Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/261

Rh the reaonablenes of the greater number of wars that have dubbed heroes. I do not mean to conider this quetion critically; becaue, having frequently viewed thee freaks of ambition as the firt natural mode of civilization, when the ground mut be torn up, and the woods cleared by fire and word, I do not chooe to call them pets; but urely the preent ytem of war has little connection with virtue of any denomination, being rather the chool of finee and effeminacy, than of fortitude.

Yet, if defenive war, the only jutifiable war, in the preent advanced tate of ociety, where virtue can hew its face and ripen amidt the rigours which purify the air on the mountain's top, were alone to be adopted as jut and glorious, the true heroim of antiquity might again animate female booms.—But fair and oftly, gentle reader, male or female, do not alarm thyelf, for though I have contrated the character of a modern oldier with that of a civilized woman, I am not going to advie them to turn their ditaff into a muket, though I incerely wih to ee the bayonet converted into a pruning-hook. I only recreated an imagination, fatigued by contemplating the vices and follies which all proceed from a feculent tream of wealth that has muddied the pure rills of natural affection, by uppoing that ociety will ome time or other be o contituted, that man mut necearily fulfil the duties of a citizen, or be depied, and that while he was employed in any of the departments of civil life, his wife, alo an active citizen, hould be equally intent to manage her family, educate her children, and ait her neighbours. But,&ensp;