The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage · Chapter 3Preface (3)
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1 Vide Appendix, pp. 176-179. 87
II
WOMAN'S DISABILITY IN THE MATTER OF INTELLECT
Characteristics of the Feminine Mind--Suffragist Il- lusions with Regard to the Equality of Man and Woman as Workers--Prospect for the Intellectual Future of Woman--Has Woman Advanced?
THE woman voter would be pernicious to the State not only because she could not back her vote by physical force, but also by reason of her intellectual defects. Woman's mind attends in appraising a state- ment primarily to the mental images which it evokes, and only secondarily--and sometimes not at all--to what is predicated in the state- ment. It is over-influenced by individual in- stances; arrives at conclusions on incomplete evidence; has a very imperfect sense of pro- portion; accepts the congenial as true, and re- jects the uncongenial as false; takes the imagi- 88 nary which is desired for reality, and treats the undesired reality which is out of sight as non- existent---building up for itself in this way, when biased by predilections and aversions, a very unreal picture of the external world. The explanation of this is to be found in all the physiological attachments of woman's mind: 1 in the fact that mental images are in her over-intimately linked up with emotional reflex responses; that yielding to such reflex responses gives gratification; that intellec- tual analysis and suspense of judgment involve an inhibition of reflex responses which is felt as neural distress; that precipitate judgment brings relief from this physiological strain; and that woman looks upon her mind not as an implement for the pursuit of truth, but as an instrument for providing her with creature comforts in the form of agreeable mental im- ages. In order to satisfy the physical yearning
1 Certain of these have already been referred to in the letter printed in the Appendix ( vide p.167 infra ). 89
for such comforts, a considerable section of intelligent and virtuous women insist on picturing to themselves that the reign of physical force is over, or as good as over; that distinctions based upon physical and intellec- tual force may be reckoned as non-existent; that male supremacy as resting upon these is a thing of the past; and that Justice means Egalitarian Equity--means equating the weaklings with the strong and the incapable with the capable. All this because these particular ideas are congenial to the woman of refinement, and be- cause it is to her, when she is a suffragist, un- congenial that there should exist another prin- ciple of justice which demands from the phys- ically and intellectually capable that they shall retain the reins of government in their own hands; and specially uncongenial that in all man-governed States the ideas of justice of the more forceful should have worked out so much to the advantage of women, that a large majority of these are indifferent or ac- 90 tively hostile to the Woman's Suffrage Move- ment. In further illustration of what has been said above, it may be pointed out that woman, even intelligent woman, nurses all sorts of miscon- ceptions about herself. She, for instance, is constantly picturing to herself that she can as a worker lay claim to the same all-round efficiency as a man--forgetting that woman is notoriously unadapted to tasks in which se- vere physical hardships have to be con- fronted; and that hardly any one would, if other alternative offered, employ a woman in any work which imposed upon her a com- bined physical and mental strain, or in any work where emergencies might have to be faced. In like manner the suffragist is fond of picturing to herself that woman is for all ordinary purposes the intellectual equal, and that the intelligent woman is the superior of the ordinary man. These results are arrived at by fixing the at- 91 tention upon the fact that an ordinary man and an ordinary woman are, from the point of view of memory and apprehension, very much on a level; and that a highly intelligent woman has a quicker memory and a more rapid power of apprehension than the ordinary man; and further, by leaving out of regard that it is not so much a quick memory or a rapid power of apprehension which is required for effective intellectual work, as originality, or at any rate independence of thought, a faculty of fel- icitious generalisations and diacritical judg- ment, long-sustained intellectual effort, an un- selective mirroring of the world in the mind, and that relative immunity to fallacy which goes together with a stable and comparatively unresponsive nervous system. When we consider that the intellect of the quite ungifted man works with this last- mentioned physiological advantage, we can see that the male intellect must be, and-- pace [with the permission of] the woman suffragist---it in point of fact is, within its range, a better instrument for 92 dealing with the practical affairs of life than that of the intelligent woman. How far off we are in the case of woman from an unselective mirroring of the world in the mind is shown by the fact that large and important factors of life may be represented in woman's mind by lacunæ [gaps] of which she is totally unconscious. Thus, for instance, that not very unusual type of spinster who is in a condition of re- tarded development (and you will find this kind of woman even on County Council's), is completely unconscious of the sexual element in herself and in human nature generally. Nay, though one went from the dead, he could not bring it home to her that unsatisfied sex- uality is an intellectual disability. Sufficient illustration will now have been given of woman's incapacity to take a com- plete or objective view of any matter in which she has a personal, or any kind of emotional interest; and this would now be the place to discuss those other aspects of her mind which 93 are relevant to her claim to the suffrage. I refer to her logical endowment and her political sagacity. All that I might have been required to say here on these issues has, however, already been said by me in dealing with the arguments of the suffragist. I have there carefully writ- ten it in between the lines. One thing only remains over.--We must, before we pass on, consider whether woman has really, as she tells us, given earnest for the future weeding out of these her secondary sex- ual characters, by making quite phenomenal advances within the lifetime of the present gen- eration; and, above all, whether there is any basis for woman's confident assurance that, when for a few generations she shall have en- joyed educational advantages, she will at any rate pull up level with man. The vision of the future may first engage our attention; for only this roseate prospect makes of any man a feminist. Now the basis that all this hope rests upon 94 is the belief that it is a law of heredity that ac- quired characteristics are handed down; and, let it be observed, that whereas this theory found, not many decades ago, under the in- fluence of Darwin, thousands of adherents among scientific men, it finds to-day only here and there an adherent. But let that pass, for we have to consider here, not only whether acquired characteristics are handed down, but further whether, "if we held that doctrine true," it would furnish scien- tific basis for the belief that educational ad- vantages carried on from generation to gen- eration would level up woman's intellect to man's; and whether, as the suffragist also be- lieves, the narrow education of past genera- tions of women can be held responsible for their present intellectual shortcomings. A moment's consideration will show--for we may here fix our eyes only on the future--- that woman could not hope to advance rela- tively to man except upon the condition that the acquired characteristics of woman, instead 95 of being handed down equally to her male and female descendants, were accumulated upon her daughters. Now if that be a law of heredity, it is a law which is as yet unheard of outside the sphere of the woman suffrage societies. Moreover, one is accustomed to hear women, when they are not arguing on the suffrage, allege that clever mothers make clever sons. It must, as it will have come home to us, be clear to every thoughtful mind that woman's belief that she will, through education and the cumulation of its effects upon her through generations, become a more glorious being, rests, not upon any rational basis, but only on the physiological fact that what is congenial to woman impresses itself upon her as true. All that sober science in the form of history and physiology would seem to entitle us to hope from the future of woman is that she will develop pari passu [step by step] with man; and that educa- tion will teach her not to retard him overmuch by her lagging in the rear. 96 In view of this larger issue, the question as to whether woman has, in any real sense of the word, been making progress in the course of the present generation, loses much of interest. If to move about more freely, to read more freely, to speak out her mind more freely, and to have emancipated herself from traditionary beliefs--and, I would add, traditionary ethics --is to have advanced, woman has indubitably advanced. But the educated native too has advanced in all these respects; and he also tells us that he is pulling up level with the white man. Let us at any rate, when the suffragist is congratulating herself on her own progress, meditate also upon that dictum of Nietzsche, "Progress is writ large on all woman's ban- ners and bannerets; but one can actually see her going back." 97
III
WOMAN'S DISABILITY IN THE MATTER OF PUBLIC MORALITY
Standards by which Morality can be Appraised--Con- flict between Different Moralities--The Correct Standard of Morality--Moral Psychology of Men and Woman--Difference between Man and Woman in Matters of Public Morality.
YET a third point has to come into considera- tion in connexion with the woman voter. This is, that she would be pernicious to the State also by virtue of her defective moral equip- ment. Let me make clear what is the nature of the defect of morality which is here imputed to woman. Conduct may be appraised by very differ- ent standards. We may appraise it by reference to a trans- cendental religious ideal which demands that 98 the physical shall be subordinated to the spirit- ual, and that the fetters of self should be flung aside. Or again, we may bring into application purely mundane utilitarian standards, and may account conduct as immoral or moral ac- cording as it seeks only the happiness of the agent, or the happiness of the narrow circle of humanity which includes along with him also his relatives and intimate friends, or again, the welfare of the wider circle which includes all those with whom he may have come into con- tact, or whom he may affect through his work; or again, the welfare of the whole body-politic of which we are members; or lastly, that of the general body of mankind. Now it might be contended that all these dif- ferent moralities are in their essence one and the same; and that one cannot comply with the requirements of any one of these systems of morality without fulfilling in a measure the re- quirements of all the other moralities. It might, for example, be urged that if a 99 man strive after the achievement of a trans- cendental ideal in which self shall be annulled, he will pro tanto [to such extent] be bringing welfare to his do- mestic circle; or again, that it would be im- possible to promote domestic welfare without, through this, promoting the welfare of the nation, and through that the general welfare of the world. In like manner it might be argued that all work done for abstract principles of morality like liberty and justice, for the advancement of knowledge, and for whatever else goes to the building up of a higher civilisation, will, by promoting the welfare of the general body of mankind, redound to the advantage of each several nation, and ultimately to the advantage of each domestic circle. But all this would be true only in a very superficial and strictly qualified sense. In re- ality, just as there is eternal conflict between egoism and altruism, so there is conflict be- tween the different moralities. To take examples, the attempt to actualise 100 the transcendental religious ideal may, when pursued with ardour, very easily conflict with the morality which makes domestic felicity its end. And again--as we see in the anti-mili- tarist movement in France, in the history of the early Christian Church, in the case of the Quakers and in the teachings of Tolstoy--it may quite well set itself in conflict with na- tional ideals, and dictate a line of conduct which is, from the point of view of the State, immoral. We need no further witness of the divorce between idealistic and national morality than that which is supplied in the memorable utter- ance of Bishop Magee, "No state which was conducted on truly Christian principles could hold together for a week." And domestic morality will constantly come into conflict with public morality. To do everything in one's power to advance one's relatives and friends irrespectively of all considerations of merit would, no doubt, be quite sound domestic morality; it could, how- 101 ever, not always be reconciled with public morality. In the same way, to take one's country's part in all eventualities would be patriotic, but it might quite well conflict with the higher interests of humanity. Now, the point towards which we have been winning our way is that each man's moral sta- tion and degree will be determined by the elec- tion which he makes where egoism and altru- ism, and where a narrower and a wider code of morality, conflict. That the moral law forbids yielding to the promptings of egoism or to those of the nar- rower moralities when this involves a violation of the precepts of the wider morality is axio- matic. Criminal and anti-social actions are not excused by the fact that motives which im- pelled their commission were not purely ego- istic. But the ethical law demands more than ab- stention from definitely anti-social actions. It demands from every individual that he shall recognise the precepts of public mor- 102 ality as of superior obligation to those of ego- ism and domestic morality. By the fact that her public men recognised this ethical law Rome won for herself in the ancient world spectacular grandeur. By an unexampled national obedience to it glory has in our time accrued to Japan. And, in truth, there is not anywhere any honour or renown but such as comes from casting away the bonds of self and of the narrower moralities to carry out the behests of the wider morality. Even in the strongholds of transcendental religion where it was axiomatic that mor- ality began and was summed up in personal morality, it is gradually coming to be rec- ognised that, where we have two competing moralities, it is always the wider morality which has the prior claim upon our allegiance. Kingsley's protest against the morality of "saving one's dirty soul" marked a step in ad- vance. And we find full recognition of the superior claim of the larger morality in that other virile dictum of Bishop Magee, "I would 103 rather have England free, than England sober." That is, "I would maintain the con- ditions which make for the highest civilisation even at the price of a certain number of lapses in personal and domestic morality." What is here new, let it be noted, is only the acknowledgment by those whose official allegiance is to a transcendental ideal of per- sonal morality that they are called upon to obey a higher allegiance. For there has al- ways existed, in the doctrine that guilty man could not be pardoned and taken back into favour until the claims of eternal justice had been satisfied, theoretical recognition of the principle that one must conform to the pre- cepts of abstract morality before one may ethically indulge oneself in the lower moral- ities of philanthropy and personal benevo- lence. The view point from which I would pro- pose to survey the morality of woman has now been reached. It has, however, still to be pointed out that we may appropriately, in com- 104 paring the morals of man and woman, confine our survey to a comparatively narrow field. That is to say, we may here rule out all that relates to purely personal and domestic mor- ality--for this is not relevant to the suffrage. And we may also rule out all that relates to offences against the police laws--such as public drunkenness and offences against the criminal law--for these would come into consideration only in connexion with an absolutely inappre- ciable fraction of voters. It will be well to begin by signalising certain points in the moral psychology of man. When morality takes up its abode in a man who belongs to the intellectual caste it will show itself in his becoming mindful of his public obligations. He will consider the qual- ity of his work as affecting the interest of those who have to place dependence upon it; be- haviour to those who are casually brought into relations with him; the discharge of his in- debtedness to the community; and the proper conduct of public affairs. 105 In particular, it will be to him a matter of concern that the law shall be established upon classifications which are just (in the sense of being conformable to public advantage); and that the laws shall everywhere be justly, that is to say rigorously and impartially, adminis- tered. If we now turn to the man in the street we shall not find him especially sensible to the appeals of morality. But when the special call comes it will generally be possible to trust him: as an elector, to vote uninfluenced by con- siderations of private advantage; and, when called to serve on a jury, to apply legal class- ifications without distinction of person. Furthermore, in all times of crisis he may be counted upon to apply the principles of com- munal morality which have been handed down in the race. The Titanic disaster, for example, showed in a conspicuous manner that the ordinary man will, "letting his own life go," obey the com- munal law which lays it upon him, when in- 106 volved in a catastrophe, to save first the wo- men and children. Lastly, we come to the man who is intoler- ant of all the ordinary restraints of personal and domestic morality. Even in him the seeds of communal morality will often be found deeply implanted. Time and again a regiment of scallawags, who have let all other morality go hang, have, when the proper chord has been made to vi- brate in them, heard the call of communal morality, and done deeds which make the ears of whosoever heareth of them to tingle. We come into an entirely different land when we come to the morality of woman. It is personal and domestic, not public, morality which is instinctive in her. In other words, when egoism gives ground to altruism, that altruism is exercised towards those who are linked up to her by a bond of sexual affection, or a community in blood, or failing this, by a relation of personal friendship, or by some other personal relation. 107 And even when altruism has had her perfect work, woman feels no interest in, and no re- sponsibility towards, any abstract moral ideal. And though the suffragist may protest, in- stancing in disproof of this her own burning enthusiasm for justice, we, for our part, may legitimately ask whether evidence of a moral enthusiasm for justice would be furnished by a desire to render to others their due, or by vehement insistence upon one's own rights, and systematic attempts to extort, under the cover of the word "justice," advantages for oneself. But it will be well to dwell a little longer on, and to bring out more clearly, the point that woman's moral ideals are personal and domestic, as distinguished from impersonal and public. Let us note in this connexion that it would be difficult to conceive of a woman who had become deaf to the appeal of personal and do- mestic morality making it a matter of amour propre to respond to a call of public morality; 108 and difficult to conceive of a woman recover- ing lost self-respect by fulfilling such an obli- gation. But one knows that woman will rise and re- spond to the call of any strong human or trans- cendental personal affection. Again, it is only a very exceptional woman who would, when put to her election between the claims of a narrow and domestic and a wider or public morality, subordinate the former to the latter. In ordinary life, at any rate, one finds her following in such a case the suggestions of domestic--I had almost called it animal--mor- ality. It would be difficult to find any one who would trust a woman to be just to the rights of others in the case where the material in- terests of her children, or of a devoted hus- band, were involved. And even to consider the question of being in such a case intellec- tually just to any one who came into competi- tion with personal belongings like husband and 109 child would, of course, lie quite beyond the moral horizon of ordinary woman. It is not only the fact that the ideals of abstract justice and truth would inevitably be brushed aside by woman in the interests of those she loves which comes into consideration here; it is also the fact that woman is almost without a moral sense in the matter of execut- ing a public trust such as voting or attaching herself to a political association with a view to influencing votes. There is between man and woman here a characteristic difference. While it is, of course, not a secret to any- body that the baser sort of man can at any time be diverted from the path of public mor- ality by a monetary bribe or other personal advantage, he will not, at any rate, set at naught all public morality by doing so for a peppercorn. He will, for instance, not join, for the sake of a daughter, a political move- ment in which he has no belief; nor vote for this or that candidate just to please a son; or cen- 110 sure a member of Parliament who has in vot- ing on female suffrage failed to consider the predilections of his wife. But woman, whether she be politically en- franchised as in Australasia, or unenfran- chised as at home; whether she be immoral in the sense of being purely egoistic, or moral in the sense of being altruistic, very rarely makes any secret or any shame of doing these things. In this matter one would not be very far from the truth if one alleged that there are no good women, but only women who have lived under the influence of good men. Even more serious than this postponement of public to private morality is the fact that even reputedly ethical women will, in the in- terests of what they take to be idealistic causes, violate laws which are universally accepted as being of moral obligation. I here pass over the recent epidemic of polit- ical crime among women to advert to the want of conscience which permits, in connexion with professedly idealistic causes, not only misrepre- 111 sentations, but the making of deliberately false statements on matters of public concern. It is, for example, an illustration of the pro- foundly different moral atmospheres in which men and women live that when a public woman recently made, for what was to her an idealistic purpose, a deliberately false statement of fact in The Times, she quite naïvely confessed to it, seeing nothing whatever amiss in her ac- tion. And it did not appear that any other woman suffragist could discern any kind of immoral- ity in it. The worst thing they could find to say was that it perhaps was a little gauche to confess to making a deliberately false state- ment on a public question when it was for the moment particularly desirable that woman should show up to best advantage before the eyes of man. We may now for a moment put aside the question of woman's public morality and con- sider a question which is inextricably mixed up 112 with the question of the admission of woman to the suffrage. This is the mental attitude and the programme of the female legislative reformer. 113
IV
MENTAL OUTLOOK AND PROGRAMME OF THE FEMALE LEGISLATIVE REFORMER
THE suffragist woman, when she is the kind of woman who piques herself upon her ethical impulses, will, even when she is intellectually very poorly equipped, and there is no imprint of altruism upon her life, assure you that noth- ing except the moral influence of woman, ex- erted through the legislation, which her prac- tical mind would be capable of initiating, will ever avail to abate existing social evils, and to effect the moral redemption of the world. It will not be amiss first to try to introduce a little clearness and order into our ideas upon those formidably difficult problems which the female legislative reformer desires to attack, and then to consider how a rational reforming mind would go to work in the matter of pro- posing legislation for these. 114 First would come those evils which result from individuals seeking advantage to them- selves by the direct infliction of injury upon others. Violations of the criminal law and the various forms of sweating and fleecing one's fellow-men come under this category. Then would come the evils which arise out of purveying physiological and psychological re- freshments and excitements, which are, ac- cording as they are indulged in temperately or intemperately, grateful and innocuous, or sources of disaster and ruin. The evils which are associated with the drink traffic and the betting industry are typical examples. Finally, there would come into consideration the evils of death or physical suffering deliber- ately inflicted by man upon man with a view to preventing worse evils. The evil of war would come under this category. In this same cate- gory might also come the much lesser evil of punitive measures inflicted upon criminals. And with this might be coupled the evil of 115 killing and inflicting physical suffering upon animals for the advantage of man. We may now consider how the rational legis- lative reformer would in each case go to work. He would not start with the assumption that it must be possible by some alteration of the law to abolish or conspicuously reduce any of the afore-mentioned evils; nor yet with the as- sumption that, if a particular alteration of the law would avail to bring about this result, that alteration ought necessarily to be made. He would recognise that many things which are theoretically desirable are unattainable; and that many legislative measures which could perfectly well be enforced would be barred by the fact that they would entail deplorable un- intended consequences. The rational legislator whom we have here in view would accordingly always take expert advice as to whether the desired object could be achieved by legal compulsion; and as to 116 whether a projected law which satisfied the condition of being workable would give a bal- ance of advantages over disadvantages. In connexion with a proposal for the pre- vention of sweating he would, for instance, take expert advice as to whether its provisions could be enforced; and whether, if enforce- able, they would impose added hardships on any class of employees or penalties on any in- nocent class of employers. In like manner in connexion with a pro- posed modification in criminal procedure, the rational reformer would defer to the expert on the question as to whether such modification would secure greater certainty of punishment for the guilty without increasing the risk of convicting the innocent. In connexion with the second category of evils--the category under which would come those of drinking and betting--the rational legislative reformer would recognise the com- plete impracticability of abolishing by legis- 117 lative prohibition physiological indulgences and the evils which sometimes attend upon them. He would consider instead whether these at- tendant evils could be reduced by making the regulating laws more stringent; and whether more stringent restrictions--in addition to the fact that they would filch from the all too small stock of human happiness--would not, by paving the way for further invasions of per- sonal liberty, cripple the free development of the community. On the former question, which only experts could properly answer, the reasonable reformer would defer to their advice. The answer to the last question he would think out for him- self. In connexion with the evils which are de- liberately inflicted by man with a view to reap- ing either personal profit, or profit for the na- tion, or profit for humanity, the reasonable reformer would begin by making clear to himself that the world we live in is not such 118 a world as idealism might conjure up, but a world of violence, in which life must be taken and physical suffering be inflicted. And he would recognise that the vital material interests of the nation can be pro- tected only by armed force; that civilisation can be safeguarded only by punishing viola- tions of the criminal law; and that the taking of animal life and the infliction of a certain amount of physical suffering upon animals is essential to human well-being, comfort, and recreation; and essential also to the achieve- ment of the knowledge which is required to combat disease. And the reasonable reformer will, in con- formity with this, direct his efforts, not to the total abolition of war, but to the prevention of such wars as are not waged for really vital material interests, and to the abatement of the ferocities of warfare. In the case of punishment for criminals he would similarly devote his efforts not to the abrogation of punishments, but to the relin- 119 quishment of any that are not reformatory, or really deterrent. In like manner the reasonable reformer would not seek to prohibit the slaughtering of animals for food, or the killing off of animal pests, or the trapping, shooting, or hunting of animals for sport or profit, nor yet would he seek to prevent their utilisation of animals for the acquirement of knowledge. He would direct his efforts to reducing the pain which is inflicted, and to preserving every- where measure and scale--not sentimentally forbidding in connexion with one form of utilisation of animals what is freely allowed in connexion with another--but differentia- ting, if differentiating at all in favour of per- mitting the infliction of proportionately greater suffering in the case where national and hu- manitarian interests, than in the case where mere recreation and luxury and personal profit, are at stake. Having recognised what reason would pre- scribe to the legislative reformer, we have next 120 to inquire how far the man voter conforms to these prescriptions of reason, and how far the woman reformer would do so if she became a voter. Let it be noted that the man in the street makes no question about falling in with the fact that he is born into a world of violence, and he acquiesces in the principle that the State, and, failing the State, the individual, may employ force and take life in defence of vital material interests. And he frankly falls in with it being a matter of daily routine to kill and inflict suffering upon ani- mals for human profit or advantage. Even if these principles are not formulated by the man in the street in quite such plain terms, he not only carries them out in practice, but he conducts all his thinking upon these pre- suppositions. He, for instance, would fall in with the prop- osition that morality does not require from man that he should give up taking life or inflicting physical suffering. And he would 121 not cavil with the statement that man should put reasonable limits to the amount of suffer- ing he inflicts, and confine this within as nar- row a range as possible--always requiring for the death or suffering inflicted some tangible advantage. Moreover, if the question should be raised as to whether such advantage will result, the ordinary man will as a rule, where the matter lies beyond his personal ken, take expert opin- ion before intervening. He will, for instance, be prepared to be so guided in connexion with such questions as whether disease could, if more knowledge were available, be to a large extent prevented and cured; as to how far animal experiments would contribute to the acquirement of that knowl- edge; and as to how far the physical suffer- ing which might be involved in these experi- ments can be minimised or abolished. But not every man is prepared to fall in with this programme of inflicting physical suf- fering for the relief of physical suffering. 122 There is also a type of spiritually-minded man who in this world of violence sets his face un- compromisingly against the taking of any life and the infliction of any physical suffer- ing--refusing to make himself a partaker of evil. An idealist of this type will, like Tolstoy, be an anti-militarist. He will advocate a gen- eral gaol delivery for criminals. He will be a vegetarian. He will not allow an animal's life to be taken in his house, though the mice scamper over his floors. And he will, consist- ently with his conviction that it is immoral to resort to force, refuse to take any part in legis- lation or government. This attitude, which is that commended by the Hindoo and the Buddhist religions, is, of course, a quite unpractical attitude towards life. It is, in fact, a self-destructive attitude, unless a man's fellow-citizens are prepared by forcible means to secure to him the enjoyment of the work of his hands or of his inherited property, or unless those who refuse to desist 123 from the exercise of force are prepared to un- take the support of idealists. We have not only these two classes of men-- the ordinary man who has no compunction in resorting to force when the requirements of life demand it, and the idealist who refuses to have any lot or part in violence; there is also a hy- brid. This male hybrid will descant on the general iniquity of violence, and then not only connive at those forms of violence which min- ister to his personal comforts, but also make a virtue of trying to abate by legal violence some particular form of physical suffering which happens to offend in a quite special man- ner his individual sensibility. There is absolutely nothing to be said about this kind of reforming crank, except only that anything which may be said in relation to the female legislative reformer may be appositely said of him; and perhaps also this, that the ordinary man holds him both in intellectual and in moral contempt, and is resolved not to 124 allow him to do any really serious injury to the community. To become formidable this quasi-male per- son must, as he recognises, ally himself with the female legislative reformer. Passing on to deal with her, it imports us first to realise that while the male voter has--ex- cept where important constitutional issues were in question--been accustomed to leave actual legislation to the expert, the female re- former gives notice beforehand that she will, as soon as ever she gets the suffrage, insist on pressing forward by her vote her reform- ing schemes. What would result from the ordinary voter legislating on matters which require expert knowledge will be plain to every one who will consider the evolution of law. There stand over against each other here, as an example and a warning, the Roman Law, which was the creation of legal experts: the prætor and the jurisconsult; and the legal 125 system of the Greeks, which was the creation of a popular assembly--and it was a popu- lar assembly which was quite ideally intelli- gent. Upon the Roman Law has been built the law of the greater part of the civilised world. The Greek is a by-word for inconsequence. How can one, then, without cold shudders think of that legal system which the female amateur legal reformer would bring to the birth? Let us consider her qualifications. Let us first take cognisance of the fact that the re- forming woman will neither stand to the prin- ciple that man may, where this gives a balance of advantage, inflict on his fellow-man, and a fortiori upon animals, death and physical suf- fering; nor yet will she stand to the principle that it is ethically unlawful to do deeds of vio- lence. She spends her life halting between these two opinions, eternally shilly-shallying. She will, for instance, begin by announcing 126 that it can never be lawful to do evil that good may come; and that killing and inflicting suf- fering is an evil. (In reality the precept of not doing evil that good may come has rela- tion only to breaking for idealistic purposes moral laws of higher obligation.) She will then go back upon that and concede that war may sometimes be lawful, and that the punish- ment of criminals is not an evil. But if her emotions are touched by the forcible feeding of a criminal militant suffragist, she will again go back upon that and declare that the appli- cation of force is an intolerable evil. Or, again, she will concede that the slaugh- tering of animals for food is not an evil, but that what is really unforgivable is the infliction of physical suffering on animals. And all the time for her, as well as for man, calves and lambs are being emasculated to make her meat succulent; wild animals are painfully done to death to provide her table with delicacies; birds with young in the nest are shot so that she may parade in their plumage; or fur-bear- 127 ing animals are for her comfort and adorn- ment massacred and tortured in traps. When a man crank who is co-responsible for these things begins to talk idealistic re- forms, the ordinary decent man refuses to have anything more to say to him. But when a woman crank holds this lan- guage, the man merely shrugs his shoulders. "It is," he tells himself, "after all, the woman whom God gave him." It must be confessed that the problem as to how man with a dual nature may best accom- modate himself to a world of violence pre- sents a very difficult problem. It would obviously be no solution to follow out everywhere a programme of violence. Not even the predatory animals do that. Tigers do not savage their cubs; hawks do not pluck hawks' eyes; and dogs do not fight bitches. Nor would, as has been shown, the solution of the problem be arrived at by everywhere surrendering--if we had been given the grace 128 to do this--to the compunctious visitings of nature. What is required is to find the proper com- promise. As to what that would be there is, as between the ordinary man and woman on the one side, and the male crank and the battalions of sentimental women on the other, a conflict which is, to all intents and purposes, a sex war. The compromise which ordinary human na- ture had fixed upon--and it is one which, min- istering as it does to the survival of the race, has been adopted through the whole range of nature--is that of making within the world in which violence rules a series of enclaves in which the application of violence is progres- sively restricted and limited. Outside the outermost of the series of ring fences thus constituted would be the realm of uncompromising violence such as exists when human life is endangered by wild animals, or murderous criminals, or savages. Just within this outermost fence would be civilised war-- 129 for in civilised war non-combatants and prison- ers and wounded are excluded from the appli- cation of violence. In like manner we bring humanity in general within a more sheltered enclosure than animals--pet animals within a more sheltered enclosure than other animals. Again, we bring those who belong to the white race within a narrower protecting circle than mankind in general, and those of our own na- tion within a still narrower one. Following out the same principle, we in- clude women and children within a narrower shelter fence than our adult fellow-male; and we use the weapon of force more reluctantly when we are dealing with our relatives and friends than when we are dealing with those who are not personally known to us; and finally, we lay it aside more completely when we are dealing with the women of our house- holds than when we are dealing with the males. The cause of civilisation and of the amenities, and the welfare of the nation, of the family, 130 and of woman, are all intimately bound up with a faithful adherence to this compromise. But this policy imposes upon those whom it shelters from violence corresponding obliga- tions. In war non-combatants--not to speak of the wounded on the battlefield--must desist from hostile action on the pain of being shot down like wild beasts. And though an individual non-combatant might think it a patriotic action for him to take part in war, the thoughtful man would recognise that such action was a violation of a well-understood covenant made in the interest of civilisation, and that to break through this covenant was to abrogate a hu- manitarian arrangement by which the general body of non-combatants immensely benefits. Exactly the same principle finds, as already pointed out, application when a woman em- ploys direct violence, or aspires to exercise by voting indirect violence. One always wonders if the suffragist appre- ciates all that woman stands to lose and all 131 that she imperils by resort to physical force. One ought not to have to tell her that, if she had to fight for her position, her status would be that which is assigned to her among the Kaffirs--not that which civilised man concedes to her. From considering the compromise by which man adapts his dual nature to violence in the world, we turn to that which the female legis- lative reformer would seek to impose by the aid of her vote. Her proposal, as the reader will have dis- cerned, would be that all those evils which make appeal to the feminine emotions should be legally prohibited, and that all those which fail to make this appeal shall be tolerated. In the former class would be included those which come directly under woman's ken, or have been brought vividly before the eyes of her imagination by emotional description. And the specially intolerable evils will be those which, owing to the fact that they fall upon woman or her immediate belongings, induce 132 in the female legislative reformer pangs of sympathetic discomfort. In the class of evils which the suffragist is content to tolerate, or say nothing about, would be those which are incapable of evoking in her such sympathetic pangs, and she concerns her- self very little with those evils which do not furnish her with a text for recriminations against man. Conspicuous in this programme is the ab- sence of any sense of proportion. One would have imagined that it would have been plain to everybody that the evils which individual women suffer at the hands of man are very far from being the most serious ills of humanity. One would have imagined that the suffering inflicted by disease and by bad social condi- tions--suffering which falls upon man and woman alike--deserved a first place in the thoughts of every reformer. And one might have expected it to be common knowledge that the wrongs individual men inflict upon women have a full counterpart in the wrongs which 133 individual women inflict upon men. It may quite well be that there are mists which here "blot and fill the perspective" of the female legislative reformer. But to look only upon one's own things, and not also upon the things of others, is not for that morally innocent. There is further to be noted in connexion with the female legislative reformer that she has never been able to see why she should be required to put her aspirations into practical shape, or to consider ways and means, or to submit the practicability of her schemes to ex- pert opinion. One also recognises that from a purely human point of view such tactics are judicious. For if the schemes of the fe- male legislative reformer were once to be re- viewed from the point of view of their prac- ticability, her utility as a legislator would come into question, and the suffragist could no longer give out that there has been committed to her from on High a mission to draw water for man-kind out of the wells of salvation. Lastly, we have to reflect in connection with 134 the female legislative reformer that to go about proposing to reform the laws means to aban- don that special field of usefulness which lies open to woman in alleviating misery and re- dressing those hard cases which will, under all laws and regulations of human manufacture and under all social dispositions, inevitably occur. Now when a woman leaves a social task which is commensurate with her abilities, and which asks from her personal effort and self-sacrifice, for a task which is quite beyond her abilities, but which, she thinks, will bring her personal kudos, shall we impute it to her for righteousness? 135