Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/260

254 are made laves to their perons, and mut render them alluring that man may lend them his reaon to guide their tottering teps aright. Or hould they be ambitious, they mut govern their tyrants by initer tricks, for without rights there cannot be any incumbent duties. The laws repecting woman, which I mean to dicus in a future part, make an aburd unit of a man and his wife; and then, by the eay tranition of only conidering him as reponible, he is reduced to a mere cypher.

The being who dicharges the duties of its tation is independent; and, peaking of women at large, their firt duty is to themelves as rational creatures, and the next, in point of importance, as citizens, is that, which includes o many, of a mother. The rank in life which dipenes with their fulfilling this duty, necearily degrades them by making them mere dolls. Or, hould they turn to omething more important than merely fitting drapery upon a mooth block, their minds are only occupied by ome oft platonic attachment; or, the actual management of an intrigue may keep their thoughts in motion; for when they neglect dometic duties, they have it not in their power to take the field and march and counter-march like oldiers, or wrangle in the enate to keep their faculties from ruting.

I know that as a proof of the inferiority of the ex, Roueau has exultingly exclaimed, How can they leave the nurery for the camp!—And the camp has by ome moralits been termed the chool of the mot heroic virtues; though, I think, it would puzzle a keen cauit to prove the&ensp;