Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/342

336 To render women truly ueful members of ociety, I argue that they hould be led, by having their undertandings cultivated on a large cale, to acquire a rational affection for their country, founded on knowledge, becaue it is obvious that we are little intereted about what we do not undertand. And to render this general knowledge of due importance, I have endeavoured to hew that private duties are never properly fulfilled unles the undertanding enlarges the heart; and that public virtue is only an aggregate of private. But, the ditinctions etablihed in ociety undermine both, by beating out the olid gold of virtue, till it becomes only the tinel-covering of vice; for whilt wealth renders a man more repectable than virtue, wealth will be ought before virtue; and whilt women's perons are careed, when a childih imper hews an abence of mind—the mind will lie fallow. Yet, true voluptuounes mut proceed from the mind—for what can equal the enations produced by mutual affection, upported by mutual repect? What are the cold, or feverih carees of appetite, but in embracing death, compared with the modet overflowings of a pure heart and exalted imagination? Yes, let me tell the libertine of fancy when he depies undertanding in woman—that the mind, which he diregards, gives life to the enthuiatic affection from which rapture, hort-lived as it is, alone can flow! And, that, without virtue, a exual attachment mut expire, like a tallow candle in the ocket, creating intolerable digut. To prove this, I need only oberve, that men who have wated great part of their lives&ensp;