Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/53

Rh been confounded with a knowledge of the human heart. But can the crude fruit of caual obervation, never brought to the tet of judgment, formed by comparing peculation and experience, deerve uch a ditinction? Soldiers, as well as women, practie the minor virtues with punctilious politenes. Where is then the exual difference, when the education has been the ame? All the difference that I can dicern, aries from the uperior advantage of liberty, which enables the former to ee more of life.

It is wandering from my preent ubject, perhaps, to make a political remark; but, as it was produced naturally by the train of my reflections, I hall not pas it ilently over.

Standing armies can never conit of reolute, robut men; they may be well diciplined machines, but they will eldom contain men under the influence of trong paions, or with very vigorous faculties. And as for any depth of undertanding, I will venture to affirm, that it is as rarely to be found in the army as amongt women, and the caue, I maintain, is the ame. It may be further oberved, that officers are alo particularly attentive to their perons, fond of dancing, crowded rooms, adventures, and ridicule. Like the fair ex, the buines of their lives is gallantry.—They were taught to pleae, and they only live to pleae. Yet they do not loe their rank in the ditinction of exes, for they are till reckoned uperior to women, though in what their riority&ensp;