That same year, Thomas Taylor responded with "A Vindication of the Rights of Beasts," a parody designed to reveal the absurdity of Wollstonecraft's position by demonstrating that beasts, as well as women, have "intrinsic and real dignity and worth".
What few of us realised at the time was that the self-appointed zookeepers were abrogating to themselves the right to shoot the beast.
To move this beast toward the right, you push down on the handle, and to move left you lift up.
Since Roman times, he argued, humanism's latent message had been that "reading the right books calms the inner beast" and its function was to select a "secret élite" of the literate.
If you've got a shark you want to catch, a dream you have no idea how to attain, pick up the phone and call the person in your life that might have a clue about how to help you turn that unwieldy beast in the right direction.
It's just the nature of the beast right now... .. [quoted recently on the subject of the media hype about the Republican primary contenders, and the mini-uproar over her calling "Herb" [sic] Cain the "flavor of the week".].
Some big beasts of the right raise sincere concerns about the gulf between Mr Cameron's ministerial team which they see as dominated by managerialism and pragmatism and a parliamentary party that is more ideological, especially over Europe, the great uniting issue of the right (and a cause that binds crusty oldies to the 2010 intake).
If he's on some novice chaser and needs a big jump at the last to seal victory, he'll go for it and it will have been the right decision, even if the wretched beast meets the fence only halfway up.
"You've got the belly of the beast right here," said Pat McDonald, a psychotherapist and career counselor who will teach the N.Y.U.
The precise placement of each hair on the furry body of a werewolf rocketed the beast right off the page.
