Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/200

194 thing in its true colours, how could the paions gain ufficient trength to unfold the faculties?

Let me now as from an eminence urvey the world tripped of all its fale deluive charms. The clear atmophere enables me to ee each object in its true point of view, while my heart is till. I am calm as the propect in a morning when the mits, lowly dipering, ilently unveil the beauties of nature, refrehed by ret.

In what light will the world now appear?—I rub my eyes and think, perchance, that I am jut awaking from a lively dream.

I ee the ons and daughters of men puruing hadows, and anxiouly wating their powers to feed paions which have no adequate object—if the very exces of thee blind impules, pampered by that lying, yet contantly truted guide, the imagination, did not, by preparing them for ome other tate, render hort-ighted mortals wier without their own concurrence; or, what comes to the ame thing, when they were puruing ome imaginary preent good.

After viewing objects in this light, it would not be very fanciful to imagine that this world was a tage on which a pantomime is daily performed for the amuement of uperiour beings. How would they be diverted to ee the ambitious man conuming himelf by running after a phantom, and, 'puruing the bubble fame in the cannon's mouth' that was to blow him to nothing: for when conciounes is lot, it matters not whether we mount in a whirlwind or decend in rain. And hould they compaionately invigorate his ight and hew him the thorny path which&ensp;