A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with - Early Modern Texts

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt
looks up to and shapes for itself, would elude their sight. ‘He
who loves not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he
love God?’ asked the wisest of men [1 John 4:20].. . . .
Our trees are now allowed to spread with wild luxuriance,
and we don’t expect by force to combine the majestic marks
of time with youthful graces; rather, we wait patiently until
the trees have driven their roots down deep and braved many
a storm. Well, then, is the mind. . . .to be treated with less
respect? To argue from analogy: everything around us is
in a progressive state; and when an unwelcome knowledge
of life gives us a sense of having had almost enough of
life, and we discover by the natural course of things that
everything that happens under the sun is vanity [Ecclesiastes
1:14], we are drawing near to the awe-inspiring close of the
drama. The days of activity and hope are over, and as for
the opportunities that our early years gave us for advancing
in the scale of intelligence—we have nearly reached their
bottom line. A knowledge of the futility of life is very useful
at this late stage of our lives—or earlier, if it is obtained
through experience. Useful because it is natural; but when
a frail ·young, inexperienced· being is shown the follies and
vices of man so as to teach him to •guard prudently against
the common casualties of life by •sacrificing his heart—that’s
the wisdom of this world, contrasted with the nobler fruit of
piety and experience.
·THE BELIEF IN LIFE AFTER DEATH: ITS EFFECTS ON OUR
THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS·
I will venture a paradox. . . .: if men were born only to form
a circle of life and death, it would be wise to take every
possible step to make life happy. Moderation in every pursuit
would then be supreme wisdom; and the prudent voluptuary
[= ‘the sexually energetic person who takes care of his own interests]
might enjoy a degree of contentment although he didn’t
cultivate his understanding or keep his heart pure. If we were
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mortal, prudence would be true wisdom; or, to put the point
more explicitly, prudence would yield the greatest portion
of happiness, considering the whole of life; but knowledge
about anything other than the conveniences of life would be
a curse, ·or at any rate the pursuit of it would be a curse, as
I now proceed to explain·.
Why should we injure our health by close study? The
exalted pleasure that intellectual pursuits provide would
hardly compensate for the hours of exhaustion that follow,
especially if we take into account the doubts and disappointments
that cloud our researches. Every inquiry ends
with empty hands and annoyance, because the cause that
we particularly wanted to discover recedes before us as we
advance, like the horizon. . . . Yet, disappointed as we are in
our researches, the mind is strengthened through exercise,
perhaps becoming strong enough to comprehend the answers
which, at another stage of existence, it may receive to the
anxious questions it asked ·back in its earthly life· when
the understanding with feeble wing was fluttering round the
visible effects ·and hoping· to dive into the hidden cause.
The passions also, the winds of life, would be useless or
even harmful if the substance that composes our thinking
being died with our bodies. The appetites would meet all
our earthly needs and would produce more moderate and
permanent happiness ·than our passions do·. But the
powers of the soul
that are of little use in this life, and probably disturb
our animal pleasures even while conscious dignity
makes us glory in having them,
prove that ·this· life is merely an education, a state of
infancy, to which the only hopes worth cherishing should
not be sacrificed. The conclusion I draw from this is that
we ought to have a precise idea of what we want to attain
by education. •The immortality of the soul is contradicted