Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/25

Rh is allowed to be the dignified ditinction which raies men above the brute creation, and puts a natural ceptre in a feeble hand.

Yet, becaue I am a woman, I would not lead my readers to uppoe that I mean violently to agitate the conteted quetion repecting the equality or inferiority of the ex; but as the ubject lies in my way, and I cannot pas it over without ubjecting the main tendency of my reaoning to micontruction, I hall top a moment to deliver, in a few words, my opinion.—In the government of the phyical world it is obervable that the female, in general, is inferior to the male. The male purues, the female yields—this is the law of nature; and it does not appear to be upended or abrogated in favour of woman. This phyical uperiority cannot be denied—and it is a noble prerogative! But not content with this natural pre-eminence, men endeavour to ink us till lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment; and women, intoxicated by the adoration which men, under the influence of their enes, pay them, do not eek to obtain a durable interet in their hearts, or to become the friends of the fellow creatures who find amuement in their ociety.

I am aware of an obvious inference:—from every quarter have I heard exclamations againt Rh