberve in other men a fellow-feeling with all the emotions of our own breat.'

But, according to the tenour of reaoning, by which women are kept from the tree of knowledge, the important years of youth, the uefulnes of age, and the rational hopes of futurity, are all to be acrificed to render women an object of deire for a hort time. Beides, how could Roueau expect them to be virtuous and contant when reaon is neither allowed to be the foundation of their virtue, nor truth the object of their inquiries?

But all Roueau's errors in reaoning aroe from enibility, and enibility to their charms women are very ready to forgive! When he hould have reaoned he became impaioned, and reflection inflamed his imagination intead of enlightening his undertanding. Even his virtues alo led him farther atray; for, born with a warm contitution and lively fancy, nature carried him toward the other ex with uch eager fondnes, that he Rh