Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/72

66 of inferiority, and how few women have emancipated themelves from the galling yoke of overeign man?—So few, that the exceptions remind me of an ingenious conjecture repecting Newton: that he was probably a being of a uperior order, accidentally caged in a human body. In the ame tyle I have been led to imagine that the few extraordinary women who have ruhed in eccentrical directions out of the orbit precribed to their ex, were male pirited, confined by mitake in a female frame. But if it be not philoophical to think of ex when the oul is mentioned, the inferiority mut depend on the organs; or the heavenly fire, which is to ferment the clay, is not given in equal portions.

But avoiding, as I have hitherto done, any direct comparion of the two exes collectively, or frankly acknowledging the inferiority of woman, according to the preent appearance of things, I hall only init that men have increaed that inferiority till women are almot unk below the tandard of rational creatures. Let their faculties have room to unfold, and their virtues to gain trength, and then determine where the whole ex mut tand in the intellectual cale. Yet let it be remembered, that for a mall number of ditinguihed women I do not ak a place.

It is difficult for us purblind mortals to ay to what height human dicoveries and improvements may arrive when the gloom of depotim ubides, which makes us tumble at every tep; but, when morality hall be ettled on a more olid bais, then, without being gifted with a prophetic pirit, I will venture to predict that woman will be&ensp;