At the end I crave the indulgence of the cultured reader for the
imperfections necessarily visible in all that I have here set
down—imperfections not only due to incomplete information and fallible
logic, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to certain fundamental
weaknesses of the sex to which I have the honour to belong. A man is
inseparable from his congenital vanities and stupidities, as a dog is
inseparable from its fleas. They reveal themselves in everything he
says and does, but they reveal themselves most of all when he discusses
the majestic mystery of woman. Just as he smirks and rolls his eyes in
her actual presence, so he puts on apathetic and unescapable
clownishness when he essays to dissect her in the privacy of the
laboratory. There is no book on woman by a man that is not a stupendous
compendium of posturings and imbecilities. There are but two books that
show even a superficial desire to be honest—“The Unexpurgated Case
Against Woman Suffrage,” by Sir Almroth Wright, and this one. Wright
made a gallant attempt to tell the truth, but before he got half way
through his task his ineradicable donkeyishness as a male overcame his
scientific frenzy as a psychologist, and so he hastily washed his hands
of the business, and affronted the judicious with a half baked and
preposterous book. Perhaps I have failed too, and even more
ingloriously. If so, I am full of sincere and indescribable regret.