Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/78

72 of nerves and vigour of mucles, which arie from bodily labour, when the mind is quiecent, or only directs the hands.

Dr. Prietley has remarked, in the preface to his biographical chart, that the majority of great men have lived beyond forty-five. And, conidering the thoughtles manner in which they have lavihed their trength, when invetigating a favourite cience they have wated the lamp of life, forgetful of the midnight hour; or, when lot in poetic dreams, fancy has peopled the cene, and the oul has been diturbed, till it hook the contitution, by the paions that meditation had raied; whoe objects, the baeles fabric of a viion, faded before the exhauted eye, they mut have had iron frames. Shakepeare never graped the airy dagger with a nerveles hand, nor did Milton tremble when he led Satan far from the confines of his dreary prion.—Thee were not the ravings of imbecility, the ickly effuions of ditempered brains; but the exuberance of fancy, that 'in a fine phrenzy' wandering, was not continually reminded of its material hackles.

I am aware that this argument would carry me further than it may be uppoed I wih to go; but I follow truth, and, till adhering to my firt poition, I will allow that bodily trength eems to give man a natural uperiority over woman; and this is the only olid bais on which the uperiority of the ex can be built. But I till init, that not only the virtue, but the knowledge of the two exes hould be the ame in nature, if not in degree, and that women, conidered not only as moral, but rational creatures, ought&ensp;