Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/196

190 more matured and exalted mind looks up to, and hapes for itelf, would elude their ight. He who loves not his brother whom he hath een, how can he love God? aked the wiet of men.

It is natural for youth to adorn the firt object of its affection with every good quality, and the emulation produced by ignorance, or, to peak with more propriety, by inexperience, brings forward the mind capable of forming uch an affection, and when, in the lape of time, perfection is found not to be within the reach of mortals, virtue, abtractedly, is thought beautiful, and widom ublime. Admiration then gives place to friendhip, properly o called, becaue it is cemented by eteem; and the being walks alone only dependent on heaven for that emulous panting after perfection which ever glows in a noble mind. But this knowledge a man mut gain by the exertion of his own faculties; and this is urely the bleed fruit of diappointed hope! for He who delighteth to diffue happines and hew mercy to the weak creatures, who are learning to know him, never implanted a good propenity to be a tormenting ignis fatuus.

Our trees are now allowed to pread with wild luxuriance, nor do we expect by force to combine the majetic marks of time with ueful graces; but wait patiently till they have truck deep their root, and braved many a torm.—Is the mind then, which, in proportion to its dignity, advances more lowly towards perfection, to be treated with les repect? To argue from analogy, every thing around us is in a progreive tate; and when an unwelcome knowledge of life duces&ensp;