Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/89

Rh become either abject laves or capricious tyrants. They loe all implicity, all dignity of mind, in acquiring power, and act as men are oberved to act when they have been exalted by the ame means.

It is time to effect a revolution in female manners—time to retore to them their lot dignity—and make them, as a part of the human pecies, labour by reforming themelves to reform the world. It is time to eparate unchangeable morals from local manners.—If men be demi-gods—why let us erve them! And if the dignity of the female oul be as diputable as that of animals—if their reaon does not afford ufficient light to direct their conduct whilt unerring intinct is denied—they are urely of all creatures the mot mierable! and, bent beneath the iron hand of detiny, mut ubmit to be a fair defect in creation. But to jutify the ways of Providence repecting them, by pointing out ome irrefragable reaon for thus making uch a large portion of mankind accountable and not accountable, would puzzle the ubtilet cauit.

The only olid foundation for morality appears to be the character of the upreme Being; the harmony of which aries from a balance of attributes;—and, to peak with reverence, one attribute eems to imply the neceity of another. He mut be jut, becaue he is wie, he mut be good, becaue he is omnipotent. For to exalt one attribute at the expene of another equally noble and neceary, bears the tamp of the warped reaon of man—the homage of paion. Man, accutomed to bow down to power in his avage Rh