I have had to admit, sadly, that either nature has made a great difference between man and man, or that the world is not yet anywhere near to being fully civilized.

Both of these scenarios presented by Wollstonecraft may be intentionally difficult for a reader to accept; either nature has created all men so different from one another that a search for similarities is utterly futile, or the world as it stands at the time of writing is not as sophisticated and accepting of women, who are different to men, as her readers may think it is.

By using antithesis in this way, Wollstonecraft is suggesting that the situation at hand (that of the shoddy treatment of women by men) is so appalling and so abhorrent that it can only be explained by these two difficult circumstances. It is possible that Wollstonecraft is purposefully alienating her reader in order to inspire in him or her a desire to do the opposite of what she is saying: to be more civilized and accepting of differences, as both approaches can lead to more equitable treatment of women.