concentrate herself only on the orthodox immoralities propounded by Dr. Gregory and Dr. Fordyce. She challenges the whole field, and deals with Pope, Lord Chesterfield, and Rousseau as fearlessly as with teachers more in harmony with the ordinarily received opinions of her day. In contrast with Dr. Fordyce's recommendation of the consolations of religion to women on the ground that "a fine woman never strikes more deeply" than when she is communing in spirit with her Creator, she reminds us of the opposite pole of male and female depravity expressed by Pope in the lines where, speaking on behalf of the whole male sex, he says:—
"Yet ne'er so sure our passion to create
As when she touch'd the brink of all we hate."
The appearance of wantonness, just short of its reality, if indeed it was desirable to stop short of it, is recommended to women by Pope exactly in the same spirit as that in which Dr. Fordyce recommended piety. The centre of both systems is the assumption that women have nothing better to do or think of in this world than "to make conquests," as the old phrase was. The falsity, the immorality of this assumption, and the miserable consequences of acting upon it, it was the aim of "The Vindication of the Rights of Women" to demonstrate. In combating Rousseau's views on education, especially his antagonism to teaching boys and girls together or according to the same methods, she refers to his argument that if women are educated like men, the
