Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/73

Rh be either the friend or lave of man. We hall not, as at preent, doubt whether he is a moral agent, or the link which unites man with brutes. But, hould it then appear, that like the brutes they were principally created for the ue of man, he will let them patiently bite the bridle, and not mock them with empty praie; or, hould their rationality be proved, he will not impede their improvement merely to gratify his enual appetites. He will not, with all the graces of rhetoric, advie them to ubmit implicitly their undertanding to the guidance of man. He will not, when he treats of the education of women, aert that they ought never to have the free ue of reaon, nor would he recommend cunning and diimulation to beings who are acquiring, in like manner as himelf, the virtues of humanity.

Surely there can be but one rule of right, if morality has an eternal foundation, and whoever acrifices virtue, trictly o called, to preent convenience, or whoe duty it is to act in uch a manner, lives only for the paing day, and cannot be an accountable creature.

The poet then hould have dropped his neer when he ays,

For that they are bound by the adamantine chain of detiny is mot certain, if it be proved that they are never to exercie their own reaon, never to be independent, never to rie above opinion, or to feel the dignity of a rational will that only bows to God, and often forgets that the univere Rh