Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/70

64 rib, and make one moral being of a man and woman; not forgetting to give her all the 'ubmiive charms.'

How women are to exit in that tate where there is to be neither marrying nor giving in marriage, we are not told.—For though moralits have agreed that the tenor of life eems to prove that man is prepared by various circumtances for a future tate, they contantly concur in adviing woman only to provide for the preent. Gentlenes, docility, and a paniel-like affection are, on this ground, conitently recommended as the cardinal virtues of the ex; and, diregarding the arbitrary economy of nature, one writer has declared that it is maculine for a woman to be melancholy. She was created to be the toy of man, his rattle, and it mut jingle in his ears whenever, dimiing reaon, he chooes to be amued.

To recommend gentlenes, indeed, on a broad bais is trictly philoophical. A frail being hould labour to be gentle. But when forbearance confounds right and wrong, it ceaes to be a virtue; and, however convenient it may be found in a companion—that companion will ever be conidered as an inferior, and only inpire a vapid tendernes, which eaily degenerates into contempt. Still, if advice could really make a being gentle, whoe natural dipoition admitted not of uch a fine polih, omething towards the advancement of order would be attained; but if, as might quickly be demontrated, only affectation be produced by this indicriminate counel, which throws a tumbling-block in the way of gradual&ensp;