lieve that Eve was,
"literally speaking, one of Adam's ribs." She is indignant at the
blasphemy of sectarians who teach that an all-merciful God has instituted
eternal punishment, and she is impatient of the debtor and creditor
system which was then the inspiration of the religion of the people. She
believes in God as the life of the universe, and she accepts neither the
theory of man's innate wickedness nor that of his natural perfection, the
two then most generally adopted, but advocates his power of
development:--

"Rousseau exerts himself to prove that all _was_ right originally;
a crowd of authors that all _is_ now right; and I, that all _will
be_ right."

She, in fact, teaches the doctrine of evolution. But where its modern
upholders refer all things to an unknowable source, she builds her belief
"on the perfectibility of God."

Even the warmest admirers of Mary Wollstonecraft must admit that the
faults of the "Vindication of the Rights of Women" are many. Criticised
from a literary stand-point, they exceed its merits. Perfection of style
was not, it is true, the aim of the writer, as she at once explains in
her Introduction. She there says, that being animated by a far greater
end than that of fine writing,--

"... I shall disdain to cull my phrases or polish my style. I aim
at being useful, and sincerity will render me unaffected; for
wishing rather to persuade by the force of my arguments than to
dazzle by the elegance of my language, I shall not waste my time in
rounding periods, nor in fabricating the turgid bombast of
artificial feelings, which, coming from the head, never reach the
heart. I shall be employed about things, not words! and, anxious to
render my sex more respectable members of society, I shall try to
avoid that flowery diction which has slided from essays into
novels, and from novels into familiar letters and conversation."

Yet she errs principally from the fault she determines to avoid, as the
very sentence in which she announces this determination proves. Despite
her sincerity, she is affected, and her arguments are often weakened by
meretricious forms of expression. No one can for a moment doubt that her
feelings are real, but neither can the turgidity and bombast of her
language be denied. She borrows, unconsciously perhaps, the "flowery
diction" which she so heartily condemns. Her style, instead of being
clear and simp