Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/213

207 that it never urpried me and, allowing Pope's ummary of their character to be jut, 'that every woman is at heart a rake,' why hould they be bitterly cenured for eeking a congenial mind, and preferring a rake to a man of ene?

Rakes know how to work on their enibility, whilt the modet merit of reaonable men has, of coure, les effect on their feelings, and they cannot reach the heart by the way of the undertanding, becaue they have few entiments in common.

It eems a little aburd to expect women to be more reaonable than men in their likings, and till to deny them the uncontrouled ue of reaon. When do men fall-in-love with ene? When do they, with their uperiour powers and advantages, turn from the peron to the mind? And how can they then expect women, who are only taught to oberve behaviour, and acquire manners rather than morals, to depie what they have been all their lives labouring to attain? Where are they uddenly to find judgment enough to weigh patiently the ene of an awkward virtuous man, when his manners, of which they are made critical judges, are rebuffing, and his converation cold and dull, becaue it does not conit of pretty repartees, or well turned compliments? In order to admire or eteem any thing for a continuance, we mut, at leat, have our curioity excited by knowing, in ome degree, what we admire; for we are unable to etimate the value of qualities and virtues above our comprehenion. Such a repect, when it is felt, may be very ublime; and the confued conciounes of humility may render&ensp;