Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/59

Rh meanwhile I hall content myelf with oberving, that I cannot dicover why, unles they are mortal, females hould always be degraded by being made ubervient to love or lut.

To peak direpectfully of love is, I know, high treaon againt entiment and fine feelings; but I wih to peak the imple language of truth, and rather to addres the head than the heart. To endeavour to reaon love out of the world, would be to out Quixote Cervantes, and equally offend againt common ene; but an endeavour to retrain this tumultuous paion, and to prove that it hould not be allowed to dethrone uperior powers, or to uurp the ceptre which the undertanding hould ever coolly wield, appears les wild.

Youth is the eaon for love in both exes; but in thoe days of thoughtles enjoyment proviion hould be made for the more important years of life, when reflection takes place of enation. But Roueau, and mot of the male writers who have followed his teps, have warmly inculcated that the whole tendency of female education ought to be directed to one point:—to render them pleaing.

Let me reaon with the upporters of this opinion who have any knowledge of human nature, do they imagine that marriage can eradicate the habitude of life? The woman who has only been taught to pleae will oon find that her charms are oblique unbeams, and that they cannot have much effect on her huband's heart when they are een every day, when the ummer is paed and gone. Will he then have ufficient native energy to Rh