*& 
 c&Sffi^ 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 GIFT OF" 
 
 <^M-<^^^ 
 
 Received 
 Accession No. 
 
 Class No. 
 
 'i3jr^-&l 
 
 2 
 
 ^|P^^* 
 
 ^Vc '' 
 
A STUDY 
 
 OF 
 
 MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT 
 
 AND 
 
 THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN 
 
 BY 
 
 EMMA RAUSCHENBUSCH-CLOUGH, PH.D. 
 
 i] 
 
 OF THB 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 
 
 1898 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
7 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 MY attention was first directed to the subject of this 
 book by Professor Dr. M. Heinze, of the Univer- 
 sity of Leipzig. He observed, in conversation, that 
 though much was being written on the subject of the 
 position of woman and on the movement in connec- 
 tion with her emancipation, comparatively little was 
 being done by way of patient research in the annals 
 of the past, to define the influences which have resulted 
 in the social revolution of the present day. As a center 
 for possible investigation of this kind, he mentioned 
 Mary Wollstonecraft. her work and her times. 
 
 Following his suggestion, I took a survey of 
 that which had been done in this particular direction, 
 and found that Mr. C. Kegan Paul, Mary Wollstone- 
 craft's biographer in recent times, had done valuable 
 work in editing letters by her in connection with 
 his work on William Godwin, his Friends and Con- 
 temporaries, London, 1876. His work had formed 
 the foundation for several biographical sketches. A 
 full analytical and critical investigation of her views, 
 as they had found expression in her life and works, 
 with a survey of the influences which had moulded 
 her thought, had yet to be given. This was the task 
 which I made my own. 
 
 In the spring of 1894, the result of my research in 
 form of an Inaugural Dissertation was presented to the 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 Faculty of the University of Bern in Switzerland, and 
 was accepted by Professor Dr. Ludwig Stein of the 
 Department of Philosophy, as a part of the usual ex- 
 amination for the Doctorate in Philosophy. 
 
 Meantime I had come to a realization that my sub- 
 ject was far from being exhausted. Professor Stein 
 suggested further research in several directions. Mr. 
 C. Kegan Paul kindly placed at my disposal several of 
 the works 'of Mary Wollstonecraft, which it had previ- 
 ously been impossible for me to obtain. Dr. Richard 
 Garnett of the British Museum aided me in my 
 search for additional material during a short sojourn in 
 London. During a summer vacation spent at Donau- 
 eschingen in the Black Forest in Germany, the 
 Librarian of the Fiirstlich Fiirstenbergische Bibliothek, 
 located there, spared no pains in helping me to find 
 traces of Mary Wollstonecraft's influence upon her 
 German contemporaries. At the University Libraries 
 of Zurich and Vienna I gathered the material for my 
 hypothesis concerning the literary indebtedness of 
 Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel to Mary Wollstonecraft. 
 
 With this accumulation of additional material I 
 returned to my home in India and began again, 
 enlarging everywhere, adding much that was new. 
 
 Perhaps my work may be of some little service as a 
 contribution toward historical research in a direction 
 which has not received a large degree of attention 
 thus far, though it has strong claims upon the 
 student of to-day. 
 
 E. R. C. 
 
 ONGOLE. INDIA, 1896. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 HER LIFE. 
 
 Childhood. Efforts to obtain an education. Unhappy- 
 family circumstances. A school at Newington Green 
 opened. Journey to Lisbon. Engagement as gov- 
 erness. Beginning of her literary career. Sojourn 
 in Paris. Marriage to Mr. Imlay. The birth of her 
 daughter Fanny. Her journey to Norway. Imlay 's 
 desertion. Return to literary work. Marriage to 
 William Godwin. Birth of her daughter Mary. 
 Death. Her fame as an author. Mary and Shelley. 
 Death of Fanny. Shelley's Revolt of Islam. 
 Death of Godwin. Mary Wollstonecraft's name 
 well-nigh forgotten. Mr. C. Kegan Paul's publica- 
 tion of her letters. Renewed interest . . . 1 28 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 HER LITERARY WORK. 
 
 Versatility of her mental powers. Pedagogical writings. 
 Translations. Writings of a revolutionary nature. 
 A contribution to history. Description of travel. 
 The writing of a novel interrupted by her death. 
 Relation of her Letters to Imlay to the genius of 
 Rousseau. Her chief work : TheVindication of the 
 Rights of Woman. Attitude of the English public 
 toward the book. Horace Walpole's epithet. 
 Hannah More's conservatism. Critics waver be- 
 tween dissent and approval. General recognition in 
 England that the book proclaimed a new system . 24 45 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 HER RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL VIEWS. 
 
 First Phase: A Christian of the evangelical type. 
 Second Phase : a thinker of the rationalistic school. 
 Her theism. Her ethical views more closely allied 
 to those of Locke than of Rousseau. Distinction 
 between speculative and moral truths. Her concep- 
 tion of the nature of reason. Importance attached 
 to the contest between reason and the passions. 
 Her attitude toward Deism. Her conception of evil 
 opposed to that of Rousseau. Third Phase : A 
 change in her views, characterized by silence rather 
 than expression of new views. Effect of Godwin's 
 description of her last days. Reproach of irreligious - 
 ness. Her criticism of religious institutions resented 
 by her contemporaries 46 66 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE RIGHTS OF MAN AND HER REPLY TO 
 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 Her early championship of the rights of man. /^Her place -~ 
 among reformers in London. Edmund Burke's 
 Reflections on the Revolution in France. Charac- 
 teristics of her Reply. Her explanation of Burke's 
 attitude toward the French Revolution. Burke's 
 policy as statesman compared with the tenets of the 
 School of Revolutionists. Her discussion of Burke's 
 faith in historical growth, his respect for rank, for 
 the English constitution, for English security of prop- 
 erty. The nature of liberty discusse.d by Rousseau 
 and Locke. Recognition in her volume on the 
 French Revolution of the principle of growth in his- 
 tory. Locke's enunciation of revolutionary principle 
 conservative as compared to hers. Effect of her 
 journey among uncivilized nations: A tempered 
 enthusiasm 6786 
 
CONTENTS. vii 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN AND HER POLEMICS AGAINST 
 WRITERS ON FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 The rights of woman as the logical sequence of the rights 
 of man. Rousseau's investigation of the character 
 given by nature to woman. His views on the educa- 
 tion of woman : Her virtues to make her useful to man, 
 her knowledge to render her pleasing to man. Mary 
 Wollstonecraft's polemics against Rousseau's argu- 
 ment, against Madame de Stael, Mrs. Piozzi, Madame 
 Genlis. Her tribute to Mrs. Macauley. The advice 
 contained in Dr. Fordyce's Sermons in its bearing 
 upon the attitude of the church toward woman. Dr. 
 Gregory in his solicitude for the welfare of his 
 daughters a type of the parent of that day. Mary 
 Wollstonecraft's hesitation in the training of her 
 daughter. Solution of the problem then in progress 
 in America . . 87 106 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HER INVESTIGATION OF THE CAUSES OF WOMAN'S 
 
 INTELLECTUAL INFERIORITY. 
 
 Woman regarded physically inferior to man a century 
 ago. The change wrought by scientific research. 
 Mary Wollstonecraft's statement of the cause of 
 woman's intellectual inferiority. The evils of class^ 
 distinction visited upon woman. Sensibility as part 
 of the so-called female character. The neglect of the 
 understanding in female education. Instinct sub- 
 stituted for reason not a peculiarity of sex. Example 
 of military men. Mary Wollstonecraft fails to prove 
 that sexual difference does not enter the region of 
 mind. Mrs. Shelley's opinion. Godwin's compari- 
 son between his own and his wife's mental charac- 
 teristics. Intuitive powers of mind as found in 
 women. Hartmann's philosophy showing new cause 
 for denying women the rights of reason. Dr. 
 Simmers theory . of the greater degree of mental 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 differentiation attained by men. The solution of the 
 question lies in the future .... 107 124 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 HER DISCUSSION OF WOMAN'S MORAL INFERIORITY. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft a pupil of the Intuitional School of 
 English Ethics rather than the Utilitarian School. 
 Woman's criterion of morals not the same as man's. 
 The negative virtues to be practised by woman to 
 the exclusion of the positive. Benevolence not a 
 
 virtue peculiar to woman. Unsparing criticism of 
 
 the women of her times. Normal development of 
 character not reached. The effects of the prevailing 
 system upon wifehood and motherhood. Woman 
 incapacitated even for the duties of her own natural 
 sphere. Criticism of the discussion of woman's 
 moral inferiority 125 139 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 HER DEMANDS FOR THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 
 The object of education. Influence of Locke and 
 Rousseau upon Mary Wollstonecraft 's pedagogical 
 views. Her argument in favor of National Educa-^ - 
 tion. Democratic measures to be introduced in 
 National Schools. Godwin's threefold argument 
 against National Education. Mary Wollstonecraft's 
 criticism of the system of education then in vogue in 
 England. The influence of the home and the school 
 to be blended. The rights and duties of motherhood 
 vindicated. Co-education, advocated. Moderation 
 in her demands for the higher education of women. 
 Her suggestions point to Sociology as a field of 
 investigation awaiting the special researches of 
 women . 140 163 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 HER VINDICATION OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 Her appeal to the French Republicans. The reciprocal 
 relation between the individual and the state. Her 
 
CONTENTS. ix 
 
 description of the evils attending monarchical govern- 
 ment. A representative government with universal _ 
 suffrage her political ideal. The enfranchisement of 
 women and the hopes vested by her in Talleyrand's 
 championship. The political, civil and economic 
 rights of women in need of vindication. The abject 
 nature of the economic existence of the women of her 
 times. In her grasp upon economic problems among 
 the most progressive thinkers of her times . 164 175 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE RELATION OF HER VIEWS TO THOSE OF GODWIN 
 AND LATER SOCIALISTS. 
 
 Godwin the first scientific socialist of later times. Points 
 of contact between him and Mary Wollstonecraft. 
 His radicalism tempered by her influence. Her last 
 work, Maria ; or, the Wrongs of Woman, considered 
 as giving evidence of his influence. The purpose of 
 the story not antagonistic to the family. The touch 
 of anarchy due to Godwin's influence. The attitude 
 of socialism toward marriage. Saint Simon, Fourier 
 and Owen in favor of the emancipation of woman. 
 Possibility of influence wielded over them by Mary 
 Wollstonecraft. The tenets of the Socialism of later 
 times fore-shadowed by her in some of her demands 
 for the social amelioration of women . . 176 190 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 THE RECEPTION OF HER WORK IN GERMANY. 
 
 Conditions of thought in England and Germany com- 
 pared. The attitude of contemporary German 
 periodicals toward the Vindication of the Rights of 
 Woman. Salzmann's attempt to tone down the 
 revolutionary character of the book in introducing it 
 to the German public. The announcement of a new 
 system not understood by German critics. Impres- 
 sions made by the book upon two Germans then 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 residing in England. Friendship of the author with 
 Count Schlabrendorf. An hypothesis that Theodor 
 Gottlieb von Hippel was indebted to her work for a 
 radical change in his views, supported by coincidence 
 as to time, by the literary character of Hippel, by an 
 investigation of the views set forth by him before and 
 after the appearance of the Vindication of the Rights 
 of Woman. Examination of theories previously set 
 forth to account for the change. Hippel's later 
 writings regarding the position of woman contain an 
 innate contradiction viewed in connection with his 
 life, position and surrounding influences, and point to 
 the influence of Mary Wollstonecraft . . 191 217 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Changes wrought since the time of Mary Wollstonecraft, 
 apparent in the general ideas of the present time and 
 in the attitude of women and men toward the sub- 
 ject. Professions entered by women. The enfran- 
 chisement of women. The relation of the modern 
 woman to the home. Mary Wollstonecraft 's place 
 as pioneer in the movement for the emancipation of 
 women 218228 
 
 INDEX 229-234 
 
A STUDY OF 
 
 MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, 
 
 AND THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 HER L,IFE. 
 
 MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT was born near London, 
 April 27, 1759. Her parents were of Irish descent, 
 and evidently passed the earlier years of their mar- 
 ried life under favorable circumstances. They were 
 both of good family and were in possession of some 
 wealth. Mary's father had inherited ^10,000 from 
 his father, who owned a large factory in Spitalsfield. 
 He engaged in fanning and was an active man but 
 not prosperous, and therefore sought to better his 
 affairs by frequent change. A deeper fall in 
 poverty marked each move made by him. When 
 Mary was six years old the family moved to Bark- 
 ing in Essex, and three years later to Beverly in 
 Yorkshire. There they remained for six years, 
 
2 HER LIFE. 
 
 then moved to Wales for a year, and finally return- 
 ed to L,ondon. 
 
 Mary was the second of six children. She 
 enjoyed the advantages of an out-door life and 
 seems to have been a strong and healthy child. 
 Dolls had no attraction for her ; she preferred to 
 play and run about with her brothers. Her delight 
 in nature was keen, and animals were friends whom 
 she cherished. Her mother seems to have been a 
 woman of firm character and good intentions, but 
 in her decided preference for her eldest son, she 
 was unjust to Mary, and gave her but a slight share 
 of the affections which the warm-hearted child 
 craved. In later life she admitted that in her 
 treatment of Mary she had been too severe. Her 
 father was a man of unstable character; trifles 
 could rouse his temper, and neither his dogs nor 
 his family were safe from the bursts of his violence. 
 Even as a child, Mary could not conceal her indig- 
 nation, and fearlessly interposed when her mother 
 was the victim of his rage. Though the heavy 
 pressure of sad circumstances rested upon her 
 childhood, she was far from being crushed. Superi- 
 ority of mind and heart seems early to have 
 manifested itself. Her mother leaned upon her, 
 and her father respected her. 
 
 Mary seems to have attended the common day 
 school until she was fifteen years old. While the 
 family lived at Beverly, she was a frequent visitor 
 at the house of a Mr. Clare, a clergyman of literary 
 taste, who seems to have lent her books and directed 
 her reading. Through his wife she became ac- 
 
HER LIFE. 3 
 
 quainted with Fanny Blood, a young woman some- 
 what older than herself, of noble character, who 
 possessed the accomplishments of a young lady, and 
 by her skill in music and drawing did much toward 
 the support of her family. Mary's heart went out 
 to Fanny at sight in a strong and enthusiastic 
 friendship ; and in several ways the beginning of 
 this friendship may be termed a crisis in her young 
 life. Thus far Mary seems to have read simply to 
 quench her thirst for knowledge. Fanny's studies 
 had been carried on more systematically. But 
 Mary's ambition to excel in intellectual pursuits 
 was now fully roused, and the latent spirit of inde- 
 pendence within her asserted itself in the deter- 
 mination to make her way in life by her own 
 exertions. 
 
 This two-fold ambition however met with little 
 sympathy in Mary's home. Her plans for study- 
 were left unheeded, and a position that was offered 
 her, she declined, persuaded by the earnest entreaties 
 of her mother. Three years thus passed by and the 
 financial difficulties of the family grew more op- 
 pressive. Mary finally decided to accept the position 
 of companion to a Mrs. Dawson in Bath. She was 
 now nineteen years old. Mrs. Dawson's temper 
 made her new office a difficult one, which few of her 
 predecessors had been able to fill for any length of 
 time. Man- stayed for two years. 
 
 The occasion of her return home was a 
 lingering illness of her mother, w*ho longed for the 
 presence of her eldest daughter and refused to 
 accept the slightest service from anyone else. 
 
4 HER LIFE. 
 
 She died, and Mary's father soon married again. 
 His house ceased to offer a suitable home for his 
 daughters. 
 
 Mary now went to live with her friend Fanny for 
 a time, helped her mother, who took in needle-work, 
 and under Fanny's guidance pursued her studies. 
 Fanny's home life was rendered unhappy by causes 
 similar to those which had rested like a blight on 
 Mary's life. Family life presented itself to her in 
 its darkest aspects. A year of work and study had 
 passed, when Mary's sister Eliza, who had married 
 a Mr. Bishop, possibly in order to escape the ills 
 connected with life in her father's house, called for 
 Mary's presence. Her marriage was a most un- 
 happy one. Eliza was very young, hasty tempered 
 and apt to exaggerate trifles. Mr. Bishop was a 
 man of violent temper. Eliza's reason had well- 
 nigh given way under her trials. This was the 
 first occasion on which any of the great social ques- 
 tions presented itself to Mary ; and the motives that 
 prompted her actions in her sister's behalf, were 
 decisive in her own affairs in later years. She con- 
 sidered her sister's marriage as practically dissolved 
 by reason of the brutality of her husband. She 
 arranged a sudden and secret flight, and after she 
 had remained in hiding with her sister for a time, a 
 legal separation was effected. 
 
 Thus far Mary had largely devoted herself to her 
 family, strong to help in trouble, a gentle nurse in 
 sickness. She now saw that she must engage in 
 some work, in which Eliza and her sister Everina 
 also could find a livelihood, and in which Fanny 
 
HER LIFE. 5 
 
 could join. Mary was now twenty-four years old. 
 Her talents had asserted themselves, and notwith- 
 standing her meagre educational advantages, she 
 had the attainments necessary to open a school. 
 This was her first public venture. 
 
 The school which the sisters and Fanny Blood 
 opened at Newington Green in 1783 seemed for a 
 time to succeed. They soon had twenty day pupils 
 and a few boarders. But discordant notes marred 
 the harmony which they had hoped would make 
 their work a pleasure. The heavier share of the 
 burdens fell upon Mary, yet it was not without some 
 jealousy that her sisters saw her the recipient of a 
 larger degree of respect and admiration than they 
 themselves received. Fanny, to whom Mary in 
 earlier days looked up as a friend of larger attain- 
 ments than she herself possessed, now leaned upon 
 Mary for support. Their relations were reversed. 
 Fanny's life was being worn out with the ills of 
 poverty, and when she married Mr. Hugh Skeys 
 and went with him to Lisbon, her health was 
 already undermined. He had feared the dis- 
 pleasure of his friends, and had delayed his mar- 
 riage until it was too late. Mary's heart clung to 
 Fanny ; and, when after a time, Fanny begged for 
 her presence, she refused to listen to the voice of 
 friends, who advised her not to go, she left the 
 school in charge of her sisters, and arrived in 
 Lisbon but just in time to nurse her friend during 
 her last days. Fanny died, and Mary returned to 
 England almost heart-broken ; for she loved Fanny 
 with all the devotion of her nature. At Newing- 
 
6 HER LIFE. 
 
 ton she found fresh troubles awaiting her. Her 
 sisters had not been equal to the responsibility rest- 
 ing upon them. The pupils had scattered, and 
 means with which to meet debts incurred for house- 
 rent were not forthcoming. There was nothing 
 left to do but to close the school. 
 
 The sad circumstances of Mary's early life now 
 seemed to reach their climax. She wrote in later 
 years : "I have never had either father or brother." 
 Her eldest brother was now an Attorney in London 
 and might have helped his family, but he was a 
 selfish man, and Everina, who had sought a home 
 with him, found the shelter grudgingly given. Her 
 father's poverty was growing more distressing. 
 Far from having a home to offer his children, he 
 had begun to look to them for support. Fanny's 
 parents too were in trouble, and her brother George, 
 whom Mary loved as an own brother, was without 
 a situation. Poverty, sorrow and trouble surround- 
 ed Mary on every hand. A note of deep despond- 
 "f" ency vibrates through her letters of this period. 
 Life with her had been one hard struggle. Even 
 childhood's joys had fled before the harshness 
 which she experienced at the hands of those who 
 should have been her best friends. Her unweary- 
 ing efforts to obtain an education had been met by 
 almost insurmountable difficulties, and now her 
 first attempt to carve for herself an independent and 
 useful place in life had proved a failure. Above all, 
 in the death of her friend Fanny, she had lost the 
 kindliest ray of sunshine that had thus far smiled 
 upon her path. 
 
HER I JFK. 7 
 
 Two prominent men rendered Mary service at 
 this time, that was destined to influence the further 
 development of her career ; and it is significant of 
 the influences that surrounded her at that time, that 
 both were clergymen. One, the Rev. J. Hewlett, 
 introduced her to Mr. Johnson, the publisher in 
 vSt. Paul's Churchyard, to whom she offered her first 
 literary venture, Thoughts on /he Education of 
 Daughters. Ten guineas this effort brought her, 
 and with characteristic unselfishness, she put the 
 money into the hands of Fanny's parents, that they 
 might carry out their desire of going to Ireland and 
 settling in Dublin. The other friend, who helped 
 Mary at this juncture, was Dr. Richard Price, the 
 famous Dissenting preacher. Through his recom- 
 mendation Mr. Prior, Assistant Master at Eton, 
 obtained for her a situation as governess in the 
 family of Lord Kingsborough in Ireland. In the 
 autumn of 1787, after a short stay in Eton, with 
 Mr. and Mrs. Prior, she sailed with these friends 
 to Ireland. 
 
 Her new position as governess was not one in 
 which Mary could long rest satisfied. Her craving 
 for independence could not be silenced. She soon 
 became attached to her pupils, but the tone ol 
 society at the castle was far from congenial. In her 
 hours of leisure she wrote a story, Mary, a Fie- 
 tion, a record of her friendship with Fanny Blood. 
 Mr. Johnson, the publisher, whose interest in her 
 had been roused before she went to Ireland, saw in 
 this second literary attempt fresh indication of her 
 talent. He advised her to come to London and 
 
8 HER IJFK. 
 
 promised her constant literary work, to consist 
 chiefly in translating from the French. Man- 
 gladly entered upon these plans. L,ady Kings- 
 borough had cause to be jealous of the hold which 
 Mary had on the affections of her pupils. The 
 regret which the eldest of them showed when left 
 by Mary for a short time, was the pretext for her 
 dismissal. She left behind her scenes of gaiety at 
 Dublin, Bristol, Hotwells and Bath, where she had 
 gone with the family of her employer. Most of the 
 women with whom she came in contact were frivol- 
 ous, most of the men were coarse. The insight 
 which she gained into the ways of those favored 
 by rank and fortune was not without its mould- 
 ing influence upon her views in the years that 
 followed. 
 
 Under the direction of her publisher, Mary, during 
 the following five years, 1787 1792, developed an 
 unusual activity. Besides attending to the daily 
 recurring smaller tasks, incidental to her position, 
 she increased her knowledge of modern languages 
 and made translations of several books, popular at 
 that time. A few books for children issued from 
 her pen. Contributions to the Analytical Rcric:c, 
 lately started by Mr. Johnson, also formed part ol 
 her activity. By reason of her exertions she was 
 now able to help her family. Her father in his 
 poverty had come to look to her for support. 
 Everina and Eliza, who continued as governesses, 
 frequently made Mary's scantily furnished rooms 
 their home. They and Mary's two younger brothers 
 were offered educational advantages through her 
 
HER LIFE. 9 
 
 generosity. Not less than ^200, as Mr. Johnson 
 says, did she expend on her brothers and sisters 
 during those years. 
 
 Through her relations to her publisher, Mary was 
 introduced to men and women who were congenial. 
 The literary society which frequented the house of 
 Mr. Johnson, where Mary was always welcome, was 
 composed of men of liberal views, in favor of reform ; 
 who gathered to discuss the great questions of those 
 stirring times and to watch eagerly the develop- 
 ments of the Revolution in France. This social 
 intercourse could not but stimulate Mary's mental 
 activity. Yet she worked on, comparatively unno- 
 ticed, until in 1790, Edmund Burke published his 
 famous Reflections on Mie Revolution in France. 
 The first of the numerous replies from the liberal 
 party came from the pen of Mary Wollstonecraft. 
 Written with an eloquence somewhat too heedless, 
 her reply nevertheless called forth applause, for it 
 breathed throughout the spirit of liberty. Concern- 
 ing Mary's attitude toward the questions of her 
 times, there could not now be any doubt. She 
 belonged to the Revolutionists, and demanded re- 
 form, political and social. Soon after this, her 
 views again found expression in her best-known 
 work, the I 'indication of tJie Rights of Women. 
 
 Mary was now thirty-three years of age. Her 
 work had been crowned with unusual success. 
 Through her last-named book she had become 
 famous not only in England but also in Germany 
 and France. In the literary circles of London she^/ 
 was now a distinguished personage. She took 
 
TO HER LIFE. 
 
 the brevet rank of Mrs. Wollstonecraft. In ap- 
 pearance she was dignified and attractive. Regu- 
 lar features and large expressive eyes were sur- 
 rounded by masses of brownish auburn hair. There 
 is thus far no trace of a romance in Mary's life. 
 A report, which was later discussed in Mary's biog- 
 raphy as well as in Fusel Ts, that Mary's friendship 
 with that distinguished artist, whose wife was also 
 her friend, had become intensified to a degree that 
 made the relations of a merely friendly nature 
 equivalent to a torment to her, is found by Mr. C. 
 Kegan Paul, who has had opportunity to weigh the 
 evidence for and against, to be without foundation. 
 Whether this circumstance, as Godwin says, decid- 
 ed her to seek a change by a short sojourn in France, 
 or whether it was to study on the spot the nature 
 of the events that perplexed the minds of friends 
 and foes alike of the Revolution is uncertain ; with 
 regard however to her private affairs her journey 
 was destined to usher her into sad complications. 
 
 Mary went to Paris toward the end of the year 
 1792. As yet there was peace between France and 
 England. Mary had very good introductions. At 
 the house of a friend she met an American, 
 Captain Gilbert Imlay, who had, in the service of 
 the United States, gained some slight reputation as 
 an author. He wrote a monograph entitled, . / 
 Topographical Description of the Western Territory 
 of North America, which in its day went through 
 many editions. To him Mary gave her whole 
 heart, and with it an unbounded confidence. Mean- 
 time the relations between England and France had 
 
HKR UFK. 1 i 
 
 become strained to such an extent, that all commu- 
 nication between the two countries had ceased. 
 Mary's position, as a British subject, was full of 
 danger ; Imlay was safe, since the Americans were 
 considered friends and allies by the Revolutionists. 
 Mary's nationality had to be concealed, and a legal 
 marriage with Imlay was therefore out of the ques- 
 tion ; moreover it was doubtful whether such would 
 have been valid in England. She was regarded in 
 the circle of their acquaintances as Imlay \s wife, and 
 the American consul gave her a certificate to that 
 effect. 
 
 In the autumn of 1/93 Imlay was called to 
 Havre on business, and after a few months Mary 
 followed him. In the spring of the following year 
 Mary gave birth to a daughter, named Fanny in 
 memory of the dear friend of her youth. Until 
 September she enjoyed the sunshine of happiness 
 and then Imlay went to London and this separation 
 was the beginning of Imlay's desertion. His letters 
 grew cool in tone and when she followed him to 
 London, in April 1795, his attentions were strained, 
 and his interest in her and her child but slight. 
 After a few weeks he asked Mary to undertake a 
 journey to Norway, where he had engaged in busi- 
 ness ventures, and gave her a legal document, in 
 which he speaks of her as " Mary Imlay, my best 
 friend and wife," giving her plenary powers to act 
 for him. She travelled in Sweden, Norway and 
 Denmark. Her health, worn out by cruel uncer- 
 tainty, was recuperated, but mentally she was nigh 
 unto despair. When after an absence of four 
 
12 HER LIFE. 
 
 months she returned to England with her little 
 daughter, she found that her most harrassing fears 
 were not without foundation. Driven to despair 
 by the discovery that an unworthy intrigue was 
 being carried on under her own roof, she sought 
 death in the waters of the Thames. Some passing 
 boatmen rescued her when life was almost extinct. 
 Their kindness seemed but cruelty ; for she still 
 could not bear the thought of a permanent separa- 
 tion from Imlay. During the five months that 
 followed, he frequently offered her pecuniary assist- 
 ance, which she declined. u I never wanted but 
 your heart that gone, you have nothing more to 
 give." ' With regard to Fanny's maintenance, she 
 wrote : " You must do as you please with respect 
 to the child." Imlay gave a bond for a sum to 
 be settled on his child ; but neither interest nor 
 principal was ever paid. In March 1796, Mary saw 
 that all hope of reconciliation was futile. Imlay 
 now vanished completely from her life. 
 
 As before her journey to France, she lived again 
 in London, and by the aid of Mr. Johnson, always 
 the most helpful of her friends, she again support- 
 ed herself by her pen. She had her daughter 
 Fanny with her, and at Imlay's request they both 
 bore his name. Otherwise there was no change. 
 During her sojourn in France she had written the 
 first volume of An Historical and Moral View of 
 the Origin and Progress of ike French Revolution, 
 and the effect it has produced in Rnrope, which 
 
 1 Letters to Imlay. p. 188. - Ibid., p. 206. 
 
IIKR LIFE. 13 
 
 was now published. This would have been a 
 valuable work, if she could have completed it 
 in three or four additional volumes as she in- 
 tended. The letters which she had written to Imlay 
 during her travel in northern countries, she divest- 
 ed of personal matters, and published them on 
 account of their descriptive merit, as Letters written 
 during a short residence in Sweden, Norway and 
 Denmark. 
 
 Mary was sad and depressed in spirit, but gradu- 
 ally she found pleasure in frequenting, as before her 
 journey to France, the literary society of L,ondon. , 
 William Godwin was one of those with whom 
 she renewed her acquaintance. Her Letters from 
 Sweden had charmed him, for he saw in them 
 every indication of matured literary talent and a 
 spirit grown gentle and calm with suffering. Her 
 late experiences had roused his sympathy. The 
 friendship which they now conceived for each other 
 soon ripened into love. 
 
 William Godwin was at this time forty years old, 
 and stood at the height of his literary success. 
 His Political Justice represented as bold a stride 
 in a new direction as did Mary Wollstonecraft's 
 Rights of Jl'ometi. He was the most radical of 
 the liberal party in England, and as their most 
 prominent thinker was of very pronounced influ- 
 ence in his day. One of the radical consequences of 
 his philosophy was that " marriage is law, and the 
 worst of all laws." It was not a light matter with 
 him to decide to act contrary to his own theories. 
 Mary had just passed through a sad experience to 
 
i4 HER UFB:. 
 
 which some degree of publicity had been given. 
 She had no wish to encounter again the ordeal of 
 public comment. Moreover, the experiences of her 
 life had brought her in vivid contact with all the 
 distressing aspects of marriage as a civic institution. 
 She hesitated to take any decisive step. They did 
 not at once declare thei^ attachment to the world. 
 The ceremony took pjace at St. Pancras Church, 
 March 26th, 1797. V 
 
 It was a union of two, who may be counted 
 among the most remarkable people of their times. 
 A rare blending of mental endowments was to be 
 expected. Mary was at work on a novel, Maria ; 
 or, the Wrongs of Woman, upon which she bestow- 
 ed a degree of painstaking labor unusual with 
 her. But the season of calm in her stormy life was 
 of short duration. She gave birth to a daughter, 
 Mary, August 3Oth, 1797, and after lingering 
 between life and death for ten days, the best physi- 
 cians in London doing their utmost to save her, 
 she died September loth, 1797. 
 
 A year later, Godwin published his Memoirs of 
 Mary Wollst oncer aft Godwin. He hoped by a clear 
 statement of the principles, which had actuated 
 her in the arrangements of her life, to call forth a 
 more kindly attitude towards her memory. But he 
 was not the one to do her this service. Too many 
 of his own radical views found their way into the 
 book ; nor did he succeed in representing Mary's life 
 in a way that would lessen the. asperity with which 
 her character was denounced. He also published 
 the Posthumous Works of Mary Wollstonecraft in 
 
HER LIFE. 15 
 
 four volumes, which again excited much adverse 
 criticism. The volumes contained chiefly the novel 
 Maria ; oi\ the Wrongs of Woman, which, owing to 
 the author's death remained incomplete, and also 
 the personal part of her letters to Imlay, which 
 Mary had retained, when she published the Letters 
 from Sii'eden. 
 
 Two years after his wife's death, Godwin publish- 
 ed a work of fiction, St. Leon, in which he paid 
 an indirect tribute of a high order to Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft. In Marguerite, one of the most charm- 
 ing female characters in the fiction of that day, the 
 reader recognizes her leading traits. The story is 
 remarkable for the exalted place which the joys of 
 family life afford when centered in a woman like 
 Marguerite. The married life of St. Leon with 
 Marguerite is an idealized description of the enjoy- 
 ment which Godwin drew from the companionship of 
 his wife during the short season of their united lives. 
 
 The writings of Mary Wollstonecraft continued 
 to be read ; her fame as one of the most gifted 
 authors of her time was spread abroad. Her works 
 were read in Germany and France in translations, 
 and in America also her name seems to have been 
 well known ; for Aaron Burr during his residence 
 in Europe writes to his daughter Theodosia : " I 
 have seen the two daughters of Mary Wollstone- 
 craft." ' The facts of her late life, however, as they 
 had been brought before the public were viewed 
 
 1 The Private Journal of Aaron Burr, during his residence of 
 four years in Europe. Edited by Matthew L. Davis, New York, 
 1838, Vol. I, p. 98. 
 
16 HER LIFE. 
 
 with little favour and scant justice. It pleased critics 
 to look upon them, not as due to unfortunate circum- 
 stances, but as wilful transgressions against the laws 
 of society. Caustic remarks were made and pass- 
 ed on. But while newspapers after a time ceased 
 to make comments, sketches of her life and works 
 found their way into histories of English litera- 
 ture, and into books of reference, great and small. 
 The same unjust estimate of her character is found 
 in most of these. An anonymous defender in 1803 
 claimed that it was " want of attentive enquiry, 
 which has induced the public to pass a general vote 
 of censure upon an unfortunate woman, who, in 
 many instances might have advanced a claim to 
 their warmest approbation." ' A tone however pre- 
 vails in this Defence, that is not without its hidden 
 drop of poison. 
 
 Once more, in 1844, an edition of the [^indication 
 of the Rights of IVomen was published, because, as 
 is said in the Preface, " it is undoubtedly one of the 
 most extraordinary productions of the time at which 
 it appeared," and also " because it is character- 
 ized by an originality, a boldness, a love of truth 
 and a generous earnestness of purpose, which show 
 with what an ardent desire to accomplish a great 
 and noble purpose the fair and gifted author 
 entered upon her hazardous undertaking." After 
 
 1 A Defence of the Character and Conduct of the late Mary 
 Wollstonecraft Godwin ; in a series of letters to a Lady, London, 
 1803. 
 
 2 A Vindication of the Rights of Women ; 3rd Edition, revis- 
 ed and re-edited, London, William Strange, 1844. 
 
HER LIFE. 17 
 
 this there is silence, and during the several decades 
 that followed, the memory of Mary Wollstonecraft 
 was more and more neglected, and she well-nigh for- 
 gotten ; while the movement to which she had given 
 perhaps the first conscious expression, was taking 
 its first timid steps toward general recognition. 
 
 Meantime Mary's two daughters passed their 
 childhood's days in the house of Godwin and grew 
 up into womanhood. Fanny took the name of 
 Miss Godwin. Mary, beautiful and gifted, was 
 wont to take her books to the lonely St. Pancras 
 cemetery to read in the shade of the willow-tree by 
 the side of her mother's grave, and thus to satisfy 
 her thirst for knowledge undisturbed by an unloved 
 step-mother. Here the poet Shelley, who during 
 that period of his life looked upon Godwin as his 
 tutor and mentor, found Mary, then sixteen years 
 old, over her books, and told her the story of his 
 life and of his love for her, a though legally bound, 
 he held himself morally free to offer himself to her 
 if she would be his." 1 She, a mere child, imbued 
 with her father's philosophy and overcome by a 
 profound admiration for the poetical genius of 
 Shelley, " conceived that she wronged by her action 
 no one but herself, and she did not hesitate." 2 
 Harriet, the wife of Shelley, deserted by her hus- 
 band, supplanted by Mary, ere long found herself 
 involved in serious trouble ; death seemed prefer- 
 able to life ; she sought a watery grave. There 
 
 1 Mrs. Julian Marshall : The Life and Letters of Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft Shelley, Vol. I, p. 64. 
 - Ibitl.. page 65. 
 
 3 
 
T<S HER UFK. 
 
 was intense mental activity in the house of Godwin ; 
 there was genius and noble thought. But wrong- 
 was done in the enunciation of principles dangerous 
 to the welfare of society ; wrong was done by re- 
 ducing these principles to action. Mary Shelley, 
 not only as the wife of the poet, but also through 
 the display of her own genius won for herself a 
 place in English literature. 
 
 Fanny, the gentle girl, full of thoughtful, lov- 
 ing care for those about her, has a place in the 
 biographies of four remarkable people. Her win- 
 some baby ways are exquisitely described in her 
 mother's letters. In Godwin's biography she takes 
 the place of his eldest daughter, helpful and sym- 
 pathetic in his financial troubles. As Mr. C. Kegan 
 Paul says, Fanny, after her mother, is the most 
 attractive character met with in the whole enor- 
 mous mass of Godwin's MSS. Mary's maturer 
 nature expanded under Shelley's influence, not 
 under Godwin's. Fanny had a warm place in Shel- 
 ley's affections. In his biography as well as in 
 Mary's, she is the gentle adviser, who seeks to make 
 peace, when Godwin refused to know his daughter 
 Mary, after she had left his house with Shelley ; and 
 takes upon herself the niediatorship between the 
 two households. Gentle words issue from the pens 
 of the biographers, when they come to the place 
 where Fanny " withdrew from life, because in her 
 weakness and her melancholy she looked upon her- 
 self as a sad encumbrance to the world ; she with- 
 drew, not in violence or passion, but stealing away 
 with hopeless eye and rapid step to darkness, silence 
 
HKk IJFK. 19 
 
 and oblivion/' 1 Godwin's mind was filled with 
 anxious attempts to extricate himself from his finan- 
 cial embarrassments ; Mrs. Godwin, never of gentle 
 temper, had perhaps reminded the poor girl that she 
 w r as a burden to the household. Moreover the 
 extreme depression to which her mother had been 
 subject, seized hold of Fanny from time to time. 
 She was twenty-two years old when she travelled to 
 Swansea, stopped for the night at the Mackworth 
 Arms Inn, and ended her life by a dose of laudanum. 
 Godwin and Shelley hastened to Swansea and re- 
 turned overwhelmed with grief. Even Godwin's 
 habitual equanimity was shaken; for he had loved 
 this gentle girl, who had found her way to his affec- 
 tions during the brief period, when both he and she 
 found a rare warmth of affection in the presence of 
 Mary Wollstonecraft. 
 
 In the year 1817 Shelley wrote his epic poem 
 " The Revolt of Islam." The Dedication is to Mary 
 and contains a verse which refers to the mother, 
 whose memory Mary cherished with a deep and 
 peculiar affection : 
 
 11 They say that thou \vert lovely from thy birth, 
 Of glorious parents thou aspiring child : 
 1 woiuler not- for One then left this earth 
 Whose life was like a setting planet mild, 
 Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled 
 Of its departing glory ; still her fame 
 Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and wild 
 Which shake these latter days ; and thou canst claim 
 The shelter, from thy Sire, of an immortal name." 
 
 Edward Powden, 1,1,. D. : The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 
 Vol. II, p. 50. 
 
2O HER LIFK. 
 
 Laon, the hero of this poem, was one who suffered 
 and died because his entreaties to break the fetters 
 of despotism had incited men to rebellion and revolt. 
 And Cythna was but his other self. Hers is a lofty 
 character, of a type perhaps unknown before the 
 dawn of the nineteenth century ; a stranger in 
 fiction until Shelley's fiery spirit gave her birth. 
 Cythna mourns with L,aon the servitude in which 
 one-half of mankind languish, u Victims of lust and 
 hate, the slaves of slaves." The light of exultation 
 breaking from her. eyes, Cythna assumes the task of 
 proclaiming freedom and equality between man and 
 woman.. 
 
 " The wild -eyed women throng around her path 
 From their luxurious dungeons, from the dust 
 Of meaner thralls, from the oppressors' wrath. 
 Or the caresses of his sated lust, 
 
 The}' congregate 
 
 Thus she doth equal laws and justice teach 
 To women, outraged and polluted long ; " 
 
 Mary, the loved companion of Shelley's aspira- 
 tions, had a cast of genius different from that which 
 belongs to the reformer ; but the mother, whose 
 life was hushed when hers began, presented in real 
 life a type of womanhood, which found its idealized 
 image in Cythna. 
 
 The years passed by, Godwin, after a long life 
 of literary toil, had died at the ripe age of eighty. 
 Shelley had found an early, sadly lamented death 
 in the waves of the Mediterranean Sea. Mary Shel- 
 ley, the freshness of her powers spent during the 
 eight years of active life with Shelley, had passed 
 
HRR IJFK. 21 
 
 her twenty-nine years of lonely widowhood in 
 literary labour and thought. Her grave was in 
 Bournemouth Churchyard, the burial-place nearest 
 the home of her only surviving child, Sir Percy Shel- 
 ley, who transferred the remains of his grand-parents, 
 William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft to the 
 same spot, when the old St. Pancras cemetery was 
 invaded by busy London life. In the house of Sir 
 Percy Shelley, near by, was kept the silver urn con- 
 taining the ashes of his father. Here too the pic- 
 ture of Mary Wollstonecraft, painted by Opie at the 
 request of Godwin, during her short married life 
 with him, had its place. As Mr. Kegan Paul says, 
 its tender, wistful, childlike, pathetic beauty, with 
 a look of pleading against the hardness of the world, 
 he knows in one only other face, that of Beatrice 
 Cenci. 
 
 Not until eighty years had passed ; since the 
 publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's / 'indication 
 of Hie Rights of }\ 7 owan were steps taken to set 
 her right in the eyes of the world. Sir Percy 
 Shelley placed the whole of the papers in his posses- 
 sion relating to his grandfather, William Godwin, 
 at the disposal of Mr. C. Kegan Paul, the well- 
 known publisher in London, in order that he might 
 compile a Life of the philosopher. Among these 
 papers were found letters written by Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft during the period of ten years that preced- 
 ed the publication of her I 'indication of the Rights 
 of Woman concerning which so little was known. 
 They are addressed to members of her family and to 
 intimate friends and reveal a woman, who suffered 
 
22 UIvR UKK. 
 
 much, who courageously met the difficulties that 
 confronted her and others, whose heart ever craved 
 for love, and whose consolation was found in a 
 warm and tender allegiance to the beliefs of the 
 Christian religion. 
 
 Mr. C. Kegaii Paul undertook to vindicate the 
 memory of Mary Wollstonecraft, and what he had 
 commenced in his Life of Godwin, largely by 
 letting her speak herself through her letters, he 
 carried through three years later. He published 
 again the personal part of those Letters to I ml ay 
 and in the full Prefatory Memoir he accomplish- 
 ed, what was attempted with so slight a degree 
 of success many years before by Godwin. Mary 
 Wollstonecraft found her defender in him. He 
 protests against the obloquy and scorn which have 
 been heaped upon her character. As for the views, 
 for which she fought, he well says : " Her opinions 
 have become in many particulars the common- 
 places of our own day, while she who was first to 
 proclaim what is now held innocently, was for- 
 gotten or assailed." 
 
 Mr. Paul's effort had its immediate effect ; for 
 the eyes of the literary world could no longer ignore 
 the memory of Mary Wollstonecraft. The AVrr 
 Quarterly Review soon after brought out an essay, by 
 Mathilde Blind, on Mary Wollstonecraft, which did 
 her full justice. A similar essay was published in 
 the Deutsche Rundschau, 1889, by Helen Zim- 
 mern. And in the Eminent Women Series a full 
 biographical sketch of Mary Wollstonecraft was 
 written by Elizabeth Robins Pennell, in which her 
 
HER LIFE. 23 
 
 memory is fully vindicated. So lively an interest 
 was awakened, that several new editions of the 
 / 'indications of the Rights of Woman were called for. 
 
 The story of the life of Mary Wollstonecraft is 
 pathetic throughout, full of wrong inflicted, of suffer- 
 ing endured. Much as she was maligned, not even 
 the severest of her critics has been able to bring 
 forward a charge against her, that she neglected 
 her parents, her brothers and sisters ; that she was 
 faithless in her relations to any man or woman. 
 The vindicator of the rights of her sex is not known 
 to have betrayed a woman during the whole course 
 of her sad, eventful life. She disdained to tamper 
 with the affections of any man. 
 
 The charge which must ever stand unanswerably 
 against her memory, is that she wronged herself in 
 the excess of trustfulness bestowed upon Imlay, in 
 her reluctance to enter upon her marriage relation 
 with Godwin in the lawful form. After this charge 
 has been admitted, it behoves the student of history 
 to enquire, whether there was aught in her message 
 to humanity that was good, true and right. 
 
 Resentment was felt a century ago against that in 
 her life, which seemed an application of some of the 
 most dangerous principles that found expression in 
 the French Revolution. A calmer judgment to-day 
 sifts good from evil ; and that innate sense of justice 
 in the human race, that stands ready to vindicate 
 the memory of its benefactors has asserted itself in 
 behalf of Mary Wollstonecraft. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 HER LITERARY WORK. 
 
 THE works of Mary Wollstonecraft display unusual 
 versatility of mental powers. She was able to turn 
 her mind to new tasks in a way that made her 
 eminent in several directions. She may be classed 
 among pedagogical writers, but she also wrote on 
 historical subjects and took part in discussions in 
 political principles. She wrote fiction, and her let- 
 ters descriptive of experiences in travel, and letters 
 personal, take a high rank even to this day, among 
 productions of that kind. And more than all this, 
 her genius furnished, in her Vindication of the 
 Rights of Woman, the motive power, derived from 
 originality of conception, which helped to carry 
 forward an historic movement. 
 
 Her intellectual endowments then, were of a 
 wide scope. She was a born educator. Her prac- 
 tical skill in education was even superior to her 
 speculations upon that subject," 1 is the tribute 
 
 1 The Gentleman's Magazine, 1797. Among " Obituaries of 
 Remarkable Persons." 
 
HKR LITERARY WORK. 25 
 
 paid her by one of her contemporaries. Godwin 
 says of her : u No person was ever better formed 
 for the business of education ; if it be not a sort of 
 absurdity to speak of a person as formed for an in- 
 ferior object, who is in possession of talents, in the 
 fullest degree adequate to something on a more 
 important and comprehensive scale." u I have heard 
 her say, " he continues, a that she never was con- 
 cerned in the education of one child, who was not 
 personally attached to her, and earnestly concerned 
 not to incur her displeasure. Another eminent 
 advantage she possessed in the business of education, 
 was that she was little troubled with scepticism and 
 uncertainty. She saw, as it were by intuition, the 
 path which her mind determined to pursue, and 
 had a firm confidence in her own power to effect 
 what she desired." 1 She wrote but little on strictly 
 educational matter, but she brought to bear upon 
 her Vindication of the Rights of Woman all the 
 skill, practical and theoretical, which she possessed, 
 as an educator. It is, as the Analytical Review 
 said, " in reality an elaborate treatise on female 
 education." The educator was here merged in the 
 reformer. 
 
 The leading traits of the reformer were hers. 
 Courage and strength of conviction marked her 
 attitude ; nor did she hesitate to place implicit trust 
 in her own opinions, however much at variance 
 
 1 \V. Godwin : Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of 
 the Rights of Woman, p. 43. 
 
 - The Analytical Review, March 1792. 
 
 4 
 
26 HER LITERARY WORK. 
 
 they might have been with those held by the great 
 majority. The enthusiasm which inspires belief in 
 success, however insurmountable the obstacles might 
 seem, was hers and carried her forward. 
 
 Her love for humanity was on a grand scale and 
 gave her a keen insight into the causes that lay at 
 the root of social evils, lent her a firm hand to open 
 out these causes and lay them bare, and inspired 
 her with a burning desire to see the wrongs of 
 humanity set right, and justice meted out to that 
 part of the human race, whose rights had thus far 
 been largely overlooked. 
 
 Blended with the eminently practical tendency 
 of the reformer, displayed in the measures which 
 she a4vocated, was the speculative reasoning of 
 the philosopher. She possessed the high mental 
 power of seeing truth intuitively ; and at the same 
 time aimed at accurate expression of terms and 
 thus sought a rational basis for ideas, which she 
 had attained by way of intuitive perception. The 
 great questions, that have engaged thinkers in all 
 ages, concerning the liws of the universe and their 
 invisible law-giver ; concerning the destiny of man 
 and the ultimate triumph of right over wrong, had 
 early confronted her, and she had come to her 
 own conclusions regarding them. This speculative 
 reasoning forms the background of her practical 
 applications. 
 
 This threefold gift : The practical skill of the 
 educator, the zeal of the reformer, and the thought- 
 fulness of the philosopher, supported as it was by an 
 unusual command of language, made her a woman 
 
HER LITERARY WORK. 27 
 
 u well known throughout Europe by her literary 
 works.'' 1 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft began her public career as 
 a teacher, and as a consequence her first literary 
 efforts were put forth in the direction of education. 
 Her first production 2 did not enjoy great success. 
 It is full of precepts, full of counsel, and is written 
 in a sombre tone, with little of the joyousness of 
 life and youth vibrating in it. The burdens of her 
 life seemed to her insupportably heavy at the time, 
 and the heaviness of spirit is apparent in her writing. 
 Yet the germs of later, riper thought are there. 
 
 Her vSecond attempt as a writer of educational 
 books was in a happier vein, and met with far 
 greater success. In Original Stories from Real 
 Life 3 she abandoned the somewhat stilted form of 
 precept, and in the form of stories, taught the 
 children to see the deeper meanings in the daily 
 occurrences of their lives. 
 
 A prominent educator in Germany, C. S. Salz- 
 inann, had adopted a similar method. His book 
 accidentally fell into Mary Wollstonecraft's hands 
 while she was learning German, and as an exercise 
 in language, she began to translate it. She was 
 soon so pleased to find, as she says in the preface, 
 
 1 The Gentleman's Magazine, 1797. 
 
 2 Thoughts on the Education of Daughters with Reflections 
 on Female Conduct in the more important Duties of Life. 
 London, 1787. 
 
 3 Original Stories from Real Life. London, 1788, 1791, 1796 
 (with illustrations designed and engraved by W. Blake). 
 London, 1807, 1820, 1835. Dublin, 1799. 
 
28 HER LITERARY WORK. 
 
 that the writer coincided with her in opinion res- 
 pecting the method, which ought to be pursued to 
 form the heart and temper of children, that she 
 made her translation 1 an English book, by avoid- 
 ing the introduction of German customs and local 
 opinions, thus giving it the spirit of an original. 
 " All the pictures," she says, "are drawn from real 
 life, and that I highly approve of this method, my 
 having written a book on the same plan, (Entitled 
 Original Stories from Real Life} is the strongest 
 proof." It is interesting, as an indication of the 
 later, development of her thought, that in her own 
 book she inserted a little tale to lead children to 
 consider the Indians as their brothers, u because the 
 omission of this subject appeared to be a chasm in 
 a well-digested system." 
 
 Both these books, her own Original Stories from 
 Real Life and her rendering of Salzinann's Morali- 
 schcs Elementarbuch were much read in their day. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft's other translations did not 
 enjoy so great a degree of popularity. She trans- 
 lated Necker's Opinions Religieuses* and Lavater's 
 Physiognomy from the French. A translation from 
 the Dutch of Young Grandison was put into her 
 hands, which she almost re-wrote. She also com- 
 piled a French Reader, introducing some original 
 
 1 C. S. Salzmann : Elements of Morality. Translated by 
 Mary Wollstonecraft. London, 1790, 2 vols. ; 1792, 3 vols. ; 
 1793, 2 vols. ; Baltimore, U. S. A.. 1811 ; Edinburgh, 1821. 
 
 a Jacques Necker: Of the Importance of Religious Opinions. 
 Translated by Mary Wollstonecraft. London. 1788 ; Philadel- 
 phia, 1791. 
 
HER LITERARY WORK. 29 
 
 pieces, and adding a preface. The nature of this 
 work offered little opportunity for display of genius ; 
 on the contrary, perhaps her talent was suppressed. 
 Yet it increased no doubt that readiness of expres- 
 sion, that is so conspicuous in the two productions, 
 which followed each other closely toward the end 
 of the period of her work in Mr. Johnson's employ. 
 Had her literary activity ceased here, she might 
 rightly have been classed among the pedagogical 
 writers of her time. But she now entered into 
 a new sphere of activity. The revolutionary 
 element, that had thus far lain dormant, now burst 
 forth. While she had heretofore, as an educator, 
 watched the development of the individual, she 
 now turned her attention to the evolution of the 
 human race. In her Rights of Man 1 she ex- 
 pressed her general views, in her Rights of Woman 2 
 
 1 A Vindication of the Rights of Man, in a letter to the Right 
 Honorable Edmund Burke. London, 1790. Two Editions in 
 the same year. 
 
 2 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, with Strictures on 
 Political and Moral subjects. London, 1792. Two editions. 
 Boston, U. S. A., Thomas and Andrews, 1792. 
 
 Defense des droits des femmes, suivie de quelques consider- 
 ations sur des sujets politique et moreaux. 2 parties, 8, Paris, 
 Buisson, 1792. Also I, yon, Bruyset freres, 1792. 
 
 Rettung der Rechte des Weibes. Schnepfenthal bei Gotha, 
 1793, Mit Vorwort und Anmerkungen von Christian Gotthilf 
 Salzmann, 2 Bande. 
 
 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. London, William 
 Strange, 1844. This edition was revised and re-edited. 
 
 Another edition: London, T. Fisher Urnvin, 1891. With an 
 Introduction by Mrs. Henry Fawcett. 
 
 Another edition : London, Walter Scott, 1892. With an Intro- 
 duction bv Elizabeth R. Pe nil ell. 
 
30 HER LITERARY WORK. 
 
 which followed soon after, she directed her full 
 attention to woman as constituting that part of the 
 human race, which had not been allowed to partake 
 to the full extent in the true progress of civilization ; 
 and as the result had forfeited its own best interest ; 
 and at the same time had endangered the advance- 
 ment of the whole. This was a task suited to the 
 courage and zeal of the reformer. She attacked 
 the social structure, wrought by the laborious 
 evolution of many centuries, and made firm by the 
 customs and usages of Church and State. It was 
 an age when the French Revolution marked a 
 crisis in history, and thinking minds were busy 
 with the problem of how to save ancient institutions 
 by expanding them in order to give room to a new 
 principle, that found expression in the demand for 
 the rights of men. Mary Wollstonecraft stood in 
 the very midst of the currents of thought that made 
 her time remarkable. In her Rights of Man she 
 took opportunity to range herself against conserva- 
 tism, and to express herself in favor of all that was 
 liberal and progressive. She showed her grasp upon 
 the discussion of the rights of man in every aspect. 
 The application of the same reasoning to the rights/ 
 of women was a novel undertaking and was carried' 
 through with boldness and courage. 
 
 Her volume 1 on the French Revolution is the 
 next literary production, and seems a natural step 
 from the discussion of the abstract principles in- 
 
 1 An Historical and oral View of the Origin and Progress of 
 the French Revolution ; and the effect it has produced in Europe. 
 Vol. I, London, 1794. 
 
HKR UTKRARY WORK. 31 
 
 volved iii that catastrophe to an historical survey of 
 their embodiment in facts and events. It is a 
 philosophical book. The author never loses sight 
 of the causes that underlie events ; she never forgets 
 the principles which she believed must ultimately 
 be crowned with victory. It is a matter of regret 
 that she did not complete her work in four or five 
 volumes. She does not bring the record further 
 than to the time of the King's removal to Paris. 
 The events, which she herself witnessed the pas- 
 sage of Lrouis XVI. to his trial and later to his 
 death, and the intense excitement attendant upon 
 these extreme measures were not depicted by her 
 pen, except in short letters. She was accurate in 
 her descriptions and preserved a good degree of 
 calmness amid the feverish throbbing of national 
 excitement. The writings of foreigners, who were 
 at that time in Paris, are to-day a valuable source of 
 information to the student of history. Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft's work would have ranked with the best 
 of these, had she carried it farther. 
 
 Written under different circumstances, in a 
 mood melancholy but receptive, her next book 1 
 reveals a new aspect of her literary talent. Away 
 
 1 Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, 
 Norway and Denmark. London, 1796. 
 
 Another edition in Wilmington, Del., U. S. A., 1796. 
 
 A German translation appeared in Hamburg. Date uncertain. 
 
 Extractos das cartas de Mary Wollstonecraft relativas a 
 Suecia, Noruega e Dinamarca, e huma breve noticia de sua vida, 
 offerecidos .... por H. X. Baeta. Lisboa, 1806. 
 
 New English edition, Cassell, 1889. 
 
 Natur-und Sittengemlilde aus Schweden. Leipzig, 1893. 
 
32 HER LITERARY WORK. 
 
 from scenes of strife and bloodshed, she wanders in 
 Northern countries, in paths far removed from the 
 beaten track of the ordinary traveller. She looks 
 upon the scenes that unfold before her through the 
 medium of unusual powers of perception of the 
 beautiful in nature ; the wealth of her imagination 
 gives rise to charming interludes ; and her observa- 
 tions on man and the various conditions in which 
 she finds him, are worthy of one who has made the 
 progress of humanity her life's study. It is a 
 thoroughly charming book. Much appreciated in 
 its time, it has claim upon the student of to-day, 
 who would acquaint himself with the conditions 
 existing in Norway and Sweden a century ago. Its 
 recent editions show that this claim is respected. 
 
 This was the last book published during her life- 
 time. While in the midst of her next task, her 
 pen was laid aside, and her mental activities were 
 hushed in death. Godwin published The Wrongs 
 of Woman : or Maria. A Fragment l in its un- 
 finished condition, as she left it. It fills Volumes I 
 and II of her Posthumous Works. * 
 
 With mingled feelings the reader of to-day fol- 
 lows her in this last effort to take the part of the 
 oppressed. The Wrongs of Woman is a novel 
 written with a purpose. The author does not use 
 argument this time, but draws pictures of degra- 
 
 1 French Translation : Maria, ou le malheur d'etre feiume. 
 Ouvrage posthume invite de 1 'anglais, par B. Duros, Paris, 
 1798. 
 
 - Posthumous Works of the Author of a Vindication of the 
 Rights of Woman, Four volumes. London, 1798. 
 
HER LITERARY WORK. 33 
 
 dation and horrors so vivid, that he who has admired 
 her idealism can scarcely believe that realism, so 
 repulsive, could issue from the same pen. Yet it 
 was a portrayal of the wrongs which she had known 
 women to endure. Twice in the course of her 
 literary career Mary Wollstonecraft attempted in 
 works of fiction to describe the feelings and pas- 
 sions that govern human beings ; and both times 
 with the purpose of showing how the brutal force 
 of men may triumph over the helpless resistance 
 of women, whom circumstances have placed in 
 their power. In Mary, a Fiction^ the heroine is 
 bound for life to a man, whose approach fills her 
 with horror. In The Wrongs of Woman this theme 
 is carried farther. The author's main object, as she 
 says in the fragmentary Preface, was "to exhibit 
 the misery and oppression, peculiar to women, that 
 arise out of the partial laws and customs of society." 
 This she accomplished. And he who lays bare the 
 festering sores of suffering humanity is also its 
 benefactor. 
 
 The fourth volume of the Posthumous Works of 
 Mary Wollstonecraft contains a series of lessons 
 written by the author for the use of her little 
 daughter Fanny ; a number of letters written to 
 Mr. Johnson, the Publisher ; a Letter on the Present 
 Character of the French Nation; The Cave of 
 Fancy, a Tale, begun in earlier years and never 
 finished ; and an Essay On Poetry and our Relish 
 for the Beauties of Nature. These Miscellaneous 
 
 1 Mary, a Fiction, London, 1788. 
 
34 HER LITERARY WORK. 
 
 pieces are interesting as giving fresh glimpses of 
 the niind and talent of the author. But their value 
 is slight, compared to the Letters to Imlay, which 
 fill the whole of the third and part of the fourth 
 volume. 
 
 It is certainly a rare occurrence in the his- 
 tory of Literature, that a man should publish after 
 her death, the letters of his wife to a former lover or 
 husband. It was evidently not her wish, that was 
 thus carried out ; for she says in one of the last of 
 the letters : " And whatever I may think and feel, 
 you need not fear that I shall publicly complain. 
 No ! If I have any criterion to judge of right and 
 wrong, I have been most ungenerously treated : 
 but, wishing now only to hide myself, I shall be 
 silent as the grave in which I long to forget myself. 
 I shall protect and provide for my child. I only 
 mean by this to say, that you have nothing to fear 
 from my desperation." l But Godwin evidently 
 believed it due to his wife's memory, that it should 
 be proven to the world in this most conclusive way, 
 that Mary Wollstonecraft's relations to Imlay, 
 though not sanctioned by English law, were con- 
 sidered by her sacred and binding, that the tie 
 between them was not sundered by her, and that 
 untold anguish preceded the last words she penned 
 to Imlay : "I part with you in peace." Mr. C. 
 Kegan Paul, Mary Wollstonecraft's vindicator in 
 the present century, in re-publishing these Letters 
 to Imlay may have been guided by the same motive. 
 
 1 Posthumous Works, Vol. IV, p. 21 ; or C. Kegan Paul : 
 letters to Imlay, p. 193. 
 
HER LITERARY WORK. 35 
 
 The literary discrimination however of both men, 
 may have actuated them ; for these letters are an 
 unusual production viewed from the literary stand- 
 point. Godwin boldly claims in his Preface that 
 " the following letters may possibly be found to 
 contain the finest examples of the language of 
 sentiment and passion ever presented to the world." 
 He points out that "they bear a striking resem- 
 blance to the celebrated romance of Werther, though 
 the incidents to which they relate are of a very 
 different cast." Hettner, in his able sketch of 
 Rousseau says l : Goethe's Werther is the continua- 
 tion and completion, marked by highest genius, of 
 the key-note struck by Rousseau." Do the Letters 
 to Imlay also bear the imprint of Rousseau upon 
 them ? They reveal a heart possessing rare possi- 
 bilities of response to the touch of love. With an 
 unusual glow and warmth of language they give 
 glimpses of the freshness and depth of new-found 
 happiness; the charm of which gradually vanishes, 
 giving way to passionate expressions of anxious 
 longing; till finally the note of despair vibrates 
 through the long continued pain of deception and 
 desertion. Rousseau's New Heloise, which Mary 
 Wollstonecraft mentions in the Wrongs of Woman, 
 thus speaks the language of the heart. 
 
 In one of the letters, she tells Imlay how their 
 little daughter, then six months old, was delighted 
 with the scarlet waistcoats and loud music at the 
 fete of the previous day in memory of Rousseau, 
 
 1 Hettner : Geschichte der franzdsischen Literatur im XVIII 
 Jahrhundert, p. 459. 
 
36 HER LITERARY WORK. 
 
 and adds; "to honour J. J. Rousseau, I intend to 
 give her a sash, the first she has ever had round 
 her, and why not? for I have always been half in 
 love with him." l 
 
 However, the admission that the Letters to Imlay 
 may bear relationship to the genius of Rousseau 
 must be hedged round by limitations. If " the 
 historical significance of Rousseau lies in his vin- 
 dication of the idealism of the heart, making its 
 inalienable rights the foundation of social order," a 
 then it must be admitted that the influence of 
 this dangerous doctrine, offers a key to the tragedy 
 of Mary Wollstonecraft's life. Farther than this a 
 comparison can not extend ; for there is in her life 
 no trace of the contradictions of character, which 
 make it difficult even for the most well-meaning 
 of Rousseau's biographers to free his memory from 
 serious reproach. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft's literary career was closed 
 by death when she was thirty-eight years old. Her 
 first literary venture was made ten years before. 
 Much was condensed into this short period. It is 
 vain to conjecture as to what might have been her 
 further career by the side of a man of the literary 
 and critical abilities of Godwin. She was planning 
 to strike out again in pedagogical lines, in a series 
 of letters on the management of children in their 
 infancy. A number of Hints, to be incorporated 
 in what was to be Part Second of her Vindication 
 
 1 C. Kegan Paul : Letters to Imlay, p. 57. 
 
 2 Hettner : Geschichte der franzosischen Literatur ini XVIII 
 Jahrhundert, p. 476. 
 
HER IJTERARY WORK. 
 
 37 
 
 of the Rights of Woman, also point to work planned. 
 A rounded-out, complete life and career were not to 
 be hers. In glancing over the period of her activity, 
 it is not the more finished products of her later 
 years, that rivet the attention of the student. It is 
 that rugged outburst of ardent love for her sex, her 
 Vindication of the Rights of Woman, that will prob- 
 ably pass down her name to the centuries to come. 
 
 Judged according to the standard of literary 
 merit, the book has serious faults. It is replete 
 with logical argument ; yet there is a looseness in 
 the arrangement of the material, that seriously 
 detracts from its value. The author says in her 
 Introductory Chapter : " I shall disdain to cull my 
 phrases or polish my style ; I aim at being useful, 
 and sincerity will render me unaffected." Yet had 
 she pruned the luxuriance of her eloquence, and 
 toned down the harshness, with which she ex- 
 presses many of her opinions, the same end would 
 have been accomplished, while much of the outcry 
 against the book might have been prevented. 
 
 The subject-matter of the book had evidently 
 been the growth of years, but it seems to have been 
 committed to writing with unusual rapidity. God- 
 win says : u The censure of the liberal critic as to 
 the defects of this performance, will be changed 
 into astonishment, when I tell him, that a work of 
 this inestimable moment, was begun, carried on, and 
 finished in the state in which it now appears, in 
 a period of no more than six weeks." l This state- 
 
 1 W. Godwin : Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the 
 Rights of Woman, p. 84. 
 
38 HER LITERARY WORK. 
 
 inent seems almost incredible, for in its last edition 
 the book contains 287 pages 8vo., of fairly fine print. 
 Yet to all appearances it is a piece of work written 
 under the rapid dictates of genius and given to the 
 world, without allowing room to riper reflection or 
 aiming at more methodical arrangement. 
 
 As a literary production then, the Vindication of 
 the Rights of Woman cannot lay claim to a place 
 among books of first rank. Godwin predicted that 
 on account of the importance of its doctrines, and 
 the eminence of genius displayed, it did not seem 
 very improbable that it would be read as long as 
 the English language endures. But looking back 
 upon the rapid succession of historical events since 
 that time, there is an additional reason for its 
 eminent place in literature : it marks an epoch in 
 the history of civilization relative to the position 
 of woman. The second half of the Eighteenth 
 f Century gave birth to many problems, which the 
 ' present century has sought to solve ; and one of 
 them is the emancipation of woman. The discus- 
 ' sion of the rights of men furnished the arguments 
 for the rights of women. It was Mary Wollstone- 
 craft's achievement, to see that out of the one 
 must naturally follow the other, by way of logical 
 sequence ; and to gather into full expression the 
 sentiments that were then beginning to force their 
 way into the minds of men, was the service that 
 she rendered her times. The Vindication of the 
 Rights of Woman then is the first proclamation of 
 one of the movements peculiar to the history of the 
 \ Nineteenth Century. 
 
HER LITERARY WORK. 39 
 
 Books that serve as the battle-cry in the war of 
 opinions frequently have no value to posterity save 
 that of historical interest. They testify to the slow 
 and contested growth of ideas, and stand as evid- 
 ence that the facts of to-day are but the ideals of 
 yesterday. The Vindication of the Rights of Woman 
 shares to some degree in the fate of books of its 
 kind. Few people to-day would care to read it from 
 beginning to end. There are pages of reasoning on 
 matters which to-day are commonplaces. But on 
 the other hand, Mary WollstonecrafVs theses still 
 stand before the world as theses. One of them : 
 Equality in education, has advanced somewhat 
 farther than its counterpart : Equality in civil 
 rights. One century has grappled with the prob- 
 lem, which will be bequeathed to the next still 
 unsolved. If then the Vindication of the Rights of 
 Woman stands among the very outposts of the 
 movement at the present time, it must have been 
 more than a century in advance of average public 
 opinion of its own time. 
 
 Godwin gives a glimpse of the attitude of the 
 public toward this " very bold and original produc- 
 tion." He says : 
 
 ' ' The public at large formed very different opinions respect- 
 ing the character of the performance. Many of the sentiments 
 are undoubtedly of a rather masculine description. The spirited 
 and decisive way in which the author explodes the system of 
 gallantry, and the species of homage with which the female sex 
 is usually treated, shocked the majority. Novelty produced a 
 sentiment in their mind, which they mistook for a sense of 
 injustice. The pretty, soft creatures that are so often to be 
 found in the female sex, and that class of men who believe they 
 could not exist without such pretty, soft creatures to resort to, 
 
40 HER LITERARY WORK. 
 
 were in arms against the author of so heretical and blasphemous 
 a doctrine." ' 
 
 In looking over the pages of periodicals of that 
 day, abundant evidence is found, that this book was 
 considered to proclaim a " new system," to announce 
 the tenets of a " new school." The most adverse of 
 the criticisms of her contemporaries are to-day the 
 surest evidence of the bold and valiant service which 
 Mary Wollstonecraft rendered the cause for which 
 she fought. But her friends too, incidentally testify 
 to the novelty of her propositions. The Analytical 
 Revieiv, to which she was a contributor, seems to 
 bring the earliest notice of the book, and antici- 
 pated the reception, which to all probability awaited 
 " this singular and, on the whole, excellent pro- 
 duction," by saying : 
 
 "The lesser wits will probably affect to make themselves 
 merry at the title and apparent object of this publication ; but 
 we have no doubt, if even her contemporaries should fail to do 
 her justice, posterity will compensate the defect ; and have no 
 hesitation in declaring, that if the bulk of the great truths 
 which this publication contains were reduced to practice, the 
 nation would be better, wiser and happier, than it is upon the 
 wretched, trifling, useless and absurd system of education which 
 is now prevalent." 2 
 
 As translations and new editions in rapid succes- 
 sion abundantly testify, the civilized world was better 
 prepared, at least to give attention to this work, 
 strange and new in title and object though it seemed, 
 than this friendly critic was ready to predict. 
 
 1 W. Godwin : Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the 
 Rights of Woman, p. 81. 
 
 2 The Analytical Review, March 1792, p. 241 249. 
 
HKR LITERARY WORK. 41 
 
 The Monthly Review criticizes the book in an 
 equally fair though more conservative spirit. 
 Admitting that the author u is possessed of great 
 energy of intellect, vigour of fancy and command 
 of language ; and that the performance suggests 
 many reflections, which deserve the attention of 
 the public," the critic proceeds with his strictures : 
 il We do not, however, so zealously adopt Miss 
 Wollstonecraft's plan for a revolution in female 
 education and manners, as not to perceive that 
 several of her opinions are fanciful and some of her 
 projects romantic." Among the latter he seems 
 specially to include the proposition of letting 
 women assume an active part in civil government. 
 However, the critic agrees with the fair writer, that 
 " both the condition and the character of women 
 are capable of great improvement." 1 There is here 
 the wavering between assent and disapproval, that 
 seems to have been the common attitude toward 
 the book. Few endorsed it as unhesitatingly as the 
 Analytical Review ; few attempted so elaborate a 
 condemnation as The Critical Review. " 
 
 This journal gave unlimited space to its review 
 of this new book, evidently very soon after it made 
 its appearance. The critic quotes at length, tries 
 to show the fallacies in the reasoning and to refute 
 the argument ; but with little success. He first 
 objects to the method applied. One of the strictest 
 
 ~ ^ 
 
 1 The Monthly Review or Literary Journal, June 1792, p. 198 
 209. 
 
 - The Critical Review or Annals of Literature, April 1792, 
 
 P- 389 39 8 > and June 1792. p. 132-141- 
 
 f. ^ 
 
42 HER LITERARY WORK. 
 
 proofs in mathematical demonstrations is the 
 reductio ad ctbsurdum. The reasoning of the 
 author, as she applies the boasted principles 
 of the rights of men to those of women, must 
 be admitted as correct. Many of her conclusions 
 however, are so absurd, that he finds it evident, 
 that the premises must be, in some respects, falla- 
 cious. After thus condemning the method on 
 account of the conclusions which are reached, he 
 pronounces the work "weak, desultory and trifling. 1 ' 
 The language he finds u flowing and flowery, but 
 weak, diffuse and confused." He speaks of indeli- 
 cacy of ideas and expressions, and with prudish 
 respect for his readers, decides to draw the veil, 
 rather than recount them. If the author meant 
 this as a trial of skill with the stronger sex, he 
 thinks she has wholly failed and has betrayed her 
 own cause by defending it. 
 
 This critic also ventures on personal advice to 
 the author of the book under review. He says : 
 
 " It may be fancy, prejudice or obstinacy, we contend not for 
 a name, but we are infinitely better pleased with the present 
 system ; and, in truth, dear young lady, for by the appellation 
 sometimes prefixed to your name, we must suppose you to be 
 young, endeavour to attain ' the weak elegancy of mind,' ' the 
 sweet docility of manners,' 'the exquisite sensibility,' the 
 former ornaments of your sex ; we are certain you will be more 
 pleasing and we dare pronounce that you will be infinitely hap- 
 pier." 
 
 The temper of the book evidently roused curio- 
 sity concerning the person of the author. Many 
 expected to find in the champion of her sex, who 
 was described as endeavouring to invest woman with 
 
HKR UTKRARY WORK. 43 
 
 all the rights of man, as Godwin says, " a sturdy, 
 muscular, raw-boned virago ; and they were not a 
 little surprised, when, instead of all this, they found 
 a woman, lovely in her person, and, in the best and 
 most engaging sense, feminine in her manners." l 
 The Genticmai? s Magazine gives a description of 
 her personality in the Obituary Notice : " Her 
 manners were gentle, easy and elegant ; her con- 
 versation intelligent and amusing, without the least 
 trait of literary pride, or the apparent consciousness 
 of poXvers above the level of her sex ; and for 
 soundness of understanding and sensibility of heart, 
 she was, perhaps, never equalled." 8 The contrast 
 between these words of admiration and Horace 
 Walpole's epithet : u that hyena in petticoats, Mrs. 
 Wollstonecraft " is indeed great ! 
 
 This epithet occurs in a letter to Miss Hannah 
 More, who, moving in a sphere of work very differ- 
 ent from that of Mary Wollstonecraft, and sur- 
 rounded by influences orthodox and conservative, 
 had no sympathy for the cause which Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft made her own. The letter was written 
 after the latter's volume on the French Revolution 
 had appeared. In it Horace Wai pole addresses 
 Hannah More : u Adieu, them excellent woman ! 
 thou reverse of that hyena in petticoats, Mrs. 
 Wollstonecraft, who to this day discharges her ink 
 and gall on Made Antoinette, whose unparalleled 
 
 1 W. Godwin, Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the 
 Rights of Woman, p. 83. 
 
 2 The Gent! email's Magazine, 1797. Obituariesof Remarkable 
 
44 HKll LITERARY WORK. 
 
 sufferings have not yet staunched that Alecto's 
 blazing ferocity." ' At the time when the I 'indi- 
 cation of the Rights of Woman appeared, Hannah 
 More wrote to him as follows : 
 
 " I have been much pestered to read the ' Rights of Woman,' 
 but am invincibly resolved not to do it. Of all jargon, I hate 
 metaphysical jargon ; beside, there is something fantastic and 
 absurd in the very title. Ho\v many ways there are of being 
 ridiculous ! I am sure I have as much liberty as I can make a 
 good use of, now I am an old maid ; and when I was a young 
 one I had, I daresay, more than was good for me .... To be 
 unstable and capricious, I really think, is but too characteristic 
 of our sex ; and there is, perhaps, no animal so much indebted 
 to subordination for its good behaviour as woman." 
 
 To this Horace Walpole replies : 
 
 "It is better to thank Providence for the tranquillity and 
 happiness we enjoy in this country, in spite of the philosophis- 
 ing serpents we have in our bosom, the Paines, Tookes and the 
 Wollstonecrafts. I am glad you have not read the tract of the 
 last mentioned writer. I \vould not look at it, though assured 
 it contains neither metaphysics nor politics ; but as she entered 
 the lists of the latter, and borrowed the title from the demon's 
 book which aimed at spreading the irroity* of men, she is ex- 
 communicated from the pale of my library. \Ve have had 
 enough of new systems, and the world a great deal too much 
 already." - 
 
 Horace Walpole with his aristocratic birth and 
 tastes could not find a congenial element in revolu- 
 tionary agitation of any kind. He says of himself : 
 " My opinions are for myself, I meddle not with 
 those of others. 1 ' And again : 4l I know I have 
 always been a coward on points of religion and 
 
 The Letters of Horace Walpole ; Kdited by Peter Cunning- 
 ham, London, 1859. Volume IX. 
 
 1 Letter to Miss Hannah More, January 24, 1795, p. 452. 
 
 - Ibid.. AllgUSt 21, 1792, p. 385. 
 
II KR UTKRARY WORK. 45 
 
 politics." ' He looked with undisguised horror 
 upon the proceedings of the French Revolution ; 
 and the French Republicans were to him u hosts of 
 banditti," u a leg-ion of assassins," who, he believed, 
 had " blasted and branded liberty perhaps for cen- 
 turies." There was therefore the widest diver- 
 gency between him and Mary Wollstonecraft. 
 
 The critic, who had the presumption to recom- 
 mend to Mary Wollstonecraft the former ornaments 
 of her sex, that she might be more pleasing and in- 
 finitely happier, makes the following appeal : 
 
 " We call on men therefore to speak, if they would wish the 
 women to be pupils of this new school ! We call on the women 
 to declare, whether they will sacrifice their pleasing qualities for 
 the severity of reason, the bold unabashed dignity of speaking 
 what they feel, of rising superior to the vulgar prejudices of 
 decency and propriety. We may easily anticipate the answer, 
 and shall leave Miss Wollstonecraft at least to oblivion; her best 
 friends can never wish that her work should be remembered." :{ 
 
 Conservatism, in accordance with its nature, is 
 ever willing to see progressive thought shrink 
 away into oblivion, and has ever been ready to 
 spread the mantle of silence ; too often in the course 
 of history it has been the silence of death, over him 
 who dares to give the new truth a powerful utter- 
 ance. Mary Wollstonecraft's book is still remem- 
 bered, and the new school, the tenets of which she 
 was perhaps the first to fully enunciate, is an 
 historical fact, which inevitably must find its place 
 in the records of the history of civilization in the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 Ibid., p. 390. -'Ifr/flL p. 389. 
 
 The Critical Review, June 1792. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 HER RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL VIEWS. 
 
 THE letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, which for the 
 first time were published in 1876 by Mr. C. Kegan 
 Paul in his Life of Godwin, constitute a valuable 
 source of biographical interest. Not until after 
 their publication could it be demonstrated that she 
 passed through several phases of religious thought ; 
 that she was not always a rationalist ; that there was 
 a time when she was a Christian in the evangelical 
 sense of the term, when she questioned not the 
 doctrines of the Church, but sought to bear her 
 troubles with Christian fortitude, looking for com- 
 fort to the One, who with the Christian world, she 
 believed, is nigh unto them that trust in Him. 
 
 The series of letters begins in November 1783, 
 at the sickbed of her younger sister, Eliza. An 
 account is given of the progress of the illness and 
 the growing determination in the mind of Mary to 
 end the wretchedness of the sufferer by aiding her 
 in her flight from her husband. These letters give 
 a very vivid glimpse of Mary's struggle with 
 poverty, while attempting to conduct a school at 
 Newington Green ; they relate the death of her 
 friend, Fanny, at Lisbon, cover the period of her 
 
HER RKUGIOUS AND ETHICAL VIEWS. 47 
 
 stay at the castle of Lord Kingsborough in Ireland, 
 and contain an account of the motives and circum- 
 stances which led to her residence in London, and to 
 the literary work in which she there engaged. 
 Addressed to members of the family and intimate 
 friends, they give a detailed record of a period of 
 her life, that had been but very briefly touched 
 by Godwin in his Memoirs of his wife. 
 
 Those who would charge Mary Wollstonecraft 
 with a spirit of defiance against received traditions, 
 find nothing in these letters to uphold them. On 
 the contrary, a very humble spirit characterizes, at 
 least, that first bold act of the kind, when she helped 
 her sister Eliza to escape from marriage-ties that had 
 become unbearable. In a letter telling her sister 
 Hverina of friends who had turned from her be- 
 cause of " this scheme, that was contrary to all 
 the rules of conduct that are published for the bene- 
 fit of new married ladies," she adds : 
 
 "Don't suppose I am preaching, when I say uniformity of 
 conduct cannot in any degree be expected from those whose 
 first motive of action is not the pleasing the Supreme Being, 
 and those who humbly rely on Providence will not only be 
 supported in affliction, but have a peace imparted to them that 
 is past all describing." 1 
 
 The same deeply pious tone pervades other 
 letters. To a friend she writes : " It gives me the 
 sincerest satisfaction to find that you look for com- 
 fort where only it is to be met with, and that Being 
 in whom you trust will not desert you. m 
 
 1 C. Kegan Paul : William Godwin, his Friends and Contem- 
 poraries, Vol. I, p. 171. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 175. 
 
48 HER RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL VIEWS. 
 
 Watching by the side of the deathbed of her 
 friend Fanny, she writes to her sisters : u Could I 
 not look for comfort, where only 'tis to be found, I 
 should have been mad before this, but I feel that I 
 am supported by that Being who alone can heal 
 a wounded spirit." 1 Nor is she in this early 
 period in any sense at variance with the faith 
 and the hopes that inspire the Christian world. 
 She writes in a letter to a friend : u I feel myself 
 particularly attached to those, who are heirs of the 
 promises and travel on in the thorny path with 
 the same Christian hopes that render my severe 
 trials a cause of thankfulness when I can think." 
 
 Godwin's statements regarding his wife's reli- 
 gious views are very meagre and must be accepted 
 with some degree of hesitation ; for here, as else- 
 where in her Memoirs, he seems inclined to sub- 
 stitute his own philosophical views for the actual 
 facts of the case. The following sentence is an 
 instance of this tendency. He says : u In fact, she 
 had received few lessons of religion in her youth, and 
 her religion was almost entirely of her own crea- 
 tion. " :! If this had been the case, Mary would 
 not, in the letters under review, have used the 
 phraseology of Christendom, nor would she have 
 quoted passages from the Bible with so much 
 readiness. Godwin is probably correct, however, 
 in saying that his wife had been brought up in 
 the tenets of the Church of England ; that until 
 
 i Ibid., p. 178. - Ibid., p. 175. 
 
 3 W. Godwin : Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the 
 Rights of Woman, p. 34. 
 
HER RKUGIOUS AND KTHICAL VIEWS. 49 
 
 tlie year 1787, she regularly frequented public 
 worship, for the most part, according to the forms 
 of that Church ; and that after that period her 
 attendance became less constant, and in no long time 
 was wholly discontinued. There is also no doubt 
 with regard to Mary's friendship with Dr. Richard 
 Price, known in the scientific world as a writer 
 on financial, political and ethical questions ; in 
 history as the man who called forth Edmund 
 Burke's fiery outburst against the French Revolu- 
 tion. Godwin indicates that it was respect for the 
 man, u which was not accompanied with a super- 
 stitious adherence to his doctrines," that led her 
 occasionally to listen to the sermons of Dr. Price. 
 He would not have made this assertion, had he been 
 aware of the contents of the letters, which now lie 
 before the world, which, in their religious fervor 
 were deeply in sympathy with the spirit and teach- 
 ings of the famous Dissenting preacher. 
 
 In her earlier literary work this trend of thought 
 is also manifest. The two books of this period, 
 Thoughts on tJic Education of Daughters, and Mary, 
 a Fiction, are deeply religious in spirit. Had this 
 attitude of mind and heart continued, it is safe to 
 say, that her career would have been far different. 
 She might have become a writer like Hannah 
 More, gifted and much read, yet without the leaven 
 of new and radical thought ; and her Rights of 
 Woman might have been a book, so subdued in 
 tone, that it could have been read and widely read 
 without causing a ripple in the minds of conserva- 
 tive, orthodox readers. 
 
 7 
 
50 HER RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL VIEWS. 
 
 But it was not to be thus. Religious influences 
 ceased to be paramount in her life. She found her- 
 self within a circle of friends and associates in 
 London, who represented various schools of English 
 and Continentak thought, and all were engaged 
 in trying to solve by the light of reason the prob- 
 lems peculiar to those times. Descartes had a cen- 
 tury previous pointed out the road. He had left 
 the old beaten track of accepted opinions and had 
 turned to reason as the one sure proof of exist- 
 ence itself. His Cogito ergo sum rang in various 
 changes through the Deist controversy that squan- 
 dered so much of valuable energy in endless 
 discussion. It dictated to Locke his task, when 
 he set himself to explore the laws according to 
 which the human understanding converts impres- 
 sions upon the senses into ideas. It opened the 
 investigation in the school of Moral Philosophy in 
 England concerning the nature of virtue, whether 
 dependent upon a moral sense, or whether the 
 product of reason. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft's mental activity during 
 those years must have been rich in the experience 
 which is the heritage of an honest effort to answer 
 the question : What is truth ? As she says : 
 
 " A few fundamental truths meet the first enquiry of reason, 
 and appear as clear to au unwarped mind, as that air and bread 
 are necessary to enable the body to fulfil its vital functions ; but 
 the opinions which men discuss with so much heat must be sim- 
 plified and brought back to first principles ; or who can dis- 
 criminate the vagaries of the imagination, or scrupulosity of 
 weakness, from the verdict of reason?" * 
 
 A Vindication of the Rights of Man, p. 37. 
 
HKR RKUGIOUS AND ETHICAL VIEWS. 51 
 
 She gathered together what appealed to her as 
 truth, from various systems of thought that com- 
 manded attention in her time and formed her own 
 system of thought on which she built her opinions. 
 Every question that confronted her, she brought to 
 the test of reason. Before her sojourn in London 
 the heart and its claims had been predominant ; now 
 reason stands at the front and demands satisfaction. 
 This period of her thought is decidedly rationalistic 
 in character ; yet, it is not without rich notes that 
 come straight from the heart. One of the richest 
 of these is contained in the following passage : 
 
 " Religion, pure source of comfort in this vale of tears ! how 
 has the clear stream been muddled by the dabblers, who have 
 presumptuously endeavoured to confine in one narrow channel 
 the living waters that ever flow towards God the sublime 
 ocean of existence ! What would life be without that peace 
 which the love of God, when built on humanity, alone can 
 impart ? Kvery earthly affection turns back, at intervals, to 
 prey upon the heart that feeds it ; and the purest effusions of 
 benevolence, often rudely damped by man, must mount as a 
 free-will offering to Him who gave them birth, whose bright 
 image they faintly reflect." 1 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft remained a theist to the 
 last. It seems the existence of God was to her 
 mind a fundamental truth, perceived and accepted 
 intuitively. But during the period under review, 
 even her theism had its rationalistic tendency. 
 It is reason that scans the attributes of the Almighty, 
 that perceives the infinite harmony with which 
 one attribute seems to imply the other. And this 
 lofty worship, that satisfies the soul in beholding 
 the perfections of the Divine Being is the only 
 
 1 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, p. 241. 
 
52 ITKR RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL VIEWS. 
 
 worship, which she considers worthy of rational 
 beings. She says : 
 
 " I disclaim the specious humility which, after investigating 
 nature, stops at the author. The High and Lofty One, who in- 
 hahiteth eternity, doubtless possesses many attributes of which 
 we can form no conception ; but reason tells me that they can- 
 not clash with those I adore - and I am compelled to listen to 
 her voice." 1 
 
 She here probably refers to Rousseau, who in 
 his famous Profession de Foi rfu Vicaire Savoyard 
 had reasoned concerning a God, who must be an 
 intelligence, who must possess spirituality, power, 
 and will, and then had made a halt, and confessed 
 his inability to discover the nature of God. Locke 
 on the other hand, had demonstrated the existence 
 of God, and his attributes according to the laws 
 of the human understanding. Mary Wollstone- 
 craft made the conviction, that human reason is 
 able to penetrate into the nature of, at least, some 
 of the attributes of God, the pivotal point in 
 her reasoning on ethical questions. She calls 
 the attributes of God " the everlasting foundation 
 on which reason builds both morality and reli- 
 gion." 2 She asserts that "the darkness, which 
 hides our God from us, only respects speculative 
 truths, it never obscures moral ones ; they shine 
 clearly, for God is light, and never, by the constitu- 
 tion of our nature, requires the discharge of a duty 
 the reasonableness of which does not beam on us 
 when we open our eyes." 3 That only is virtue, 
 which the judgment of reason distinguishes as 
 
 1 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, p. 85. 
 
 - A Vindication of the Rights of Man, p. 9. 
 
 3 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, p. 231. 
 
HKR RKIJGIOUS AND ETHICAL VIEWS. 53 
 
 virtue ; for reason speaks in moral questions with 
 divine authority. 
 
 This tendency to identify ethics with intel- 
 lectual apprehension shows that Mary Wollstone- 
 craft was in touch with the controversy carried on 
 in the school of Moral Philosophy. Dr. Richard 
 Price looked with disfavor upon the theory con- 
 cerning; a Moral Sense, but found it necessary to 
 draw a distinction between Speculative Reason and 
 Moral Reason, 1 a distinction which coincides with 
 Kant's Theoretical and Practical Knowledge. 
 Mary Wollstonecraft speaks of speculative and 
 moral truths, and claims that the latter are per- 
 ceived by an act of intelligence and not by the 
 exercise of a special moral faculty. She is in this 
 respect a pupil of Dr. Price. 
 
 If then so much importance is attached to the 
 functions of reason, what would Mary Wollstone- 
 craft say concerning the nature of reason ? She 
 calls it " the simple power of improvement, the 
 power of discerning truth." '* Locke gives a 
 definition of reason that expresses to some extent 
 Mary Wollstonecraft's conception of it. He says : 
 u Reason is natural revelation, whereby the Eternal 
 Father of Light, and Fountain of all knowledge, 
 communicates to mankind that portion of truth 
 which he has laid within the reach of their natural 
 faculties." 3 But Mary Wollstonecraft goes beyond 
 
 1 J)r. Richard Price: Review of the Principal Questions and 
 Difficulties in Morals. 1758, p. 393. 
 
 2 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, p. 94. 
 
 '' J. Locke : Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book 
 IV, Chap. 19, 4. 
 
54 HER RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL VIEWS. 
 
 this definition and adds a mystic element, that finds 
 no place in Locke's philosophy. Reason she con- 
 siders not only a natural revelation, but " a tie that 
 connects the creature with the Creator," and she 
 goes still further, when she says : u the nature of 
 reason must be the same in all, if it be an emana- 
 tion of divinity." l These are conceptions that 
 evade the grasp of Locke's Empiricism and bear 
 relation to Plato's Idealism. 
 
 She considers the passions necessary auxiliaries 
 of reason, and in direct contradiction to other mor- 
 alists, who, she claims, have coolly seen mankind 
 through the medium of books, she asserts that the 
 regulation of the passions is not always wisdom. 
 Life, as Mary Wollstonecraft looks upon it, offers 
 opportunity for a contest between the passions 
 and reason, and no one who lays claim to perfecti- 
 bility, can withdraw from it. v A state of inno- 
 cence is impossible, and a knowledge of the world, 
 which theoretically acquaints itself with life, in 
 order practically to avoid the heat of the contest is 
 hurtful ; for great talents as well as great virtues 
 must have ample room for development, and should 
 not with calculating prudence be laid in fetters. 
 And though she admits that the knowledge thus 
 acquired may sometimes be purchased at too dear a 
 rate, she says she can only answer, that she very 
 much doubts whether any knowledge can be ob- 
 tained without labour and sorrow. 
 
 The individual finds, after the force of passions, 
 that raised some object above its surroundings, as 
 
 1 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, p. 94. 
 
HER RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL VIEWS. 55 
 
 specially desirable, has spent itself, that he is in 
 possession of new ideas, a habit of thinking, and 
 some stable principles. But not only to himself 
 does he find that benefit has accrued ; his attitude 
 toward his fellowmen is affected. He cannot judge 
 their failings harshly ; for he realizes that "we are 
 formed of the same earth and breathe the same 
 element." ' 
 
 She does not give assent to the doctrine in the 
 theology of her times, according to which the weak- 
 ness and the vices of men call forth positive 
 punishment from God. It appears to her so con- 
 trary to the nature of God, discoverable in all his 
 works and in our reason, that he should punish 
 without the benevolent design of reforming, that 
 she " would sooner believe that the Deity paid 
 no attention to the conduct of men." * This con- 
 clusion, which she did not draw, would have been 
 in harmony with Deism ; she had a strong belief 
 in God's immanent power in the world. Her 
 rationalistic attitude toward religion as revealed 
 in sacred writings is deistic. She declines to believe 
 anything contrary to reason, possibly that which 
 is beyond reason ; but in either case, reason deter- 
 mines the norm, according to which the decision 
 falls. As Lechler 3 says of Locke, so it may be 
 said of her, that as regards that aspect of her 
 thought that seems to make religion equivalent to 
 mere reasonableness, she is a Deist. But as regards 
 
 1 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, p. 206. 
 
 - 77/M/., p. 271. 
 
 3 G. V. Lechler : Geschichte des Englischen Deismus, p. 179. 
 
56 HER RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL VIEWS. 
 
 the supra-naturalistic tendency of her thought, her 
 place is on the side opposed to Deism. 
 
 Her conception of evil is far more in harmony 
 with philosophical speculation than with the accept- 
 ed dogma of the church. Rousseau ranges himself 
 on the side of theological opinion in saying : " Oh 
 man ! Seek not the originator of evil, for them 
 thyself art he ! m He considers evil the result of a 
 misuse of the liberty granted by Providence to man. 
 In the universe he sees a conformity with divine 
 law, which never fails, and evil lies in the violation 
 of that law, " but that which man does with full 
 freedom of choice, cannot be considered as part of 
 the divine order of the universe."" In her Rights 
 of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft opposes Rousseau's 
 proposition that God had made all things right and 
 error had been introduced by the creature, as equally 
 unphilosophical and impious. u Could the helpless 
 creature, whom that wise Being called from nothing, 
 break loose from his Providence and boldly learn to 
 know good by practising evil, without his permis- 
 sion ?" 3 
 
 The inevitable sequence of her argument, that 
 evil is not the work of man, but a part of 
 Divine Providence, could not but iiltimately lead 
 to conclusions, that seemed directed against the 
 existence of God. She faces this aspect of the 
 problem in Paris, in the sight of the excesses to 
 which the passions of men impelled them, driven 
 by the memory of past misery and a lively sense of 
 
 1 Rousseau : Emile IV, \ 269. - Ibid., \ 267. 
 
 3 A Vindication of the Rights ot Woman, p. 42. 
 
HKR RELIGIOUS AXD ETHICAL VIHWS. 57 
 
 present wrong. She writes in a letter intended for 
 print : 
 
 " Before I came to France, I cherished, you know, an opinion, 
 that strong virtues might exist with the polished manners pro- 
 duced by the progress of civilization ; and I even anticipated 
 the epoch, when, in the course of improvement, men would 
 labour to become virtuous, without being goaded on by misery. 
 But now, the perspective of the golden age, fading before the 
 attentive eye of observation, almost eludes my sight ; and, 
 losing thus in part my theory of a more perfect state, start not, 
 my friend, if I bring forward an opinion, which at the first 
 glance seems to be levelled against the existence of God ! I am 
 not become an Atheist, I assure you, by residing at Paris : 
 yet I begin to fear that vice, or, if you will, evil, is the grand 
 mobile of action, and that, when the passions are justly poised, 
 we become harmless, and in the same proportion useless." 1 
 
 Tliis letter is the expression of a change in her 
 views that had taken place during' her sojourn in 
 Paris. Thus far she had been decidedly optimistic. 
 She said : >v Rousseau exerts himself to prove that 
 all wis right originally : a crowd of authors that 
 all A now right : and I, that all will be right' 1 
 She then believed in the ultimate victory of good 
 o\vr evil. When doubt arose in her mind, whether 
 such victory in its effects would be conducive 
 to the best interests of the race, she was aware 
 that this doubt conflicted with her belief in the 
 existence of God ; for she had made his ' Provid- 
 ence responsible for the origin of evil. But this 
 note of pessimism does not endure. Her spirit 
 could not but rise to heights of faith, to see from 
 afar a time, when men would lk do unto others, 
 
 1 Posthumous Works. Vol. IV, p. 45. 
 
 - A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, p. 43. 
 
58 HER RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAI, VIEWS. 
 
 what they wish they should do unto them." That 
 she quotes these words of Christ in one of her later 
 works, 1 as the ray of light, which, if followed, must 
 broaden out to the full light of a glorious day, is 
 an indication of the profound reverence in which 
 she holds him and his precepts. 
 
 To gauge that which is said, not said or only 
 implied, in order to determine, whether there is a 
 new attitude of mind, is a task beset with the possi- 
 bilities of error. In the case of Mary Wollstone- 
 craft it was not difficult to find a degree of change 
 sufficient to mark out a period of religious thought 
 that was evangelical, a worship of the heart ; and 
 another that was rationalistic, an eager seeking for 
 truth as acceptable to reason. Rationalism never 
 ceased to assert its hold upon her, and thus the 
 second period cannot be said to have terminated. 
 It continued to the end. Yet with the beginning of 
 her sojourn in Paris there is a change, imperceptible 
 almost, and characterized not by any new views 
 expressed by her, but rather by silence on subjects, 
 which were up to that time prominent topics of 
 discussion with her. In the books of this period 
 she no longer enters wide digressions, in order to 
 deliver her opinion regarding religious and ethical 
 subjects. She had worked her way through the 
 tangle of conflicting opinions. She had argued for 
 and against. But that was over now. Yet he 
 who looks for them, finds the same foundations, so 
 carefully laid in previous years. 
 
 The Origin and Progress of the French Revolution, p. 15. 
 
HKR RELIGIONS AXD ETHICAL VIEWS. 59 
 
 There is a trace in her Letters to Imlay of the 
 spirit that pervaded those early letters, written when 
 sorrow and poverty pressed heavily at her door. 
 The same attempt to rest humbly in the unsearch- 
 able will of an Almighty God impels her to 
 % write to Imlay: " The tremendous power who 
 formed this heart, must have foreseen that, in a 
 world in which self-interest, in various shapes, 
 is the principal mobile, I had little chance of 
 escaping misery. To the fiat of fate I submit." ' 
 Not by way of mere ejaculation, but rather as an 
 appeal to the highest power, does she write to 
 Imlay : " For God's sake, keep me no longer in 
 suspense."' She frequently closed her letters to 
 him with u God bless you!" Before she went on 
 that cruel errand, walking for hours in the rain 
 on the bridge of the Thames, that her clothes 
 might be drenched and she the more certain to 
 sink, when she sought death in the waters below, 
 she wrote to him : " God bless you ! May you 
 never know by experience what you have made 
 me endure." 3 
 
 But the silence on religious subjects deepens, 
 and a change now begins in her ethical views. 
 Imlay vanishes from our sight, and we have before 
 us the letters written to Godwin during the short 
 period of their attachment, and the fragment of 
 her novel Maria; or, the Wrongs of Woman. 
 Maria, the heroine of her last book, is a woman who 
 is a stranger evidently to the warm impulses of 
 
 1 Letters to Imlay, p. 178. - Ibid., p. 205. '> Ibid., p. 186. 
 
60 HER RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL VIEWS. 
 
 religious thought. Ethically considered, this book 
 advocates individual liberty somewhat to the dis- 
 advantage of those principles of law and order, 
 which the human race has evolved amid so much 
 of pain and struggle. 
 
 Death came and found her in a frame of mind 
 of which Godwin says : " Nothing could exceed the 
 equanimity, the patience and affectionateness of the 
 poor sufferer." 1 Miss Hayes, a lady of some little 
 literary fame, in whose house Mary Wollstonecraft 
 met William Godwin, and who was with her during 
 the last four days of her life, wrote to Mr. Hugh 
 Skeys, the husband of the Fanny of those early 
 days of devoted friendship : 
 
 "Though I have had but little experience in scenes of 
 this sort, yet I confidently affirm that my imagination could 
 never have pictured to me a mind so tranquil, under affliction so 
 great. Her whole soul seemed to dwell with anxious fondness 
 on her friends ;and her affections, which were at all times more 
 alive than perhaps those of any other human being, seemed to 
 gather more disinterestedness upon this trying occasion. The 
 attachment and regret of those who surrounded her appear- 
 ed to increase every hour, and if her principles are to be judged 
 of by what I saw of her death, I should say that no principles 
 could be more conducive to calmness and consolation." - 
 
 Nothing of a strictly religious nature seems to 
 have been said by the side of Mary Wollstonecraft \s 
 death-bed. Clergymen were not among the friends 
 of those later days. Godwin, was not the man to 
 invite expressions of feeling called forth by the 
 near approach of death. Mr. C. Kegan Paul relates 
 
 1 Godwin : Memoirs of the Author of the Vindication of the 
 Rights of Woman, p. 184. 
 - C. Kegan Paul : William Godwin, etc., Vol. I, p. 282. 
 
HER RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL VIEWS. 6l 
 
 the following incident, characteristic of the un- 
 sentimental materialism of Godwin : 
 
 "In one of Mary Wollstonecraft's last hours, when she was 
 suffering acute agony. Mr. Basil Montagu ran to Dr. Carlisle, 
 and returned before the physician with an anodyne. The 
 medicine had an immediate effect, and she turned to her 
 husband, who held her hand, with a sigh of relief, and said, 
 "Oh Godwin, I am in heaven." But even at that moment 
 Godwin declined to be entrapped into the admission that heaven 
 existed, and he calmly replied, "You mean, my dear, that 
 your physical sensations are somewhat easier." l 
 
 Iii his memoir of his wife, so little calculated to 
 hush the voice of vituperation, Godwin, in speaking 
 of her last days, says : " During her whole illness, 
 not one word of a religious cast fell from her lips."- 
 " Mr. Godwin seems more especially to triumph in 
 this circumstance," writes one, Philalethus, in the 
 Gcntlemarfs Magazine of that year, and adds : 
 " For a dying person, perfectly sensible of his con- 
 dition, not to utter one word about a future state, 
 not even to advert for a moment to prospects of 
 immortality, is singularly strange and unaccount- 
 able ?" ' Another writer, under the signature 
 ''Constant Reader," says in a letter to the Editor 
 of the same Magazine, nearly a month later : " It 
 would be highly honorable to the female sex, if 
 some expressive writer would contrast Mr. Godwin's 
 boast of his wife's dying hours with the manner in 
 
 1 C. Kegan Paul : Prefatory Memoir to Letters to Imlay, 
 p. LIX. 
 
 - \V. Godwin : Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the 
 Rights of Woman, p. 190. 
 
 3 The Gentleman's Magazine. March 13, 1798. 
 
62 HER RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL VIEWS. 
 
 which some excellent characters live." 1 And then 
 follows a comparison of Mary Wollstonecraft with 
 Mrs. E. Carter. 
 
 Harsh, discordant notes are these, sounded over 
 the grave of one, who, five years before, had claimed 
 that every difficulty in morals, that equally baffles 
 the investigation of profound thinking, and the 
 lightning glance of genius, is an argument on 
 which to build the belief of the immortality of the 
 soul. Even a year before her death she wrote : 
 " Surely something resides in this heart that is not 
 perishable and life is more than a dream." 
 
 The reproach of irreligiousness clung to the 
 memory of Mary Wollstonecraft until of late years, 
 and even now the statement is made by way of 
 biographical fact, that she, " unlike her husband, 
 was a decided theist, though not a Christian." 3 As 
 her family correspondence testifies, she was, until 
 she was nearly thirty years old, in every sense of 
 the term, a Christian. What was she in her later 
 years ? As a thinker she belonged to the rational- 
 istic school. As to her religious views, where is 
 her place ? She certainly was not an atheist ; nor 
 could scepticism ever assert its hold upon her ; 
 neither can she be ranked among Freethinkers, 
 still prominent in her time in England ; for her 
 attitude toward Christianity was not hostile. With 
 regard to some of her views, she was a Deist, but 
 
 1 The Gentleman's Magazine, April 12, 1798. 
 
 2 Letters from Sweden, Norway and Denmark, p. 97. 
 
 3 Leslie Stephen : History of English Thought in the 
 Eighteenth Century. Vol. IT, p. 276. 
 
HKR RKUGIOUS AX1) KTIIICAL YIKAYS. 63 
 
 these were not sufficiently vital to give her a place 
 in that school. True, she did not accept the 
 doctrine of original sin ; she did not believe in the 
 eternal torments of hell ; Satan was to her an 
 allegorical person ; and parts of the Bible she con- 
 sidered in the light of tradition rather than as 
 verbal inspiration. This deviation from orthodoxy 
 cannot, however, have been the reason why she 
 should have been regarded as standing apart from 
 the host of men and women, who as Christians 
 represent a tremendous force towards the uplifting 
 of humanity. 
 
 It cannot but be considered unfortunate that 
 it was Godwin's hand that painted the picture of 
 Alary Wollstonecraft, that was passed down to 
 posterity and was regarded until recent years, as 
 the authentic record of her life and the true general 
 statement of the chief characteristics of her thought. 
 He was an atheist and moreover had accustomed 
 himself to look upon the phenomena of the mind 
 as subject to the same calm demonstration which 
 is applied to Mathematics. His wife's belief in 
 God, and the impulses of a devout nature which 
 were born of this faith, eluded both his logic and 
 his psychological insight. Yet he too mentions 
 her delight in nature, and her custom when walk- 
 ing amidst the wonders of nature to converse with 
 her God. Even five years after the time, when as 
 Godwin says, " the prejudices of her early years 
 suffered a vehement concussion," she wrote pass- 
 ages in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 
 that seem to indicate plainly a belief in the 
 
64 HKR RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL VIEWS. 
 
 divinity of Christ. She rarely mentions him and 
 his precepts, but never in aught but the tone 
 of profound reverence. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft did not call upon the 
 religious institutions which seek to represent the 
 principles of Christianity, to serve as allies in 
 vindicating to woman her rights. Her attitude 
 toward the Church was negative. She criticized 
 freely, and with an unsparing hand, the abuses that 
 had crept into the Church, but never as one who 
 delights to scoff at that, which seems to others 
 holy and without a flaw. Yet she seems to have 
 given offence to some of her contemporaries by 
 her stringent criticism of practices, then current 
 in some of the English schools, which, she 
 thought, made religion worse than a farce. kk What 
 good," she asks, " can be expected from the youth 
 who receives the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, 
 to avoid forfeiting half a guinea, which he probab- 
 ly afterwards spends in some sensual manner?" 
 Boys sought to elude the necessity of attending 
 public worship, and she thought this justified, 
 "for such a constant repetition of the same thing 
 must be a very irksome restraint on their natural 
 vivacity." " As these ceremonies," she adds, 
 "have a most fatal effect on their morals, and 
 as a ritual performed by the lips, when the heart 
 and mind are far away, is not now stored up by our 
 Church as a bank to draw on for the fees of the 
 poor souls in purgatory, why should they not be 
 abolished?" 1 
 
 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, p. .239. 
 
HER RKUGTOUS AND ETHICAL VIEWS. 65 
 
 Mrs. West in her Letters to a young Man 
 misquotes this passage, and is consequently taken 
 to task by Mary Wollstonecraft's anonymous de- 
 fender, for mutilating the language of one, whom 
 she harshly classes with " infidels, deists, the ene- 
 mies of Christ, of law, morality and decency." In 
 corroboration of what Mary Wollstonecraft affirms, 
 he addresses Mrs. West as follows : 
 
 " And if you yourself, uiy dear madam, knew hut one-half 
 of what I have been both an ear and eye witness to, from men 
 as well as boys, respecting the compulsory attendance on the 
 sacrament and prayers ; you would not hesitate to acknowledge, 
 that these ceremonies have a most fatal effect on the morals 
 of such persons ; not as a necessary, but as an accidental cause ; 
 which is all that Mary Wollstonecraft ever meant to imply." 1 
 
 Perhaps also there was some occasion for the 
 impatience, with which Mary Wollstonecraft regards 
 the conduct and character of the clergy, designated 
 by her as "indolent slugs, who guard, by sliming 
 it over, the snug place, which they consider in the 
 light of an hereditary estate ; and eat and drink 
 and enjoy themselves, instead of fulfilling the duties, 
 excepting a few empty forms, for which it was 
 endowed."* 
 
 These criticisms, not undeserved in some cases, 
 perhaps, were yet severe, and may account somewhat 
 for the degree of hostility, with which some of her- 
 contemporaries consigned Mary Wollstonecraft to a 
 place among those, who, by the Christian world 
 
 1 A Defence of the Character and Conduct of the late Mary 
 Wollstonecraft Godwin ; in a series of Letters to a Lady, London, 
 1803, p. 159. 
 
 - A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, p. 239. 
 
 9 
 
66 IIRR RKTJGIOUS AND RTHICAI, VTFAVS. 
 
 were regarded with a species of abhorrence. Few 
 were aware of the faith, the Christian hopes, that 
 characterised the early part of her career. Her 
 criticism of the dogmas of the church, of the short- 
 comings of the clergy, during the years of her 
 greatest popularity as a writer, were well known, 
 and were more or less resented. The silence on 
 religious subjects, of the last year of her life, the 
 one spent by the side of Godwin, in whatever way 
 it may be interpreted, is one of the saddest aspects 
 of a life that was full of pathos. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE RIGHTS OF MAX AND HER REPLY TO 
 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 GODWIN'S account of his wife's childhood conveys 
 the impression, that she early respected her own 
 rights, and that she contended for the rights of 
 others. Her father was a despot in his family. 
 His violent temper, when manifested toward her- 
 self, roused Mary's indignation. " Upon such occa- 
 sions," Godwin says, "she felt her superiority, 
 and was apt to betray marks of contempt." ' 
 When her mother was threatened with violence, 
 she threw herself between the tyrant and his 
 victim. " She has even spent whole nights upon 
 the landing-place near their chamber-door, when, 
 mistakenly, or with reason, she apprehended that her 
 father might break out into paroxysms of violence. "- 
 Godwin relates 5 an incident, significant of the 
 championship, which she was ever ready to assume 
 in behalf of those wronged. It happened when 
 
 1 W. Godwin : Memoirs of the Author of the Vindication of 
 the Rights of Woman, p. 9. 
 
 - ibid., p. 9. 3 Ibid., p. 49. 
 
68 THK RIGHTS OF MAX. 
 
 she was on her way back to London from Lisbon, 
 where she had watched by the side of the death-bed 
 of her dearest friend, Fanny. The captain of the 
 English vessel, on which she had embarked, was 
 hailed by the crew of a French vessel in distress, 
 and entreated to take the ship-wrecked sailors on 
 board. He was a hard man, and replied, that his 
 stock of provisions was by no means adequate to 
 feed an additional number of mouths, and abso- 
 lutely refused compliance. Mary took up the 
 cause of the sufferers and threatened, that she would 
 have the captain called to a severe account, when 
 he arrived in England. She finally prevailed, and 
 the lives of the men were saved. 
 
 When she found herself in the midst of fashion- 
 able life on the castle of Lord Kingsborough, she 
 was far from being overwhelmed by the show of 
 wealth and station. She soon detected the glamor 
 of false refinement of manners. In the very first 
 letter to her sister Everina, she writes : "A fine 
 
 lady is a new species to me of animals The 
 
 forms and parade of high life suit not my mind."' 
 A few days later she writes to Eliza, 
 
 " You have a sneaking kindness, you say, for people of 
 quality, and I almost forgot to tell you I was in company with 
 a Lord Fingal in the packet. Shall I try to remember the titles 
 of all the Lords and Viscounts I am in company with, not for- 
 getting the clever things they say ? I would sooner tell you a 
 tale of some humbler creatures ; I intend visiting the poor 
 cabins ; as Miss Kingsborough is allowed to assist the poor, and 
 I shall make a point of finding them out." 2 
 
 1 C. Kegan Paul : William Godwin, etc., Vol. I, p, j<S6. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 187. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 69 
 
 Four months later she read Rousseau's Emile 
 with evident enjoyment. She writes to her sister 
 (March 24, 1788) : 
 
 " I am now reading Rousseau's Emile. and love his para- 
 doxes. He chooses a common capacity to educate, and gives as a 
 reason that a genius will educate itself. However he rambles 
 into that chimerical world in which I have too often wandered, 
 and draws the usual conclusion that all is vanity and vexation 
 of spirit. 1 ' 1 
 
 As yet there is no evidence of theory and specula- 
 tion with regard to political subjects. She was 
 bent rather on psychological research. Her books 
 of this period abound in delineation of character 
 and observation of human nature, and have a very 
 strong background of religious thought and feeling. 
 The hope of Heaven finds fervent expression in the 
 heroine of Mary, a Fiction, a picture, no doubt, 
 of Mary Wollstonecraft's own state of mind at that 
 time. Her letters give evidence of an almost 
 morbid weariness of life. While staying for a few 
 weeks in the house of Mr. Prior, a teacher at Eton, 
 on her way to her appointment as governess in the 
 family of Lord Kingsborough, she writes to her 
 sister : 
 
 " My thoughts and wishes tend to that land where the God 
 of love will wipe away all tears from our eyes, where sincerity 
 and truth will flourish, and the imagination will not dwell on 
 pleasing illusions, which vanish like dreams, when experience 
 forces us to see things as they really are." 2 
 
 The possibilities of her nature, both for happi- 
 ness and for wretchedness were great. L,lfe had 
 
 1 C. Kegan Paul : William Godwin, etc., Vol. I, p. 189. 
 
 - Ibid., p. -184. 
 
70 THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 
 
 brought her much of the latter, and the former, 
 she realized, was tinged with much of delusion. 
 She was weary of this and sick at heart. The con- 
 ditions for happiness, which she sought in vain 
 in this existence, must be present, she believed, 
 in a life to come. Upon this she placed her hopes. 
 This utter dissatisfaction with existing conditions, 
 was perhaps a necessary prelude to the zeal, which 
 later inspired her as a reformer. 
 
 A change however was wrought. The languor 
 of weary waiting, till life might be over, was replaced 
 by a fervent desire to live and serve humanity. 
 Her eyes turned from the possibilities of a life to 
 come, and became intently fixed upon the means of 
 creating conditions for happiness in the present life. 
 Various causes worked together, no doubt, to make 
 life seem attractive and desirable to her, after she 
 had settled as a writer in London ; but one of them 
 must have been this eager planning for a new 
 world, which she and others hoped to see arise from 
 the downfall of old and time-worn institutions. 
 
 The change came after she had become a member 
 of the social circle in London, that represented the 
 extreme side of liberal thought in England during 
 those stirring times. The house of the publisher, 
 Mr. Johnson, who was not only Mary Wollstone- 
 craft's employer, but also a friend of almost fatherly 
 solicitude, was the place where the school of 
 English reformers were wont to meet for dis- 
 cussion and exchange of opinion concerning the 
 developments of the Revolution in France. It 
 was well known, that books, which, by reason of 
 
THE RIGHTS OF MAX. 71 
 
 their radical tendency, had been declined by other 
 publishers, would not, on this account, be unfavor- 
 ably regarded by him. This temerity worked mis- 
 chievously for him, during the troubled years in the 
 latter part of the reign of George III., when he was 
 fined and imprisoned, on account of the publication 
 of writings too outspoken. 
 
 Thomas Paine was one of the frequenters of 
 Mr. Johnson's house. Fuseli, full of enthusiasm 
 for Rousseau's ideas and for revolutionary matters, 
 came several times each week. Godwin, specu- 
 lating on matters social and political, also came on 
 stated days. There was Priestly, who suffered more 
 than others in that circle, because of his pronounced 
 antagonism to all establishments, political and reli- 
 gious. Bonnycastle, Dr. Geddes, and Dr. George 
 Fordyce were frequent guests. Distinguished visitors 
 from abroad too, whose interests were with liberty, 
 were wont to seek the acquaintance of those to be 
 found here. It was thus that Mary Wollstonecraft 
 made the acquaintance of Lavater, while in Eng- 
 land ; and of Talleyrand on his occasional visits. 
 
 Surprise and indignation was called forth in this 
 circle of thinkers by Edmund Burke's Reflections 
 on tJic Revolution in France. It caused surprise 
 because he had not heretofore shown himself in- 
 tolerant ; and had raised a powerful note of warning 
 when King George ILL refused to lend ear to the 
 demands of the American colonies. It caused in- 
 dignation ; for it was full of bitter invectives and 
 angry accusations. Burke had reached the close of 
 a long and eventful political career. Sorrow had 
 
J2 THE RIGHTS OF MAX. 
 
 overtaken him in his family life, sickness cast its 
 gloom about him. Once more he gathered his 
 gigantic powers of oratory together ; and it was to 
 hurl curses upon political events, which were yet 
 of a nature to gladden the heart of the enthusiast. 
 Those dark days, when it became apparent, that 
 liberty had become but the cover, beneath which 
 human passions could work their worst, had not 
 yet come. Burke's dismal forebodings struck a 
 most discordant note. 
 
 The immediate cause of this fiery outburst on the 
 part of Edmund Burke was an anniversary sermon 
 preached by Dr. Richard Price, to commemorate 
 the Revolution of 1688. He, on this occasion, 
 expressed the warm approbation, with which he 
 and the society of Revolutionists regarded the pro- 
 ceedings of the French Republicans. There were 
 few men of liberal principles in those days, who 
 did not look upon the events, transpiring in France, 
 as the rising of the day-star. This sermon had 
 been printed ; and furnished to Burke the target 
 for sarcasms, without number. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft's reply to Burke was the 
 first of the numerous replies which his Reflec- 
 tions on the Revolution in France evoked. Godwin 
 asserts this at a time, when many were living, 
 who might have denied the statement, had it 
 
 o 
 
 not been true. Not less than thirty-eight replies 
 appeared within the first year or two after its 
 publication. 1 Ultimately, Thomas Paine's Rights 
 of Man voiced, in so incisive a manner, the senti- 
 
 1 James Prior : Life of Edmund Burke, p. 322. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF MAN. j3 
 
 meiits of the liberal party, that other similar 
 expressions were laid aside and overlooked. But 
 Mary Wollstonecraft's reply went through two edi- 
 tions ; and was in the fervor of its sentiment, and 
 its impassioned language eminently calculated to 
 attract attention. It was evidently written at the 
 spur of the moment. Excitement carried the writer 
 forward. When she had come to abdut the middle 
 of her book, the fire of enthusiasm began to burn 
 low, and seemed to have spent itself. With her 
 wonted frankness and confidence, she complained 
 to Mr. Johnson, that lassitude had overtaken her, 
 which made it impossible to complete her task. 
 He asked her not to do violence to herself, and 
 readily offered to throw away the first sheets of her 
 book, which had already been printed. Stung by 
 this easy compliance on his part, her pride was 
 roused, and she went home to complete her book. 
 It is no disparagement to Mary Wollstonecraft's 
 powers of discrimination, to say, that she did not 
 interpret correctly Burke's attitude toward the 
 French Revolution. This was a task suited to 
 calmer minds of the present century, not to those 
 who stood in the heat of the controversy. It is not 
 however thus easy to excuse the lack of courtesy 
 to her opponent. She defends Dr. Price in say- 
 ing to Mr. Burke: u In reprobating Dr. Price's 
 opinions, you might have spared the man ; and if 
 you had had but half as much reverence for the grey 
 hairs of virtue as for the accidental distinctions of 
 rank, you would not have treated with such indecent 
 familiarity and supercilious contempt, a member 
 
 10 
 
74 THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 
 
 of the community whose talents and modest virtues 
 place him high in the scale of moral excellence." * 
 She is open to the same reproof ; for she too might 
 have spared the man of grey hairs, remembering 
 his staunch adherence to liberal principles, through- 
 out a long and honorable career as statesman. 
 
 Why had hatred of the French Revolution taken 
 possession of Burke ? This is the question that 
 confronts Mary Wollstonecraft at the very outset. 
 The following passage does credit to her psycho- 
 logical insight, as placed side by side with the 
 theory of a great historian of the present century. 
 
 " However, as you have informed us that respect chills love, 
 it is natural to conclude, that all your pretty flights arise from 
 your pampered sensibility ; and that, vain of this fancied pre- 
 eminence of organs, you foster every emotion till the fumes, 
 mounting to your brain, dispel the sober suggestions of reason. 
 It is not in this view surprising, that when you should argue 
 you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames your im- 
 agination, instead of enlightening your understanding." 2 
 
 She gives here, though not couched in words 
 of profound pity, a forecast of Buckle's theory, 
 who says : 
 
 " At this distance of time, when his nearest relations are no 
 more, it would be affectation to deny that Burke, during the 
 last few years of his life, fell into a state of complete hallucina- 
 tion When the crimes of that great revolution, 
 
 instead of diminishing, continued to increase, then it was that 
 the feelings of Burke finally mastered his reason, the balance 
 tottered ; the proportions of that gigantic intellect were dis- 
 turbed His mind, once so steady, so little swayed 
 
 by prejudice and passion, reeled under the pressure of events 
 which turned the brains of thousands. ' ' 3 
 
 1 A Vindication of the Rights of Man, p. 34. 2 Ibid., p. 6. 
 3 Buckle : History of Civilization, Vol. I, p. 424. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 75 
 
 Burke was not at any period of his career, as 
 statesman, on the side of the revolutionary princi- 
 ple ; though he was eminently in favor of reform ; 
 and anticipated many of the great measures of the 
 present century. In possession of ample materials 
 for generalization, and of large capacity as a specu- 
 lative thinker, his political principles were yet 
 altogether practical. The empiric, not the specu- 
 lative method was his. " Politics," he says, " ought 
 to be adjusted, not to human reasonings, but to 
 human nature ; of which the reason is but a part, 
 and by no means the greatest part." 1 Burke's 
 policy as statesman may be said to be without 
 philosophical basis. 2 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft belonged to the school of 
 Revolutionists. She believed in laying the found- 
 ation of the political structure upon abstract prin- 
 ciples. The evils of political and social life, which 
 to her eager eyes had assumed such great pro- 
 portions, would, she believed, yield to the sway 
 of reason. Her rationalism, so prominent in her 
 religious and ethical views, could not but assert 
 itself in her political views also. She goes to the 
 heart of the controversy, when she attacks Burke's 
 latest expression of his belief in the development 
 of history, in accordance with an unerring impulse, 
 an instinct. He says : "In England we still feel 
 within us, and we cherish and cultivate, those 
 inbred sentiments which are the faithful guardians, 
 
 1 Burke's " Observations on a late state of the Nation." 
 
 2 R. VonMohl : Geschichte und L,iteratur der Staatswissen- 
 schaften. Vol. I, p. 257. 
 
76 THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 
 
 the active monitors of our duty, the true supporters 
 of all liberal and manly morals." 1 
 
 The Rights of Man, logically considered, could 
 not but command Burke's assent. It was the appli- 
 cation of the principle, that seemed to him danger- 
 ous, and caused him to hold back and to talk rather 
 of an "ancient, permanent sense of mankind," of 
 u the judgment of the human race," 2 as opposed 
 to the judgment of individuals. u The pretended 
 rights of these theorists," he says, u are all ex- 
 tremes : and in proportion as they are metaphysical- 
 ly true, they are morally and politically false." 3 
 To passages of this kind Mary Wollstonecraft 
 refers, when she says : " I perceive, from the whole 
 tenor of your Reflections, that you have a mortal 
 antipathy to reason ; but if there is anything like 
 argument, or first principles, in your wild declama- 
 tion, behold the result : that we are to reverence 
 the rust of antiquity, and term the unnatural 
 customs, which ignorance and mistaken self-interest 
 have consolidated, the sage fruit of experience."* 
 She comes to the point in making her request : 
 " Will Mr. Burke be at the trouble to inform us, how 
 far we are to go back to discover the Rights of Man, 
 since the light of reason is such a fallacious guide 
 that none but fools trust to its cold investigation ? " 
 
 She reviews his discussion of this aspect of the 
 subject. He speaks of the Magna Charta as our 
 
 1 Burke : Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke's 
 Works, London, Bell and Daldy ; 1867. Vol. II, p. 358. 
 . -' Ibid., p. 435. a Ibid., p. 335. 
 
 * A Vindication of the Rights of Man, p. 9. 5 Ibid., p. 13. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 77 
 
 oldest reformation, but " the Magna Charta of King 
 John, was connected with another positive Charter 
 from Henry L, and both the one and the other, 
 were nothing more than a re-affirmance of the still 
 more ancient standing law of the Kingdom." 1 
 Englishmen thus claimed their rights as hereditary 
 title ; they asserted their liberties as an entailed 
 inheritance, derived from their forefathers, to be 
 transmitted to their posterity. There lies deep 
 truth in this interpretation of history. If Burke was 
 one-sided in banishing the speculative element from 
 politics, the school of Revolutionists was equally 
 one-sided in ignoring the significance of historical 
 growth. The very demands for the Rights of Man 
 were not a mushroom growth, but had their roots 
 in the centuries that had passed. Mary Wollstone- 
 craft, during this controversy, overlooks the intri- 
 cate windings of these roots and rootlets. She sees 
 in the infancy of society in England naught but 
 lawlessness, gross prejudice and immoral supersti- 
 tion. If Magna Charta, she says, rests for its 
 chief support on a former grant, which reverts to 
 another, then chaos becomes the base of the 
 mighty structure. Yet this chaos contained the 
 spark, that gathered to itself fuel, until, even in her 
 day, the mighty conflagration caused the civilized 
 world to tremble. 
 
 If reason was never to assert itself, to bend 
 beneath its sway existing conditions, then it was 
 difficult to see on what principle Mr. Burke could 
 
 1 Burke : Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke's 
 Works, Vol. II, p. 305. 
 
78 THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 
 
 defend American independence ; or how he could 
 justify the Reformation, which tore up by the roots 
 an old establishment. She says : 
 
 "To go further back;" "had you been a Jew, you would 
 have joined in the cry, crucify him ! crucify him ! The pro- 
 mulgator of a new doctrine, and the violator of old laws and 
 customs, that not melting, like ours, into darkness and 
 ignorance, rested on Divine authority, must have been a danger- 
 ous innovator, in your eyes, particularly if you had not been 
 informed that the Carpenter's Son was of the stock and lineage 
 of David." 1 
 
 It was a peculiar turn of the argument, that 
 Burke, who feared "that France might throw off 
 that Christian religion, which has hitherto been our 
 boast and comfort, and one great source of civiliza- 
 tion amongst us and amongst many other nations," 2 
 should have been asked to meet the question, which 
 he, whose mind is bent on revolution, must ever 
 ask of him, who frowns upon upheavals. 
 
 Burke's respect for rank could not but rouse 
 Mary Wollstonecraft's democratic spirit. " Some 
 decent, regulated pre-eminence," he says, " some 
 preference given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor 
 unjust, nor impolitic." 3 He mourned the fate of 
 Marie Antoinette, the unfortunate queen of France ; 
 but to the poor his advice was, that they must 
 labour to obtain what by labour can be obtained, 
 and be taught their consolation in the final pro- 
 portions of eternal justice. This advice Mary 
 Wollstonecraft calls : " contemptible, hard-hearted 
 
 1 A Vindication of the Rights of Man, p. 21. 
 
 2 Burke : Reflections on the Revolution in France, Vol. II, 
 P. 363- 3 Ibid., p. 325. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 79 
 
 sophistry, in the specious form of humility, and 
 submission to the will of Heaven. " It is, Sir, 
 possible," she says, " to render the poor happier 
 in this world, without depriving them of the con- 
 solation, which you gratuitously grant them in 
 the next." i 
 
 Rank and property go hand in hand. Burke ex- 
 pressed himself in favor of the one as much as of 
 the other. " The power of perpetuating our pro- 
 perty in our families," he says, " is one of the most 
 valuable and interesting circumstances belonging 
 to it, and that which tends the most to the per- 
 petuation of society itself." * The desire of 
 Englishmen to preserve the family estate, to per- 
 petuate a name, which Burke here commends, 
 seems to Mary Wollstonecraft a relic of barbarous, 
 feudal institutions. In this arrangement the 
 younger children were sacrificed to the eldest son ; 
 they were sent into exile, or confined in convents, 
 " that they might not encroach on what was called 
 with shameful falsehood, the family estate." 3 
 
 Burke was proud of English customs, proud of 
 the English constitution. It angered him to have 
 the example of the French Republicans held out to 
 shame British conservatives. " I wish my country- 
 men," he says, " rather to recommend to our 
 neighbours the example of the British constitution 
 than to take models from them for the irnprove- 
 
 1 A Vindication of the Rights of Man, p. 144. 
 
 2 Burke : Reflections on the Revolution in France, Vol. II, 
 
 P- 324- 
 
 3 A Vindication of the Rights of Man, p. 46. 
 
80 THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 
 
 ment of our own." J " The Revolution Society has 
 discovered that the English nation is not free," 
 he remarks with some sarcasm. Mary Wollstone- 
 craft meets this reproach by pointing out the in- 
 security of the liberty of the poor man under that 
 "immaculate constitution." The game-laws, she 
 mentions, as a venerable vestige of the law, that 
 rendered the life of a deer more sacred than that of 
 a man. She protests against the arbitrary custom 
 of pressing men for the sea service. " You should 
 have hinted to the French," she says, " that pro- 
 perty in England is much more secure than liberty, 
 and not have concealed that the liberty of an honest 
 mechanic his all is often sacrificed to secure the 
 property of the rich." 3 
 
 It is the glaring contrast between the stately 
 palace and the wretched hovel, that seems to her 
 the curse of civilization. She draws an attractive 
 picture of the farmer's hut, with its homely palings 
 and twining woodbine ; the cow grazing near that 
 supports the children ; the chubby babes feeding the 
 cheerful poultry, and breathing the bracing air, far 
 from the diseases and the vices of cities. And then 
 come her questions : " Why cannot large estates be 
 divided into small farms? Why does the brown 
 waste meet the traveller's view, when men want 
 work ? But commons cannot be enclosed without 
 acts of parliament to increase the property of the 
 
 1 Burke : Reflections on the Revolution in France, Vol. II, 
 p. 516. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 328. 
 
 3 A Vindication of the Rights of Man, p. 25. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 8 1 
 
 rich ! Why might not the industrious peasant be 
 allowed to steal a farm from the heath ? l 
 
 Revolutionary in tone, as well as in tendency, are 
 these demands. The demon of property, that has 
 ever been at hand to encroach on the sacred rights 
 of men, she claims, has rendered liberty but a fair 
 idea, that has never yet received a form in the 
 various governments. But fearlessly she turns to 
 Mr. Burke : " The birthright of man, to give you, 
 Sir, a short definition of this disputed right, is such 
 a degree of liberty, civil and religious, as is com- 
 patible with the liberty of every other individual, 
 with whom he is united in a social compact, and 
 the continued existence of that compact." - 
 
 The nature of liberty was a theme under frequent 
 discussion during the latter part of the eighteenth 
 century. Rousseau's genius had made it promi- 
 nent ; for he emphasized strongly, that the liberty 
 of man, in its very essence, is an inalienable 
 possession, because it has its ever reproducing 
 source in human nature itself. Mary Wollstone- 
 craft, too, speaks 3 of natural rights, which men 
 inherit at their birth, as rational creatures, and 
 which, since they are received not from their fore- 
 fathers, but from God, cannot be undermined by 
 proscription. 
 
 Rousseau's teachings on the founding of states, 
 and the sovereignty of the people were of great 
 influence. The English Revolutionists could not 
 disclaim their vital connection with his thought. 
 
 1 A Vindication of the Rights of Man, p. 48. 
 - Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., p. 22. 
 
 n 
 
82 THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 
 
 Godwin, in a note to the first chapter of his Poli- 
 tical Justice, acknowledges his indebtedness to 
 Rousseau ; but also to Locke's Essay concerning 
 Human Understanding. Mary Wollstonecraft was 
 in touch with the thought of both philosophers, as it 
 had crystallized in the opinions of the day ; and she 
 had evidently made the works of both a careful 
 study. She was well aware, that Locke had opened 
 out paths, in which others followed. In the Introduc- 
 tory Chapter to her volume on the French Revo- 
 lution, she gives an historical sketch of the growth 
 of the desire among men for their rights. 
 
 " Locke, following the track of other bold thinkers, recom- 
 mended in a more methodical manner religious toleration, 
 and analyzed the principles of civil liberty : for in his defini- 
 tion of liberty, we find the elements of the Declaration of the 
 Rights of Man, which in spite of the fatal errors of ignorance, 
 and the perverse obstinacy of selfishness, is now converting 
 sublime theories into practical truths." 1 
 
 The volume on the French Revolution gives 
 glimpses of a change in the mind of the author 
 since the days, two years previously, when she 
 engaged in the controversy with Edmund Burke. 
 She had gone to Paris to watch with her own eyes 
 the development of events. The king of France 
 passed by her window to his trial. " I can scarcely 
 tell you why," she writes in a letter to her pub- 
 lisher, Mr. Johnson, " but an association of ideas 
 made the tears flow insensibly from my eyes, when 
 I saw Louis sitting, with more dignity than I 
 expected from his character, in a hackney coach, 
 going to meet death, where so many of his race 
 
 1 The Origin and Progress of the French Revolution, p. 4. 
 
THK RIGHTS OF MAN. 83 
 
 have triumphed.'" With eager interest and quick 
 sympathies, she watched to see what use French- 
 men would make of their liberty. 
 
 ' ' Whilst the heart sickens over a detail of crimes and follies, 
 and the understanding is appalled by the labour of unravelling 
 a black tissue of plots, which exhibits the human character in 
 the most revolting point of view ; it is perhaps, difficult to 
 bring ourselves to believe, that out of this chaotic mass a fairer 
 government is rising than has ever shed the sweets of social 
 life on the world. But things must have time to find their 
 level."-' 
 
 The principle of growth in the history of 
 nations, which she was inclined to ignore during 
 her controversy with Burke, now meets with just 
 appreciation in her manner of sketching the origin 
 and progress of the French Revolution. She says : 
 
 " It was neither produced by the abilities or intrigues of 
 a few individuals ; nor was the effect of sudden and short- 
 lived enthusiasm ; but the natural consequence of intellectual 
 improvement, gradually proceeding to perfection in the ad- 
 vancement of communities, from a state of barbarism to that of 
 polished society." 3 
 
 When in speaking of " acts of ferocious folly, 
 which have justly brought much obloquy on 
 the grand revolution," she says : " Yet I feel con- 
 fident of being able to prove, that the people are 
 essentially good, and that knowledge is rapidly 
 advancing to that degree of perfectibility, when 
 man will be considered as man, acting with the 
 dignity of an intelligent being." 4 " There is in this 
 trust in the essential goodness of the people, a 
 
 1 Posthumous Works, Vol. IV, p. 93. 
 
 2 The Origin and Progress of the French Revolution, p. 73. 
 :i Ibid., p. VII. 4 Ibid., p. 72. 
 
84 THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 
 
 leaning toward Burke's confidence in "those in- 
 bred sentiments, which are the faithful guardians, 
 the active monitors of our duty." 1 
 ^ Locke had maintained,- that when the people 
 I are made miserable, and find themselves exposed to 
 h ill-usage of arbitrary power, it will invariably 
 happen that they will be ready to rid themselves 
 of a burden that sits heavy upon them. Mary 
 Wollstonecraft goes further than Locke, when she 
 considers a revolution justifiable, not only with a 
 view to liberation from tyranny, but also because the 
 laws and customs, which serve society in one period 
 of development, are insufficient for the next. There 
 lay between her days and Locke's times a century 
 of tremendous changes, of upheavals in Europe, 
 upbuilding in America. In the old world 
 existing institutions and conditions were regarded 
 with impatience, as blocking the way of progress. 
 In the new world a rational government was 
 rising on new foundations, untrammelled by the 
 antiquated laws and customs of by-gone barba- 
 rism. Americans were proud of their achieve- 
 ment. Their sympathies were on the side of French 
 Republicans. Mary Wollstonecraft came in contact 
 with Americans, who, for causes similar to those 
 which brought her to Paris, were sojourning there. 
 Imlay too was an American. As appears from her 
 letters to him, she was entering gladly upon a plan 
 of returning to America with him, to buy a farm 
 there, and settle to the enjoyments of a home. 
 
 1 See p. 75- 
 
 2 John I^ocke : Treatise on Civil Government, XIX, $ 224. 
 
- \ 
 
 THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 85 
 
 But this was not to be. She left France and its 
 scenes of turmoil and bloodshed, its advanced civili- 
 zation and the evils attending it, to wander among 
 the quiet hamlets of Sweden and Norway ; to ponder 
 on the state of man when he follows the dictates of 
 his animal nature, and his reason is dormant and 
 inactive. She came to Tonsberg in Norway, where 
 the farmers had commenced to cut away the forests 
 and clear the ground, because they had learned, 
 that lumber was of value in commerce. Half a 
 century previously, they had allowed the Dutch to 
 take the wood, asking nothing, but that they should 
 be paid for the labor of cutting it. Now the 
 character of the country was being changed. The 
 vast tracts of forest were decreasing ; meadows and 
 fields were on the increase. In their patient 
 toil lay the development of the mental resources of 
 the inhabitants. Mary Wollstonecraft writes : 
 
 " I never, my friend, thought so deeply of the advantages 
 obtained by human industry as since I have been in Norway. 
 The world requires, I see, the hand of man to perfect it ; and as 
 this task naturally unfolds the faculties he exercises, it is physi- 
 cally impossible that he should have remained in Rousseau's 
 golden age of stupidity. And, considering the question of 
 human happiness, where, oh ! where does it reside ? Has it 
 taken up its abode with unconscious ignorance, or with the 
 high -wrought mind?" l 
 
 She returned to England, after her brief sojourn 
 in those northern countries, with less of the 
 revolutionary spirit. " An ardent affection for 
 the human race," she says in the Appendix to 
 her Letters from Sweden, " makes enthusiastic 
 
 1 Betters from Sweden, Norway and Denmark, p. 115. 
 
86 THE RIGHTS OF MAN. 
 
 characters eager to produce alteration in laws and 
 governments prematurely." This was her attitude 
 while in France. But now her entlmsiasm was 
 tempered by reason and intelligent observation. 
 She adds : "To render these alterations useful and 
 permanent, they must be the growth of each parti- 
 cular soil, and the gradual fruit of the ripening 
 understanding of the nation, matured by time, not 
 forced by an unnatural fermentation." 
 
 Her northern journey had convinced her, that 
 this "gradual change is gaining ground ;" that the 
 grand causes, which she saw at work in France, 
 " were carrying mankind forward ;" and that ulti- 
 mately, " the sum of human misery would be dimin- 
 ished." Hope for the future still inspired her. 
 That noble optimism, which must ever be the 
 mark of the reformer, was hers. Neither the 
 glimpse of the vices and follies of the polished 
 circles of the world, nor the sight of man but just 
 above the brute creation, could quench the ardent 
 desire within her, to see man in possession of all 
 his rights. 
 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN AND HER POLEMICS 
 AGAINST WRITERS ON FEMALE EDUCATION. 
 
 NOT the impulsive expression of fervid desire for 
 a change, but the inevitable sequence of the demand 
 for the rights of man, the Vindication of the 
 Rights of Woman must be regarded as a product of 
 the times. Mary Wollstonecraft was a child of her 
 times, and her views with regard to the rights of 
 man form with her the basis of her demand for the 
 rights of woman. The same principles are applied 
 in both cases. " If the abstract rights of man will 
 bear discussion and explanation," she says in the 
 Dedication of her book, " those of woman, by a 
 parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same 
 test." 
 
 In her controversy with Edmund Burke, she 
 attacked his policy of aiming at expediency, of 
 adjusting principles to practice. The same con- 
 troversy is carried over into the polemical part of 
 the Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Much 
 was written in that day concerning the education 
 
88 THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 
 and conduct of women. A trivial tone pervades 
 some of the books of this kind. There were 
 writers who resorted to satire, and in turn ridiculed 
 or pitied women, as they endeavored to instruct 
 them. The pages of the Spectator, in those days, 
 were frequently filled with witty sallies, exposing 
 the weaknesses of women. There were sober 
 attempts also, of giving advice to parents and young 
 women. ^Writers o f this class had the avowed 
 object of making the subordinate position of woman 
 as endurable to her as possible under the circum- 
 stances, by advising that which seemed expedient? 
 Edmund Burke's trust in an " ancient permanent 
 sense of mankind," carried over into the contro- 
 versy for the rights of woman, appeared in the 
 (tacit admission of writers on female education, 
 that the instinct of the race had asserted itself in 
 assigning to woman a subordinate place. ~~) 
 
 Though the influence of Rousseau is undoubt- 
 edly visible in some of the opinions of Mary 
 Wollstonecraft ; they are diametrically opposed to 
 each other in their views of the nature and 
 position of woman. He was her chief opponent. 
 In the polemical part of the Vindication of the 
 Rights of Woman, she enters upon an elaborate 
 protest against his system. Again and ^gain 
 throughout her book, she finds occasion to contradict 
 and oppose him. He had expressed with seeming 
 logical correctness and a finished eloquence that, 
 which was really the opinion of the civilized world, 
 concerning the nature of woman. To disprove 
 Rousseau, therefore, went far toward refuting the 
 
THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 89 
 
 whole false system of woman's education and 
 position. 
 
 Rousseau, after tracing in his famous book on 
 education, his Emile, which, in its day, furnished 
 much inspiration to pedagogical research, how his 
 pupil's character was gradually formed until he 
 finally became a man, says : 
 
 " Thus far we have sought to educate a man in accordance 
 with the principles of nature. In order not to leave our work 
 incomplete, it remains to show how to educate woman, the 
 counterpart to man. He who wishes to be guided aright, must 
 follow the precepts of nature." ' 
 
 He then proceeds in a truly masterly way, blend- 
 ing truth and sophistry, to interpret the qualities, 
 with which nature has endowed woman. He 
 exalts that, which he considers the work of nature ; 
 and marks as perversions the effects, which civiliza- 
 tion has had upon woman. Later in his discussion 
 he says : "I always come back to my guiding 
 principle and it, without fail, offers the solution of 
 all difficulties. I study that which is, seek the 
 cause, and finally come to the conclusion that that 
 which is, is right." 2 Rousseau in his investigation 
 often loses sight of that high ideal of human 
 character, which includes intellectual pre-eminence. 
 
 The doctrine of a return to nature, as the only 
 way to a normal condition for human beings, 
 found a practical application in Rousseau's Emile. 
 Mary Wollstonecraft agreed with him, so far as he 
 demanded that the unnatural distinctions of rank 
 and wealth were to be abolished, and that ancient 
 
 1 Rousseau : Emile V, $ 25. - Ibid., % 95. 
 
 12 
 
90 THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 
 prejudices and useless and injurious customs were 
 to be rendered powerless. In her criticism of exist- 
 ing conditions, she runs parallel with Rousseau ; 
 many passages in her Vindication of the Rights q/ 
 Woman, where she censures estrangement from 
 nature and her laws are similar to passages in 
 Rousseau's Emile. His keen observations may have 
 stimulated her; so that in this aspect of her work, 
 she may seem to walk in his footsteps. But when 
 Rousseau portrays this state of nature in favor of 
 physical well-being; and when he considers strength, 
 health and especially self-approbation the most 
 desirable possessions ; and assigns to moral laws and 
 ethical motives a subordinate place, Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft dissents. His thesis was : The nearer 
 to nature, the better ; while she looked forward to 
 a higher and more perfect civilization, to be reached 
 by means of the improvement of human reason. 
 
 In describing the education of Sophia, who was, 
 like Emile, to remain untouched by the hand 
 of civilization, Rousseau seeks to examine the char- 
 acter which nature has given to woman. His 
 starting point is*' that woman has less bodily strength 
 than man ; and that in consequence he is her 
 master. The education of woman should therefore 
 always be relative to man ; every precept that fails 
 to recur to this relation must necessarily run wide 
 of the mark ; for nature has ordained that she 
 should serve him. 
 
 One of the first precepts of this system is, that 
 care should be bestowed upon outward appearance. 
 Rousseau describes, how girls, from their earliest 
 
THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 91 
 
 infancy are fond of dress. They show by their 
 little airs, that they are desirous of being thought 
 pretty ; and unconsciously they realize that the phy- 
 sical part of the art of pleasing lies in dress. They 
 soon become anxious to know how to dress up 
 their dolls ; and though they learn with reluctance 
 how to read and write, they apply themselves very 
 readily to the use of their needles. As soon as 
 they are capable of understanding what is said to 
 them, they are willing to be governed by the con- 
 sideration of what people will think of their 
 behaviour. 
 
 Many a protest is launched by Mary Wollstone- 
 craft against writers, who, like Rousseau, speak of 
 the natural fondness of women for dress, of their in- 
 nate desire to please. To her these are but the 
 outcome of perverted nature, of a false system of 
 education. She unhesitatingly dissents from his 
 interpretation of the hand of nature, and claims 
 that she too has read in nature's book, and this 
 was her result : 
 
 " I have, probably, had an opportunity of observing more 
 girls in their infancy than J. J. Rousseau. J can recollect my 
 own feelings, and I have looked steadily around me ; yet so far 
 from coinciding with him in opinion respecting the first dawn 
 of the female character, I will venture to affirm, that a girl, 
 whose spirits have not been damped by inactivity, will always 
 be a romp, and the doll will never excite attention unless con- 
 finement allows her no alternative." l 
 
 Brought up to please man, the riper virtues of 
 woman are, according to Rousseau, to be of a 
 nature to render her useful and convenient for man. 
 
 1 Rights of Woman, p. 81. 
 
92 THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 
 The first and most important qualification in a 
 woman, he says, is good-nature or sweetness of 
 temper. An habitual restraint should be exercised 
 over her, so that a tractableness may result, for 
 wlfich woman has occasion ; since during her whole 
 life she remains under subjection either to man, 
 or to the opinions of mankind. But in making 
 her tractable, she should not be made unhappy. 
 It is not necessary to make her dependence burden- 
 some, but only to let her feel it. Rousseau ad- 
 vises, that she should be allowed to "exempt her- 
 self from the necessity of obeying." Subtilty 
 should even be cultivated, as a talent natural to 
 the sex ; for he thinks every natural inclination is 
 good and right. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft admits that " formed to live 
 with such an imperfect being as man, women 
 ought to learn, from the exercise of their faculties, 
 the necessity of forbearance." ' But she questions 
 whether a state of dependence is natural to them. 
 " Considering the length of time that w*omen have 
 been dependent," she says, u is it surprising that 
 some of them hug their chains?" 2 She quotes a 
 naturalist as saying : " These dogs at first kept 
 their ears erect ; but custom has superseded nature, 
 and a token of fear is become a beauty." By this 
 observation she meets Rousseau on his own ground. 
 When he claims that women oiight to have but 
 little liberty, because they are apt to indulge them- 
 selves excessively in what is allowed them, she 
 again meets him with a parallel case : u Slaves and 
 
 1 Rights of Woman, p. 136. 2 Ibid., p. 135. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 93 
 
 mobs have always indulged themselves in the 
 same excesses, when once they broke loose from 
 authority. The bent bow recoils with violence, 
 when the hand is suddenly relaxed that forcibly 
 held it." ' As for calling subtil ty a talent 
 peculiar to women, she insists that " greatness of 
 mind can never dwell with cunning," and that if 
 any class of mankind be so created, that it must 
 necessarily be educated by rules not strictly dedu- 
 cible from truth, virtue is an affair of convention. 
 Woman, according to Rousseau, should be kept in 
 a state of moral inferiority. Where does he rank 
 her intellectually ? 
 
 She is to know but little, and the little she knows 
 is to be of a nature pleasing to man. She should 
 ever have in mind the question : How will your 
 discourse be received ? Reason in women is a 
 practical reason, says Rousseau, capacitating them 
 artfully to discover the means of attaining a known 
 end, but which would never enable them to discover 
 that end itself. As the conduct of women is 
 subservient to public opinion, their faith in matters 
 of religion should, for that very reason, be subject 
 to authority. The wife ought to be of the same 
 religion as her husband ; for though such religion 
 might be false, that docility which induces her to 
 submit to the order of nature, takes away, in the 
 sight of God, the criminality of error. It is not 
 so needful to explain to them the reasons for their 
 belief, as to lay down precisely the tenets they are 
 to believe. After thus cramping woman's intellec- 
 
 1 Rights of Woman, p. 135. 
 
94 THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 
 tual powers, and checking the growth of character, 
 he advises her to reflect, that a reflecting man may 
 not yawn in her company ! 
 
 Rousseau's argument was, to a degree, consist- 
 ent, provided his thesis, that nature formed woman 
 for man, was granted. But Mary Wollstonecraft 
 touched its weakest spot, when she pointed out, 
 that the sacrifice of woman's mental and moral 
 development, which is involved in this system, 
 served but for a short time. According to Rous- 
 seau's interpretation, nature gives but a slight 
 degree of permanency to a relation, which religion 
 and ethics make almost absolutely binding. His 
 system, as here becomes apparent, may justly be 
 regarded as lacking a moral basis. It is difficult 
 to conceive of precepts more degrading to woman, 
 than those set forth by the " Apostle of Nature," 
 as Rousseau has been called. Mary Wollstone- 
 craft rightly asks, why a girl should be educated 
 for her husband with the same care as for an 
 Eastern harem ; why the important years of youth, 
 the usefulness of age, and the rational hopes of 
 futurity should be sacrificed to render her an object 
 of desire for a short time. Her rationalism was 
 intensely antagonistic to a system that magnified 
 the physical aspects of human life, and hopelessly 
 cramped the faculty of reason in one-half of the 
 human race. She considered the unfolding of 
 reason the chief end in life ; and believed that it 
 is the right of man to seek to attain this end. 
 Rousseau denied this right to woman. His system 
 of necessity called forth her fierce opposition. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 95 
 
 Rousseau's doctrine was as dangerous as it was 
 pernicious. Set forth with a finished eloquence, 
 he gave what seemed to be a philosophical basis to 
 the corruptions of his time. Mary Wollstonecraft 
 detected the poison in the crystal cup. It must 
 have been of an alluring nature in her day ; for 
 those who look for the cause of the tragedies of 
 her later life, find, that a drop of the poison passed 
 her lips. Yet in her Vindication of the Rights of 
 Woman she speaks forth the indignation of a sober- 
 minded Englishwoman, and arraigns one of Rous- 
 seau's most distinguished countrywomen, because, 
 far from sharing her indignation, she pleads his 
 cause. The Baroness de Stael in her Eulogium on 
 Rousseau, grants his pardon ; though he denies 
 woman reason, shuts her out from knowledge and 
 turns her aside from truth, simply because his 
 admiration for woman, as nature formed her, amounts 
 almost to adoration. What signifies it, the Baron- 
 ess de Stael argues, to women, that his reason 
 disputes with them the empire, when his heart is 
 devotedly theirs. That she and other women 
 should thus unite with men in adopting sentiments, 
 that had the direct tendency of degrading them, 
 calls forth Mary Wollstonecraft's scorn. 
 
 One of her own countrywomen, Mrs. Piozzi, 
 known specially by her literary relations to Dr. 
 Johnson, reasoned after the same fashion as the 
 Baroness de Stael. The contempt with which men, 
 in that day, treated woman's understanding, seemed 
 to her a slight grievance. She was convinced, 
 however, that not a woman could be found, who 
 
96 THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 
 would contradict the assertion, that " all our attain- 
 ments, all our arts are employed to gain and keep 
 the heart of man ; and what mortification can exceed 
 the disappointment, if the end be not obtained?" l 
 If Mrs. Piozzi's estimate of the women of her 
 times was to any degree correct, Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft had little encouragement in pleading for 
 the rights of reason in behalf of women. 
 
 Madame Genlis, a prominent pedagogical writer 
 of her day, is taken to task by Mary Wollstonecraft 
 for error in another direction. The books of 
 Madame Genlis were numerous, and were widely 
 read. She sought to uphold the power of the 
 Roman Catholic Church and of the aristocracy ; 
 and carried her respect for authority into her 
 educational views by insisting on blind obedience 
 to the will of parents. An accomplished young 
 woman, according to Madame Genlis, is ready to 
 marry anybody, whom her mother is pleased to 
 recommend. So rigid are the lines drawn by 
 her, that she insists that " a well-educated girl has 
 not time to be in love." 
 
 It might perhaps seem as if the spirit of criticism 
 had taken hold of Mary Wollstonecraft and blinded 
 her to the merits of other writers. But this was 
 not the case. In mentioning Mrs. Chapone's Letters, 
 she indicates, that she cannot always coincide in 
 opinion with her; but this does not affect her 
 respect for the writer. Words of great esteem are 
 bestowed by her upon the memory of Mrs. 
 Macaulay, the famous author of a History of 
 
 1 Rights of Woman, p. 160. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 97 
 
 England, who, in possession of an unusual degree 
 of knowledge and talent, had been remarkable 
 among her contemporaries for her conflict with the 
 atheistical and sceptical tendencies of her times. 
 The approbation of this great woman Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft expected, when she first thought of writing 
 her book ; but soon heard with deep regret that 
 she was no more. She called attention to the 
 fact, that sufficient respect had not been paid to the 
 memory of Mrs. Macatilay. 
 
 In the light of this noble tribute, which frees 
 Mary Wollstonecraft from the suspicion of undue 
 eagerness to condemn, it is all the more surprising 
 to see how she challenges writers of her own and 
 past times. I^ord Chesterfield was among them. 
 Pope and Milton are attacked, the latter because 
 in his Paradise Lost Eve says to Adam : 
 
 " My author and disposer, what thou bidst 
 Unargued I obey ; so God ordains ; 
 God is thy law, thou mine : to know no more 
 Is woman's happiest knowledge and her praise." 
 
 Perhaps the most daring part of her polemics 
 is her bold attack upon Dr. Gregory's Legacy to 
 his Daughters and Dr. Fordyce's Sermons 1o 
 Young Women. Both were popular writers, who 
 had a large circle of readers ; and whose views were 
 in harmony with the current opinions of the day. 
 Of Dr. Fordyce's sermons l she says : " They have 
 long made a part of a young woman's library ; nay, 
 girls at school are allowed to read them, yet," she 
 
 1 Rev. James Fordyce, D.D. Sermons to Young Women, 1762. 
 2 Volumes. Many Editions. 
 
 13 
 
98 THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 
 adds, u I should not allow girls to peruse them, unless 
 I designed to hunt every spark of nature out of 
 their composition, melting every human quality 
 into female meekness and artificial grace." She 
 objects to the lover-like phrases, with which a grave 
 preacher should not embellish his discourse. He 
 addresses u the British fair, the fairest of the fair, 
 as if they had only feelings," and makes florid 
 appeals to Heaven, and to u the beauteous innocents, 
 the fairest images of Heaven here below." 
 
 Dr. Fordyce proceeds from the same proposition 
 that forms the basis of Rousseau's argument : 
 Woman is created for man. Her character is to be 
 one of yielding softness and gentle compliance. He 
 would not justify men in anything wrong on their 
 part, but is astonished at the folly of many women, 
 who complain of the indifference of their husbands. 
 He tells them : 
 
 " Had you behaved to them with more respectful observance, 
 and a more equal tenderness, studying their humours, over- 
 looking their mistakes, submitting to their opinions in matters 
 indifferent, passing by little instances of unevenness, caprice or 
 passion, giving soft answers to hasty words, complaining as 
 seldom as possible, and making it your daily care to relieve 
 their anxieties, to enlighten the hour of dulness, and call up the 
 ideas of felicity : had you pursued this conduct, I doubt not but 
 you would have maintained and even increased their esteem, so 
 far at to have secured every degree of influence that could 
 conduce to their virtue or your mutual satisfaction, and your 
 home might at this day have been the abode of domestic bliss/' 1 
 
 Not a trace of the human character does Mary 
 Wollstonecraft find in a woman according to this 
 description ; she is simply a domestic drudge, whose 
 
 Rights of Woman, p. 152. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 99 
 
 being- is absorbed in that of a tyrant. Moreover, 
 she thinks Dr. Fordyce must have had very little 
 acquaintance with the human heart, if he really 
 supposed that such conduct would bring back 
 wandering love, instead of exciting contempt. 
 
 It is true that there is little apparent difference 
 between the advice given by Rousseau and that of 
 Dr. Fordyce ; and yet, there is a distinction. 
 An interest in the well-being of woman is 
 displayed in Dr. Fordyce's advice, that is absent in 
 Rousseau's. The sentiment of the Church, which 
 Dr. Fordyce voices, has an ethical aspect that is 
 foreign to the sentiments of the "Apostle of Nature." 
 The advice of the Church was to the servant to be 
 obedient to his master, to woman to submit herself 
 to her own husband. Meekness, gentleness, the 
 bearing of injuries without retaliation, were virtues 
 extolled by the founder of the Christian religion. 
 Men in the early days of Christianity frequently 
 laid aside their courage and strength and assumed 
 the garb of meekness, which their master had worn. 
 Side by side with this spirit of self-renunciation, 
 there dwelt in the new religion an appreciation of 
 the intrinsic value of the individual, as an object of 
 salvation, and a broad conception of liberty as the 
 product of faith, that sent its waves of influence 
 along the course of the history of the nations. 
 
 The Greek first conceived the idea of the free- 
 dom of the individual. 1 But man is free, meant to 
 him : The Greek is free ; the slave and the bar- 
 
 1 See Wilhelm Preger : Entfaltung der Idee des Meuschen 
 durch die Weltgeschichte. Miinchen, 1870. 
 
100 THp; RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 
 barian were not included. Christianity ushered 
 into the world principles, according to which the 
 slave and woman, the conquered and the wretched 
 were placed on the same footing with the strongest 
 and the mightiest, so far as the highest spiritual 
 gifts which the religion of Christ had to offer, were 
 concerned. And these principles, combined with 
 the Anglo-Saxon love of active independence, are 
 destined ultimately to vindicate to all the right 
 of personal freedom. But meantime Dr. Fordyce 
 represents those who preached that which seemed 
 expedient, and gave but a faint reflection of the 
 true relation which Christianity bears to woman. 
 
 Another passage in Dr. Fordyce's sermons, quoted 
 by Mary Wollstonecraft seems a curious mixture of 
 religious sentiment and ill-advised flattery. Dr. 
 Fordyce says : 
 
 " Never, perhaps, does a fine woman strike more deeply than 
 when, composed into pious recollection, and possessed with the 
 noblest considerations, she assumes, without knowing it, supe- 
 rior dignity and new graces ; so that the beauties of holiness 
 seem to radiate about her, and the bystanders are almost in- 
 duced to fancy her already worshipping amongst her kindred 
 angels ! " 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft asks, " Why are women 
 to be thus bred up with a desire of conquest ? the 
 very word, used in this sense, gives me a sickly 
 qualm ! Do religion and virtue offer no stronger 
 motives, no brighter reward ?" 
 
 Even in perversions, as great as the above 
 passage by Dr. Fordyce, a deep truth may be found 
 hidden somewhere. The Church has ever had in 
 woman a mighty ally to keep the flame of piety 
 
THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN IOI 
 
 bright in a community ; and piety in turn exalted 
 woman ; for there is something in man that res- 
 ponds to a visible token of communion between one 
 of his kind and his Creator. 
 
 "Where the husband's attention is wholly absorbed by the 
 struggle for daily bread, the only aspirations, frequently, that 
 are left to the family, are those of a religious nature, and they 
 are nourished by the wife. A deep sense of piety, that 
 centres in the mother of the family is often the best safeguard 
 of morality." l 
 
 This too is conquest ; not the conquest of 
 men's hearts, by youth and beauty with the aid 
 of religious devotion ; but the conquest of the 
 hearts of her family by the mother, who can 
 thus best guard her charge against its foes. It is 
 the perversion of truth that forms the butt of the 
 attacks of the revolutionists. Mary Wollstonecraft 
 valued most highly the religious aspirations of 
 which man is capable. To see them given a place 
 with other accomplishments, that please the eyes 
 of men, rightly roused her opposition. 
 
 Free from flattery, and filled with a loving regard 
 for the welfare of his daughters, who had lately lost 
 their mother, Dr. Gregory's Legacy to his Daugh- 
 ters" is a touching instance of the vacillation of 
 opinion, which must inevitably have been the state 
 of mind of an affectionate father in those days. 
 Dr. Gregory feared the consequence of instilling 
 sentiments, that might draw his daughters out of 
 
 1 Wundt : Die Bthik, p. 534. 
 
 - John Gregory, M. D. "A Father's Legacy to his Daugh- 
 ters," 1774. Many editions. The last in 1877. 
 
102 THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 
 the track of common life, without enabling them to 
 act with consonant independence and dignity. In 
 the preface he tells them a mournful truth, u that 
 they will hear, at least once in their lives, the 
 genuine sentiments of a man, who has no interest in 
 deceiving them." Mary Wollstonecraft exclaims : 
 
 " Hapless woman ! what can be expected from thee when the 
 beings on whom thou art said naturally to depend for reason 
 and support, have all an interest in deceiving thee ? This is the 
 root of the evil that has shed a corroding mildew on all thy 
 virtues ; and blighting in the bud thy opening faculties, has 
 rendered thee the weak thing thou art ! It is this separate 
 interest, this insiduous state of warfare, that undermines moral- 
 ity and divides mankind ! " l 
 
 The very parental solicitude with which Dr. 
 Gregory would mould the conduct of his daughters, 
 shows forth in bold lines the deceptive character 
 of his advice. If girls possessed strength and 
 vigor, they should conceal it, lest men suppose that 
 they were not entirely dependent on their pro- 
 tection for safety. u Be even cautious," he says, 
 " in displaying your good sense. But if you 
 happen to have any learning, keep it a profound 
 secret, especially from the men, who generally look 
 with a jealous and malignant eye on a woman of 
 great parts and a cultivated understanding." Men 
 of real merit, Dr. Gregory afterwards observes, are 
 superior to this meanness. " Where is the neces- 
 sity," demands Mary Wollstonecraft, " that the 
 behaviour of the whole sex should be modulated 
 to please men, who, having little claim to respect 
 as individuals, choose to keep close in their pha- 
 
 1 Rights of Woman, p. 154. 
 
THF, RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 103 
 
 lanx? " ' Marriage was to be the chief end of exist- 
 ence, yet on no account should it be apparent, that 
 a young- woman's thoughts were bent in this direc- 
 tion. A wife should keep her husband in ignor- 
 ance concerning the extent of her affection, so that 
 uncertainty might prove an attraction. This tangle 
 of dissimulations and pretences Mary Wollstone- 
 craft brushes aside with the sound advice : " Make 
 the heart clean, and give the head employment, and 
 I will venture to predict that there will be nothing 
 offensive in the behaviour." 
 
 Notwithstanding the popularity, which Dr. 
 Gregory's book enjoyed, even down to recent times, 
 some of his contemporaries were alive to the defects 
 of the book and the system it sets forth. One of 
 Mary Wollstonecraft's severest critics agrees with 
 her on one point, that Dr. Gregory's Legacy shows 
 that u his system of female excellence was formed 
 in consequence of confined views, and a state 
 of society, neither the best nor the most eligi- 
 ble." But while granting all that can be said 
 against this book and against the wisdom of its 
 author, yet the father who speaks through its pages 
 is not an isolated example, but is a type of many a 
 parent, who wavered and hesitated, fearing that in 
 his most earnest effort to advance the best welfare of 
 his daughter, he might unfit her for the world in 
 which she lived. Mary Wollstonecraft faced the 
 practical aspect of the question some years after her 
 denunciation of Dr. Gregory's book, when the happi- 
 
 1 Rights of Woman, p. 155. 
 
 2 The Critical Review, June 1792, p. 132. 
 
104 THK RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 
 ness of her little daughter, Fanny, lay very close to 
 her heart. She wrote to the father of her child : 
 
 " You know that as a woman I am particularly attached to 
 her, I feel more than a mother's fondness and anxiety, when I 
 reflect on the dependent and oppressed state of her sex. I 
 dread lest she should be forced to sacrifice her heart to her 
 principles, or principles to her heart. With trembling hand I 
 shall cultivate sensibility, and cherish delicacy of sentiment, 
 lest, while I lend fresh blushes to the rose, I sharpen the thorns 
 that will wound the breast I would fain guard. I dread to 
 unfold her mind, lest it should render her unfit for the world 
 she is to inhabit. Hapless woman ! What a fate is thine !" ' 
 
 There is a note of sad resignation in this letter, a 
 tacit admission that existing conditions are more 
 powerful than the individual who wages war against 
 them. She says with reference to Dr. Gregory : 
 " Surely it would have been wiser to have advised 
 women to improve themselves till they rose above 
 the fumes of vanity ; and then to let the public 
 opinion come round, for where are rules of accom- 
 modation to stop?" 2 But public opinion generally 
 moves slowly. It is conservative in its nature. 
 She, who dares to outrun it, must needs pay the 
 penalty. 
 
 The problem was passing through a natural 
 process of solution at the time when Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft was writing her book, fearlessly facing an 
 array of writers, who if not mighty, were yet 
 numerous and influential ; and when, a few years 
 later, she shrank with the dread prompted by her 
 love from bringing up her own daughter in the 
 way which she had advocated so unhesitatingly. 
 
 1 Letters from Norway, etc., p. 66. 
 
 2 Rights of Woman, p. 155. 
 
THK RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 105 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft looked to France as the 
 country, where the rights of women would first 
 receive consideration. Not France, but those newly 
 settled colonies in America proved to be the place, 
 where there was that absence of coercion, which 
 she desired. " L,et there be then no coercion 
 established in society, and the common law of 
 gravity prevailing, the sexes will fall into their 
 proper places." l 
 
 The opinions, which the settlers carried away 
 with them as their heritage from the home of their 
 fathers had to pass the test of stern realities, when 
 they came to seek for daily bread in an unsettled 
 country. The ballast of perversions, concerning 
 life and its meanings, savouring of an over-wrought, 
 time-worn civilization, had to be cast overboard in 
 the face of relentless necessity. The old doctrine, 
 which Mary Wollstonecraft seemed to fight single- 
 handed, that woman was created to please man, 
 could not take root, where woman ranged herself 
 by the side of man, to make a home where but 
 lately primeval forests had covered the soil. 
 Women had been burden-bearers from time imme- 
 morial. There was nothing new in this aspect 
 of the character of the American woman of 
 those early days. The new feature lay in the fact, 
 that men and women had fled from oppression, 
 with the hope of building up a state, where the 
 rights of men would be guarded. Such an atmos- 
 phere was conducive to a respect for the rights of 
 
 Rights of Woman, Dedication. 
 
 14 
 
106 THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 
 women and offered opportunities to women to claim 
 their rights. 
 
 Dr. Fordyce and Dr. Gregory have had their 
 day ; for the reader of the present time lays aside 
 their books with a smile of wonder, not of con- 
 tempt ; for the race must work its way into 
 the light of truth after its own fashion. Mary 
 Wollstonecraft's hand aimed a powerful stroke at 
 the system that had worn itself threadbare. She 
 eminently proved herself endowed with the courage 
 of the reformer; for she set her own opinion over 
 against that of most of her contemporaries, and, 
 inspired with a firm belief in its soundness, she 
 dealt blow after blow, to destroy the false foundation 
 and make way for the upbuilding of the rights of 
 woman on the same basis as the rights of man. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HER INVESTIGATION OF THE CAUSES OF WOMAN'S 
 INTELLECTUAL INFERIORITY. 
 
 MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT in her I/indication of 
 the Rights of Woman demands for woman, as a 
 rational being, a place by the side of man, with 
 equality of rights and privileges. True to the 
 spirit of the Revolutionary School, she makes these 
 demands on the ground of abstract principles ; 
 yet abstractions are of little value where reali- 
 ties speak against them. The facts of the past 
 and present seemed to indicate, that woman's posi- 
 tion had ever been subordinate to that of man ; and 
 that thus far, woman had not given evidence of 
 ability to rank with man, whether regarded ac- 
 cording to physical, ethical or intellectual standard. 
 It was therefore a very essential part of her under- 
 taking, to prove that this subordination was merely 
 a result of education and circumstances and did 
 not have its source in a natural inferiority of the 
 sex. If she failed to prove this, her demands were 
 without foundation ; for she could not claim equal 
 
108 THE CAUSES OK WOMAN'S 
 
 rights for those, who did not at least possess the 
 potentiality of equality. 
 
 She admits throughout, that woman has less 
 physical strength than man ; nor does she seem, to 
 entertain the hope, that education can essentially 
 alter this divergency. She says : " In the govern- 
 ment of the physical world it is observable that 
 the female in point of strength is, in general, in- 
 ferior to the male. This is the law of nature ; and 
 it does not appear to be suspended or abrogated in 
 favor of woman." 1 But she does protest against the 
 prejudices of her times, that led men to think 
 bodily strength inimical to the character of a 
 gentleman ; and seemed to women to " take from 
 their feminine graces and from that lovely weak- 
 ness, the source of their undue power." She tells 
 of a woman of fashion, whom she had known, who 
 thought u a distinguishing taste and a puny ap- 
 petite the height of all human perfection." "I 
 have seen this weak, sophisticated being neg- 
 lect all the duties of life, yet recline with self- 
 complacency on a sofa, and boast of her want of 
 appetite, as a proof of delicacy that extended to, 
 or, perhaps arose from her exquisite sensibility." 
 With these perversions of her times Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft had no patience. She claimed that by 
 their mode of dress, the nature of their employ- 
 ment, the rules of etiquette and by their whole 
 education women have been rendered artificial 
 beings, who are not even in possession of that 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 32. - Hid., p. 74. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 82. 
 
INTELLECTUAL INFERIORITY. 109 
 
 smaller share of physical strength, which atuern 
 has allotted to them. If women would but lead 
 rational lives, they would have sufficient strength 
 to engage in various activities, to support them- 
 selves and thus to enjoy a life of usefulness and 
 independence. 
 
 Physical superiority is a noble prerogative and 
 has its far-reaching effects even into the realm of 
 the mental and moral activities. A dependence of 
 spirit is frequently bred by physical weakness, 
 that proves a most effectual check upon a full dis- 
 play of mental resources and that firmness of 
 character that lead to success. Mary Wollstone- 
 craft says : "I will allow that bodily strength 
 seems to give man a natural superiority over wo- 
 man, and this is the only solid basis on which the 
 superiority of the sex can be built." l It may be 
 argued that if woman must depend upon man to 
 encounter with his superior strength the harsh 
 vicissitudes of life ; if he is the one to meet danger 
 and to stand between the world and his family as 
 its protector, then he has claim to certain rights, 
 from which he may exclude woman. Responsible 
 position is never without its peculiar rights. This 
 is true to some extent ; yet it is also true, that it is 
 not in the end physical force, but intellect that 
 governs. Man's superior physical strength may 
 meet the brunt of pressure from without, while at 
 the same time the moral and intellectual force, that 
 keeps him at the front, is furnished by the female 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 75. 
 
110 THE CAUSES OF WOMAN'S 
 
 members of the household. " There have been 
 many women in the world," says Mary Wollstone- 
 craft, " who, instead of being supported by the 
 reason and virtue of their fathers and brothers, have 
 strengthened their own minds by struggling with 
 their vices and follies." l 
 
 The onward tread of science during the present 
 century has had marked effect upon this aspect of 
 Mary Wollstonecraft's argument. Writers cannot 
 to-day speak of woman as a " fair defect in na- 
 ture." 8 The position which Mary Wollstonecraft 
 deplored of being denied equality with man, yet 
 not belonging to the brutes, is undermined ; for no 
 one to-day speaks of woman in her normal condi- 
 tion, as a being physically inferior to man ; weaker 
 in some respects she may be and differently con- 
 stituted, but not inferior. Mary Wollstonecraft 
 reasoned in her day unaided by much of the valu- 
 able material, that empiric science now offers as a 
 foundation to the deductions of the philosopher. 
 Biology unfolds the secrets of life ; and the theory 
 of evolution, which has revolutionized some aspects 
 of thought during the present century, renders the 
 trivial teaching of a century ago put of place. Nor 
 does the abstruse terminology of the man of science 
 keep the general facts, with which he deals, from 
 finding their way into the common opinions 
 of the day. 
 
 Researches in the direction of Anthropology 
 during the past few decades have had a similar 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 148. - Hid., p. 84. 
 
INTELLECTUAL INFERIORITY. Ill 
 
 effect. One of the tenets of common belief in Mary 
 Wollstonecraft's day was, that woman had ever 
 been held in a condition subject to man. She 
 also reckons with this assertion as a known factor 
 in her argument. The investigations of Bachofeu, 
 Morgan, Lappert and others during the present 
 century, in the direction of the Matriarchate, 
 indicate that history, from antiquity down to the 
 present time, shows distinct traces of a condition 
 of society, in which the mother is the center of the 
 joint family and the governing head. Among 
 certain races the matriarchal family preceded the 
 patriarchal family. These researches belong to our 
 own times ; and it seems a return to barren soil 
 with scant fruitage to regard Mary Wollstone 1 craft, 
 with her feet firmly planted on the one stretch of 
 undisputed territory, the human reason. 
 
 Descartes, after emerging from a sea of doubt, 
 had come to an indisputable point, his Cogito, 
 ergo sum, and from this point his argument 
 proceeded. Mary Wollstonecraft started from a 
 similar point. Woman is in possession of reason, 
 she argued. Reason is an emanation of divinity, 
 the tie that connects the creature with the Creator, 
 and must therefore in its nature be the same in all, 
 though varying in the strength and perceptibility 
 with which it becomes manifest in individuals. 
 It follows, that since reason in its nature is the 
 same in all, knowledge and virtue must be of 
 the same nature in all, and with this conclusion 
 principles of expediency are denied the right 
 to control the kind of knowledge which woman 
 
112 THE CAUSES OF WOMAN'S 
 
 should seek and the nature of the virtues which 
 she should make her own. Teachers of female 
 excellence are brushed aside ; every thing is thrown 
 open to woman, nothing can be withheld ; for she is 
 a rational being. Taken by itself, this conclusion 
 is that of one-sided rationalism. Taken in connec- 
 tion with Mary Wollstonecraft's wise word : " Let 
 there be then no coercion established in society, and 
 the common law of gravity prevailing the sexes 
 will fall into their proper places," l it is evident, that 
 reason was but to serve as the hinge, on which the 
 door to liberty was to swing open. 
 
 But would women avail themselves of the rights, 
 which reason opened out before them ? Those of 
 the sex, who were forced by pressure of circum- 
 stances to strain their ability to the utmost, in order 
 to provide the necessities of life for themselves and 
 others, had Mary Wollstonecraft's full appreciation. 
 She did not deal with women of this kind ; nor 
 with the exceptional woman. Her attention was 
 fixed upon that large majority of women, who, in 
 accordance with the social arrangements of the 
 civilized world, were supported by their fathers or 
 husbands and, dependent as they were, were twice 
 fettered by the wish of him who supported them, 
 and by the iron law of public opinion. In her 
 descriptions of the condition of the woman of her 
 times, in her appeals to arise and shake off the 
 unworthy yoke, and in her demand for a revolution 
 in female manners, there is a rare mingling of psycho- 
 
 1 Dedication to the Rights of Woman. 
 
INTELLECTUAL INFERIORITY. 113 
 
 logical insight into the causes of social evils and 
 the reformer's righteous indignation at the weak- 
 ness of human nature. 
 
 Gathering together the scattered threads of her 
 argument, the first cause of woman's subordinate 
 position, as unfolded by her, may be given as 
 follows : Man, in order to maintain the ascendancy 
 which his physical strength gives to him, needs 
 superiority of reason, in order to make his rulership 
 permanent and secure. Weakness, with its conse- 
 quent yielding, is therefore far more pleasing to 
 him, than that rational independence, which is a 
 necessary accompaniment of equality. Woman, on 
 the other hand, is satisfied by the homage which 
 she receives from man, and does not find it 
 necessary by the application of all her facul- 
 ties to earn for herself that respect, which one 
 human being desires to receive from another. And 
 as the helpless loveliness of women induces man 
 most readily to " lend his reason to guide their 
 tottering steps aright," 1 weakness virtually becomes 
 an attraction and the impulse to all higher aspira- 
 tions receives a deadly check. This, Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft considered the first cause of woman's 
 inferiority, the effects she found everywhere 
 apparent. 
 
 The etiquette of society illustrated the peculiar 
 attitude of men toward women. Men thought it 
 manly to pay those trivial attentions, with which 
 they in reality insultingly supported their own 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 218. 
 
 15 
 
114 THE CAUSES OF WOMAN'S 
 
 superiority. u It is not condescension," says Mary 
 Wollstonecraft, " to bow to an inferior. So ludicrous, 
 in fact, do these ceremonies appear to me" she says, 
 "that I scarcely am able to govern my muscles, 
 when I see a man start with eager and serious 
 solicitude to lift a handkerchief or shut a door, 
 when the lady could have done it herself, had she 
 only moved a pace or two." l She earnestly wished 
 that the distinction of sex might cease to exist in 
 society, unless where love animates the behaviour. 
 It seemed to her as if men tried, by these trivialities, 
 to compensate women for the loss of important 
 advantages ; and women, blinded by the show of 
 respect, played the role of queens as long as possi- 
 ble, instead of insisting upon the more noble social 
 forms, dictated by equality. 
 
 ^It was but natural that women should desire 
 position and honor ; the craving for the love and 
 respect of members of the race is inherent in 
 human nature. The perversion lies in the way in 
 which this desire is gratified. Mary Wollstone- 
 craft 's opposition to class privileges here found its 
 application to women ; for as a class, she says, they 
 are born in possession of certain privileges. Hard- 
 working women of the laboring classes were above 
 the reproach, which fell upon women of the higher 
 classes, who considered homage and flattery their 
 chie, not because they had done anything to 
 deserve it, but because they were women. They 
 expected consideration and respect to be paid them, 
 
 The Rights of Woman, p. 100. 
 
INTELLECTUAL INFERIORITY. 115 
 
 not as a well-earned right, but because they were 
 accustomed to seeing it gratuitously granted ; hence 
 the evils which always follow the use of advantages 
 obtained without exertion were visited upon them. 
 Their ready acceptance of privileges, which were not 
 the result of exertion, did not however display a 
 species of weakness peculiar to the sex ; but simply 
 showed that their moral fibre was neither more nor 
 less tense than that of the men whose lives were cast 
 in similar moulds. Mary Wollstonecraft classes 
 them with the rich and quotes from Adam Smith's 
 Theory of Moral Sentiments, whose description of 
 the character of the rich she finds equally applica- 
 ble to that of women. As an observation on human 
 nature, she remarks : " Birth, riches, and every 
 extrinsic advantage that exalt a man above his 
 fellows, without any mental exertion, sink him in 
 reality below them." l 
 
 A woman of sensibility was the ideal woman in 
 i Mary Wollstonecraft's day. She quotes a writer 
 as saying, that " woman's power is her sensibility." 
 Naturally women regarded the means of increasing 
 this power as the most important question of their 
 lives. They employed their time with novels, 
 music, poetry and gallantry ; all their thoughts 
 turned on subjects calculated to excite emotion. 
 The result was that peculiar female character, which, 
 as Mary Wollstonecraft told her contemporaries, 
 could scarcely be called a human character. She 
 described it as possessing neither harmony nor 
 stability ; for the imagination was heated and the 
 
n6 THE CAUSES OF WOMAN'S 
 
 feelings rendered fastidious ; the understanding 
 was neglected, and since feeling predominated when 
 reason should rule, the opinions wavered and con- 
 duct was unstable. A strange character, it is true, 
 but poets depicted it with attractive coloring, and 
 men yielded admiringly to its sway. 
 
 Who shall say that this character belongs entirely 
 to the women of a century ago ? The causes that 
 produced it have by no means disappeared ; the 
 effects must continue their existence, though in a 
 somewhat altered form. Bebel, in his widely cir- 
 culated book on the relation of woman to socialism, 
 describes female character in almost the same 
 language used by Mary Wollstonecraft. Where 
 she uses the word sensibility, Bebel employs the 
 German word Gemilth. Sensibility, defined as " the 
 capacity of the soul to exercise, or to be the subject 
 of emotion or feeling, as distinguished from the 
 intellect and will," has its equivalent in the 
 German Gemuth. And when Bebel complains, 
 that in the education of women too much emphasis 
 is laid upon Vertiefung des Gemilths^ he gives 
 expression to one of the chief contentions of Mary 
 Wollstonecraft. Dr. Johnson's definition of sensibi- 
 lity as " quickness of sensation ; quickness of percep- 
 tion ; delicacy ;" gives to her no other idea than that 
 of most exquisitely polished instinct. " I discern," 
 she says, " not a trace of the image of God in either 
 sensation or matter. Refined seventy times seven, 
 they are still material ; intellect dwells not there ; 
 
 1 August Bebel : Die Frau und der Socialismus, Stuttgart, 
 1895. 24. Auflage. 
 
INTELLECTUAL INFERIORITY. 117 
 
 nor will fire ever make lead gold/' 1 Ever consistent 
 in her pronounced rationalism, she seems to over- 
 look here the fact that sensibility too has its place. 
 Her contention was against exaggerated sensi- 
 bility ; perhaps she could not afford to lessen the 
 force of her argument by pointing out, that an 
 absence of sensibility is also to be deplored. 
 
 In the education of women, the cultivation of the 
 understanding was always subordinate to the ac- 
 quirement of some corporeal accomplishment. Girls 
 were therefore expected to dedicate a great part of 
 their time to needlework; yet, this employment 
 contracted their faculties more than any other that 
 could have been chosen for them, by confining their 
 thoughts to their persons. Men ordered their 
 clothes to be made and had done with the subject ; 
 women often made their own clothes and were 
 continually talking about them. It was not the 
 making of necessaries that weakened the mind, but 
 what Mary Wollstonecraft calls " the frippery of 
 dress." 2 
 
 The straight path to the store-house of knowledge 
 was closed to women. They were not admitted to 
 serious scientific study, and if they had natural 
 sagacity it was turned too soon on life and / 
 manners. They frequently^ent into society, and I 
 soon acquired a certain knowledge of human nature; 
 but this too was of a superficial kind, rather the 
 result of sheer observation on real life than the 
 outcome of comparison between that, which has 
 
 The Rights of Woman, p. 108. - Ibid., p. 125, 
 
Il8 THE CAUSES OF WOMAN'S 
 
 been individually observed and the results of ex- 
 perience generalized by speculation. They dwelt 
 on effects and modifications, without tracing them 
 back to causes. The complicated rules to adjust 
 behaviour became the weak substitute for simple 
 principles. In the absence of that sound reasoning, 
 which forms the basis of morality, women cultivated 
 a ready tact, to guide their steps. Instinctively they 
 found their way, and this faculty was admired as 
 one of the charming aspects of female character. 
 Mary Wollstonecraft did not look upon it in that 
 light. She regarded it as a faculty cultivated by 
 woman under stress of the necessity upon her. 
 
 To prove this, she cited the example of military 
 men. They too were sent into the world before their 
 minds had been stored with knowledge or fortified 
 by principles. The consequences were similar. 
 Soldiers acquired a little superficial knowledge, 
 snatched from the muddy current of conversation; 
 and by continually mixing with society, they gained, 
 what is termed, a knowledge of the world. 
 If they had any sense, it was a kind of 
 instinctive glance, that catches proportions and 
 decides with respect to manners, but fails when 
 arguments are to be pursued below the surface, or 
 opinions analyzed. Where was then the difference, 
 when the education had been the same ? Yet 
 soldiers did not lose their rank in the distinction 
 of sexes ; for they were still reckoned superior to 
 women, though in what their superiority consisted, 
 it was difficult to discover. This comparison found 
 much favor in the eyes of contemporary critics 
 
INTELLECTUAL INFERIORITY. 119 
 
 and was thought witty and to the point. It was 
 an ingenious attempt at proving that the distinc- 
 tions of sex do not enter the realms of mind. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft refused to admit that there 
 is any inherent difference in the mental proclivi- 
 ties of man and woman. That oft-repeated obser- 
 vation, that man is swayed by thought, woman 
 by feeling, and that by the intermingling of both, 
 harmonious completeness ensues, seemed to her but 
 the entering-wedge to argument, that ended in com. 
 pletely separating the mental functions, and cul- 
 minated in comparing women to angels. But as 
 only young women were compared with angels, the 
 comparison was proven unsound. Any attempt at 
 separation seemed to end in anomalous position. 
 As Mary Wollstonecraft frequently reiterates : 
 Woman has always been either slave or tyrant, f 
 She is either considered to move in a sphere above 
 man, to which he looks up in worshipping attitude, 
 as to a being of entirely different nature ; or else 
 she is thought incapable of reason, and as having 
 her place somewhere between man and the brute 
 creation. 
 
 It cannot however be said that Mary Wollstone- 
 craft has proven that the nature of sex does not 
 in some way affect the functions of the mind. To 
 attempt such proof would have been inconsistent 
 with the rationalistic basis of her argument ; for 
 reason must be the same in all. A poetical admirer 
 of Mary Wollstonecraft's genius, who reproduced 
 in verse, what she had maintained ; but whose 
 poetry was less poetical than occasional passages 
 
 f " OF THB 
 
 | UNIVERSITY 
 
120 THE CAUSES OF WOMAN'S 
 
 of her prose, voiced her leading sentiment in the 
 following couplet : 
 
 " 'Twixt mind and mind, then say, ye learned and wise, 
 In what and where the sexual difference lies ?" 1 
 
 But is there no intrinsic difference between the 
 powers of mind displayed by man, and those of 
 woman ? Is all the apparent divergency merely 
 due to outward circumstances? Mrs. Shelley, the 
 gifted daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, writes in 
 her later years: u My belief is, whether there be 
 sex in souls or not, that the sex of our material 
 mechanism makes us quite different creatures, better 
 though weaker, but wanting in the higher grades 
 of intellect." 2 Godwin, in sketching the leading 
 traits of Mary Wollstonecraft's intellectual character, 
 draws a comparison between her mental powers and 
 his own, that is of peculiar interest in this connec- 
 tion. Of himself he says : 
 
 " One of the leading passions of my mind has been an anxious 
 desire not to be deceived. This has led me to view the topics 
 of my reflection on all sides ; and to examine and re-examine 
 without end, the questions that interest me. I have been stimu- 
 lated, as long as I can remember, by an ambition for intellectual 
 distinction ; but as long as I can remember, I have been discour- 
 aged, when I have endeavored to cast the sum of my intellectual 
 value, by finding that I did riot possess, in the degree of some 
 other men, an intuitive perception of intellectual beauty." 
 
 " What I wanted in this respect," he continues, 
 " Mary possessed, in a degree superior to any other 
 person I ever knew." 
 
 1 " A Poetical Epistle addressed to Miss Wollstouecraft. 
 Occasioned by reading her celebrated Essay on the Rights of 
 Woman." By John Henry Colls. London, 1795. 
 
 2 Mrs. J. Marshall : The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstone- 
 craft Shelley, 1889, Vol. II, p. 269. 
 
INTELLECTUAL INFERIORITY. 121 
 
 " The strength of her mind lay in intuition. She was often 
 right, by this means only, in matters of mere speculation. She 
 adopted one opinion, and rejected another, spontaneously, by a 
 sort of tact, and the force of a cultivated imagination ; and yet, 
 though perhaps, in the strict sense of the term, she reasoned 
 little, it is surprising what a degree of soundness is to be found 
 in her determinations. In a robust and unwavering judgment 
 of this sort, there is a kind of witchcraft ; when it decides 
 justly, it produces a responsive vibration in every ingenuous 
 mind. In this sense, my oscillation and scepticism were fixed 
 by her boldness." 1 ^ 
 
 This contrast, pointed out by Godwin, is gene- 
 rally thought characteristic of man and woman. 
 Man is said to reach his conclusions by the slow 
 process of logical reasoning, while woman takes a 
 shorter road, led by an unerring instinct, which some 
 designate intuition. But intuitive perception is 
 not to be confounded with that instinctive glance 
 of the proportion of things, which women are said to 
 possess. Spinoza distinguishes between three kinds 
 of knowledge : That which is attained through opi- 
 nions or perceptions ; that which is the product of 
 reason ; and that which is intuitive. The last he con- 
 siders the highest, for it seeks to explore the nature 
 of things/' Genius has its home amid intuitive per- 
 ceptions; and the idea, that comes spontaneously 
 and unlooked-for, passes the threshold of the uncon- 
 scious to the conscious as an intuition. But the 
 idea, if born in the artists' mind, demands industry 
 and skill of execution, before it can be of value 
 to the human race ; if it is a gift to the scientist, it 
 
 1 W. Godwin : Memoirs of the author of a Vindication of the 
 Rights of Woman, London, 1798, p. 197. 
 
 2 Spinoza : Ethica. Part II. Proposition 41. 
 
 16 
 
122 THK CAUSKS OF WOMAN'S 
 
 is but the beginning of a long process of laborious 
 experiments, before it can even be called a discovery ; 
 and in the same way, the speculative mind may see 
 clearly as with an eagle's eye ; yet if discursive 
 thought is lacking, carefully to mark the steps that 
 lead to a demonstration of the truth, this power of 
 intellectual sight, as a fresh source of knowledge, is 
 lost to the world. 
 
 Though it may perhaps be said, that women 
 are in possession of intuitive powers of mind, 
 if not to as great a degree, yet with a greater 
 number of instances, than is the case with men, 
 they certainly have been lacking in that patient 
 plodding of reason, that converts the new-found 
 thought into a real acquisition to the treasure- 
 house of human knowledge. On the other hand, 
 it has undoubtedly often been the case, that 
 women have uttered a thought, which men have 
 made their own, which they have worked out and 
 given to the world, unconscious, perhaps, that they 
 have merely decked out an idea which another 
 furnished. 
 
 Hartmann claims that women are closer to the 
 Unconscious, i.e., to the ultimate ground of exist- 
 ence, than men. Woman is to man, he says, 
 as instinctive, unconscious action is to reasonable 
 or conscious action. He is therefore not in favor 
 of a movement, which is to make women like unto 
 men, so far as the training and application of reason 
 is concerned ; though according to his philosophy, 
 the intuitive perceptions, which the mind draws 
 from the Unconscious, are utilized in behalf of 
 
INTELLECTUAL INFERIORITY. 123 
 
 the human race, only as they pass through a process 
 of close reasoning- and demonstration. He would 
 see woman retain her place as a tie, that aids the 
 connection between man and that ultimate ground 
 of existence, which he calls the Unconscious.* 
 Thus German Pessimism has found new cause why 
 woman should be denied the rights of reason ; not 
 in this case to gratify individual man, as in Mary 
 Wollstonecraft's days, but for the good of the race. 
 An explanation on psychological grounds is 
 offered by Dr. G. SimmeL* As the body of woman 
 resembles more that of a child, and is less differ- 
 entiated than that of man, so her mental proclivities, 
 her preferences and activities are gathered more 
 closely about a center, and present an existence 
 less specialized and independent. He defines 
 feeling as the sum of infinitely minute conceptions. 
 Where, as in the case of woman, feeling predomi- 
 nates, any single conception has little opportunity 
 to rise into prominence, by reason of the infinite 
 number of conceptions crowded together. The 
 whole receives attention rather than the parts ; 
 the result is considered rather than the factors ; 
 a decision is reached without dwelling on the 
 reasons that lead to it. This is the contrast 
 between feeling and conscious thought. Man's 
 mental activities are more differentiated ; he reaches 
 a logical conclusion by slow process. Woman 
 
 1 E. Von Hartniann : Philosophic desUnbewussten, Abschnitt. 
 B. Capitel xi. 
 
 - Dr. G. Simmel : Zur Psychologic cler Frauen. Zeitschrift 
 fur Volker Psychologic. Band xx. 1890. 
 
124 INTELLECTUAL INFERIORITY. 
 
 arrives at her conclusions with great rapidity, simply 
 because the abundance of conceptions do not call 
 forth searching thought, but yield their decision as 
 by an impulse. Development in the case of women 
 would thus lie in the direction of greater differ- 
 entiation, which implies training that would decrease 
 the tendency to feeling and increase the realm of 
 reason. This theory seems much in harmony with 
 the whole tenor of Mary Wollstonecraft's argument. 
 The solution of this question cannot be reached 
 until after women, for a number of generations, 
 have had perfect freedom to cultivate their powers 
 as they will. If the needs of the race continue to 
 demand of the majority of women a development 
 of mental functions, not of close resemblance to 
 those of men, they will not therefore be considered 
 intellectually inferior. Uniformity is not to be 
 gained at the cost of that healthful diversity which 
 perhaps nature intended.1 Mary Wollstonecraft's 
 proposition that reason must be the same in all, 
 does not to-day require proof. The nature of reason 
 is the same in man and woman, but the work which 
 the world requires of them may not, in some of its 
 aspects, be the same, and may therefore determine 
 shades of difference in the development of mental 
 resources. It is the problem of the future to give 
 free scope to the intellectual activities of all, to 
 break the fetterTwhichlEHe^Istinctions of sex have 
 laid upon the mental life of women, and thus to 
 utilize in behalf of the race the diversity of 
 natural endowment. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HER DISCUSSION OF WOMAN'S MORAL 
 INFERIORITY. 
 
 THE moral inferiority of women was to Mary 
 Wollstonecraft, in her day, as apparent as their 
 intellectual inferiority. In pointing out the causes, 
 that left the understanding of women in an un- 
 developed or perverted state, she dealt with the 
 facts of environment. Given the circumstances in 
 which women were placed, and the result must 
 inevitably be the condition, which she deplored. In 
 explaining the moral inferiority of women, her task 
 was beset with greater difficulties. The contro- 
 versy between the Intuitional and Utilitarian 
 Schools of English Ethics, the one taking a com- 
 plete set of ultimate ethical truths for granted, the 
 other making utility, or conduciveness to pleasure, 
 the standard of conduct, found its echo in the 
 Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The author 
 repeatedly refers to the nnsettled state of ethical 
 conceptions, and desires to see the time, when 
 morality will have a fixed basis, for then, she 
 
126 HER DISCUSSION OF WOMAN'S 
 
 believed, women also would realize more fully, that 
 they are conscious moral agents. 
 
 There is little trace of the tenets of the 
 Utilitarian School in her views ; she was rather on 
 the side of the Intuitional School. Her friend, 
 Dr. Richard Price, was a member of this School. 
 In his Review of the Chief Questions and Difficul- 
 ties of Morals, he speaks of moral ideas as derived 
 from the u intuition of truth or immediate discern- 
 ment of the nature of things by the understanding." 
 Dr. Price revived the views of Cudworth of the 
 Cambridge School of Moralists, who maintained the 
 " essential and eternal distinctions of good and evil" 
 as independent of mere arbitrary will, whether 
 human or divine. The philosophers of this School 
 claimed, that the distinctions of good and evil have 
 an objective reality, and the knowledge of them 
 conies to the human mind from the divine. These 
 are views which Mary Wollstonecraft evidently 
 adopted, and in her Vindication of the Rights of 
 Woman they are to be found in their application to 
 her subject. 
 
 She argued, that one of the first and most far- 
 reaching causes of woman's moral inferiority, was 
 to be found in her inability to order her conduct 
 /according to the same eternal standard of virtue, 
 'which man considered binding to himself. The 
 principles, w r hich determined his conduct, were based 
 upon his relation to the supreme Being ; the conduct 
 of woman was made sufeject to the will of man. 
 Women were not permitted to turn to the founda- 
 tion of light, but were u forced to shape their 
 
MORAL INFERIORITY. 127 
 
 course by the twinkling of a mere satellite.'' l 
 Hence not only the degree of virtue attained was 
 different in man and woman, but it was not the 
 same in kind, for they had not the same criterion 
 of morals. The virtues of women were often 
 fluctuating, having no other foundation than utility, 
 and of that utility men pretended arbitrarily to 
 judge, shaping it to their own convenience. 
 
 " To account for, and excuse the tyranny of 
 man," Mary Wollstonecraft says, 
 
 "Many ingenious arguments have been brought forward to 
 prove, that the two sexes, in the acquirement of virtue, ought 
 to aim at attaining a very different character ; or to speak 
 explicitly, women are not allowed to have sufficient strength of 
 mind to acquire what really deserves the name of virtue. Yet 
 it should seem, allowing them to have souls, that there is but 
 one way appointed by Providence to lead mankind to either 
 virtue or happiness. ' ' - 
 
 That little hypothetical clause, " allowing them 
 to have souls," takes for granted, what in the early 
 centuries of the Christian era was a cause for 
 ecclesiastical controversy. The council at Macon, 
 in the sixth century, discussed at length the 
 question whether woman was in possession of a 
 soul. Mary Wollstonecraft is not called upon to 
 meet the foe thus openly ; he had hidden in her 
 day behind a tacit understanding, that though 
 women have souls, yet the distinction of sex must 
 confine these souls within certain limits. 
 
 With a view to enhancing woman's usefulness to 
 man, she was to practise those virtues, which fitted 
 her for her subordinate position. They were the 
 
 1 Rights of Woman, p. 50. - Ibid., p. 49. 
 
128 HER DISCUSSION OF WOMAN'S 
 
 negative virtues, sometimes designated female 
 virtues, principally gentleness, forbearance and long- 
 suffering. But Mary Wollstonecraft makes a dis- 
 tinction between these virtues, when applied to the 
 Deity in poetic strains, bearing on their front all 
 the characteristics of grandeur, combined with the 
 winning graces of condescension, and these same 
 virtues when practised by helpless, oppressed women. 
 Gentleness, she says, loses its godlike character, 
 when it becomes the submissive demeanour of 
 dependence, the support of weakness that loves, 
 because it wants protection. It might be strictly 
 philosophical to recommend gentleness on a broad 
 basis to frail beings, but it could not then be termed 
 a virtue. Forbearance too, when it confounds 
 right and wrong, must cease to be a virtue. Thus 
 not even the negative virtues could nourish beneath 
 the sceptre of authority. 
 
 In Mary Wollstonecraft's day, as in ours, women 
 were credited with possessing more goodness of 
 heart, piety and benevolence than men. She doubts 
 this assumption, for ignorance would thus be made 
 the mother of devotion ; and is persuaded, that 
 " the proportion between virtue and knowledge 
 is more upon a par than is commonly granted." 1 
 She is here in touch with some of the greatest 
 philosophers of her own times and previous times. 
 Spinoza, in the form of geometrical proof, gave the 
 most classical demonstration of the close connection 
 between reason and virtue. The existence of 
 altruistic impulses, that seemingly arise spontane- 
 
 1 Rights of Woman, p. 94. 
 
MORAL INFERIORITY. 129 
 
 ously, without conscious relation to the intellect, is 
 not admitted by Mary Wollstonecraft. She would 
 not have the sensibility of women, their strong 
 attachments and instantaneous emotions of com- 
 passion interpreted as humanity, benevolence or 
 generosity ; for these qualities belong to mind as 
 well as nerves. " Besides," she says, " how can 
 women be just or generous, when they are the 
 slaves of injustice?" L 
 
 That woman should have been just, was thus to 
 her mind out of the question ; that she should have 
 been benevolent, again, was not to be expected ; 
 for ignorance kept her affections confined in a 
 narrow channel, concentrated upon her husband 
 and children, simply because they were her own. 
 Friendship, too, requiring reason as its cement, she 
 considered rare among women. Moreover with 
 respect to each other, she reasoned, they were all 
 rivals, and friendship was therefore almost im- 
 possible. Nor did she believe honesty and upright- 
 ness virtues peculiar to women ; she found that 
 they resorted rather to cunning and intrigue, the 
 qualities of him, who is subordinate and yet craves 
 power. Meanness and selfishness, Mary Wollstone- 
 craft considered the characteristics of women, not 
 because they were naturally so, but because their 
 absolute dependence upon men made them so. 
 
 With an unsparing hand Mary Wollstonecraft 
 pictures the women of her time as almost destitute 
 of virtue. Not one of her critics accuses her of 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 280. 
 
 17 
 
130 HER DISCUSSION OF WOMAN'S 
 
 over-stepping the bounds of truth and fact ; on the 
 contrary, this portion of her work was commended 
 as applicable to a large proportion of women. With 
 /her intense hatred of shams, she accused her country- 
 women of undermining morality by substituting 
 the show for the substance. They desired the 
 appearance of virtue, though true worth was want- 
 ing. She cites the example of women, whom she 
 had known, who neglected every domestic duty, even 
 squandered away the money, which should have been 
 saved for their helpless young children ; and yet 
 plumed themselves on their unsullied reputation, 
 as if the whole compass of their duty as wives and 
 mothers was only to preserve it. She had seen 
 others, who were indolent and wanting in every 
 virtue, and yet thought they had a claim upon 
 their husband's affection, because they were faithful. 
 It is an indirect tribute to the state of morality 
 in England at that time, that women desired, above 
 all things, to be considered virtuous and true with 
 respect to very important phases of civilized society. 
 Mary Wollstonecraft refused to admit that it was 
 binding upon woman more than upon man, to keep 
 pure the hidden springs of social life. She speaks 
 with pity of the outcast from society, and demands 
 for her not mercy, but justice. With indignation 
 she points to the woman, who spurns contact with 
 her, who has offended against the laws of society ; 
 but receives into her presence him, who is also 
 guilty. She is not unfair in her demands for 
 \ equality in virtue ; for while she expects, that 
 women practise the whole range of virtues, even 
 
 i 
 
MORAL INFERIORITY. 131 
 
 those, which are thought peculiar to men; she 
 expects equally, that men take their part in creating 
 an environment of healthful morality. So thorough 
 a student of the causes of woman's inferiority could 
 not overlook the fact, that an atmosphere of social 
 purity is an essential factor in the uplifting 
 of woman. 
 
 Character is formed by engaging in the acti- 
 vities of life. Women were hedged in by limita- 
 tions of various kinds, to the extent that normal 
 development of character was not within their 
 reach. They dared not pass out of the confined range 
 of their surroundings, in order to strive for some- 
 thing that seemed to them useful and desirable. By 
 carefully keeping them from contact with the con- 
 tending forces of active life, they were not, however, 
 made passionless ; in their little narrow scope, they 
 too had their passions. u By fits and starts they 
 are warm in many pursuits ; yet this warmth, never 
 concentrated into perseverance, soon exhausts itself; 
 exhaled by its own heat, or meeting with some 
 other fleeting passion, to which reason has never 
 given any specific gravity, neutrality ensues." l 
 Reason, which makes the steady, unflinching pur- 
 suit of some object possible, is not there to lend aid. 
 "When," Mary Wollstonecraft exclaims, "do we 
 hear of women, who, starting out of obscurity, 
 boldly claim respect on account of their great 
 abilities or daring virtues ? Where are they to be 
 found?" 2 In another place she gives her answer : 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 105. - Ibid., p. 101. 
 
132 HER DISCUSSION OF WOMAN'S 
 
 " They were made to be loved, and must not aim at 
 respect, lest they should be hunted out of society 
 as masculine." l 
 
 The members of human society are necessarily 
 dependent upon each other, in the various relations 
 of life. Mary Wollstonecraft reasoned that the 
 dependence of women upon men had assumed an 
 exaggerated form. One of the occasional passages 
 of humour in her book describes the reliance of 
 women upon the physical support of men. 
 
 " In the most trifling dangers," she says, " they cling to their 
 support, with parasitical tenacity, piteously demanding succour ; 
 and their natural protector extends his arm, or lifts up his voice, 
 to guard the lovely trembler from what? Perhaps the frown 
 of an old cow, or the jump of a mouse ; a rat would be a serious 
 danger. In the name of reason, and even common sense, what 
 can save such beings from contempt, even though they be soft 
 and fair?" - 
 
 This, she found was the result of confining 
 women to close rooms, till their muscles were 
 relaxed and those infantine airs were bred, that 
 degrade a rational being. She insisted that girls 
 should be sent out of doors to exercise, and that 
 fear, when displayed by them, instead of being 
 cherished, perhaps created, should be treated in 
 the same manner as cowardice in boys. "It is 
 true," Mary Wollstonecraft remarks, "they could 
 not then with equal propriety be termed the 
 sweet flowers that smile in the walk of man ; 
 but they would be more respectable members of 
 society." 3 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 69. 3 /&?., p, 106. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 107. 
 
MORAL INFERIORITY. 133 
 
 But their physical dependence was only an accom- 
 paniment of their mental dependence. "Women," 
 Mary Wollstonecraft claims, "are told from their 
 infancy, and are taught by the example of their 
 mothers, that a little knowledge of human weak- 
 ness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper,; 
 outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention 
 to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them 
 the protection of man ; and should they be beauti- 
 ful, everything else is needless, for, at least, twenty 
 years of their lives." 1 This was the character 
 which obtained for girls all their mothers desired 
 for them, and thus moral inferiority was passed 
 down from generation to generation. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft upbraids the women of her 
 times for their love of pleasure. Yet at the same time, 
 she points out, that this was simply another outcome 
 of their dependence on man. Had he desired a com- 
 panion in toil, they would have fitted themselves 
 for this place; for the seeking of pleasure was not a 
 quality belonging specifically to women. On the 
 other hand, he devoted his hours of leisure to them, 
 and wanted a toy, u a rattle, to jingle in his ears 
 whenever, dismissing reason, he chose to bej 
 amused." But virtue, in order to thrive, requires 
 healthier atmosphere than the pursuit of pleasure 
 can afford. The ambition to be man's companion 
 in his hours of leisure brought the activities of 
 women within very narrow limits. As Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft says : " Confined in cages like the feathered 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 49. 2 Ibid., p. 68. 
 
134 HER DISCUSSION OF WOMAN'S 
 
 race, they have nothing to do but to plume them- 
 selves, and stalk with mock majesty from perch to 
 .perch. It is true, they are provided with food and 
 f raiment, for which they neither toil nor spin; but 
 t health, liberty, and virtue, are given in exchange." 
 
 It might almost seem as if Mary Wollstonecraft 
 had entered the ranks of writers of her day, who 
 spoke lightly of women, and found occasion for 
 witticism, as they reviewed the distorted form, which 
 virtue assumed in their lives. Yet how different 
 was her motive ! She described the symptoms of 
 the disease, in order to show, that her diagnosis 
 was correct. It is difficult, in our day, to appreciate 
 fully the serious drawbacks, experienced by the 
 women, in certain classes of society, a century ago, 
 who had been educated according to the approved 
 standard of female excellence of the day, and were 
 then called upon to meet the difficulties of life. 
 They had been educated for man ; yet man was not 
 educated for them. They were ill prepared for the 
 experience that awaited them, when dreams and 
 sentiment were made subordinate to the hard facts 
 of existence ; or perhaps wholly crushed by coldness 
 and harshness. Marriage could not eradicate the 
 habitude of life ; and the serious question then was, 
 whether a woman had sufficient native energy to 
 look into herself for comfort, and cultivate her 
 dormant faculties. Often the spirit may have been 
 broken by discontent, and moral inferiority estab- 
 lished to an extent, that might almost be termed 
 a human wreck. 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 98. 
 
MORAL INFERIORITY. 135 
 
 The discussion of the causes of woman's inferi- 
 ority, as Mary Wollstonecraft traces them in their 
 effects even in the hidden springs of action, that 
 bless or curse private life, is not without its utili- 
 tarian element. She did not embrace the tenets of 
 the Utilitarian School in Ethics in its tendency to 
 make utility the sole standard of morality. Ques- 
 tions of mere utility had little hold upon her. 
 There is, instead, a deep conviction in her writings, 
 that happiness cannot be attained, when sought for 
 its own sake. She believed that that, which is 1 
 really of value in life, has to be attained amid stress I 
 and suffering. Yet she made the sound practical 
 demand to know to what extent human happiness 
 is attained by the prevailing system. Could woman, 
 made inferior intellectually and morally by a vari- 
 ety of causes, thus contribute to the fullest extent to 
 the well-being of the race? Did they, whose whole 
 education had had for its object, that they should be 
 made agreeable and useful to man, really make the 
 best wives? And did the women, who had been 
 rendered weak and trifling by surrounding condi- , 
 tions make the best mothers ? This was bringing | 
 the problem to the practical test. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft answers these questions 
 emphatically in the negative. She pictures women 
 in the home ; at work, it is true, but in a restless, 
 unsystematic way ; and points to the quiet resolu- 
 tion and the serious kind of perseverance, that is 
 required to fulfil domestic duties. In the discharge 
 of even the simplest duties, she thinks, there must 
 be some plan of conduct ; yet how can a sense of 
 
136 HER DISCUSSION OF WOMAN'S 
 
 order be expected " from a being who, from its 
 infancy, has been made the weathercock of its own 
 sensations. " i By the neglect of the understanding, 
 Mary Wollstonecraft claims, woman was detached 
 from domestic employments to a greater degree, than 
 could ever have been the case, by means of the most 
 serious intellectual pursuits. Reason is absolutely 
 necessary to aid in the performance of any duty, 
 and again she repeats that sensibility is not reason. 
 But does not feeling guide a woman aright in the 
 discharge of the duties, which motherhood lays upon 
 her ? An opinion prevailed, in her day as in ours ; 
 and no doubt much is to be said in favor of it ; that 
 by an innate instinct a mother knows what to do for 
 her child ; that her delicate tact can best devise 
 the means that lead to its development. This opi- 
 nion is directly opposed to the rationalistic basis of 
 Mary Wollstonecraft's reasoning in general, and she 
 makes no exception when her subject is the rela- 
 tion between mother and child. She demands an 
 enlightened maternal affection, as opposed to that 
 selfish attachment, which women have for their chil- 
 dren merely because they are their own. Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft unsparingly censures the women of her 
 times as neglectful of their duties as mothers. 
 Some sent their babes to a nurse, and only took 
 them from the nurse to send them to school. 
 Others, women of sensibility, who wished to do 
 their duty, but had not the sober, steady eye of 
 reason, that plans conduct equally distant from 
 tyranny and indulgence, vacillated between these 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 114. 
 
MORAL INFERIORITY. 137 
 
 two extremes, and proved themselves unfit to 
 educate their children. 
 
 " To be a good mother," Mary Wollstonecraft says, 
 " a woman must have sense, and that independence 
 of mind, which few women possess, who are taught 
 to depend entirely on their husbands. Meek wives 
 are, in general, foolish mothers. They want their 
 children to love them best, and take their part, in 
 secret, against the father, who is held up as a scare- 
 crow." L The author recognizes the transgressions 
 against the law of heredity, of which men had been 
 guilty by demanding unconditioned obedience from 
 women, in exclaiming : " Who can tell, how many 
 generations may be necessary to give vigour to the 
 virtue and talents of the freed posterity of abject 
 slaves?" Moreover she thinks it "vain to expect 
 the present race of weak mothers either to take 
 that reasonable care of a child's body, which is 
 necessary to lay the foundation of a good consti- 
 tution ; or, to manage its temper so judiciously 
 that the child will not have, as it grows up, to 
 throw off all that its mother, its first instructor, 
 directly or indirectly taught." 
 
 Thus Mary Wollstonecraft pictures v/oman as 
 incapacitated even for that sphere, which, in accord- 
 ance with the laws of nature, and the common 
 opinion of mankind, is peculiarly her own ; weak, 
 because she leans on a being, who, like herself is 
 often in need of support ; unable to see in the true 
 light her relation to her kindred, and therefore 
 deprived of comfort and satisfaction, which should 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 227. z Ibid., p. 126. 
 
 18 
 
138 HER DISCUSSION OF WOMAN'S 
 
 be the outcome of family relation ; shut out from 
 participation in those broad interests that concern 
 the welfare of the nation and of the human 
 race. In the performance of their duties, women 
 fell short in rendering to society that, which 
 was due. Yet though Mary Wollstonecraft points 
 out the failures and the weakness of women, as they 
 faced every important duty of life, justice compels 
 her again and again to call attention to the prin- 
 ciple, which has been slow in gaining a foothold in 
 human society, that where there are duties, there 
 are also rights. Authority, she says, cannot compel 
 women to discharge their duties in a virtuous 
 manner. But if, after they have received their 
 rights, and have learned how to use them, they 
 should continue to fail in the performance of their 
 duties, then, and not until then, it would be just to 
 term them beings, who are morally inferior by 
 nature. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft's discussion of the moral 
 inferiority of women is peculiarly one-sided. There 
 were many in her day, who shared her opinion that 
 women are morally inferior. She does not in this 
 respect stand isolated. Moreover, since she had set 
 herself the task of showing, that women suffered 
 because deprived of their rights, she was justified in 
 making her argument as forcible as she could, con- 
 sistent with truthfulness. If, to-day, her language 
 seems severe, it must be remembered that she 
 possessed the traits of the reformer, and shared the 
 reformer's tendency to exaggerate the evils against 
 which he is at war. 
 
MORAL INFERIORITY. 139 
 
 It is not in this respect that her discussion is 
 open to criticism. A subtle error runs through her 
 argument, which has its root in her excessive ration- 
 alism. She makes the mistake of applying to the 
 moral nature of women a formula of rationalism, 
 and, according to this, demonstrates their inferiority. 
 To argue, that reason and virtue stand to each other 
 in close relation, that women have not learned to 
 use their reason, and that therefore they have no 
 virtue, is manifestly a proceeding that leads to a 
 false conclusion. Mary Wollstonecraft could not 
 arrive at a correct estimate of the moral status of 
 women, by exalting reason, and ignoring the func- 
 tion of conscience, of spontaneous impulses, that 
 gather strength from family traits, race characteris- 
 tics, general environment and religious motive. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 HER DEMANDS FOR THE EDUCATION OF 
 WOMAN. 
 
 MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT in her study of history, 
 and in her observations of the condition of man, 
 came to the conclusion, that either nature had made 
 great difference between man and man, or that the 
 civilization, that had hitherto taken place, had been 
 very partial. She says : "I have turned over 
 various books written on the subject of education, 
 and patiently observed the conduct of parents and 
 the management of schools ; but what has been the 
 result? A profound conviction that the neglected 
 education of my fellow-creatures is the grand source 
 of the misery I deplore." l 
 
 Her definition of education is as follows : "By 
 individual education, I mean, such an attention to a 
 child as will slowly sharpen the senses, form the 
 temper, regulate the passions as they begin to fer- 
 ment, and set the understanding to work before the 
 body arrives at maturity ; so that the man may only 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 31. 
 
THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 141 
 
 liave to proceed, not to begin, the important task of 
 learning to think and reason." l She claims that 
 education is viewed in a false light, if it is regarded 
 as a preparation for life ; it is in itself and for all 
 human beings a good and desirable possession. 
 
 The conception of education, which makes human 
 perfection the end in view, has a strong ethical back 
 ground Where education is regarded in the light 
 of a preparation for life, there is necessarily a ' 
 bending of ideals to mere questions of utility. Mary 
 Wollstonecraft's rationalistic tendencies here serve * 
 to form the basis of her views on education. The - 
 perfectibility of human reason is the cornerstone, 
 and all the various schemes of life, which demand 
 a preparation, that runs counter to the claims of 
 human reason, to attain to a perfection, which should 
 be sought for its own sake, are set aside. She thus 
 lays the foundation for equality in pedagogical 
 lines. Distinction of sex is obliterated, where 
 reason and its perfectibility constitute the claim f 
 upon educational opportunities. Woman's right 
 to an education, regardless of the question whether 
 it will fit her, or unfit her, for her peculiar duties, is 
 thus established ; for she is endowed with reason, 
 and the demands of reason must first be satisfied, 
 the question of utility will find its own answer in 
 each individual case, as the mind unfolds. 
 
 Undoubtedly, Mary Wollstonecraft, not only in 
 the tendency of her philosophical, but also of her 
 pedagogical thought, sat at the feet of her great 
 countryman, John Locke. Locke's pedagogy is an 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 51. 
 
142 THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 
 
 organic part of his philosophy. Since he considers 
 the mind as tabula rasa at birth, it is the object 
 of education to direct the impressions, which the 
 soul receives through the senses, in such a way, 
 that the powers of reason may be unfolded and 
 moral development keep pace with intellectual 
 growth. Reason and virtue stand in very direct 
 relation in his philosophy ; for reason guides the 
 will, and to think right, is to act right. Virtue and 
 happiness are to each other as cause and effect, and 
 virtue is cultivated by an habitual restraint upon 
 the desires and passions that seek those minor 
 possessions of life, which are calculated to satisfy 
 only temporary needs. 
 
 In her first little treatise on education, Mary 
 Wollstonecraft refers to Locke in the following 
 words : u To be able to follow Mr. Locke's system, 
 (and this may be said of almost all treatises on 
 education) the parents must have subdued their 
 own passions, which is not often the case in any 
 considerable degree." * There are sentences in this 
 little book that seem to point directly to Locke. 
 She says : " It is the duty of a parent to preserve 
 a child from receiving wrong impressions." 2 And 
 again : " Above all, try to teach them to combine 
 their ideas. It is of more use than can be con- 
 ceived, for a child to learn to compare things that 
 are similar in some respects, and different in 
 others." 3 This reasoning is certainly much after 
 
 1 Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, p. n, Condon 1787. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 20. 
 
 3 The Rights of Woman, p. 22. 
 
THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 143 
 
 the manner of Locke, and seems to indicate, that 
 she had followed his precepts, converted them into 
 practice, and was then coining them into advice, 
 which was the result of her own experience ; for 
 when she wrote her Thoughts on the Education of 
 Daughters, she was a teacher. The foundation of 
 her pedagogical views was therefore laid under the 
 influence of Locke. Rousseau's Emile, the second 
 great pedagogical treatise of the century, came into 
 her hands when her strictly educational career had 
 nearly come to a close. She found the book most 
 attractive, yet there is little direct trace of its 
 influence upon her educational views. 
 
 Locke's pedagogy was decidedly rationalistic, 
 while Rousseau's method in education was the 
 method of mental inactivity." 1 Emile, until he is 
 fifteen years of age, is to be educated by the senses ; 
 reflection does not have a place ; for ideas are signs 
 that have to him no meaning. " Childhood," says 
 Rousseau, "is the sleep of reason," 2 and since 
 children are not capable of independent judgment, 
 it would not be wise to make them acquainted with 
 subjects, that are beyond their comprehension. 
 These expressions were plainly directed against 
 Locke, who says : "Children are at an early age 
 susceptible to reason, and consider it an honor to 
 be treated as reasonable beings." 3 Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft agrees with Locke: "It is easier, I grant," 
 she says, " to command than reason ; but it does 
 
 1 Rousseau : Emile, Book II. \ 152. 
 
 2 Ibid., 114. 
 
 9 J. Locke : Some Thoughts on Education, $ 81. 
 
144 THB EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 
 
 not follow that children cannot comprehend the 
 reason, why they are made to do certain things 
 habitually." L 
 
 In a short chapter on Duty to Parents^ in The 
 Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she protests 
 against the misuse of authority, which she had 
 often seen in the attitude of parents toward 
 their children. She says: "A slavish bondage to 
 parents cramps every faculty of the mind," and 
 quotes Mr. L,ocke as judiciously observing that, " if 
 the mind be curbed and humbled too much in 
 children ; if the spirits be abased and broken much 
 by too strict a hand over them ; they lose all their 
 vigour and industry." 2 Locke in his Treatise on 
 Civil Government claims in cool, logical argument, 
 that " the time comes when a child is as free from 
 subjection to the will and command of his father, as 
 the father himself is free from subjection to the will 
 of anybody else." 3 This thought is clothed by 
 Mary Wollstonecraft in more passionate language. 
 The memory of the species of tyranny, which she 
 endured under her parental roof adds warmth to 
 her protests. The revolutionary spirit penetrates 
 her views on education. She attacks the vestiges 
 of the patriarchal system, which, in its strongest 
 development, gave the father unlimited power even 
 over the life of his children. 
 
 Both I/ocke and Rousseau were in favor of 
 private education. The former, in Some Thoughts 
 concerning Education dealt with the education 
 
 i The Rights of Woman, p. 233. 2 Ibid., p. 232. 
 
 3 J. Locke : Treatise in Civil Government, VI. $ 66. 
 
THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 145 
 
 by his tutor of a nobleman's son ; and the 
 latter, in his Emile took a boy of common capa- 
 city and depicted the help given by a tutor to 
 aid his natural course of development. Mary 
 Wollstonecraft evidently refers to this, when she 
 says : " A man cannot retire into a desert with his 
 child, and if he did, he could not bring himself 
 back to childhood, and become the proper friend 
 and play fellow of an infant or youth." 1 Children 
 confined to the society of men and women soon 
 acquire, she thinks, a kind of premature manhood, 
 that stops the vigorous growth of mind or body. If 
 a number of children are made to pursue the same 
 objects, their faculties open and they are excited to 
 think for themselves. But however great a child's 
 affection for his parent may be, he will always long 
 to play and prattle with other children, and it is 
 only in the society of his equals in age, that he 
 acquires frank ingenuousness of behaviour and lays 
 the foundation of that broad love for humanity that 
 should mark the citizen. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft voiced the sentiments of 
 the French Republicans, in advocating national 
 education. She thus favored measures not sanction- 
 ed by Locke, and strenuously opposed by Rousseau. 
 Locke decided against it largely because a 
 teacher, who has charge of a number of children, 
 cannot give adequate attention to the individuali- 
 ty of each pupil. Rousseau, in the opening 
 remarks of his first chapter in Emile, discusses 
 the question, as to whether the end in view in 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 236. 
 
 19 
 
146 THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 
 
 the education of his pupil is, to train him to be a 
 human being, or to be a citizen. As he made a 
 distinction between natural liberty and civil liberty, 
 so he distinguishes between man as nature moulds 
 him, who is everything in himself, and man the 
 citizen, whose value can only be determined by his 
 relations to social life. Emile, until he is fifteen 
 years of age, cultivates those virtues only, which 
 refer to himself. He is industrious, temperate, 
 patient, persistent, and full of courage. Of social 
 virtues he is ignorant; until after a period of rapid 
 transition, warm love for humanity springs up in 
 his heart, and with it the appreciation of the virtues 
 that bind society. 
 
 This course does not commend itself to Mary 
 Wollstonecraft. She would begin early to train 
 children to be good citizens. In the national schools, 
 which she advocated, in place of the various kinds of 
 private schools, then in vogue in England, she 
 desired various measures to be adopted, that would 
 nourish public spirit. Every species of tyranny 
 was to be excluded. She would banish the office 
 of ushers, who in their dependent position, were 
 often looked upon by the master in the light 
 of servants ; yet the pupils were expected to obey 
 them. " I believe," she says, " that experience will 
 ever prove, that this kind of subordinate authority 
 is particularly injurious to the morals of youth. 
 What indeed, can tend to deprave the character 
 more than outward submission and inward con- 
 tempt." 1 This humane spirit was even to extend 
 
 1 The Rights_of Woman, p. 250. 
 
THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 147 
 
 to the treatment of animals. " Humanity to 
 animals," she remarks, " should be particularly 
 inculcated as a part of national education, for it is 
 not at present one of our national virtues." l In 
 advocating this, she looked not only to the well-being 
 of the animals, that fell into the way of boys at 
 school and furnished them rare sport ; she looked to 
 the consequences of habitual cruelty practised during 
 school-days. " The transition, as they grow up, 
 from barbarity to brutes, to domestic tyranny over 
 wives, children and servants, is very easy ; justice, 
 or even benevolence, will not be a powerful 
 spring of action unless it extend to the whole 
 creation." 
 
 A peculiarly democratic measure, which Mary 
 Wollstonecraft would see introduced into national 
 schools, was that of making children and youths 
 independent of the masters respecting punishments. 
 " They should be tried by their peers, which would 
 be an admirable method of fixing sound principles 
 of justice in the mind, and might have the happiest 
 effect on the temper, which is very early soured or 
 irritated by tyranny, till it becomes peevishly 
 cunning or ferociously overbearing." 2 Objections 
 might be raised against this measure, on the ground 
 that children would have the character of the citizen 
 impressed upon them, at too early an age; for 
 justice seems rather to be a virtue peculiar to riper 
 years. Yet children, who passed through schools, 
 where they had not become accustomed to dread 
 the display of despotic power, on the part of the 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 256. 2 Ibid., p. 254. 
 
148 THF, EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 
 
 master, and had learned to look upon each other as 
 equals, associating with each other as such ; and 
 had even been introduced to the science of weighing- 
 each other's conduct in the balance of justice, would 
 be in possession of training, that would tend to 
 ripen the powers for an early participation in the 
 duties of a democratic government. 
 
 This measure had been advocated by Prince 
 Talleyrand, in his pamphlet on The Improvement of 
 National Education. Some of the opinions express- 
 ed in this pamphlet, had been adopted by Mary 
 Wollstonecraft. Talleyrand, whose views in the 
 direction of ecclesiastical reform had had such mark- 
 ed effect upon the National Assembly in France, 
 had opinions to offer on educational matters also ; 
 for France was at that time in a political position to 
 revise its system of education. The new constitu- 
 tion, drawn up by the French Republicans, shortly 
 before Mary Wollstonecraft wrote her Vindication of 
 the Rights of Woman, provided for general educa- 
 tion, but omitted measures for the education 
 of girls after the age of eight. They were to be 
 trained by their parents at home, chiefly in the 
 domestic arts, since they only were considered 
 useful for them. Condorcet alone believed in the 
 intellectual equality of the sexes. In England 
 education did not become a national concern until 
 the latter part of the present century. An English 
 author writes : " Three centuries have passed 
 away since England, through the Protestant 
 Reformation, declared that light was better than 
 darkness, and only seventeen years since we 
 
THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 149 
 
 decided that light was better for the mass of the 
 people." ' 
 
 However much may be said in favour of national 
 education, the system has its defects, and some of 
 these were pointed out by Godwin in his Political 
 Justice. In his chapter on National Education, 
 after stating the arguments generally brought for- 
 ward in its favour, he mentions, under three heads, 
 the injuries which may result from it. In the first 
 place, all public establishments include the idea of 
 permanence. Though they realize the most substan- 
 tial benefits at the time of their introduction, this 
 must inevitably become less and less the case, as they 
 increase in duration, until finally they actively res- 
 train the flights of mind, and fix it in the belief of 
 exploded errors. God win says; " It has frequently 
 been observed of universities, and extrusive estab- 
 lishments for the purpose of education, 'that the 
 knowledge taught there, is a century behind the 
 knowledge, which exists among the unshackled 
 and unprejudiced members of the same political 
 community." 2 His charge is, that public education 
 has always expended its energies in the support of 
 prejudice ; that it teaches its pupils, not the forti- 
 tude, that shall bring every proposition to the test of 
 examination, but the art of vindicating such 
 tenets, as may chance to be established; and this 
 
 1 Thomas Kirkup : An Inquiry into Socialism, p. 23. Condon 
 1887. 
 
 2 William Godwin : Enquiry concerning Political Justice and 
 its influence on Morals and Happiness. Fourth Edition, 
 
 1842. Volume II, p. 143. 
 
150 THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 
 
 charge is not a light one. Godwin is jealous for 
 intellectual freedom. The instant, when a man 
 decides upon closing the career of enquiry, is equiva- 
 lent to him, to the instant of his intellectual 
 decease. 
 
 The second defect in the system of national 
 education is psychological. It is in accordance 
 with the nature of man's mind, that whatever each 
 man does for himself, is done well ; whatever his 
 neighbours, or his country, undertake to do for him, 
 is done ill. There must be desire, either to teach 
 or to learn, before enthusiasm and energy carry the 
 effort forward to success. Man estimates at its 
 true value, that, which he acquires, because he 
 desires it, while that, which is thrust upon him, may 
 make him indolent, but cannot make him respect- 
 able. This reverts to one of Godwin's funda- 
 mental propositions, that "unpatronized truth is in- 
 adequate to the purpose of enlightening mankind." 
 
 The third point which Godwin makes, is that 
 national education means the alliance between edu- 
 cation and the government, an alliance, which seems 
 to him more formidable, than the much contested 
 alliance between church and state. Government, 
 he believes, would not fail to strengthen its hands, 
 and to perpetuate its institutions. The views of 
 its agents, as institutors of a system of education, 
 would be analogous to the data, upon which their 
 conduct as statesmen is vindicated. Godwin says : 
 " Had the scheme of a national education been 
 adopted, when despotism was most triumphant, it 
 is not to be believed, that it could have for ever 
 
THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 15! 
 
 stifled the voice of truth. But it would have been 
 the most formidable and profound contrivance for 
 that_purpose, that imagination can suggest. " 
 
 Professor Menger says of Godwin, that the germs 
 of the ideas of modern socialism and anarchism are 
 to be found in his work. 1 Looking at this small 
 chapter of his work, it is evident that his argument 
 is turned against socialism. In the objection on 
 psychological grounds, he uses the argument, which 
 is one of the strongest, that socialism has to face. 
 Equality of opportunity, the watchword of social- 
 ism, finds no place in this most important factor in 
 human development. He is, in this case, on the 
 side of anarchy, advocating complete negation of 
 government control, while all power is vindicated 
 to the individual, to carry on his investigations 
 concerning truth and justice in his own way. The 
 question, as to how opportunity is to be offered, 
 finds its answer in his views on property, which 
 give him an important place in the historical 
 part of the discussions of to-day, on this vexed 
 question in economic science. His theory is, 
 that each member of the community has a perma- 
 nent right to the use of those things, which, 
 attributed to him, result in a greater sum of 
 benefit or pleasure, than if otherwise appropriated. 
 This theory seems Utopian, even after a century of 
 much agitation, concerning the unequal distribution 
 of wealth. Yet the principle is one that governs 
 many well regulated families ; communistic socie- 
 
 1 Dr. Anton Menger : Das Recht auf den vollen Arbeitser- 
 trag. Zweite Auflage. Stuttgart, 1891, p. 40. 
 
152 THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 
 
 ties have applied it to practice on a larger scale. 
 Godwin, however, admits, that a complete moral 
 change must be wrought in mankind, before this 
 principle can to any extent be reduced to practice. 
 Mary Wollstonecraft deals with the actual facts 
 in the economic conditions of her times, that made 
 it desirable, that the nation should carry on the 
 work of education. Her course is in the direction 
 of socialism. Her criticism of the system of edu- 
 cation prevalent in England at the time, was all 
 levelled against the interference of property with 
 pedagogical principles. Two kinds of schools 
 were in vogue, boarding schools and day schools, 
 and both were private enterprises. The evils, which 
 follow in the train of private property, foremost of 
 which is competition, were of peculiar effect here. 
 Mary Wollstonecraft spoke from experience ; for she 
 too had conducted a day-school, and had found herself 
 dependent on the caprice of parents. She describes, 
 how the master finds himself under necessity of 
 giving the parents some sample of the boy's abilities, 
 which during vacation is shown to every visitor ; 
 how he loads the memory of the pupil with un- 
 intelligible words, of which to make a show ; and 
 winds the poor machine up to some extraordinary 
 exertion, that injures the wheels and stops the 
 progress of gradual improvement. " Yet how can 
 these things be remedied," she says, " whilst school- 
 masters depend entirely on parents for a subsistence ; 
 and, when so many rival schools hang out their 
 lures to catch the attention of vain fathers and 
 mothers, whose parental affection only leads them 
 
THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 153 
 
 to wish that their children should outshine those 
 of their neighbours ? m This evil must have had 
 unusual scope at that time in England; for she 
 adds : " Without great good luck, a sensible, con- 
 scientious man would starve before he could raise a 
 school, if he disdained to bubble weak parents by 
 practising the secret tricks of the craft." 
 
 In boarding schools the strain was apparent in 
 another direction. The parents were often in quest 
 of the cheapest schools, and the master could not 
 live, if he did not take a much greater number than 
 he could manage. Many crammed together, the 
 body, heart and understanding were equally stunted. 
 Boys, who, at great expense, lived with the masters 
 and assistants, were never domesticated ; for the 
 former kept up an intercourse with the nobility, 
 which introduced vanity and extravagance into 
 their families. Those professions, says Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft, are most debasing, whose ladder is patron- 
 age ; yet out of one of these professions the tutors 
 of the boys were chosen. " But, can they be ex- 
 pected to inspire independent sentiments, whose 
 conduct must be regulated by the cautious prudence 
 that is ever on the watch for preferment?" She 
 continues : "So far, however, from thinking of 
 the morals of boys, I have heard several masters of 
 schools argue, that they only undertook to teach 
 Latin and Greek ; and that they had fulfilled their 
 duty, by sending some good scholars to college." 2 
 
 Her remarks in this connection show how closely 
 she occasionally touches the doctrines of socialism. 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 244. 2 Ibid., p. 242. 
 
 20 
 
154 THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 
 
 She admits, that a few good scholars may have 
 been formed by emulation and discipline, but she 
 regrets the health and morals of the large number, 
 who have been sacrificed to bring forward these few 
 clever boys. "It is not for the benefit of society," 
 she says, " that a few brilliant men should be 
 brought forward at the expense of the multitude. 
 It is true that great men seem to start up, as great 
 revolutions occur, at proper intervals, to restore 
 order, and to blow aside the clouds that thicken 
 over the face of truth ; but let more reason and 
 virtue prevail in society, and these strong winds 
 would not be necessary." 1 Her contention is 
 against an aristocracy of learning ; though she 
 perceives, that where there is equality of opportu- 
 nity, and the survival of the fittest does not imply 
 so much of stress, exceptionally great men will no 
 longer arise, but the average will rise to a higher 
 level. She is in favour of a high average. 
 
 The restraint and wearisome confinement, in 
 boarding schools for girls, was even greater than that 
 endured by boys. Even in their hours of recre- 
 ation, as Mary Wollstonecraft had seen in some 
 institutions, they were not allowed to play in the 
 garden, in healthful exercise, but were obliged to 
 pace with steady deportment, stupidly backwards 
 and forwards, in the one broad walk ; holding up 
 their heads and turning out their toes, with shoul- 
 ders braced back. " The pure animal spirits, which 
 make both mind and body shoot out, and unfold 
 the tender blossoms of hope, were turned sour, and 
 
 Rights of Woman, p. 242. 
 
THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 155 
 
 were vented in vain wishes or pert repinings, that 
 contract the faculties and spoil the temper." * Some 
 of the characteristics of the female mind, that Mary 
 Wollstonecraft deplores, she traces to the influences 
 that stunted the development of girls in these 
 boarding schools. 
 
 The author draws a pleasing picture of the 
 country day-school, where a boy trudged in the 
 morning, wet or dry, carrying his books, and 
 returned in the evening to recount the feats of the 
 day close at the parental knee. She appeals to 
 many superior men, who were educated in this 
 manner, whether their father's home was not ever 
 after fondly remembered ; and whether the recol- 
 lection of some shady lane, where they conned their 
 lesson, or of some stile, where they sat making a 
 kite, did not endear their country to them. Those 
 day-schools, she believed, contained the most impor- 
 tant elements of a sound education ; for they gave 
 opportunity for that blending of home influences and 
 school discipline, that tends to mould the citizen. 
 " Public education, of every denomination," she 
 says, "should be directed to form citizens ; but if you 
 wish to make good citizens, you must first exercise 
 the affections of a son and a brother. This is the 
 only way to expand the heart ; for public affections 
 as well as public virtues must ever grow out of the 
 private character." 1 
 
 This is a beautiful vindication of home life and 
 family ties. In the State, the individual finds his 
 highest development ; yet this cannot be attained 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 246. 2 Ibid., p. 242. 
 
156 THE EDUCATION OK WOMAN. 
 
 without the nurture of the heart, and that exercise 
 of youthful sympathies, to which family life gives 
 play. Affection for mankind is seldom found in 
 those, " who did not first love their parents, their 
 brothers, sisters, and even the domestic brutes, their 
 first play-mates." * If children were separated from 
 their parents for educational purposes, Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft doubts, whether they would become better 
 citizens, by sacrificing the preparatory affections 
 and thus " destroying the force of relationships 
 that render the marriage state as necessary as it is 
 respectable." 2 
 
 Those who, judging from the title, expected to 
 find that the Vindication of the Rights of Woman 
 attacked the sanctity of the family, had here the 
 strongest evidence, that this was not the case. The 
 claims, which children have upon that permanent 
 union of their parents, that forms the foundation of 
 the influences, that have the most powerful bearing 
 upon their lives, is here respected and insisted 
 upon. Moreover, since the immediate care of the 
 children devolves upon the mother, Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft marked out to a majority of women their 
 chief employment, for at least a term of years. She 
 expresses this in another connection in the follow- 
 ing words : " Speaking of women at large, their 
 first duty is to themselves as rational creatures, and 
 the next in point of importance, as citizens, is that, 
 which includes so many, of a mother." The 
 duties of motherhood do not, according to her 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 243. 2 Ibid., p, 243. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 218. 
 
THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 157 
 
 opinion, take the first place. Woman owes it to 
 herself and to the family, which she may rear, to 
 strive in the direction of a rich intellectual and 
 moral maturity, that shall fit her to choose the 
 kind of work, to which she would give herself, 
 whether this work is dictated by the claims of 
 maternity, or by fitness for other pursuits. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft is in advance of her time, in 
 her demand, that mothers should represent person- 
 ality in themselves. They are not to sink into the 
 daily routine of caring for their children's wants, 
 generally the material wants only ; for the 
 mother, who is reduced to the drudge, has lost the 
 elasticity of mind, that keeps step with the 
 mental growth of her children. "If children 
 are to be educated to understand the true prin- 
 ciple of patriotism, their mother must be a 
 patriot," Mary Wollstonecraft rightly says. The 
 Vindication of the Rights of Woman has the aim of 
 making women better mothers ; and by insisting 
 that education should not take children out of 
 their homes, the author leaves the full range of 
 those maternal activities open, that put into the 
 hands of women some of the highest and most far- 
 reaching duties, which the State can call upon its 
 citizens to perform. So far then from cramping 
 maternal instincts, their rightful and honored place 
 in the organism of the State is vindicated to them. 
 
 The object, which Mary Wollstonecraft seeks 
 mainly to accomplish by advocating national edu- 
 cation is the introduction of co-education. Her 
 plan for the establishment of national schools is as 
 
158 THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 
 
 fallows : The teachers are to be chosen by a select 
 committee in each parish, to whom complaints of 
 negligence can be made ; if signed by six of the 
 children's parents. Without distinction of sex or 
 wealth, children under nine years of age are to 
 be taught in schools absolutely free to all, and 
 obliged to submit to the same discipline, or leave 
 the school. In order to prevent any distinctions of 
 vanity, she would even see the children dressed 
 alike. But study is not to be made irksome to the 
 little ones ; they are not to be confined to sedentary 
 employment for more than an hour at a time ; but 
 much is to be taught them by way of relaxation. 
 The school-room is to be surrounded by a large 
 piece of ground, and here they are to be taught the 
 elements of botany, astronomy and mechanics ; for 
 " many things improve and amuse the senses, when 
 introduced as a kind of show, to the principles of 
 which, dryly laid down, children would turn a 
 deaf ear." i 
 
 She evidently anticipates in these sensible 
 measures the modern Kindergarten. She would 
 also see the Socratic form of teaching by conver- 
 sation introduced, as the best way of teaching 
 children the elements of religion, history and 
 politics. It is to be noticed, that she does not 
 omit the study of religion in her plan for national 
 education. After the age of nine, differentiation 
 is to begin, natural aptitude and individual choice 
 is to be taken into consideration ; and while all 
 remain together in the morning, to continue their 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 251. 
 
THE: EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 159 
 
 studies, the afternoons may be devoted by boys to 
 learning mechanical trades, by girls to learning 
 to do house- work and millinery. She would 
 thus place industrial training also under national 
 protection. 
 
 Co-education forms the central and well defined 
 thought of the chapter on national education. In 
 advocating the desirability of educating young 
 people together, she tread on new ground ; for at 
 that time not even a limited practical experience 
 offered foundation for theory. Yet, as she had 
 claimed throughout, that the nature of reason is the 
 same in all ; and had denounced the system of 
 female education, which exaggerated feeling and 
 neglected the understanding, it remained to be 
 shown, how that reason was to receive the training, 
 that would enable woinan^jto take her place by the 
 side of man. Nothing could seem a simpler solu- 
 tion than co-education. 
 
 She did not hesitate, lest by advocating something 
 new, she might destroy that, which had borne well 
 the test of experience. There is a touch of sarcasm 
 in the last sentence of the following appeal, which 
 she makes to the French nation : 
 
 " Let an enlightened nation then try, what effect reason 
 would have, to bring women back to nature, and their duty ; 
 and allowing them to share the advantages of education and 
 government with man, see whether they will become better as 
 they grow wiser and become free. They cannot be injured by 
 the experiment ; for it is not in the power of man to render 
 them more insignificant than they are at present." l 
 
 Women had nothing to lose, and much to gain. 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 250. 
 
l6o THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 
 
 It is significant of the socialistic tendency of the 
 demands of Mary Wollstonecraft, that she expects 
 equality in education not through individual effort, 
 but as a right granted by broad national policy. 
 The only criticism that can be made to-day, is, that 
 her demands did not reach far enough. She rightly 
 demanded that primary schools should be national 
 establishments ; had she followed this to its logical 
 consummation, she would have demanded, that 
 higher education likewise should be sheltered by 
 national institutions, open to rich and poor, man and 
 woman, regardless of colour and creed. This would 
 have been in accordance with the inherent tendency 
 of the process of social development at the present 
 time. She took the first step ; in the midst of the 
 second she halted. In sketching her plan for a 
 system of national education, after speaking of 
 primary education, she says : " The young people of 
 superior abilities, or fortune, might now be taught, 
 in another school, the dead and living languages, 
 the elements of science, and continue the study of 
 history and politics, on a more extensive scale." l 
 This would make the right of entry, to the institu- 
 tions for higher education, the privilege of wealth. 
 Class distinction would thus remain, to divide 
 society into two classes, the educated and the unedu- 
 cated. Equality of opportunity cannot be realized, 
 where the mere possession of riches can secure one 
 of the most influential privileges, that of education. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft is very moderate in her 
 demands for the higher education of women. She 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 251. 
 
THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN. l6l 
 
 was treading on unknown territory ; for though the 
 brilliant achievements of some of the women of her 
 times might have fanned her hopes; yet, in her 
 book, she resolutely looks away from the excep- 
 tional cases, and confines herself to the plain, dull 
 average ; and there she had nothing to inspire hope 
 beyond the fact, that woman is in possession of 
 reason, and that reason in its nature must be the 
 same in all. Her hints and suggestions are given 
 largely with a view to fitting them for their posi- 
 tion in the home ; for it is her chief contention, that 
 the ignorance, in which women are kept, tends to 
 incapacitate the maternal character, and thus takes 
 woman out of her sphere. The ignorance of 
 women, she claims, renders the infancy of man 
 a much more perilous state than that of animals. 
 If it were only on this account, she deems the 
 national education of women of the utmost im- 
 portance. u In public schools therefore, to guard 
 against the errors of ignorance, women should be 
 taught the elements of anatomy and medicine, not 
 only to enable them to take care of their own 
 health, but to make them rational nurses of their 
 children, parents and husbands." 1 They should be 
 led to observe the progress of the human under- 
 standing in the improvement of the sciences and 
 arts; "never forgetting the science of morality, 
 or the study of the political history of mankind." 
 
 It might seem, in considering these special lines 
 of study, which Mary Wollstonecraft recommends 
 to women, that, after all, the distinction of sex is to 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 263. 
 
1 62 THE EDUCATION OK WOMAN. 
 
 enter education. She says nothing of a classical 
 education, of the severe mental drill, which men 
 must undergo. Expediency seems to be the motive 
 that inspires her advice ; she would have women 
 trained to fulfil domestic duties, to be wise mothers. 
 Even if this were the case, there would be a wide 
 difference, between this end in view, and that of 
 writers of her day, who merely sought to educate 
 women in a way, that they might be pleasing to 
 men. Does Mary Wollstonecraft merit the charge, 
 that after she had fought sexual distinction in the 
 realm of mind everywhere else, she leaves space 
 here for the entering wedge ? 
 
 It might seem so on the surface. Looking 
 deeper, however, it appears that Mary Wollstone- 
 craft had an insight into the needs of the human 
 race, beyond that of many educationalists even of 
 the present time. Her observations concerning 
 higher education do not extend very far, but she 
 insists on co-education throughout. She does not 
 give a forecast of the college woman of to-day, nor 
 does she discuss the advisability of Medical Colleges 
 for women, distinct from those of men. It is suffi- 
 cient, that at a time, seventy-five years in advance 
 of the first woman, who held her diploma as a medical 
 practitioner, she possessed the optimism to say : 
 " Women might certainly study the art of healing 
 and be physicians as well as nurses." * Her remarks, 
 which seemingly look to expediency only, indicate 
 a perception, dim perhaps, and not fully enunciated, 
 that after the whole range of educational advantages 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 221. 
 
THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 163 
 
 had been opened out to women, by means of 
 eo-education ; and after individualism had thus 
 received its just dues, in an unrestrained opportunity 
 of choice, that then differentiation according to sex 
 may begin, and that women, to a good degree, 
 must specialize in the studies, that pertain to home- 
 life. The study of sociology has opened out, in our 
 own day, avenues of research, which seem specially 
 inviting to women. Mary Wollstonecraft's scant 
 suggestions seem to point to this field of enquiry, 
 as offering opportunity for investigation of both 
 theoretical and practical nature. The true constitu- 
 tion of the family and its various functions, the 
 bearing of domestic economy upon political econo- 
 my, the prevention of crime, and many other 
 social problems await their solution, to some extent, 
 at the hands of women. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft left the widest scope to the 
 self-assertiveness of the individual, but combines 
 with this a full appreciation of the relation of 
 the individual to the progress of the race. The 
 individual must be subordinate to the process of 
 development, that carries forward humanity ; yet 
 in serving the interests of the whole, he takes the 
 path, that leads most readily to the furtherance of 
 his personal welfare. This conception Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft has embodied in her views concerning 
 the education of women ; and has thereby given 
 to her demands the character of reasonableness and 
 applicability. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 HER VINDICATION OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS 
 OF WOMAN. 
 
 SHORTLY before Mary Wollstonecraft wrote her 
 Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Talley- 
 rand Perigord, late Bishop of Autun, with whom 
 she was personally acquainted, had published a 
 pamphlet on National Education, in which he 
 observed, that u to see one-half of the human race 
 excluded by the other from all participation of 
 government, was a political phenomenon that, 
 according to abstract principles, it was impossible 
 to explain." She took for granted, that he had 
 herewith admitted the correctness of the principles, 
 which lay at the basis of her demands. With full 
 confidence in him as a staunch supporter of liberal 
 views, she hoped that opportunity would offer, 
 when his influence could do much to bring those 
 principles to the practical test in behalf of women. 
 In the beginning of that century, authors were 
 wont, in a somewhat slavish spirit, to dedicate their 
 books to their patrons of rank and means, in the 
 
THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 165 
 
 hope, that their words of flattery would realize for 
 them an adequate recompense. Motives of this 
 kind were far from influencing the author of the 
 Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She was 
 animated by the democratic spirit of her times. 
 The commendation of the people was the reward 
 she sought; and the acceptance of the measures, 
 which she advocated, her highest ambition. The 
 French nation seemed to her to stand foremost 
 among the nations, in its readiness to examine new 
 thoughts, and its ability to apply them. She thought 
 that some of the great minds, who formed the 
 constitution of the French Republicans, would coin- 
 cide with her, and that when this constitution was 
 revised, the rights of woman would be respected. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft opposed the commonly ac- 
 cepted opinion, that woman's activities could be 
 confined to domestic affairs. The events of the 
 French Revolution had plainly shown, that women, 
 however ignorant they might be, would interest 
 themselves in political affairs ; and that, " if they 
 were not permitted to enjoy legitimate rights, they 
 would intermeddle with cunning tricks and dark 
 intrigues, in order to obtain illicit privileges." She 
 maintained, that unless it could be proven, that 
 women are not in possession of reason, the State 
 has no right to exclude them from a participation 
 in the natural rights of mankind. This she con- 
 siders the flaw in the New Constitution, in which 
 French Democracy gloried. It seemed to indicate 
 that man must, in some shape, act like a tyrant ; 
 " and tyranny, in whatever part of society it rears 
 
1 66 THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 
 its brazen front, will ever undermine morality." 
 A people like the French, who had contended for 
 their freedom, and for the privilege of being allowed 
 to judge for themselves, respecting their own happi- 
 ness, could not now, she thought, be so inconsistent 
 and unjust^ that they should continue to subjugate 
 women. That they firmly believed, that they were 
 acting in the manner best calculated to promote 
 the happiness of women, did not, she thought, 
 detract from the injustice ; for "who made man the 
 exclusive judge, if woman partake with him the 
 gift of reason ? " 
 
 To some extent Mary Wollstonecraft shared in 
 the confidence, which some of the reformers of her 
 times had in the efficacy of liberty. She thought 
 the boon of freedom would be an effectual means of 
 the regeneration of women. Her appeal to men is : 
 " Make them free, and they will quickly become 
 wise and virtuous." 1 There is a touch of im- 
 patience in this demand, as if the application of a 
 single formula could work the change, which im- 
 proved conditions only can bring about in the slow 
 process of growth. This was but the noble species 
 of impatience, that possesses the reformer. Yet, she 
 was too practical and withal had too much of that 
 philosophical trait, which traces effects back to 
 their causes, to consider freedom, by itself, a solution 
 of the real and positive difficulties and necessities 
 of social life. 
 
 As an educator, Mary Wollstonecraft reposed 
 confidence in the exercise of the understanding, and 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 261. 
 
THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 167 
 
 in the habits of virtue that form the heart. But 
 she did not believe that private education could 
 work the wonders, which some writers had attrib- 
 uted to it ; for men and women must be educated in 
 a great degree by the opinions and manners of the 
 society in which they live. " In every age there 
 has been a stream of popular opinion, that has 
 carried all before it, and given a family character, 
 as it were, to the century." 1 Unless, therefore, 
 society be differently constituted, education must, 
 in a degree, be ineffectual. There is here a broad 
 conception of the state. With all her individual- 
 ism, that claimed for each the right to strive un- 
 hindered for perfection, Mary Wollstonecraft yet 
 perceives, that the state is an organic whole, of 
 which the individual forms but a part. Education, 
 which is directed to the individual, is well-nigh 
 powerless, if its precepts do not run parallel with 
 the principles, that govern the state. 
 
 This reciprocal relation between the individual 
 and the state lends substance to her claim, that 
 women must either advance or retard progress. 
 They form a part of the whole, and legislators 
 cannot set aside, lightly, so prominent a factor in 
 the weal or woe of a nation. Public virtues are 
 based upon private virtues, which send their roots 
 deep into the life of the home. The purity of 
 private life, without which a nation cannot be 
 strong and free, has its hidden springs in the posi- 
 tion of woman ; impure and foul, if the charms of 
 her sex form her claim upon a place in society ; 
 
 1 Ibid., p. 52. 
 
l68 THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 
 pure and invigorating, if she earns for herself that 
 respect, which soundness of understanding and 
 firmness of character call forth. Children, the hope 
 of the nation, receive the nurture of true patriotism, 
 when the mothers have that broad love of mankind, 
 that can only be produced, by habitually consider- 
 ing the moral and civil interests of mankind. 
 
 What then, is the form of government, that would 
 offer to woman that ample opportunity, without 
 which education must remain one-sided and in- 
 effectual ? Of monarchy Mary Wollstonecraft sees 
 naught but the abuses, and overlooks the fact, that 
 monarchies, forming a necessary step in the progress 
 of the human race, must possess some portion of 
 intrinsic merit. The Revolutionists in England 
 were wont to point to the court of the king of 
 France, as the hot-bed of vice, which poisoned the 
 nation. Their own king, George III., was not an 
 example of a great and enlightened ruler. His 
 narrow despotism was scarcely in keeping with 
 British independence. History seemed to support 
 the general statement, that "it is impossible for any 
 man, even when the most favorable circumstances 
 concur, to acquire sufficient knowledge and strength 
 of mind to discharge the duties of a king, entrusted 
 with uncontrolled power." * Though actuated by 
 the best of intentions, he was surrounded by an 
 indolent court, from which the contagion of luxury 
 spread and became the instrument of tyranny. 
 
 The days of true heroism, when men fought 
 for the safety of their country, Mary Wollstone- 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 44. 
 
THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 169 
 
 craft thought, were over; and now soldiers could 
 only gather their vainglorious laurels, whilst 
 they adjusted to a hair the European balance. 
 Standing armies had become schools of despotism, 
 because despotism was necessary, to give vigour to 
 enterprizes, that one will directed. The statesman, 
 too, whose chief merit lay in the art of keeping 
 himself in place, considered a war a fortunate oppor- 
 tunity for himself. " The whole system of British 
 politics, if system it may courteously be called, con- 
 sists in multiplying dependents and contriving taxes 
 which grind the poor to pamper the rich." l Every 
 rank in society was eager to get the gold, which 
 so surely paved the way to respect. Poverty, 
 Mary Wollstonecraft claimed, in her time, could 
 degrade a man more than vice in the eyes of his 
 fellowinen. The preposterous distinctions of rank, 
 dividing the world between voluptuous tyrants and 
 cunning, envious dependents, corrupted almost 
 every class of people, because respectability was not 
 attached to the discharge of the relative duties of 
 life, but to the station. 
 
 This is the picture, which Mary Wollstonecraft 
 unrolls before the reader, of the conditions, as she 
 saw them, existing under monarchical government. 
 She did not share in the admiration of Montesquieu, 
 and other great minds of that century, for British 
 constitutional government, but pointed to the abuses 
 of power, rank and wealth, which stifled the best 
 aspirations of the individual. " For a man," she says, 
 "there are still some loop-holes, out of which he may 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 216. 
 
 22 
 
THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 
 creep, and dare to think and act for himself ; but 
 for a woman it is an Herculean task, because she 
 has difficulties peculiar to her sex to overcome, 
 which require almost superhuman powers." 
 
 A representative government, with universal 
 suffrage, is evidently the ideal, which Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft desires to see realized. Such a system of 
 government could give to women a civil and politi- 
 cal existence in the most natural way. It would 
 open a road, by which women of a superior cast 
 could pursue more extensive plans of usefulness 
 and independence. She pointedly remarks, " I 
 may excite laughter by dropping a hint, which I 
 mean to pursue some future time, for I really think 
 that women ought to have representatives, instead 
 of being arbitrarily governed, without having any 
 direct share allowed them in the deliberations of 
 government." * This thought she intended to 
 elaborate in a second volume of the Vindication 
 of the Rights of Woman, which, however, owing 
 to her early death, was never written. Her next 
 remark shows, that she had little confidence in the 
 British system of representation, as it then was. 
 She thinks women need not complain ; u for they 
 are as well represented as a numerous class of hard- 
 working mechanics, who pay for the support of 
 royalty, when they can scarcely stop their children's 
 mouths with bread." * 
 
 To France she turns, with the hope of seeing 
 the suffrage of women included in universal 
 suffrage. Bluntschli speaks of a petition, signed 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 220. 2 Ibid., p. 221. 
 
THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 171 
 
 by many women and addressed to the king, in the 
 early days of the French Revolution, requesting 
 that women be admitted to the rights of citizens, 
 that suffrage be extended to them, and that they 
 receive power to elect representatives from their 
 own number. Condorcet, the philosopher, recom- 
 mended this petition, nevertheless the National 
 Assembly, with scorn and derision expressed their 
 unwillingness to receive it. L It is very probable 
 that Mary Wollstonecraft knew of this circum- 
 stance ; and if she did, it could but have encouraged 
 her, to believe that a strong appeal, backed 
 by argument such as her book contained, would 
 prepare the minds of legislators to regard a 
 second attempt to introduce woman's suffrage 
 with more favor. Talleyrand, who was yet 
 regarded with favor by the French Republicans, 
 and who had shown, that his powers to carry his 
 point in the National Assembly ranked very high, 
 was sent to England in the beginning of 1792 on a 
 political mission. It must have been on this occa- 
 sion, that his visit to Mary Wollstonecraft's lodg- 
 ings in George Street, which Fuseli's biographer 2 
 records, took place ; when they drank tea together, 
 and discussed social and political problems. The 
 time of his visit in England coincides with that of 
 the publication of the Vindication of the Rights 
 of Woman. 
 
 There is room for conjecture concerning the 
 hopes, which Talleyrand may have held out, of 
 
 1 J. C. Bluntschli : Allgemeine Staatslehre, p. 228. 
 
 2 John Knowles : The Life of Fuseli ; Volume I, p. 160. 
 
1 72 THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 
 championship in the cause, that she had made her 
 own, which led her to dedicate her book to him, 
 and in doing so, to make a direct appeal to the 
 French nation. But the days of Talleyrand's popu- 
 larity with the French Republicans soon after came 
 to an end. Exiled from France and England, he 
 embarked to America. A man of unusually 
 chequered career, Mary Wollstonecraft's confidence 
 in him was misplaced. Equally futile was her hope, 
 that French Republicans would seriously consider 
 her appeal. Had she turned to those colonists 
 across the Atlantic, who were then framing laws 
 and drawing up their constitution, she would have 
 addressed the nation, which was destined to be the 
 first to extend suffrage to women. 
 
 In demanding the enfranchisement of women, 
 Mary Wollstonecraft looked to their political exist- 
 ence. But she considered the civil rights of women 
 equally in need of vindication. When a woman 
 discharged her civil duties, when, while her hus- 
 band was employed in any of the departments of civil 
 life, she was intent on managing her family, 
 educating her children and assisting her neighbours, 
 as an active citizen, it seemed but right that she 
 should enjoy, individually, the protection of civil 
 laws. That ancient opinion, which considers the 
 husband the representative of his wife's opinions 
 and interests before the law, finds no justification 
 in Mary Wollstonecraft's eyes. She says : " The 
 laws respecting woman, which I mean to discuss 
 in a future part, make an absurd unit of a man and 
 his wife ; and then by the easy transition of only 
 
THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 173 
 
 considering him as responsible, she is reduced to a 
 mere cypher." l Not only a political and a civil 
 existence does she vindicate for woman, but also an 
 economic existence. 
 
 She claims for women the right to work, and this 
 demand gives her a place among the thinkers of her 
 century, who foreshadowed the claims of the 
 various socialistic and communistic systems, which 
 characterized the early part of the present century. 
 " Is not that government very defective," she says, 
 "and very unmindful of the happiness of one-half of 
 its members, that does not provide for honest 
 independent women, by encouraging them to fill 
 respectable stations?" How many women waste 
 life away, the prey of discontent, "who might have 
 practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed 
 a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own 
 industry." The few employments open to women 
 at that time, so far from being liberal, were menial. 
 When women were in possession of superior educa- 
 tion, they could take charge of the education of 
 children as governesses ; yet these situations were 
 often rendered humiliating. Women, educated 
 like gentlewomen, when forced by necessity to fill 
 them, were looked upon as degraded thereby. This 
 offers a glimpse of economic conditions, in their 
 influence upon the position of woman, in the days 
 before the doctrine, that work is a right and the 
 only legitimate means of retaining an honorable 
 place in society, had made much headway among 
 civilized nations. Mary Wollstonecraft makes the 
 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 218. 2 Ibid., p. 223. 
 
174 THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 
 charge, that men performed their duties by deputies, 
 and women desired above all things to be ladies, 
 which meant, u simply to have nothing to do, but 
 listlessly to go, they scarcely know where, for they 
 cannot tell what." L 
 
 It was very natural, that Mary Wollstonecraft 
 should dwell upon this aspect of the position of 
 woman ; for she herself had, at an early age, been 
 under necessity to provide for her own wants and to 
 aid her family. She had thus learned by experience, 
 that the path of the woman at that time, who must 
 earn her own bread, was far from smooth. More- 
 over, she had tasted of the fruit of toil in the 
 independence, which it brought, which seemed to her 
 a grand blessing, to be secured, if need be, even at 
 the expense of contracting her wants. Her ob- 
 servations, therefore, had a practical basis. They 
 contain, besides, an element that gives evidence of 
 a grasp upon economic problems, which were at 
 that time barely stated. Adani j&iith in his 
 Wealth of Nations had pointed^ to labor, as the 
 source of all economic values. The wide discrepan- 
 cy between the rights of capital and the proceeds 
 of labor, between the honour attached to station and 
 the pittance allowed to him, who, as proxy, per- 
 formed the duties of that station, were not only 
 apparent, but were becoming the subject of economic 
 speculation. No socialist or communist, of later 
 days, could have looked with greater dissatisfaction 
 upon the unequal distribution j^ wealth, than Mary 
 Wollstonecraft. She was undoubtedly acquainted 
 1 The Rights of Woman, p. 221. 
 
THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 175 
 
 with Adam Smith's works, though she quotes only 
 from his Theory of Moral Sentiments. With much 
 adroitness, she applies his observations concerning 
 the evil effects, morally, upon that part of the com- 
 munity, which is, for some reason exempt from 
 labour, to the morally inferior condition of women. 
 Mary Wollstonecraft did not live to see three 
 schools of thought arise, each of which, tried, 
 independently of each other, to solve the problems 
 of the social revolution, which went side by side 
 with political revolution. Whatever the diver- 
 gency, each emphasized the right to labor, and the 
 right to the proceeds of labour. Fourier's elaborate 
 system propounded associated labor, Saint Simon 
 attempted the organization of labor, and Robert 
 Owen sought a practical solution in his Equitable 
 Labor Exchange. These systems were to appear 
 some decades later, but even at that time, the 
 elements, that composed them, were in process of 
 evolution in the minds of thinkers. Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft proved herself in this direction also, one 
 of the most progressive thinkers of her times ; for 
 she wove into her argument the conviction, that 
 there can be no real political advance without a 
 corresponding moral improvement, and that both 
 must rest on a sound economic basis. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE RELATION OF HER VIEWS TO THOSE OF 
 WILLIAM GODWIN AND LATER SOCIALISTS. 
 
 PROFESSOR Menger in his valuable work on the 
 right to the full proceeds of labor, points to William 
 Godwin as the one, who first demonstrated this 
 right in a scientific manner. He says : " Godwin 
 may be regarded as the first scientific socialist_of 
 later times ; the germs of all the ideas of later so- 
 cialism and anarchism are to be found in his work. 
 He wielded the most powerful influence over Hall, 
 Owen and Thompson, and through them upon the 
 development of socialism." 1 
 
 There are points of contact between the views 
 of Godwin and those of Mary Wollstonecraft. They 
 were stirred by the same events ; the same currents 
 of contemporary thought moulded them. They 
 shared in the tendency of the Revolutionary school 
 toward deification of pure intellect. Both held that 
 reason and virtue are closely allied. Both believed 
 
 1 Dr. Anton Menger : Das Recht an deu vollen Arbeitsertrag 
 in geschichtlicher Darstellung. Stuttgart. 1891, p. 40. 
 
HER RELATION TO GODWIN 177 
 
 in the perfectibility of the human race. The 
 omnipotence of reason with Godwin involved 
 the abolition of all political institutions. Mary 
 Wollstonecraft did not go to such length. Of 
 anarchy there is no trace in her writings, with the 
 exception perhaps of her last book, Maria ; or, the 
 Wrongs of Woman. This was written during the 
 year of her married life with Godwin. She had 
 talked over with him the subject-matter of this 
 book; he was her critic. It may be assumed, 
 therefore, that Godwin's influence is evident in this 
 unfinished novel. Beyond this, it cannot be main- 
 tained, that she was indebted to him for her creed, 
 though he was the chief thinker of the political 
 school to which she belonged. Her Vindication 
 of the Rights of Woman appeared in 1792, his 
 Political Justice was published in 1793. He was 
 at that time as little pleased with her production, 
 as she was with the views, which he had set forth. 
 Personally they seem to have regarded each other 
 in a somewhat antagonistic spirit, during the early 
 days of their acquaintance, when they met at the 
 house of the publisher, Mr. Johnson, where both 
 were frequent guests. 
 
 Godwin gives an account of an interview, which 
 shows that they were apt to clash rather than to 
 agree. At the time of the first appearance of the 
 Vindication of the Rights of Woman, they both, 
 together with Thomas Paine and several others, 
 were invited to dine at the house of a friend. 
 Godwin wished specially to make the acquaintance 
 of Thomas Paine, who, however, was not a great 
 
 23 
 
178 HER RELATION TO GODWIN 
 
 talker ; and, with the exception of an occasional 
 shrewd remark, did little to gratify Godwin's 
 wish. , The conversation lay principally between 
 himself and Mary Wollstonecraft. They touched 
 on a variety of topics, particularly on the character 
 and habits of certain eminent men, among them 
 Voltaire, upon whom she bestowed censure with 
 a plentiful hand, while Godwin was inclined, since 
 Voltaire possessed genius, to the supposition of 
 generous and manly virtue. They also discussed 
 some questions of religion, in which Godwin found 
 her opinions approached much nearer to the received 
 ones, than his own. They separated thoroughly 
 dissatisfied with each other. Godwin says : "I did 
 her the justice, in giving an account of the conver- 
 sation, though I was not sparing of my blame, to 
 yield her the praise of a person of active and 
 independent thinking. On her side, she did me 
 no part of what perhaps I considered as justice." 1 
 Godwin's vanity had evidently been stung repeated- 
 ly by her sarcasm. He refers to this in a note, 
 accepting the invitation of Miss Hayes to meet her, 
 when, soon after her separation from Imlay, she 
 went once more into society. He wrote : " I will 
 do myself the pleasure of waiting on you on Friday, 
 and shall be happy to meet Mrs. Wollstonecraft, 
 of whom I know not that I ever said a word of harm, 
 and who has frequently amused herself with depre- 
 ciating me." 2 
 
 1 W. Godwin : Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the 
 Rights of Woman, p. 96. 
 
 2 C. Kegan Paul : Prefatory Memoir to Letters to Imlay, p. LI. 
 
AND LATER SOCIALISTS. 179 
 
 It does not appear in what respect Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft found fault with Godwin's philosophy; 
 perhaps with some aspects of his argument in 
 general ; perhaps with those portions of his Political 
 Justice, which are very radical, and found little 
 acceptance in the minds even of those of his con- 
 temporaries, who were otherwise in sympathy with 
 him. In his conception of property, Godwin boldly 
 struck out in new paths. He dealt with marriage 
 as coming under the head of property, and in his 
 treatment of the subject, strikes a blow at the mar- 
 riage relation as a permanent institution. Among 
 uncivilized races, even to the present day, the wife 
 is regarded as her husband's property. That 
 Godwin should have overlooked the higher con- 
 ceptions of marriage, evolved among Christian 
 nations, and taken a conception common to the 
 barbarian, as the foundation of his argument on this 
 subject, seems singularly repugnant, even though 
 this discussion is confined to a few pages in a trea- 
 tise of abstract reasoning. His biographer explains, 
 that Godwin's real objections to marriage are those 
 which are bound up with the whole idea of his book ; 
 and "his book gave cohesion and voice to philosophic 
 radicalism ; it was the manifesto of a school without 
 which the milder and more creedless liberalism of 
 the present day had not been." 1 
 
 It was not wholly to Mary Wollstonecraft's ad- 
 vantage, that her name, by her marriage to Godwin, 
 became connected with his. Even a writer in our 
 
 1 C. Kegan Paul : William Godwin, his Friends and Contem- 
 poraries, Vol. I., p. 115. 
 
l8o HER RELATION TO GODWIN 
 
 own day, after an exposition of Godwin's philosophy 
 and his relation to contemporary thought, says : 
 "Godwin's attack upon marriage may be illustrated 
 by the remarkable declaration in favor of woman's 
 rights by Mary Wollstonecraft, afterwards his 
 wife." 1 There is nothing either in the letter or 
 the spirit of her books, written before her marriage to 
 Godwin, that could be construed as an attack upon 
 the family. The divergency between Godwin's 
 views and her attempt to strengthen the ties of 
 family life, where she found them weakest, is great. 
 A strong appreciation of the benefit accruing to the 
 individual and to the nation from pure and health- 
 ful family influences, is one of the distinct features 
 of Mary Wollstonecraft's writings. This is especial- 
 ly evident in her views of the education, which best 
 forms the citizen. Not in any sense would she see 
 children deprived of the influences of home to 
 mould character. By granting to women their 
 rights, she firmly believed the home would be 
 emancipated. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact, that the influence of the 
 author of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman 
 led Godwin to a recognition of the grave defect in 
 his social philosophy. In the preface to the novel 
 St. Leon, published two years after his wife's death, 
 Godwin takes occasion to point out the inconsist- 
 ency between the sentiments expressed in this 
 novel, which exalts the affections and charities of 
 private life, and his Political Justice, in which 
 
 1 Leslie Stephen : History of Thought in the Eighteenth 
 Century. London, 1876, Vol. II., p. 276. 
 
AND LATER SOCIALISTS. l8l 
 
 they are treated with no great degree of favor. 
 He remarks : 
 
 " For four years, I have been anxious for opportunity and 
 leisure to modify some of the earlier chapters of that work in 
 conformity to the sentiments inculcated in this. Not that I see 
 cause to make any change respecting the principle of justice, or 
 anything else fundamental to the system then delivered ; but 
 that I apprehend domestic and private affections inseparable 
 from the nature of man, and from what may be styled the 
 culture of the heart, and am fully persuaded that they are not 
 incompatible with a profound and active sense of justice in the 
 mind of him that cherishes them. ' ' l 
 
 This modification of his former expression of 
 extreme views, and the appreciation of the value of 
 domestic relations, may be regarded as the legacy 
 of Mary Wollstonecraft to the philosophy of 
 Godwin. 
 
 It is a question, however, whether in modifying 
 Godwin's views, she did not, in turn, adopt from 
 him some of the radical consequences, which he had 
 relentlessly drawn, but which she had thus far left 
 untouched. Does the unfinished novel, Maria ; or, 
 the Wrongs of Woman, written under Godwin's 
 influence, contain elements of social disintegration ? 
 The purpose of the story, as she says in her preface, 
 is " to exhibit the misery and oppression, peculiar 
 to women, that arise out of the partial laws and 
 customs of society." u ln the invention of the 
 story," she adds, " this view restrained my fancy ; 
 and the history ought rather to be considered, as of 
 woman, than of an individual." In setting forth the 
 wrongs of women this novel is a master-piece. 
 Every species of wrong that women endure, from 
 
 1 W. Godwin : The Travels of St. Leon, London, 1799. 
 
1 82 HER RELATION TO GODWIN 
 
 the series of revolting cruelties and outrage heaped 
 upon the daughter of the outcast, to the refinement 
 of cruelty endured by the daughter of better 
 circumstances, is represented, until the mind of the 
 reader turns with horror from such scenes of 
 degradation. 
 
 In this story, as everywhere in her life and in 
 her books, it is apparent that the author belonged 
 to the Revolutionary School. She attacked monar- 
 chy and the distinctions of wealth and rank. Her 
 criticism of the educational system of England was 
 caustic and severe. Her experience of family life 
 had been unusually sad. It need not be a matter 
 of surprise therefore, that she placed the institution 
 of the family by the side of other ancient institu- 
 tions, as in need of reform. She was right in 
 exposing the wrongs, which women suffered within 
 the precincts of the family. The question is, 
 whether she preserved to the last that clear percep- 
 tion, which characterized her earlier works, of the 
 harmonious blending, which is possible between 
 woman's emancipation and the conservative aspects 
 of family life. In seeking to tear up by the root, 
 that which is evil, did she injure the roots that 
 nourish a growth of great value ? 
 
 Her attack is directed against the excess of 
 power with which the law, at that time, permitted 
 men to subjugate women. The book is not charac- 
 terized by a heedless sacrifice of the affections, 
 that constitute the sacred ties of family life. Maria, 
 the heroine of the story, supports her father 
 and seeks to advance the interests of her brothers 
 
AND LATER SOCIALISTS. 183 
 
 and sisters. One of the gravest and most vital 
 of all the questions, connected with the sub- 
 ject of the family, is touched, when Maria grieves, 
 because she perceived in her babe a slight resem- 
 blance to him, to whom it owed its existence; 
 she longed to purify her child from the heritage of 
 vice, that must have descended to it through its 
 father. * Jemima, whose mother died, broken- 
 hearted, at her birth, evidently voices the senti- 
 ments of the author regarding the importance of 
 motherhood, in saying : " I cannot help attributing 
 the greater part of my misery to the misfortune of 
 having been thrown into the world without the 
 grand support of life, a mother's affection. I had 
 no one to love me ; or to make me respected, to 
 enable me to acquire respect. I was despised from 
 my birth, and denied the chance of obtaining a 
 footing for myself in society." 2 Moreover, in the 
 case of Maria, motherhood proves triumphant mid 
 the wreck of other relations, when she decides to 
 live for her child. 
 
 Several minor characters are introduced in the 
 story, to illustrate the fact, that women at that time 
 had not an economic existence in society. Gentle 
 women, as well as honest women of the labouring 
 classes, were all oppressed beyond measure in their 
 attempt to claim for themselves the right to work. 
 Incidentally the history of women is told, whose 
 hard-earned savings were squandered by husbands, 
 who came home but to ill-treat them; for "women 
 
 1 Maria ; or, the Wrongs of Woman, Vol. II., p. 107. 
 
 2 Ibid., Vol. I., p. 90. 
 
184 HER RELATION TO GODWIN 
 
 have always the worst of it, where law is 
 to decide." 
 
 The heroine of the story represents the type of 
 woman, who, though educated, and in possession 
 of wealth, was denied a civil existence. Her 
 husband could violate every vow that bound him to 
 her, and heap outrage upon her ; he could rob her 
 with impunity ; he could goad her soul almost to 
 madness; he could hunt her from place to place, 
 rob her of her child and imprison her in a mad- 
 house; yet, since he had never struck her, had 
 never threatened her life, she had no resource ; the 
 law was on his side, and afforded her neither pro- 
 tection nor redress from the oppressor. The 
 attitude of law-courts toward the crimes of men 
 was indulgent ; harshness was characteristic of the 
 treatment received by women. 
 
 A serious touch of anarchy is displayed, when 
 Maria, the heroine of the story, takes the law into 
 her own hands. Her reason tells her when to con- 
 sider her marriage null and void, and her reason 
 again, she thinks, tells her, that since she is free, she 
 has the right to re-marry. Maria says : "If laws 
 exist, made by the strong to oppress the weak, I 
 appeal to my own sense of justice." L This reasoning 
 is very much after the manner of Godwin's social 
 philosophy. If his influence had been eliminated, 
 critics would have found less in the book that 
 could rightly be considered objectionable. Those 
 rationalistic principles, which make reason in every 
 question the arbiter, were introduced where crys- 
 
 1 Maria ; or, the Wrongs of Woman, Vol. II., p. 153. 
 
AND LATER SOCIALISTS. 185 
 
 tallization into practice is beset with most dangerous 
 consequences. The author displays here too strong 
 a tendency to consider the rights of the individual 
 as of primary importance ; she gives a secondary 
 place to the claim of civilized humanity, upon a 
 just appreciation of the sanctity of the marriage- 
 vow, when once taken. This feature of anarchy 
 mars the last service, which Mary Wollstonecraft 
 sought to render the cause of woman. 
 
 A tone pervades the speculations of a century 
 ago, concerning the antagonism between woman's 
 personal freedom and the binding nature of the mar- 
 riage tie, that cannot be called morally refreshing. 
 Liberty is a glorious possession, but the point that 
 marks its transition to license is almost impercept- 
 ible. Mary Wollstonecraft preserved even to the 
 last an attitude that compares favorably with others, 
 whose speculations were directed toward the same 
 end. There was much extraneous matter of an objec- 
 tionable kind in the writings of the early socialists ; 
 but this should not be regarded as belonging 
 to the essence of the movement. By elimina- 
 ting the mercenary element which enters so largely 
 the considerations of marriage ; by relieving the 
 drudgery of women, both indoors and out of doors, 
 the tendency of socialism should be to make woman 
 the happy and cultured friend and companion of man. 
 Kirkup claims that the socialism of to-day is but "the 
 economic and social side of a vaster movement, which 
 in politics is democracy, and in ethics means tolera- 
 tion, humanity, and unselfish service to society. m 
 
 1 Thomas Kirkup : An Inquiry into Socialism, 1887, p. i. 
 
 24 
 
1 86 HER RELATION TO GODWIN 
 
 While the aim of socialism is toward the renova- 
 tion and progress of the entire human society, 
 it is not therefore in its central principle adverse 
 to marriage and the family. 
 
 It may not be possible, at this distance of time, to 
 determine whether the works of Mary Wollstonecraft 
 were known to the leaders of socialistic thought ; 
 and whether she wielded even some slight influence 
 over them. When civilization is ripe for the in- 
 troduction of new measures, the same thought 
 springs up in different guise in various places. Her 
 works were probably known to Saint Simon, who 
 was in Paris, during the time of her sojourn there 
 in 1793. He shared the fate of Mary Wollstone- 
 craft's friend, Count Schlabrendorf, who, as a victim 
 of the Revolution, was imprisoned. She often 
 visited her friend in prison and may have been 
 acquainted with Saint Simon. Her Vindication of 
 the Rights of Woman had appeared but recently 
 in French translation in Paris, and had probably 
 come to the notice of Saint Simon. Another edition 
 appeared simultaneously in L,yons, the home of 
 Fourier, who at that time had commenced to 
 elaborate his social scheme, which included the 
 emancipation of woman. 
 
 Ten years later, in 1803, Saint Simon published 
 the first exposition of his system in his Lettres d^un 
 habitant de Geneve a ses contemporains. A sentence 
 occurs in this pamphlet, which gives to woman the 
 right to cast her vote in the new association, and the 
 right to be elected to its offices. After Saint Simon's 
 death the school, which bears his name, insisted 
 
AND LATER SOCIALISTS. 187 
 
 on allowing women an equal share in the rights 
 of their associated labour. In 1830 the Saint 
 Sirnonians published a manifesto, in which they 
 defined their general position, and with regard 
 to their attitude toward woman they say : " Chris- 
 tianity has released woman from servitude but 
 has condemned her to religious, political and 
 civil inferiority. The Saint Sirnonians have 
 announced her emancipation, but they have not 
 abolished the sacred law of marriage, proclaim- 
 ed by Christianity. On the contrary, they give a 
 new sanctity to this law." 1 The popularity of 
 Saint Simonism was greatly increased by this 
 manifesto. Many prominent men, who had thus 
 far ridiculed the school, now became its supporters. 
 u The dogma of reward, according to individual 
 ability and work, carried with it the force of con- 
 viction ; and the prospect of the abolition of all 
 privileges of birth, with the emancipation, political 
 and economic, of the working man and of woman, 
 charmed the minds of men." 2 A year later a 
 schism of a deplorable nature took place in the 
 Saint Simonian Church, because Bnfantin, who, 
 with Bazard, had been leader of the assemblies, 
 made propositions concerning the position of woman 
 in their midst, which forced Bazard and many 
 others of the best members, both men and women, 
 to withdraw. 
 
 1 Quoted by R. T. Ely, Ph. D. : French and German Social- 
 ism in Modern Times. 
 
 2 Dr. Otto Warschauer : Saint Simon und der Saint Simon- 
 ismns. I/eipzig, 1892. 
 
1 88 HER RELATION TO GODWIN 
 
 Concerning Robert Owen, the English commu- 
 nist, we have direct evidence, that he was acquaint- 
 ed with the views of Mary Wollstonecraft. He was 
 well known in the Godwin household. Fanny 
 tells Mary, who, with Shelley, was at that time 
 sojourning by Lake Geneva, in company with Lord 
 Byron, in a long letter, dated July 29, 1816, 
 of Owen's plans ; of his address to the people of 
 New Lanark, delivered on the opening of the 
 Institution for the Formation of Character ; of 
 impending riots and 26,000 men out of employ- 
 ment ; and of the hopes which Mr. Owen was 
 holding out of a speedy renovation of society, 
 by reason of his schemes. She speaks of his 
 proposition that no human being should work more 
 than three hours every day ; and after discussing 
 this and other aspects of his system, she closes by 
 saying: "So much for Mr. Owen, who is, indeed, a 
 very great and good man. He told me the other 
 day that he wished our mother was living, as he 
 had never met with a person, who thought so 
 exactly as he did, or who would have so warmly 
 and zealously entered into his plans." * 
 
 It is not difficult to link the leading thoughts 
 of Mary Wollstonecraft's argument with the social- 
 istic ideals of the present time. Socialism is 
 generally understood to mean the systematic inter- 
 ference of the state in favor of the suffering 
 classes. Laveleye affirms this in defining social- 
 ism thus : "In the first place, every socialistic 
 
 1 Mrs. Julian Marshall : The Life and Letters of Marj- Woll- 
 stonecraft Shelley. Volume I, p. 150. 
 
AND LATER SOCIALISTS. 189 
 
 doctrine aims at introducing greater equality in 
 social conditions, and, in the second place, at real- 
 izing those reforms by the law or the state." To a 
 remarkable degree Mary Wollstonecrafc looked to 
 the state, and to an active public and social spirit, 
 as the means of checking the excessive develop- 
 ment of private and individual interests. She 
 realized that when the unnatural claims of a small 
 minority yielded to a more equitable distribution of 
 duty, and of opportunities of enjoyment, women 
 would, to a large degree, share in the consequent 
 possibilities of development. " Greater equality 
 in social conditions," expresses the demand, which, 
 if granted, would abolish the causes which rendered 
 women weak and oppressed. 
 
 Not only in their general tendency the views 
 of Mary Wollstonecraft may be linked to the so- 
 cialism of later times, but also in some of the 
 particular measures, which have characterized its 
 development. She looks to government to perform 
 functions, which thus far had not been assumed by 
 any state. Some of her demands seem to point to 
 the central government of the socialistic system, 
 which controls not only large industrial factors, 
 but also extends to a systematic employment of 
 individuals. The state is to ensure woman's posi- 
 tion, to educate her, to extend the franchise to her, 
 to give her not only a political existence but also 
 an economic existence, by opening out to her 
 opportunities for work. 
 
 Socialism has ever made war upon that funda- 
 mentally erroneous assumption, that labour is a 
 
HER RELATION TO GODWIN. 
 
 weariness and a degradation ; upon that false ideal 
 of position and honour, that makes directly against 
 the enjoyment that should result from useful service. 
 In this respect also Mary Wollstonecraft is in touch 
 with socialistic ideas. L,ooking for a time when 
 duties would no longer be performed by deputies, 
 but each man would stand or fall, according to his 
 faithfulness to duty, she ranges woman in the 
 common ranks of human beings, where she also 
 will receive honor in accordance to the duties 
 which she performs. She would not see the 
 influences of home life crushed to give place to the 
 rank and file of an industrial army. Woman's duty 
 would largely be to the family. 
 
 There is a vast difference between this ideal of a 
 life of service and the conditions with which Mary 
 Wollstonecraft was at war. No longer the toy of 
 man, no longer his slave, but raised to the dignity 
 of conscious, voluntary service, woman with her 
 foot firmly planted in the home as the center, 
 would render service to mankind in ever widening 
 circles, with that enlightened love of humanity, of 
 which Mary Wollstonecraft saw so little trace in the 
 women of her times. This was the picture on 
 which her imagination dwelt. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 THE RECEPTION OF HER WORK IN GERMANY. 
 
 THE reception given to the Vindication of the 
 Rights of Woman in Germany differs, to a consider- 
 able degree, from that which was tendered it on its 
 own native soil. In England there was a very 
 lively appreciation of the fact that the book 
 proclaimed a new system. The revolutionary spirit 
 had taken hold of a pronounced party among the 
 English people ; measures of reform were the topic 
 of the day. The mind was therefore on the alert 
 and ready to grasp the situation, when there were 
 proposals of reform sufficiently far-reaching and 
 complete to herald the advent of some new system. 
 In Germany the conditions were different. Long 
 years of warfare had left behind a degree of devasta- 
 tion, from which the country recovered but slowly. 
 The fire of patriotic love was nourished in the 
 hearts of all; and the ability of literary men and 
 statesmen alike began to be directed to the one 
 absorbing topic of the following decades : The con- 
 solidation of the nation. The thoughts that 
 
192 THE RECEPTION OF HER WORK 
 
 fermented in the niinds of the French in their 
 Revolution, and which had their effect upon the 
 more quiet and practical Englishman, did not pass 
 the German by without calling forth an effect, which 
 bore its distinct national imprint. The Sturm und 
 Drang Periode in Germany wrestled with the 
 questions that occupied the thought of the end 
 of the Eighteenth Century and the beginning of the 
 present century. Kant, but barely understood in 
 England, had begun to wield far-reaching influence 
 upon German thought ; the ethical rigor of his 
 categorical imperative giving a healthier tone to the 
 conception of duty and obligation of even the man 
 of lesser education. 
 
 Meantime German women, with the exception of 
 those of royal rank, seldom ventured beyond the 
 seclusion of private life. England was not without 
 its female authors of some importance. In France 
 the Salons, presided over by gifted women, each 
 of whom having, as Voltaire remarked, one or two 
 authors at her side as ministers, were centers of 
 intellectual activity, later of degeneracy. This 
 product of French civilization, though French 
 manners and customs were much imitated in Ger- 
 many, refused to thrive on German soil. Woman 
 in Germany found her sphere in the home, and 
 showed little craving for more extended activities. 
 She fostered a high sense of family relations, and 
 thereby contributed a valuable source of strength 
 to the depleted resources of the nation. 
 
 The German critic of the Vindication of the 
 Rights of Woman scarcely realized, that he had a 
 
IN GERMANY. 193 
 
 fyook before him, which enunciated a new system. 
 The propositions against which the English critic 
 warned the public, seemed to the German critic 
 mere exaggerations, which might well be over- 
 looked, since the book contained so much that was 
 sensible and wise. The attitude of the English 
 press furnished distinct evidence, that the public 
 realized, that the book marked an epoch. There 
 is 'no evidence of this kind in the notices given in 
 German periodicals. Germany was not in touch 
 with this latest current of progressive thought. 
 Moreover there was no indication of symptoms of 
 unrest and dissatisfaction on the part of the German 
 woman, that might have given cause for anxiety, 
 lest the book incite to insubordination those, who 
 had not yet learned to question the injustice of 
 their inferior position. 
 
 Only one critic seems to have grasped the signi- 
 ficance of the book as the herald of a new era, and 
 he is not sparing in his denunciation. The con- 
 servative attitude of the German woman allays 
 any fears, however, that might have alarmed him. 
 He says : " It is not worth while losing any more 
 words about this phantastic system. Its mere 
 presentation is its best refutation. Those who will 
 protest most urgently against the realization of this 
 plan will be the women themselves." i He cannot 
 understand how a woman could demand for her 
 sex the same rights, which men enjoy, unless she 
 should prove to be a haughty, heartless fanatic, 
 incapable of a full conception of the advantages 
 
 i Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung. October, 1794. 
 
194 THE RECEPTION OF HER WORK 
 
 of her sex, and therefore willing to sacrifice them 
 in order to be as men are. He regards the 
 distinction of sex an inexhaustible source of enjoy- 
 ment, culture, study and true humanity ; and thus 
 enunciates an argument which has, perhaps, been 
 used to a greater degree by the Germans than by 
 other nationalities; and certainly has great weight, 
 when urged by those, who have granted equal 
 rights to the fullest extent. 
 
 It must be regarded as a circumstance of a 
 gratifying nature, that Mary Wollstonecraft was 
 introduced to the German public by Salzmann, one 
 of the most noted men in the pedagogy of the 
 times. A cordial feeling of interest evidently exist- 
 ed between them. She had rendered his Mora- 
 lisches Elementarbuch into English in a way 
 that secured it large circulation, and he, in turn, 
 was prepared to use his influence to secure for her 
 Vindication of the Rights of Woman a favorable 
 reception in Germany. Salzmann commanded 
 respect, not only as an educator, but also as a 
 philanthropist. Some of his books, written for the 
 young, enjoyed great popularity. In his institution 
 at Schnepfenthal, near Gotha, he educated children 
 of both sexes in accordance with the same pedagog- 
 ical views, which were emphasized in his writings. 
 He made conformity to nature the basis of his 
 educational system, and his methods were charac- 
 terized by a spirit of philanthropy. 
 
 There were many points of contact between the 
 views of Salzmann and those of Mary Wollstone- 
 craft. Yet this very agreement makes it the more 
 
IN GERMANY. 
 
 apparent, how far Mary Wollstonecraft was in 
 advance of the opinions, which, in that day, even an 
 educator and philanthropist like Salzmann held 
 concerning woman. He had supplied the transla- 
 tion, which was made by one of the teachers in the 
 institution at Schnepfenthal, with occasional notes, 
 and a preface, in which he intimates that he had 
 "taken the liberty of contradicting the honored 
 authoress in several of her assertions." He agrees 
 with her to a large extent and thereby taxes the 
 patience of the above-mentioned critic, who wished 
 that Salzmann had exposed the fallacies of the 
 system, instead of indulging in words of empty 
 praise. Yet it is true, that in every leading point 
 where Mary Wollstonecraft expresses opinions, that 
 belong to our own times rather than to Salzmann's 
 days, he seeks to tone down, and to weaken what 
 she expresses. Thus he agrees with her that 
 female education should receive more attention, 
 but thinks that " the study of such sciences, which 
 demand continuous application of thought, would 
 make a girl too abstract and sober-minded', and 
 therefore unfit to fill her destined place in life." * 
 He guards the supremacy of man and insists that 
 women must obey their husbands. 
 
 It is not therefore surprising that several of the 
 German critics were well pleased with his work as 
 
 1 Rettung der Rechte des Weibes, mit Bemerkungen ueber 
 politisclie und moralische Gegenstande von Maria Wollstone- 
 craft. Aus dem Englischen uebersetzt. Mit einigen Anmer- 
 kungen und einer Vorrede von Christian Gotthilf Salzmann. 
 Schnepfenthal, im Verlag der Erziehungsanstalt 1793. Vol. I, 
 p. 69. 
 
196 THE RECEPTION OF HER WORK 
 
 commentator. One of them expresses himself as 
 follows : "The undertaking of the translator should 
 not by any means be censured, for he has given us 
 in translation the work of a keen-witted British 
 woman, in which her noble heart also shines forth. 
 Her assertions, indeed, are not always of the same 
 value, but generally where she required reproof, 
 Mr. Salzmann administered it in notes, which dis- 
 play the far-sighted pedagogue." L Another of the 
 periodicals of the times considers the book of 
 sufficient value to have been brought before the 
 German public in a translation, but does not fail to 
 mention the exaggerated assertions, which the 
 author, carried away by a very ardent enthusiasm 
 for the rights of her sex, was led to make. Since 
 the comments of Salzmann were thought to have 
 neutralized these exaggerations, the book was 
 commended to the attention of the reader. 2 An- 
 other critic thinks this book, characterized by 
 vigorous thought concerning an important sub- 
 ject, though not without exaggeration, was worthy 
 of a translation ; but considers the author at fault 
 when, in her earnest endeavour to show that 
 women are human beings, she seems to forget 
 that they are not men, but women. 3 
 
 A very appreciative notice of the book speaks of 
 ideas exaggerated and one-sided, and propositions 
 unattainable and chimerical ; and then proceeds to 
 
 1 Seller : Gemeinnutzige Betrachtungen der neuesten Schrif- 
 ten. 1793. 
 
 2 Erlanger Gelehrte Zeitung. October 1793. 
 
 3 Gottingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen, September, 
 1793- 
 
IN GERMANY. 197 
 
 set forth the intrinsic value of the production in 
 high terms. This critic expresses himself as not 
 satisfied with the work of the translator nor with 
 the notes of Salzmann. He seems to have 
 read the book in English and claims that this 
 work, beyond most other products of modern 
 English literature, deserved a translation into the 
 German language. 1 
 
 Most of the German critics recognized the defects 
 of the book as a literary production, especially the 
 lack of order in its arrangement. They appreciated 
 its value both as a work on female education and 
 a criticism of existing conditions. That which 
 seemed strange and new they characterized as 
 exaggerations, far from realizing that the book 
 contained the announcement of a new system. 
 This tends to show that it was essentially a product 
 of English thought, with distinctive marks of 
 English national life impressed upon it. 
 
 Two Germans, who were at the time of the publi- 
 cation of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman 
 residing in England, furnish evidence of the impres- 
 sion, which the work made upon minds of different 
 stamp. .One was the philosopher, Franz von Baader, 
 who regarded the argument of the book after the 
 manner of a philosopher. He writes concerning it 
 in his Diary, December 26, 1792 : " I feel very 
 much stirred in mind. Scales are still falling from 
 my eyes ! All misuse of power, all usurpation 
 must absolutely vanish from society if virtue is to 
 
 1 Neue Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek. Volume IX, p. 
 127-132. 
 
198 THE RECEPTION OF HER WORK 
 
 be in it and remain in it." 1 To him one of the 
 great questions of life had been as to the way in 
 which virtue could rule human society ; he had 
 found in Mary Wollstonecraft's book an answer 
 from a direction, whence he had perhaps least 
 looked for it. 
 
 Inspired by different motives, the traveller, 
 Kiittner, in his volume on the state of civilization in 
 England, gives a sketch of the author of the Vindi- 
 cation of the Rights of Woman. The search for 
 truth was not the mission that had led him to visit 
 England. He gathered notable facts and conditions, 
 as he found them in his travels, into narratives 
 that might prove attractive to the ordinary reader. 
 He told the German public about Mary Wollstone- 
 craft, because she and her work were the talk of 
 the day. He would not call attention to the book, 
 he says, if it contained nothing but strange, original 
 ideas and wild projects ; but since it was really in 
 many respects noteworthy and betrayed a degree of 
 genius, which few women possessed, he found it 
 demanded attention. He repeats some of the gossip 
 current about Mary Wollstonecraft, mentions " her 
 state of dissatisfaction with men and things, her 
 disappointed hopes and her sour temper." 2 His 
 expression, that she had "none of the characteristics 
 of woman but her sex," was quoted in the news and 
 notes of a German fashion journal, where an 
 account is given of the founding of a school in 
 
 1 Franz von Baader's Nachgelassene Werke. Vol. i, p. 202. 
 
 2 K. G. Kiittner : Beitrage zur Kenntniss des Innern von 
 England, Vol. IV, p. 121. 
 
IN GERMANY. 199 
 
 Paris, where girls could learn the art of printing. 
 She is mentioned in this connection as having 
 made the demand, that women should be allowed, 
 just as men are, to learn various industries and to 
 study arts and professions. 1 
 
 A search in the books and periodicals of the 
 period discloses no trace of the disparagement, with 
 which Mary Wollstonecraft met in England. 
 Salzmann translated her memoirs and published 
 them with a preface by himself.' 2 The misfortunes 
 of her life were mentioned by German contempora- 
 ries as cause for regret, not for derision. And even 
 during the period, when in England she was mis- 
 represented or forgotten, German writers were more 
 just. Klemm, in his work descriptive of the place 
 of woman in the history of civilization, 3 makes 
 full mention of her. He regards her work how- 
 ever as of pedagogical value only, and has no 
 appreciation for her work as vindicator of the 
 rights of her sex. 
 
 There is one personal relation on record, which 
 Mary Wollstonecraft had with one of German birth, 
 that is of peculiar interest. Godwin mentions it 
 in connection with the friendships, which his wife 
 formed during her sojourn in Paris, conspicuous 
 
 1 Journal des Luxusund der Moden. August, 1795. 
 
 2 Denkschrift auf Maria Wollstonecraft Godwin, die Verthei- 
 digerin der Rechte des Weibes, von William Godwin. Ans dem 
 Englischen iibersetzt und mit einigen Anmerkungen begleitet. 
 Nebst dem Bildnisse der Verstorbenen. Schnepfenthal, im 
 Verlage der Buchhandlung der Erziehungsanstalt, 1799. 
 
 3 G. Klemm : DieFrauen, CulturgeschichtlicheSchilderungen 
 1859. Vol. VI, p. 188191. 
 
200 THE RECEPTION OF HER WORK 
 
 among which was, " the sincere friendship between 
 her and Helen Maria Williams, author of a collec- 
 tion of poems of uncommon merit, who at that time 
 resided in Paris." He continues : " Another per- 
 son, of whom Mary always spoke in terms of ardent 
 commendation, both for the excellence of his dis- 
 position, and the force of his genius, was a Count 
 Slabrendorf, by birth, I believe, a Swede." l Gustav, 
 Graf von Schlabrendorf, was a native of Stettin in 
 Prussia, who during the time of the French Revolu- 
 tion resided in Paris. He was a philanthropist and 
 was somewhat eccentric. In touch with the Girond- 
 ists, he shared the fate of those, who, though ardent 
 republicans in principle, were humane and benevo- 
 lent in sentiment, and therefore became victims of the 
 fury of the Jacobins. Schlabrendorf was imprisoned 
 for eighteen months and barely escaped execution. 
 His tribute to Mary Wollstonecraft was published 
 nearly forty years after the short season of their 
 acquaintance. Count Schlabrendorf had an intimate 
 friend, Carl Gustav Jochmann, with whom he 
 conversed about many notable events and persons, 
 and who thought these conversations of sufficient 
 value to take notes of them. As a mark of special 
 confidence, evidently, Schlabrendorf told him of 
 his acquaintance with Mary Wollstonecraft. Joch- 
 mann says : " My honored friend gave to me 
 William Godwins Memoirs of the Author of a 
 Vindication of the Rights of Woman, (2nd edition, 
 Ivondon 1798) in which he had marked many 
 
 1 W. Godwin : Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the 
 Rights of Woman, p. 102. 
 
IN GERMANY. 2OI 
 
 passages and had added marginal notes, some 
 of which I have included in the above sketch. He 
 therefore showed the book to but few of his best 
 friends. Humboldt had it for a time. ' Perhaps 
 you will occasionally smile,' said the Count, as he 
 handed it to me. But how mistaken he was? I 
 was deeply touched by it." x 
 
 Jochmann had evidently retained a copy of those 
 marginal notes, when he returned the book to 
 Schlabrendorf. These, with a sketch of the life of 
 Mary Wollstonecraft, as he had heard it related by 
 Schlabrendorf, and had found it in her Memoirs, 
 came into the hands of Heinrich Zschokke, when, 
 in 1836, he made selections for publication from 
 the papers of his late friend, Jochmann. They 
 found a place in the volume under preparation. 
 
 Those marginal notes, made by Schlabrendorf, 
 are of biographical value. They are a testimony 
 from one, who knew her well, both as to the 
 womanliness of Mary Wollstonecraft and the high 
 regard, which she inspired at a time, when Imlay, 
 whom she had trusted, proved faithless. After 
 speaking of the suffering, which she incurred by 
 the position taken in her Vindication of the Rights 
 of Woman, scorned even by the members of 
 her own sex, because she had dared to make 
 war upon the gray monster of public opinion, 
 Count Schlabrendorf continues: "And yet, Mary 
 was the noblest, purest and most thoughtful woman 
 
 1 Carl Gustav Joclimann's Reliquien. Aus seinen Nachgelas- 
 senen Papieren. Gesammelt von Heinrich Zschokke. 1836. 
 Vol. I., p. 194. 
 
 26 
 
202 THE RECEPTION OF HER WORK 
 
 whom I have ever met. I knew her well, even 
 before the time of my imprisonment, during the 
 reign of terror. Mary was not a dazzling beauty, 
 but she was of charming grace. Her face, so 
 full of expression, presented a style of beauty 
 beyond that of merely regular features. There was 
 fascination in her look, her voice and her move- 
 ment. While in prison, she often visited me ; she 
 attracted me more and more. Not until after she 
 had left Paris, did I become conscious of the fact 
 that I loved her. Her unhappy relations with Inilay 
 interfered with any closer connections with her." J 
 
 There is pathos in this brief record of a friend- 
 ship, formed mid the bloodshed and terror of the 
 revolution, strengthened by visits in prison, where 
 each hour might have brought the call to the 
 Guillotine. Mary went her way to mourn the 
 faithlessness of Imlay, to form new connections and 
 then to die. Schlabrendorf remained behind to 
 ponder the radiance that had been shed abroad in 
 the gloom of his imprisonment by the choice spirit, 
 which had fled. He treasured her Memoirs. In the 
 margin he penned the words of tribute, which during 
 his lifetime he showed only to his dearest friends. 
 After his death they were given to the world. 
 
 Nearly a year after the first appearance of the 
 Vindication of the Rights of Woman a series of 
 publications began to issue from the pen of a 
 German author, which distinctly characterizes him 
 as one, who then gave expression to modern 
 theories of the emancipation of woman. A diligent 
 
 l lbid, p. 195. 
 
IN GERMANY. 203 
 
 search has not brought to light any direct evidence 
 that this author was influenced by the views of Mary 
 Wollstonecraft ; but the accumulation of indirect 
 evidence is so great, that it does not seem difficult 
 to construe an hypothesis to that effect. The author 
 in question is Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel, born 
 in Gerdauen in Prussia, 1741, known specially by 
 his work, Ueber die Ehe, of which four editions 
 appeared during his lifetime, and which con- 
 tinues to be read to-day, as is manifest in its 
 publication in cheap form in Reclames Universal 
 Bibliothek. 
 
 An hypothesis that Theodor Gottlieb von Hip- 
 pel was indebted for a radical change in his views 
 to the views of Mary Wollstonecraft, expressed in 
 her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, may 
 be supported by a threefold argument. First : 
 There is a coincidence as to time between the appear- 
 ance of her book and the change in his views. 
 Second : It would not have been foreign to the 
 literary character of Hippel to have drawn heavily 
 upon the resources of another author, without 
 making due acknowledgment of his indebtedness. 
 Third : The divergency between his views given 
 to the public previous to 1792 and those expressed 
 after that date, is so wide, that every critic has look- 
 ed upon this as a problem toward the solution of 
 which some theory should be offered. It remains 
 to be seen whether the theory that Hippel borrow- 
 ed from Mary Wollstonecraft does not meet with a 
 larger degree of probability than any other that has 
 yet been framed. 
 
204 THE RECEPTION OF HER WORK 
 
 The coincidence as to time is an important factor 
 in the argument. Both the first edition of Mary 
 Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of 
 Woman, and of Hippel's third edition of Ueber 
 die Ehe, which contains the first sign of a 
 change in his views, bear as the date of publication 
 the year 1792. It is of first importance, therefore, 
 to show that early in the year 1792 Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft's work had been accessible to Hippel. 
 The first notice of her work in English periodicals 
 is probably that in the Analytical Review for March 
 1792, for Mr. Joseph Johnson, the publisher of this 
 Review, was the friend of Mary Wollstonecraft and 
 the publisher of all her works. But there are dates in 
 personal letters and in her Memoirs, which place 
 beyond a doubt the supposition, that her book was 
 published, if not toward the latter part of 1791, at 
 least very early in the year 1792. Burke's Reflec- 
 tions on the Revolution in France appeared in 
 November 1790. Mary Wollstonecraft's reply, as 
 the first of the many replies, must have been pub- 
 lished early in 1791. Godwin says: "Mary accord- 
 ingly proceeded, in a short time after, to the 
 composition of her most celebrated production, The 
 Vindication of the Rights of Woman.* Even 
 though it may be difficult to accept without 
 limitation Godwin's statement, that this latter book 
 was written in the incredibly short space of six 
 weeks' time, it may be regarded as having been 
 ready for the publisher about the middle of the year 
 
 1 W. Godwin : Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of 
 the Rights of Woman, p. 79. 
 
IN GERMANY. 205 
 
 [791. Other data would corroborate this. In 
 September 1791, she removed from the house which 
 she occupied in George Street to a more commo- 
 dious apartment in Store Street, 1 where she remained 
 until she went to France toward the end of 1792. 
 During the more than twelve months of residence 
 in Store Street, Godwin says, 2 she produced nothing 
 but a few articles in the Analytical Review. Her 
 literary meditations were directed toward the sequel 
 to the Rights of Woman, of which only a few hints 
 however were found among her papers after her 
 death. It is therefore certain that in September 
 1791, if not earlier, the manuscript of her Vin- 
 dication of the Rights of Woman was in the hands 
 of her publisher, and more than this, according to 
 Godwin's statement, the book was at that time 
 before the public. In November 1791, he and 
 Mary Wollstonecraft met as guests at the house of 
 a friend. Godwin remarks concerning this inter- 
 view : " I had not read her Rights of Woman, 
 and had hardly looked into her Answer to Burke." 3 
 The 'French translation of The Vindication of the 
 Rights of Woman had been published previous to 
 June 1792. This is apparent from a letter from the 
 author to her sister Everina, dated London, June 
 2oth, 1792, in which she speaks of her intended 
 trip to France and continues : " I shall be intro- 
 duced to many people, my book has been translated 
 and praised in some popular prints."* Both the 
 
 1 Ibid., p. 93. 2 Ibid., p. 99. 3 Ibid., p. 94. 
 
 4 C. Kegan Paul : William Godwin, his Friends and Contem- 
 poraries, 1876. Vol. I., p. 206. 
 
206 THE RECEPTION OF HER WORK 
 
 French editions of her book, the one in Paris and* 
 the other in Lyons, were published in 1792. A 
 second edition in London and an American edition 
 also appeared in 1792. 
 
 It therefore appears that Hippel would have had 
 time to take cognizance of this new work and then 
 to prepare a third edition of his Ueber die Ehe 
 and publish it even in the year 1792. The first 
 edition of this work appeared in 1774, containing 
 229 pages, the second in 1775 containing 319 pages. 
 Seventeen years elapsed, before the third edition 
 was published, in 1792, much enlarged, containing 
 426 pages, and altered especially in the fifth chapter, 
 "On Supremacy in the Marriage Relation." The 
 fourth edition increased to 501 pages, appeared in 
 
 1793, and completes the change that had been com- 
 menced in the third edition. In the following year, 
 
 1794, his work, Ueber die biirgerhche Verbesserung 
 der Weiber, made its appearance, demanding for 
 women the rights of men in the state, in their edu- 
 cation and in the choice of employments. Hippel 
 died in April 1796, but fragments on the same 
 subject, found among his papers, were published as 
 Nachlass iibcr iveibliche Bildung, Berlin 1801. 
 
 Beginning with the year 1792 then, and continu- 
 ing for three years, until his death, Hippel unfold- 
 ed remarkable literary activity in advocating the 
 emancipation of woman. Evidently in order to 
 make room for this, he discontinued the writing of 
 his autobiography. A diary, which he had begun one 
 and one half years previously, was laid aside about 
 the middle of the year 1792. The German period- 
 
IN GERMANY. 207 
 
 icals bring no notice of the third edition of Ueber 
 die Ehe during 1792. One of the earliest reviews 
 of the book occurs in the Allgemeine Literatur 
 Zeitung, Mai 1793, where the attention of the 
 reader is called to the remarkable change in the 
 opinions of the author since the publication of 
 previous editions. It would seem then, that this 
 book which marked the change, appeared in print 
 later than the French translation of The Vindi- 
 cation of the Rights of Woman. The coincidences 
 as to time, therefore, admit of the hypothesis that 
 Hippel's views were influenced by those of Mary 
 Wollstonecraft. 
 
 It is not a light charge, however, to make against 
 the literary character of an author, to say that he 
 borrowed from one, who had but just won her first 
 laurels in authorship, without making acknowledg- 
 ment. This charge would have to be put aside 
 unhesitatingly, if HippePs literary career did not 
 offer a spectacle, unique in the history of litera- 
 ture. The publication of his works was strictly 
 anonymous. Not even his publisher, F. C. Voss in 
 Berlin, was aware of the real name of the author. 
 Public curiosity tried at different times to force the 
 author to disclose his secret, but in vain. He fought 
 for his right to anonymity, circumvented those 
 who came dangerously near the truth in their conjec- 
 tures, and somewhat unscrupulously represented 
 others as the authors of his books. Not even 
 his most intimate friends knew all he had written ; 
 some knew of his authorship of one book, others 
 of another. After his death strife arose. His friends 
 
208 THE RECEPTION OF HER WORK 
 
 found they had been deceived. Schlichtegroll, his 
 biographer, sought to restore peace and a year after 
 HippeFs death addresses the injured friends : " For- 
 give, ye noble ones, this trait of his character. He 
 was not a man after the ordinary type ; yet he never 
 sought to injure anyone." L 
 
 Borowski tried to speak the final word concern- 
 ing Hippel's authorship, in a pamphlet, in which 
 he gives " a complete and wholly reliable list of the 
 writings of Hippel." His assurance, however, 
 that these books " were undoubtedly his produc- 
 tions and he their sole author," 3 received slight 
 recognition. " Hippel," as a later writer, has said, 
 "gave occasion for a contest by means of pamph- 
 lets, such as probably never was waged concerning 
 the literary character of a German author." * Two 
 pamphlets especially give evidence of the heat 
 of the conflict, one by his former friend attacking 
 him, 5 the other, 6 probably by his friend Scheffner, 
 trying to break the force of the accusations. 
 
 The biographical volume which accompanies the 
 complete edition of Hippel's works, characterizes 
 
 1 Schlichtegroll : Nekrolog, 1796; Volume II, pp. 171-346. 
 1797 ; Vol. I., pp. 123-414. 
 
 2 Ludwig Ernst Borowski : Ueber das Autorschicksal des 
 Verfassers des Buches iiber die Ehe. Konigsberg 1797. p. 2. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 39. 
 
 * Theodor Mundt : Zeitgenossen, Vol. IV. p. 146. Leipzig 
 
 1833- 
 
 5 W. G. Keber : Nachrichten und Bemerkungen den Gehei- 
 men Kriegsrath von Hippel betreffend. Konigsberg, 1802. 
 
 6 Epistolische Lektion fur den Herru Ertz-Pri ester Keber, 
 dessen Nachtrag zur Biographic des geheimen Kriegsrath von 
 Hippel betreffend. Danzig, 1804. 
 
IN GERMANY. 
 
 in a short preface, the position of Hippel's biogra- 
 pher, Schlichtegroll, as difficult, and points to the 
 " critique on a grand scale " l exercised by Theodor 
 Mundt, 40 years after Hippel's death. Mundt 
 pursues the psychological method and shows how 
 the ideal side of Hippel's life was in a state of 
 unremittent friction with the material side, "so 
 that his character in fact represents a tragedy of 
 contradictions." These contradictions in his life 
 are to explain the peculiar aspects of his authorship. 
 Undoubtedly they do to some extent ; yet the facts 
 remain unaltered. Mundt admits, that not only 
 the ideas of Kant, but also the thoughts of other 
 friends were utilized in Hippel's writings. 
 
 Kant was called upon, after Hippel's death, to 
 explain how the ideas of his system, before it had 
 been published, had found their way into Hippel's 
 works. He made a statement in the Allgemein- 
 er Literarisher Anzeiger, 1797, in which he 
 speaks of Hippel as an intimate friend, and does 
 not deny, that fragments of his philosophy, 
 which had found their way into his lectures 
 and the note-books of his students, had been 
 used, in a popularized form, in one of Hippel's 
 best works. 3 An hypothesis was discussed in 
 literary journals, as to whether the great philoso- 
 pher was the author of the Book on Marriage. 
 Kant's emphatic denial however, ended this 
 discussion. 
 
 1 Hippel's Werke, Berlin bei G. Reimer, 1828-1838. Vorwort 
 /u Band XII. 
 
 2 Theodor Mundt: Zeitgenossen. Vol. IV, pp. 150. 
 ;< Lebenslaiife nach aufsteigender L,inie, 4 Vols. 1778 1781. 
 
 27 
 
210 THE RECEPTION OF HER WORK 
 
 The reason given by Hippel for his insist- 
 ance upon anonymity, was that a literary career 
 was inconsistent with the interests of his political 
 career. It is difficult to determine whether it was 
 plagiarism of which Hippel was guilty toward Kant 
 and others of his friends ; or whether judgment 
 should be tempered, and all that might seem to verge 
 upon literary theft be looked upon as his own pecu- 
 liar way of literary production. In any case, it is not 
 difficult in view of the circumstances, to suppose 
 that the fresh thought of a gifted Englishwoman, 
 on a subject which had previously been regarded 
 by him in a very different light, was welcomed by 
 him and to some extent appropriated. 
 
 Several theories have been put forth to account for 
 the change in Hippel's views. At the time 
 of the first appearance of his Civil Amelioration 
 of Women, conjectures were made, not only as to 
 the authorship, but as to the intentions of the author. 
 Was it all meant as irony? One of the literary 
 journals of the times considers at length the pros 
 and cons of the supposition that the book was written 
 in a playful humour, but decides that it cannot be 
 thus interpreted and must be regarded as sober 
 truth. 1 Not even Borowski could with certainty 
 give information on this point, and admits his 
 ignorance. 
 
 Schlichtegroll seeks an explanation in Hippel's 
 veneration for the Empress Katharine II. of Russia, 
 of whom he speaks with great praise in his later 
 works. But according to Hippel's autobiography, 
 
 1 Allgemeine lyiteratur Zeitung, December 1794. 
 
IN GERMANY. 211 
 
 he was filled with enthusiastic regard for her even 
 while a young man, during his stay in St. Peters- 
 burg, in 1760. This then could hardly explain his 
 altered opinions. 
 
 Kmil Brenning l advances a theory to the effect 
 that the change might be interpreted as having 
 had a cause of a personal nature. Hippel, in his 
 earlier years, loved a woman, at the time above him 
 in station, to whom for reasons not explained by his 
 biographers, he was never married. His love for her 
 led him to abandon the study of theology and engage 
 in the study of law. This attachment thus had a 
 most decisive influence upon his career. Eleven 
 years had passed since the days of his disappoint- 
 ment, when he published the ^ first edition of his 
 Book on Marriage. It might be supposed therefore, 
 that neither his acrid remarks about women in his 
 earlier work, nor his championship in their cause 
 in later years, had any relation to this episode of his 
 youth. Brenning also points to the influence of 
 the writings of Rousseau, which is very apparent 
 in the later works of Hippel. But Rousseau's ideas 
 concerning the place given by nature to woman are 
 irreconcilable with her political emancipation. 
 
 It would be a difficult undertaking to account 
 for the change in Hippel's views by pointing to a 
 spirit of investigation on this subject in his own 
 country. There was a book, Ueber die Weiber, 
 which appeared anonymously in 1787, and gave a 
 scathing criticism of the manners, disposition and 
 
 1 Einleitung zu Hippel's "Ueber die Ehe " Leipzig 1812, 
 p. XXX. 
 
I 
 
 212 THE RECEPTION OF HER WORK 
 
 character of women. At the close of his work the 
 author makes an appeal : u To you now, O men, 
 will I speak. You are responsible for nearly all 
 the defects which I find in women. Woman is not 
 made to govern herself. It is your vocation to 
 rule." L Four years later another book a appeared 
 anonymously, which seems to have had the object 
 of opposing and contradicting the author of Ueber 
 die Weiber. Judging by the review given in one 
 of the German periodicals 3 of that time, this work, 
 though not radical, was yet liberal in its views 
 regarding women. Still another work,* written 
 by an acquaintance of Hippel, discussed the posi- 
 tion of woman in the age of Homer. 
 
 Granting the widest scope to the possible in- 
 fluence of the writer who opposed the author of 
 Ueber die Weiber, the enthusiasm of the social re- 
 former, which pervades Hippel's later writings, 
 cannot have been a product of German thought 
 and development. Moreover, why should Hippel 
 have been, in this direction, the most progressive 
 of all his countrymen ? It does not seem probable 
 that the Burgomaster of a Prussian City, who had 
 never been married, and in his earlier days had 
 written many a harsh sentence about the inferiority 
 of women, should have become the advocate of 
 
 1 Ueber die Weiber. (von B. Brandes) Weidtnann, Leipzig, 
 1787, p. 295. 
 
 2 Mann und Weib nach ihren gegenseitigen Verhaltnissen 
 geschildert. Leipzig, 1791. 
 
 3 Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek. Vol. 101, p. 133. 
 
 * Geschichte der Weiber im heroischen Zeitalter, von Karl 
 Gotthold Lenz, Hannover. 1790. 
 
IN GERMANY. 213 
 
 their emancipation after having arrived at the 
 maturity, which fifty years of life is apt to bring, 
 unless some striking external influence had been 
 brought to bear upon him. There was something 
 in the change, wrought in Hippel, which seemed 
 foreign to his nature and passed the comprehen- 
 sion of his friends. Though each one of the 
 theories, heretofore advanced, may have something 
 in its favor, there still remains a strong element 
 unaccounted for, which supports the hypothesis 
 that the change in Hippel's views was due to the 
 work of Mary Wollstonecraft. 
 
 It remains now to compare the earlier and later 
 editions of Hippel's Bitch 'fiber die Ehe, and to 
 show from his last work, that in his demands and 
 expectations he was as radical as Mary Wollstone- 
 craft. 
 
 A comparison between the second and fourth 
 edition of Hippel's Buck iiber die Ehe gives 
 evidence or modifications* throughout the whole 
 work, and in the chapter on u Supremacy in the 
 Marriage Relation," he directly contradicts in 
 his last edition what he maintained in his second 
 edition. Such sentences as the following represent 
 the key-note of Hippel's previous ideas: "Even 
 though your husband may have less understanding 
 than you have, madam, it makes no difference. 
 He is lord in the house." l In the later editions 
 this sentence is much modified. A new passage is 
 inserted just preceding it, in which the author 
 points out, that it is not in accordance with the 
 Ehe. Zweite Auflage, Berlin, 1776, p. 142. 
 
214 THE RECEPTION OF HER WORK 
 
 destiny of man, that Eve should be subordinate to 
 Adam, but that the supremacy of man merely 
 proves, that reason has not yet been given full 
 sway, so that woman is still in Egyptian bondage, 
 though her Canaan will yet appear to her. He 
 then adds : " Until that time comes, madam, if you 
 please, have patience, even though your husband 
 may have less understanding than you." 1 In the old 
 edition he claimed that obedience to the will of the 
 husband was not to be regarded as an arbitrary 
 demand at the hands of women, but one dictated 
 by nature. In the new edition he comforts them by 
 telling them, that men in their capacity as citizens, 
 sacrifice some of their legitimate rights, not without 
 advantage to themselves, and that therefore women 
 should be prepared to meet evils on a smaller scale 
 in their household. 2 This is very different from the 
 almost rude tone in which he, in the earlier editions, 
 says : " It is unnatural for women to rule, and if 
 they do rule, it is indecent to show it ; for the 
 partners of the marriage compact are not equals." 
 
 Hippel's last work, his Civil Amelioration of 
 Women, is a more dignified production than his 
 Book on Marriage. The author rises from the 
 level of amusing his readers by witty sallies 
 at the expense of women, to a height that puts 
 him in touch with thoughts and deeds more 
 than a century in advance of his own times. The 
 references in this book to history, anthropology, 
 
 1 Ueber die Ehe. Nachdruck der Vierten Auflage (1793) 
 Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1872, p. 101. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. loi. 3 Ibid., p. 143. 
 
IN GERMANY. 
 
 and the detail of judicial and political administra- 
 tion show that the author was at home in various 
 branches of knowledge, and had a wide acquaint- 
 ance with the current literature of his own nation, 
 as well as of England and France. 
 
 Amid the discussion of a large variety of subjects 
 in the Civil Amelioration of Women, the author 
 does not lose sight of his object. After seeming 
 digressions, he comes back to the plea that not only 
 women but men also have lost by the degradation 
 of women. " How great a pity," he exclaims, "that 
 so much of progress should have been checked by the 
 cruelty of men ! What an abundance offeree women 
 must possess, to have faced even until now such 
 numerous obstacles with so much of fortitude !" * 
 Hippel unhesitatingly demonstrated that woman's 
 position before the law was anomalous. " We deny 
 them the right to be persons," 2 he says, and again : 
 " Women have only one court of appeal : God." 3 He 
 adds, that while the law places women under the 
 restraint of perpetual guardianship, and is slow to 
 grant to them as persons, or as holders of property, 
 the rights of citizens, in respect to punishment no 
 distinction of sex is made. Female weakness ceases 
 to be weakness when crime and retribution is under 
 consideration. 
 
 His demands, urged with less vehemence and 
 earnestness than those of Mary Wollstonecraft, were 
 equally radical. With regard to the education of 
 
 1 Ueber die biirgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber, Frankfurt 
 und Leipzig, 1794, p. 79. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 404. 3 Ibid., p. 74. 
 
2l6 THE RECEPTION OF HER WORK 
 
 women, he says : " Until a new order of things has 
 been introduced on a broad scale in society, admit, 
 ye men, the sooner the better, the girls and young 
 women of the present day to our institutions of 
 learning, and permit them to take part in the 
 instruction here offered without the fear that evil 
 consequences might follow." A He would see women 
 free in the choice of a profession and asks : " When 
 will the right to personal choice of activities cease 
 to be the royal privilege of men?"'' 
 
 His confidence in the skill and wisdom, which 
 women would develop, if admitted to the offices of the 
 State, is almost unlimited. The ready tact which 
 they display in society, the faithful ness to duty which, 
 as even men, he says, 3 must certify, marks the ad- 
 ministration of their households, seem to Hippel a 
 guarantee that in the administration of the State, 
 their co-operation would prove to be a valuable 
 adjunct. The tyranny and greed of gain in official 
 circles, which he describes in unsparing terms, 
 would then, he believes, yield to a more equitable 
 administration. Women were to be trained for the 
 State. In this demand he coincides with Mary 
 Wollstonecraft, and both thereby give expression to 
 an idea born of the French Revolution. Hippel 
 says: " Away with the wall of partition! Train citi- 
 zens for the State without regard to the distinctions 
 of sex. Leave that which women should know as 
 house-wives and mothers to special training and 
 then all will return to the order of nature." * 
 
 1 Ueber die biirgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber, p. 252. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 108. 3 Ibid., p. 335. 4 Ibid., p. 230. 
 
IN GERMANY. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft, young, enthusiastic, ardent 
 with the zeal of the reformer, and a member of the 
 school of Revolutionists in England, saw the con- 
 nection between the claim of the French Repub- 
 licans for the rights of man and its complement, 
 the rights of woman. Her work was the product 
 of her personality and her times, with not a con- 
 tradictory note in it. Was it a reproduction of her 
 sentiments when Hippel, in almost the very words 
 used by her in the dedication of her book, attacks 
 the new constitution of the Republicans, " because 
 they saw fit to exclude a full one-half of the 
 nation?" l In an almost prophetic tone he exclaims : 
 " L,et us rejoice in the prospect of the time when 
 the day of redemption will dawn for the fair sex, 
 when human beings, who are called to equal rights, 
 will not be hindered in the enjoyment of them, and 
 when those who, to all appearances, are equal will 
 not be separated by arbitrary distinctions." 2 
 
 Was this an echo of the strong, full note, struck 
 by Mary Wollstonecraft in her Vindication of the 
 Rights of Woman ? Perhaps it was. An hypothesis 
 to that effect is supported by much indirect evi- 
 dence, and leads to the assumption, that Mary 
 Wollstonecraft, through Theodor Gottlieb von 
 Hippel, announced in Germany the principles which 
 must ultimately lead to the emancipation of 
 woman. 
 
 1 Ibid., p. 209. 2 Ibid., p. 16. 
 
 28 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 A CENTURY has passed since Mary Wollstone- 
 craft made her demands in behalf of women. The 
 principles which served as foundation of her 
 argument, have become the watchword of progress 
 in the onward course of civilization. The contest 
 concerning the abolition of slavery, waged during 
 the first part of the present century, was an 
 application of some of the ideas which were so 
 strongly enunciated during the French Revolution. 
 In our own day the discussion of the social problem 
 centers largely in the persistent effort to secure 
 to the laborer the rights of man. The influ- 
 ence of these movements could not but leave upon 
 women the impression, that the day of their 
 emancipation had also drawn nigh. If any one of 
 them demanded for herself that which she 
 considered the rights of a human being, the general 
 ideas of the present century furnished her an ally, 
 sufficiently strong to render the prospect of success 
 at least to some extent hopeful. 
 
CONCLUSION. 219 
 
 A comparison between the propositions and 
 demands of Mary Wollstonecraft and that which 
 has been achieved in their realization gives evidence 
 of a marked change in the whole situation. Few of 
 the women of her times were conscious of a desire for 
 equality, and men did not seek occasion to arouse 
 aspirations of this kind. This apathy has given 
 way to unrest. Of the nations which can to-day lay 
 even the slightest claim to civilization, there are 
 few that do not count within their borders women, 
 who are conscious of the degrading nature of their 
 subordinate position. To win for herself the rights 
 to which she has claim as a human being, is the 
 aim of the typical woman of the present century ; 
 and she works toward its attainment with a patient 
 determination. Man is not by any means always 
 her enemy, who enjoys for himself the high 
 heritage of the rights of freedom and equality, the 
 trophies of the struggle of past centuries, and 
 refuses to allow woman to partake of them. There 
 are men, who lend a hand to remove obstacles that 
 obstruct the path which Mary Wollstonecraft was 
 one of the first to tread ; men like John Stuart Mill, 
 who in his widely read book, The Subjection of 
 Women, proved himself one of the numerous 
 advisers and helpers of woman, who during the 
 present century have ranged themselves on her side. 
 
 Others, however, stand afar off and watch this 
 new current in the history of civilization with 
 doubtful mien ; strange it seems to them and 
 uncertain as to its ultimate destiny. But when this 
 question in modern progress embodies itself in the 
 
220 CONCLUSION. 
 
 form of a member of her sex, who asks of life but 
 the right of freedom in the choice of her calling, 
 in the preparation for it and in its pursuit, then 
 the question takes a turn, it becomes direct and 
 practical, and any possible opposition falls to the 
 ground by reason of its innate contradiction. The 
 days have passed, when one human being could 
 dictate to another : Thy rank in society, or in 
 this case thy sex, robs thee of the opportunity of 
 striving after the attainment of the highest possible 
 degree of development of all thy faculties. Such 
 disposition of one by another belongs to the time 
 when serfdom was still in vogue, not to our 
 own day. 
 
 The course of history remains a closed book to 
 many, who yet in their own circle of observation 
 meet with the unmistakable fact, that a revolution 
 is gaining ground, to some degree unobserved, but 
 none the less surely and steadily. It is not noticed 
 until daughter, sister or friend comes to a realiza- 
 tion of the fact, that she is first a human 
 being and then a woman, that she may partake 
 of the rights of human beings and yet remain 
 a woman. 
 
 In contrast to the apathy, which paralyzed pro- 
 gress in this direction in Mary Wollstonecraft's time, 
 we have to-day the lively opposition of conservative 
 minds among women as well as men. This is a 
 favorable sign, indicating that public opinion is now 
 at work on a question, which in that day seemed 
 peculiar and out of place. The man of meager 
 education, as well as the man of learning, forms 
 
CONCLUSION. 221 
 
 an opinion concerning the position, which nature 
 has given to woman. A corresponding profusion 
 of literary productions marks the degree to which 
 the public mind has taken hold of the question. 
 Frivolous witticism, sentimental declamation and 
 the sameness of oft repeated assertions form a 
 wearisome phase of this literature. The case is 
 different, when the scientist forms hypotheses to 
 prove that woman, according to the physical neces- 
 sity of her nature, must be excluded from the 
 higher range of mental activity. These assump- 
 tions have been proven unsound and have thus 
 supported by indirect proof the positive side of the 
 argument in favor of equality. The psychologist 
 too has instituted researches, investigating the 
 powers and functions of the female mind. His 
 results are of doubtful value, for as John Stuart Mill 
 says, this chapter of psychology will not stand on 
 correct basis until the time comes, when women 
 shall be of age and able to give information 
 concerning themselves. In this respect also, Mary 
 Wollstonecraft did the service of a pioneer, in 
 saying : "I have, probably, had an opportunity of 
 observing more girls in their infancy than J. J. 
 Rousseau and I recollect my own feelings." 1 The 
 student of political economy too finds that he is 
 lacking in a fixed foundation, when he attempts to 
 assign to woman her place in the vast organism 
 that constitutes the state. It may easily happen, 
 that that which he seeks to support theoretically 
 to-day, is practically proven untenable to-morrow 
 1 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, p. 81. 
 
222 CONCLUSION. 
 
 by woman, as she, undaunted, moves onward in 
 the path which her feet are treading. 
 
 The limited number of professions and occupa- 
 tions, which Mary Wollstonecraft hesitatingly men- 
 tioned as adapted to women, have multiplied. She 
 bravely pointed to the study and practice of medicine 
 as a calling which woman could follow, much to the 
 advantage of 'the suffering, especially among her 
 own sex. Seventy-five years after her time, the 
 Universities of Switzerland admitted women to 
 academic rights and honors. Some of Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft's countrywomen, in those early days of 
 scant educational advantages, sojourned in Switzer- 
 land, because the doors of English Colleges were 
 yet closed against them. The day came, when on 
 British soil their rights were to some extent 
 respected. There has been a steady increase from 
 year to year in the branches of employment in 
 which women gain a foothold, until to-day there 
 are few in which they have not at least reached an 
 average degree of ability and efficiency. The 
 question is no longer as to whether woman is able, 
 the question is, what effect will the addition of so 
 much fresh capacity of labor have upon social con- 
 ditions ? Will the strain grow more oppressive and 
 the struggle for existence keener ? But to set aside 
 the capabilities of the woman, who stands above 
 the average, in favor of the man of slight natural 
 endowment, would be to give the victory to the 
 physically stronger. It would be equivalent to 
 following motives, which belong to the maxims of 
 barbarism, where the physically strong takes in all 
 
CONCLUSION. 223 
 
 things the precedent, and contrary to the principles 
 of equality, which the race has evolved at tremen- 
 dous cost. 
 
 Those causes and effects of woman's subordinate 
 position, which Mary Wollstonecraft laid bare with 
 so much penetration, are still in operation to some 
 degree. In their full extent as defect, as blemish, 
 they appear when they produce discords where 
 otherwise there would be naught but full-toned 
 harmony of development. The dormant condition 
 of important faculties, barely noticed in the seclu- 
 sion of private life, makes itself felt, when the 
 activities are transferred to positions of wider 
 responsibilities in public life. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft complained that the women 
 of her times possessed so little genuine love for 
 humanity, that they seldom felt any tenderness to- 
 ward children, who were not their own. In this di- 
 rection a change has been wrought. Philanthropic 
 interests have opened out to women channels 
 of activity, which have led them to new conceptions 
 concerning the claims which the individual has 
 upon the race, and reciprocally the race on the in- 
 dividual ; and these new conceptions have re-acted 
 upon them, and lent them a new dignity. The 
 motives toward this activity have undoubtedly 
 been furnished by the religion of Jesus Christ. If 
 in facing the stronghold of conservatism, there was 
 danger that woman might lay too great a stress 
 upon her rights, the balance was restored by the 
 precepts of Christianity, which give to duty the 
 first place, and accord to right the place of a 
 
224 CONCLUSION. 
 
 legitimate second. When the weak face the strong, 
 they speak of their rights. The time must come 
 when woman may cease to declare her independ- 
 ence and remember only that human beings are 
 inter-dependent, and may limit their liberty even 
 unto the sacrifice of their lives, if they would 
 aspire to the highest ideals of the Christian world. 
 
 It is wholly in accordance with a sound, normal 
 growth, that woman should but slowly gather into 
 her hand some of the threads of public life, and 
 that her influence should but by degrees become a 
 part of the conflicting currents of contemporaneous 
 thought. By means of cunning and intrigue the 
 women of Mary Wollstonecraft's day wrought much 
 both of good and of evil in the destinies of nations. 
 Stealthy interference may even to-day have its far 
 reaching effects. At the same time, in a frank and 
 open spirit, woman, to a degree that varies in 
 different nations, is beginning to take part in the 
 duties of public life, not asserting herself obtrusive- 
 ly, but with a view to conquering rather by means 
 of the fairness and justice of her cause. For who 
 shall chide her, when she ranges herself on the 
 side of those of her own sex who, poor, destitute, 
 outcast or imprisoned are dependent upon the 
 mercy or justice of the state? Who would inter- 
 fere, when she seeks to weaken the stability of laws, 
 that were made to support man's sovereignty in 
 the family, that rank woman in a line with his 
 goods and possessions ? 
 
 Woman is comparatively powerless so long as 
 she is denied the franchise. John^ Stuart Mill 
 
CONCLUSION. 225 
 
 directs his argument largely towards this aspect of 
 the matter ; for in the problem of enfranchisement 
 the whole question of the social position of woman 
 comes to a point. The laughter, with which, as 
 Mary Wollstonecraft rightly expected, her proposi- 
 tion that women should have their own representa- 
 tives was received, has long since been turned into 
 soberness. Political conflicts and earnest debates 
 have, in several countries, shown that that which 
 in her day was termed an Utopian dream, cannot 
 now be hushed to silence by jokes and innuendoes. 
 Those who maintain the political equality of 
 woman scarcely find themselves under necessity to 
 fortify their position by means of argument. All 
 that could be said for or against was exhausted in 
 other directions. Especially since the time when in 
 America political equality was thrust upon the 
 slave, but recently liberated, as a gift, there is no 
 argument left} that could make it appear in the 
 light of justice and fairness, that woman should be 
 denied that which was given to the slave unasked. 
 All that now remains to be conquered is a certain 
 sentiment. An inveterate antipathy furnishes the 
 last arrow remaining in a once well-filled quiver. 
 
 If this antipathy is defined, it is generally found 
 to have its source in the desire to shield the family 
 and the home. In an undefinable fear of that which 
 is new and unknown to experience, fancy creates 
 terrifying pictures of how the state, which must not 
 be deprived of the family as its foundation, how the 
 whole commonwealth would be plunged into dire 
 confusion, if ever the narrow boundaries which now 
 
226 CONCLUSION. 
 
 confine women to the family, and the family only, 
 should yield to pressure. But experience, the 
 faithful adviser of fancy, has already demonstrated, 
 that the states which have extended the franchise 
 to women and have made her free economically, 
 have suffered no manner of catastrophe, nor have 
 they found themselves involved in a confusion of 
 social conditions. In its early days the movement 
 was not without its fanatics, the necessary accom- 
 paniment of any great movement. They undoubt- 
 edly had a work to do ; they did it heroically, though 
 perhaps not always gracefully, and have passed away. 
 To-day the " New Woman " illustrates another 
 phase in the evolution of the movement. She is 
 the woman who has an undisputed right to all 
 things, who would be guarded in that which she 
 appropriates, but is often crude and self-assertive in 
 her choice. She carries her new-found freedom 
 with a proud air of inelegancy. As for the true 
 "New Woman " of the future, who shall define her ? 
 There are to-day women, who in their personality 
 herald the corning of a new woman who will be 
 the fulfilment of the ideals, thought unattainable by 
 her who passed through the shadows of the 
 transition state from the old to the new. 
 
 The fear that woman could be estranged from 
 the family need have no power to harass. She will 
 never cease instinctively to expect happiness of a 
 high order in the companionship of her husband, 
 in the clinging helplessness of her little children. 
 Her expectation that her husband will regard her 
 as an equal can only tend to lift family relations to 
 
CONCLUSION. 227 
 
 a higher, nobler plane. If, as John Stuart Mill 
 says, the family is to-day the only social institution 
 in which despotism may lift its head nnrebuked 
 and unpunished, it would be a consequential com- 
 pletion of the revolutions inaugurated by the 
 eighteenth centurv, if woman should banish from 
 
 o J ' 
 
 society this remnant of barbarism. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft's hints concerning a recon- 
 ciliation between the conflicting claims of profes- 
 sional life and the home, between independence and 
 the family, are few. How both could be blended 
 in harmonious development, neither detracting 
 from the other, but rather each supplementing 
 the other, she did not and could not explain. 
 Down to the present day theories on this subject 
 are of merely potential value. Experience must 
 demonstrate that a reconciliation between these 
 conflicting factors'" in the modern woman's life, is 
 not only within the range of possibility, but that it 
 is an actually accomplished fact. Every woman 
 who engages in this conflict and in a conciliatory 
 spirit goes forth from it as conqueror, supports from 
 the practical side a movement, which to her indi- 
 vidually is a source of power. This represents the 
 individual, practical aspect of the movement. Its 
 general aspect, in its conformity to a general law, 
 is to be found in the course of history. 
 
 It is the significance of the work of Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft, as vindicator of the rights of woman, that 
 with the eye of genius she recognized the advent 
 of the time, when in the course of historical devel- 
 opment, the principles had been evolved, which 
 
228 CONCLUSION. 
 
 would offer to each individual woman a sure foot- 
 hold for her endeavors in the direction of emanci- 
 pation. To this conception she gave perhaps the 
 first conscious expression and thereby became the 
 forerunner of a movement, which seems destined to 
 revolutionize social conditions in many countries. 
 Her Vindication of the Rights of Woman may there- 
 fore be considered to have marked an epoch in the 
 history of civilization. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 America, 
 
 new government in, 84. 
 
 woman in, Wo. 
 
 political equality in, 225. 
 
 relation to France, 11. 
 Anarchy, 
 
 in education, 151. 
 
 in marriage, 184. 
 Angels, 100, 119. 
 Anthropology, 110. 
 Aristocracy, 154:. 
 Atheism, 57, 62. ' 
 Authority, 138, 144. 
 
 Baader, Franz von, 197. 
 Bachofen, 111. 
 Barbarism, 82, 179, 222. 
 Bazard, 187. 
 Bebel, August, 116. 
 Benevolence, 128-29. 
 Bible, The, 48, 63. 
 Biology, 110. 
 Blind, Mathilde, 22. 
 Bluntschli, J. C., 170. 
 Borowski, L. E., 208, 210. 
 Brandes, E., 212. 
 Brenning, E., 211. 
 Buckle, 74. 
 Burke, Edmund, 
 
 and the French Revolution, 
 
 9, 49. 
 controversy with, 71 82, 
 
 87. 
 
 Burr, Aaron, 15. 
 Byron, 188. 
 
 Cambridge School of Moralists. 
 
 126. 
 
 Carter, Mrs. E., 62. 
 Cenci, Beatrice, 21. 
 Chapone, Mrs., 96. 
 Character, 
 
 human, 89, 98. 
 
 female, 116. 
 
 formation of, 131, 188. 
 Chesterfield, Lord, 97. 
 Christianity, 
 
 hostility to, 62. 
 
 relation to woman, 99, 100. 
 
 Saint Simonians and, 187. 
 \ Church, The, 
 
 doctrines of, 46. 
 
 forms of, 49. 
 
 criticism of, 64. 
 
 sentiment of, 99. 
 Citizen, 
 
 training of, 146, 155. 
 
 rights of, 215. 
 Civilization, 
 
 progress of, 30, 186. 
 
 curse of, 80. 
 
 ideal of, 90. 
 Clergy, The, 65. 
 Co-education, ~L5'i 160. 
 Coercion, 105, 112. 
 Communism, 188. 
 
230 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Colls, John Henry, 120. 
 Condorcet, 148, 171. 
 Conquest, 100-101. 
 Constitution, 
 
 English, 79. 
 
 French Republican, 148, 
 
 165. 
 
 Conservatism, 45. 
 Cudworth, 126. 
 
 Deism, 50, 55, 62. 
 Dependence, 92, 132-33. 
 Descartes, 50, 111. 
 Development, 
 
 room for, 54. 
 
 of resources, 85. 
 
 of women, 124. 
 
 of children, 136. 
 
 of girls, 155. 
 
 of humanity, 163. 
 Differentiation, 124, 158, 163. 
 Disintegration, 181. 
 Distinction. 
 
 rank, 89, 169. 
 
 class, 160. 
 Diversity, 124. 
 Dowden, Edward, 19. 
 Dress, 91, 117. 
 Duty, 
 
 in relation to God, 52. 
 
 neglect of, 130. 
 
 of motherhood, 136. 
 
 and rights, 138. 
 
 of woman, 190. 
 
 conception of, 192. 
 
 and Christianity, 223. 
 
 Education, 
 
 intuition in, 25. 
 
 private, 144, 152. 
 
 national, 149152, 159- 
 160. 
 
 co-education, 157 162. 
 Ely, R. T., 187. 
 Emancipation, 
 
 of woman, 182, 202, 218, 
 227. 
 
 of working man, 187, 218. 
 Empiricism, 54. 
 
 Enfantin, 187. 
 England, 
 
 reform in, 70. 
 
 property in, 80. 
 
 morality in, 130. 
 
 education in, 146. 
 Environment, 
 
 and woman, 125, 139. 
 
 and morality, 131. 
 Equality, 
 
 theses of, 39. 
 
 independence and, 113. 
 
 intellectual, 148. 
 
 of 'opportunity, 160. 
 
 in social conditions, 189. 
 Ethics, 
 
 apprehension and, 53. 
 
 marriage and, 94. 
 
 schools of, 126, 135. 
 Etiquette, 108, 113. 
 Evil, 
 
 social, 26. 
 
 doctrine of, 56-57, 126. 
 
 Family, The, 
 
 constitution of, 163. 
 
 attack upon, 180, 182. 
 
 socialism and, 186. 
 Fanatic, 193. 
 Fawcett, Mrs. Henry, 29. 
 Fordyce, Dr. George, 71. 
 Fordyce, Rev. James, 97101. 
 Fourier, 175, 186. 
 France, 
 
 religion in, 78. 
 
 and woman, 105. 
 
 political position of, 148. 
 
 and suffrage, 170. 
 Franchise, 224. 
 Freedom, 
 
 of individual, 99. 
 
 of intellectual enquiry, 150. 
 
 efficacy of, 166. 
 Freethinkers, 62. 
 Fuseli, Henry, 10, 71, 171. 
 
 Geddes, Dr., 71. 
 Genlis, Madame, 96. 
 Gentleness, 128. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 George III., 71, 168. 
 Goethe, 35. 
 Godwin, William, 
 
 marriage, 13. 
 
 >'/. Leon, 15. 
 
 as biographer, 14, 39, 48, 
 63. 
 
 on national education, 149 
 152. 
 
 social philosophy of, 176 
 
 185. 
 Government, 
 
 liberty and, 81. 
 
 participation in, 148. 
 
 and education, 150. 
 
 forms of, 168. 
 Greek, The, 99. 
 Gregory, Dr. John, 101104. 
 Growth, 77, 83. 
 
 Happiness, 
 
 conditions for, 70. 
 
 abode of, 85. 
 
 attainment of, 135. 
 
 virtue and, 142. 
 Hartmann, E. von. 122. 
 Hayes, Miss, 60, Iff 8. 
 Heredity, 137. 
 Hettner, H., 35. 
 Hippel, T. G. von, 203217. 
 Homer, 212. 
 Humanity, 
 
 wrongs of, 26, 33. 
 
 service to, 70. 
 
 love for, 146. 
 
 development of, 163. 
 Humboldt, 201. 
 
 Idea, The, 121, 143. 
 Idealism. 36, 54. 
 Imlay, Gilbert, 
 
 marriage to, 10. 
 
 letters to, 34, 59. 
 Imlay, Fanny, 
 
 birth of, 11. 
 
 death of, 19. 
 
 lessons for, 33. 
 
 education of, 104. 
 
 letter by, 188. 
 
 Immortality, 61-62. 
 Impression, 142. 
 Independence, 100. 
 Individual, 
 
 judgment of, 76. 
 
 liberty of, 81. 
 
 value of, 99. 
 
 assertiveness of, 163. 
 Inferiority, 
 
 moral, 93, 125. 
 
 intellectual, 107. 
 Intrigue, 129, 165. 
 Intuition, 25, 121. 
 
 Jochmann, C. G., 200202. 
 Johnson, Joseph, 7, 12, 70, 73, 
 
 177, 204. 
 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 95, 116. 
 Justice, 
 
 sense of, 23. 
 
 as virtue, 129, 147. 
 
 principle of, 181. 
 
 Kant, Iimnanuel, 
 
 theoretical knowledge, 53. 
 
 influence in Germany, 192. 
 
 and Hippel, 209210. 
 Katharine II., 210. 
 Keber, W. G., 208. 
 Kindergarten, 158. 
 Kingsborough, Lord, 7, 47, 68. 
 Kirkup, Thomas, 149, 185. 
 Klemm, G., 199. 
 Knowles, John, 171. 
 Kiittner, K. G., 198. 
 
 Labor, 174176. 
 Lavater, 71. 
 Laveleye, 188. 
 Law, 
 
 principles of, 60. 
 
 respecting woman, 172, 215. 
 
 of oppression, 184. 
 Lechler, G. V., 55. 
 Lenz, K. G., 212. 
 Liberalism, 179. 
 Liberty, 
 
 security of, 80. 
 
 nature of, 81. 
 
232 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Liberty, 
 
 conception of, 99. 
 
 natural and civil, 146. 
 
 efficacy of, 166. 
 
 and license, 185. 
 Lippert, Julius, 179. 
 Locke, John, 
 
 philosophy, 50, 5255 
 
 revolutionary principle, 
 8284. 
 
 pedagogical views, 141 
 
 144. 
 Louis xvi., 32, 82. 
 
 Macon, Council at, 127. 
 Macauley, Catherine, 96. 
 Magna Charta, 7677. 
 Manifesto, 179, 187. 
 Marie Antoinette, 43, 78. 
 Marriage, 
 as an aim, 103. 
 attack upon 180. 
 socialism and, 185. 
 Marshall, Mrs. J., 120, 188. 
 Matriarchate, 111. 
 Materialism, 61. 
 Medical College, 162. 
 Meekness, 98-99. 
 Menger. Anton, 151, 175. 
 Mill, John Stuart, 219, 221, 224, 
 Mohl, E. von, 75. [226. 
 
 Monarchy, 168. 
 Montesquieu, 169. 
 Morality, 
 
 foundation of, 52. 
 
 reason and, 118. 
 
 basis of, 125. 
 
 state of, 130. 
 
 science of, 161. 
 Moral Sense, 52. 
 More, Hannah, 43-44, 49. 
 Motherhood, 
 
 sensibility and, 136. 
 
 duties of, 157. 
 
 importance of, 183. 
 Mundt, Th., 208. 
 
 Nation, 83, 86. 167. 
 
 Nature, 
 
 return to, 89. 
 
 law of, 108. 
 Necker, Jacques, 28. 
 
 Opie, 21, 
 Opinion, public, 
 
 conservative nature of, 104. 
 
 law of, 112. 
 
 power of, 167. 
 Opportunity, 
 
 equality of, 151, 160. 
 
 of development, 220. 
 Optimism, 86, 162. 
 Orthodoxy, 63, 
 Owen, Kobert, 175, 188. 
 
 Paine, Thomas, 44, 71, 177. 
 Paul, C. Kegan, 10, 21, 34, 46, 60 
 ' Passions, The, 
 and reason, 54. 
 of women, 131. 
 restraint upon, 142. 
 Pedagogy, 141, 143. 
 Pennell, E. E,, 22, 29. 
 Personality, 157. 
 Pessimism, 57, 123. 
 Philosophy, 
 
 moral, 50, 53. 
 
 social, 184. 
 Piozzi, Mrs., 95. 
 Plato, 54. 
 Pleasure, 133. 
 Politics, 75, 169. 
 Pope, 97. 
 Preger, W., 99. 
 Prejudice, 90, 149. 
 Price, Dr. Eichard, 
 
 as friend, 7. 
 
 as preacher, 49, 53, 
 
 as philosopher, 53, 126. 
 Priestly, 71. 
 Prior, James, 72. 
 Prior, Master at Eton, 7, 69. 
 Privilege, 114-115, 160. 
 Property, 
 
 theories on, 151. 
 
 marriage and, 179. 
 
 encroachment of, 81. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 233 
 
 Psychology, 123, 221. 
 Punishment, 55, 147. 
 
 Radicalism, 179. 
 Rank, 78. 
 Rationalism, 
 
 in religion, 58. 
 
 in politics, 75. 
 
 conclusion of, 112. 
 
 and sensibility, 117. 
 
 formula of, 139. 
 Reason, 
 
 nature of, 53, 159. 
 
 in politics, 77. 
 
 and nature, 94. 
 
 and woman, 111, 166. 
 
 and virtue, 128. 
 
 and the passions, 131. 
 
 and education, 141. 
 
 as arbiter, 184. 
 Reform, 182. 
 Reformation, 78, 84, 112. 
 Reformer, 
 
 traits of, 25, 138. 
 
 zeal of, 70, 106. 
 
 indignation o, 113. 
 
 confidence of, 166. 
 Religion, 51, 93. 
 Republicans, French, 
 
 Horace Walpole and, 45. 
 
 and national education, 
 145. 
 
 constitution of, 148. 
 
 and woman's suffrage, 165. 
 
 and Talleyrand, 171. 
 Research, 111. 
 Revelation, 53. 
 Revolution, 
 
 and Christianity, 78. 
 
 when justifiable, 84. 
 
 in female manners, 112. 
 Revolution, French, 
 
 a crisis, 30. 
 
 Burke and, 49, 74. 
 
 discussion of, 70. 
 
 history of, 83. 
 
 and women, 165, 171. 
 
 idea born of, 226. 
 
 Revolutionists, 
 
 society of English, 72, 168. 
 
 school of, 75, 77, 182, 217. 
 
 attacks of, 101. 
 Rights, 
 
 civil, 39. 
 
 natural, 81, 165. 
 
 of man, 30, 76. 
 
 of woman, 87. 
 Rousseau, 
 
 influence of, 35, 69, 211. 
 
 reasoning concerning God, 
 52. 
 
 conception of evil, 56. 
 
 position of woman, 88-95. 
 
 pedagogical views, 143-145. 
 
 Saint Simon, 175, 186. 
 Salzmann, C. G., 
 
 method of, 27. 
 
 pedagogical views of, 194. 
 
 translation by, 194-199. 
 Scepticism, 62. 
 Sheffher, 208. 
 Schlabrendorf, Count, 
 
 imprisonment of, 186. 
 
 tribute by, 200-202. 
 Science, 
 
 natural, 110. 
 
 economic, 151. 
 j Sensibility, 
 
 of women, 42, 108. 
 
 and female character 115- 
 117. 
 
 and benevolence, 29. 
 
 and motherhood, 136. 
 Shelley, Harriet, 17. 
 Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 
 
 birth, 14. 
 
 marriage, 18. 
 
 death, 21. 
 
 dedication to, 19. 
 
 opinion of, 120. 
 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 
 
 marriage, 18. 
 
 Revolt of Islam, 19. 
 
 death, 20. 
 
 at Lake Geneva, 188. 
 
234 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Shelley, Sir Percy, 21. 
 Simmel, G., 123. 
 Smith, Adam, 115, 174. 
 Socialism, 
 
 woman and, 116. 
 
 education and 151-153, 160. 
 
 marriage and, 185. 
 
 leaders of, 186. 
 
 ideals of, 188. 
 Sociology, 163. 
 Soul, The, 
 
 affected by sex, 120. 
 
 of woman, 127. 
 
 impressions upon, 142. 
 Spinoza, 121, 128. 
 Stael, The Baroness de, 95. 
 State, The, 
 
 founding of, 81. 
 
 duty toward, 157. 
 
 participation in, 165. 
 
 and individual, 167. 
 
 and woman, 189, 216. 
 
 and franchise, 225. 
 Stephen, Leslie, 62, 180. 
 Strength, physical, 108-110. 
 Subtilty, 92-93. 
 Suffrage, 
 
 universal, 170. 
 
 of woman, 170, 224. 
 System, 
 
 announcement of ew, 40, 
 44, 191, 197. 
 
 of woman's education, 89, 
 94, 106. 
 
 in England, 71. 
 
 on national education, 148. 
 
 Talleyrand, 
 
 on political rights, 164. 
 possible championship, 171. 
 
 I Theism, 51, 62. 
 Truth, 
 
 nature of, 50. 
 
 in perversions, 100. 
 
 ultimate ethical, 125. 
 
 unpatronized, 150. 
 Tyranny, 
 
 toward children, 136, 144. 
 
 in school, 146. 
 
 in society, 165. 
 
 instrument of, 168. 
 
 Understanding, 
 
 cultivation of, 117. 
 
 neglect of, 136, 159. 
 Uniformity, 124. 
 Ushers, 146. 
 Utilitarian Sphool of Ethics, 
 
 125-26, 135. 
 Utility, 
 
 in ethics, 125, 127. 
 
 in education, 141. 
 
 Vice, 55, 86. 
 Virtue, 
 
 and reason, 52, 142. 
 
 of woman, 91, 127-139. 
 
 in society, 198. 
 Voltaire, 178, 192. 
 Voss, F. C., 207. 
 
 Walpole, Horace, 43-44. 
 Warschauer, Otto, 187. 
 Weakness, 113, 133. 
 Wealth, 174. 
 Williams, H. M. 200. 
 Wundt, W., 101. 
 
 Zimmern, H. 22. 
 Zschokke, H., 201. 
 
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