Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/298

292 True tate is ever the work of the undertanding employed in oberving natural effects; and till women have more undertanding, it is vain to expect them to poes dometic tate. Their lively enes will ever be at work to harden their hearts, and the emotions truck out of them will continue to be vivid and tranitory, unles a proper education tores their mind with knowledge.

It is the want of dometic tate, and not the acquirement of knowledge, that takes women out of their families, and tears the miling babe from the breat that ought to afford it nourihment. Women have been allowed to remain in ignorance, and lavih dependence, many, very many years, and till we hear of nothing but their fondnes of pleaure and way, their preference of rakes and oldiers, their childih attachments to toys, and the vanity that makes them value accomplihments more than virtues.

Hitory brings forward a fearful catalogue of the crimes which their cunning has produced, when the weak laves have had ufficient addres to overreach their maters. In France, and in how many other countries, have men been the luxurious depots, and women the crafty miniters?—Does this prove that ignorance and dependence dometicate them? Is not their folly the by-word of the libertines, who relax in their ociety; and do not men of ene continually lament that an immoderate fondnes for dres and diipation carries the mother of a family for ever from home. Their hearts have not been debauched by knowledge, nor their minds led atray by cientific puruits; yet, they do not fulfil the liar&ensp;