Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/50

44 will prove that they have les mind than man.

I may be accued of arrogance; till I mut declare, what I firmly believe, that all the writers who have written on the ubject of female education and manners, from Roueau to Dr. Gregory, have contributed to render women more artificial, weak characters, than they would otherwie have been; and, conequently, more ueles members of ociety, I might have expreed this conviction in a lower key; but I am afraid it would have been the whine of affectation, and not the faithful expreion of my feelings; of the clear reult, which experience and reflection have led me to draw. When I come to that diviion of the ubject, I hall advert to the paages that I more particularly diapprove of, in the works of the authors I have jut alluded to; but it is firt neceary to oberve, that my objection extends to the whole purport of thoe books, which tend, in my opinion, to degrade one half of the human pecies, and render women pleaing at the expene of every olid virtue.

Though, to reaon on Roueau's ground, if man did attain a degree of perfection of mind when his body arrived at maturity, it might be proper, in order to make a man and his wife one, that he hould rely entirely on his undertanding; and the graceful ivy, claping the oak that upported it, would form a whole in which trength and beauty would be equally conpicuous. But, alas! hubands, as well as their helpmates, are often only overgrown children; nay, thanks&ensp;