Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/93

Rh their orbits, matter yields to the great governing Spirit.—But an immortal oul, not retrained by mechanical laws and struggling to free itelf from the hackles of matter, contributes to, intead of diturbing, the order of creation, when, co-operating with the Father of pirits, it tries to govern itelf by the invariable rule that, in a degree, before which our imagination faints, the univere is regulated.

Beides, if women are educated for dependence; that is, to act according to the will of another fallible being, and ubmit, right or wrong, to power, where are we to top? Are they to be conidered as vicegerents allowed to reign over a mall domain, and anwerable for their conduct to a higher tribunal, liable to error?

It will not be difficult to prove that uch delegates will act like men ubjected by fear, and make their children and ervants endure their tyrannical oppreion. As they ubmit without reaon, they will, having no fixed rules to quare their conduct by, be kind, or cruel, jut as the whim of the moment directs; and we ought not to wonder if ometimes, galled by their heavy yoke, they take a malignant pleaure in reting it on weaker houlders.

But, uppoing a woman, trained up to obedience, be married to a enible man, who directs her judgment without making her feel the ervility of her ubjection, to act with as much propriety by this reflected light as can be expected when reaon is taken at econd hand, yet he cannot enure the life of her protector; he may die and leave her with a large family. Rh