Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/259

Rh clas of people, becaue repectability is not attached to the dicharge of the relative duties of life, but to the tation, and when the duties are not fulfilled the affections cannot gain ufficient trength to fortify the virtue of which they are not natural reward. Still there are ome loopholes out of which a man may creep, and dare to think and act for himelf; but for a woman it is an herculean tak, becaue he has difficulties peculiar to her ex to overcome, which require almot uper-human powers.

A truly benevolent legilator always endeavours to make it the interet of each individual to be virtuous; and thus private virtue becoming the cement of public happines, an orderly whole is conolidated by the tendency of all the parts towards a common centre. But, the private or public virtue of woman is very problematical; for Roueau, and a numerous lit of male writers, init that he hould all her life be ubjected to a evere retraint, that of propriety. Why ubject her to propriety—blind propriety, if he be capable of acting from a nobler pring, if he be an heir of immortality? Is ugar always to be produced by vital blood? Is one half of the human pecies, like the poor African laves, to be ubject to prejudices that brutalize them, when principles would be a urer guard, only to weeten the cup of man? Is not this indirectly to deny woman reaon? for a gift is a mockery, if it be unfit for ue.

Women are, in common with men, rendered weak and luxurious by the relaxing pleaures which wealth procures; but added to this they are&ensp;