Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/46

40 to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and hould they be beautiful, every thing ele is needles, for, at leat, twenty years of their lives.

Thus Milton decribes our firt frail mother; though when he tells us that women are formed for oftnes and weet attractive grace, I cannot comprehend his meaning, unles, in the true Mahometan train, he meant to deprive us of ouls, and ininuate that we were beings only designed by weet attractive grace, and docile blind obedience, to gratify the enes of man when he can no longer oar on the wing of contemplation.

How grossly do they inult us who thus advie us only to render ourelves gentle, dometic brutes! For intance, the winning oftnes o warmly, and frequently, recommended, that governs by obeying. What childish expreions, and how inignificant is the being—can it be an immortal one? who will condecend to govern by uch initer methods! 'Certainly, ays Lord Bacon, 'man is of kin to the beats by his body; and if he be not of kin to God by his pirit, he is a bae and ignoble creature!' Men, indeed, appear to me to act in a very unphiloophical manner when they try to ecure the good conduct of women by attempting to keep them always in a tate of childhood. Roueau was more conitent when he wihed to top the progres of reaon in both exes, for if men eat of the tree of knowledge, women will come in for a tate; but, from the imperfect cultivation which their undertandings now receive, they only attain a knowledge of evil. Children,&ensp;