Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/87

Rh kings have been more under the retraint of law, and the curb, however weak, of honour, the records of hitory are not filled with uch unnatural intances of folly and cruelty, nor does the depotim that kills virtue and genius in the bud, hover over Europe with that detructive blat which deolates TurkyTurkey [sic], and renders the men, as well as the oil, unfruitful.

Women are every where in this deplorable tate; for, in order to preerve their innocence, as ignorance is courteouly termed, truth is hidden from them, and they are made to aume an artificial character before their faculties have acquired any trength. Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's ceptre, the mind hapes itelf to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only eeks to adorn its prion. Men have various employments and puruits which engage their attention, and give a character to the opening mind; but women, confined to one, and having their thoughts contantly directed to the mot inignificant part of themelves, eldom extend their views beyond the triumph of the hour. But was their undertanding once emancipated from the lavery to which the pride and enuality of man and their hort-ighted deire, like that of dominion in tyrants, of preent way, has ubjected them, we hould probably read of their weaknees with urprie. I mut be allowed to purue the argument a little farther.

Perhaps, if the exitence of an evil being was allowed, who, in the allegorical language of cripture, went about eeking whom he hould devour, he could not more effectually degrade the human Rh