Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/199

Rh It you mean to ecure eae and properity on earth as the firt conideration, and leave futurity to provide for itelf; you act prudently in giving your child an early inight into the weaknees of his nature. You may not, it is true, make an Inkle of him; but do not imagine that he will tick to more than the letter of the law, who has very early imbibed a mean opinion of human nature; nor will he think it neceary to rie much above the common tandard. He may avoid gros vices, becaue honety is the bet policy; but he will never aim at attaining great virtues. The example of writers and artits will illutrate this remark.

I mut therefore venture to doubt whether what has been thought an axiom in morals may not have been a dogmatical aertion made by men who have coolly een mankind through the medium of books, and ay, in direct contradiction to them, that the regulation of the paions is not, always, widom. On the contrary, it hould eem, that one reaon why men have uperiour judgment, and more fortitude than women, is undoubtedly this, that they give a freer cope to the grand paions, and by more frequently going atray enlarge their minds. If then by the exercie of their own reaon they fix on ome table principle, they have probably to thank the force of their paions, nourihed by fale views of life, and permitted to overleap the boundary that ecures content. But if, in the dawn of life, we could oberly urvey the cenes before as in perpective, and ee every Rh