Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/303

Rh But thee littlenees would not degrade their character, if women were led to repect themelves, if political and moral ubjects were opened to them; and, I will venture to affirm, that this is the only way to make them properly attentive to their dometic duties.—An active mind embraces the whole circle of its duties, and finds time enough for all. It is not, I aert, a bold attempt to emulate maculine virtues; it is not the enchantment of literary puruits, or the teady invetigation of cientific ubjects, that lead women atray from duty. No, it is indolence and vanity—the love of pleaure and the love of way, that will rain paramount in an empty mind. I ay empty emphatically, becaue the education which women now receive carcely deerves the name. For the little knowledge that they are led to acquire, during the important years of youth, is merely relative to accomplihments; and accomplihments without a bottom, for unles the undertanding be cultivated, uperficial and monotonous is every grace. Like the charms of a made up face, they only trike the enes in a crowd; but at home, wanting mind, they want variety. The conequence is obvious; in gay cenes of diipation we meet the artificial mind and face, for thoe who fly from olitude dread, next to olitude, the dometic circle; not having it in their power to amue or interet, they feel their own inignificance, or find nothing to amue or interet themelves.

Beides, what can be more indelicate than a girl's coming out in the fahionable world? Which, in other words, is to bring to market a ble&ensp;