Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/220

214 and hould be ditinguihed from humility, becaue humility is a kind of elf-abaement.

A modet man often conceives a great plan, and tenaciouly adheres to it, concious of his own trength, till ucces gives it a anction that determines its character. Milton was not arrogant when he uffered a uggetion of judgment to ecape him that proved a prophey; nor was General Wahington when he accepted of the command of the American forces. The latter has always been characterized as a modet man; but had he been merely humble, he would probably have hrunk back irreolute, afraid of truting to himelf the direction of an enterprie, on which o much depended.

A modet man is teady, an humble man timid, and a vain one preumptuous:—this is the judgment, which the obervation of many characters, has led me to form. Jeus Chrit was modet, Moes was humble, and Peter vain.

Thus, dicriminating modety from humility in one cae, I do not mean to confound it with bahfulnes in the other. Bahfulnes, in fact, is o ditinct from modety, that the mot bahful las, or raw country lout, often becomes the mot impudent; for their bahfulnes being merely the intinctive timidity of ignorance, cutom oon changes it into aurance. The&ensp;