ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE CONCESSION OF THE PARLIAMENTARY SUFFRAGE TO
WOMAN
I
WOMAN'S DISABILITY IN THE MATTER OF PHYSICAL FORCE
International Position of State would be Imperilled by Woman's
Suffrage--Internal Equilibrium of State would be Imperilled.
The woman suffrage movement has now gone too far to be disposed of by
the overthrow of its arguments, and by a mere indication of those
which could be advanced on the other side. The situation demands the
bringing forward of the case against woman's suffrage; and it must be
the full and quite unexpurgated case.
I shall endeavour to do this in the fewest possible words, and to be
more especially brief where I have to pass again over ground which I
have previously traversed in dealing with the arguments of the
suffragists.
I may begin with what is fundamental. It is an axiom that we should in
legislating guide ourselves directly by considerations of utility and
expediency. For abstract principles--I have in view here _rights,
justice, egalitarian equity, equality, liberty, chivalry, logicality,_
and such like--are not all of them guides to utility; and each of
these is, as we have seen, open to all manner of private
misinterpretation.
Applying the above axiom to the issue before us, it is clear that we
ought to confine ourselves here to the discussion of the question as
to whether the State would, or would not, suffer from the admission of
women to the electorate.
We can arrive at a judgment upon this by considering, on the one hand,
the class-characters of women so far as these may be relevant to the
question of the suffrage; and, on the other hand, the legislative
programmes put forward by the female legislative reformer and the
feminist.
In connexion with the class-characters of woman, it will be well,
before attempting to indicate them, to interpolate here the general
consideration that the practical statesman, who has to deal with
things as they are, is not required to decide whether the characters
of women which will here be considered are, as the physiologist (who
knows that the sexual products influence every tissue of the body)
cannot doubt, "secondary sexual characters"; or, as the suffragist
contends, "acquired characters." It will be plain that whether defects
are "secondary sexual characters" (and therefore as irremediable as
"racial characters"); or whether they are "acquired characters" (and
as such theoretically remediable) they are relevant to the question of
the concession of the suffrage just so long as they continue to be
exhibited.[1]
[1] This is a question on which Mill (vide _Subjection of Women_, last
third of Chapter I) has endeavoured to confuse the issues for his
reader, first, by representing that by no possibility can man know
anything of the "nature," _i.e._, of the "secondary sexual
characters" of woman; and, secondly, by distracting attention from the
fact that "acquired characters" may produce unfitness for the
suffrage.
The primordial argument against giving woman the vote is that that
vote would not represent physical force.
Now it is by physical force alone and by prestige--which represents
physical force in the background--that a nation protects itself
against foreign interference, upholds its rule over subject
populations, and enforces its own laws. And nothing could in the end
more certainly lead to war and revolt than the decline of the military
spirit and loss of prestige which would inevitably follow if man
admitted woman into political co-partnership.
While it is arguable that such a partnership with woman in government
as obtains in Australia and New Zealand is sufficiently unreal to be
endurable, there cannot be two opinions on the question that a virile
and imperial race will not brook any attempt at forcible control by
women.
Again, no military foreign nation or native race would ever believe in
the stamina and firmness of purpose of any nation that submitted even
to the semblance of such control.
The internal equilibrium of the State also would be endangered by the
admission to the register of millions of electors whose vote would not
be endorsed by the authority of physical force.
Regarded from this point of view a Woman's Suffrage measure stands on
an absolutely different basis to any other extension of the suffrage.
An extension which takes in more men--whatever else it may do--makes
for stability in the respect that it makes the decrees of the
legislature more irresistible. An extension which takes in any women
undermines the physical sanction of the laws.
We can see indications of the evil that would follow such an event in
the profound dissatisfaction which is felt when--in violation of the
democratic principle that every man shall count for one, and no man
for more than one--the political wishes of the large constituencies
which return relatively few members to Parliament, are overborne by
those of constituencies which, with a smaller aggregate population,
return more members.
And we see what such evil finally culminates in when the
over-representation of one part of a country and the corresponding
under-representation of other portions has led a large section of the
people to pledge themselves to disregard the eventual ordinances of
Parliament.
If ever the question as to whether the will of Ulster or that of the
Nationalists is to prevail is brought to the arbitrament of physical
force, it will be due to the inequalities of parliamentary
representation as between England and Ireland, and as between the
Unionist and Nationalist population of Ulster.
The general lesson that all governmental action ought to be backed by
force, is further brought home to the conscience when we take note of
the fact that every one feels that public morality is affronted when
senile, infirm, and bedridden men are brought to the poll to turn the
scale in hotly contested elections.
For electoral decisions are felt to have moral prestige only when the
electoral figures quantitatively represent the physical forces which
are engaged on either side. And where vital interests are involved, no
class of men can be expected to accept any decision other than one
which rests upon the _ultima ratio_.
Now all the evils which are the outcome of disparities between the
parliamentary power and the organised physical force of contending
parties would "grow" a hundredfold if women were admitted to the
suffrage.
There would after that be no electoral or parliamentary decision which
would not be open to challenge on the ground that it was impossible to
tell whether the party which came out the winner had a majority which
could enforce its will, or only a majority obtained by the inclusion
of women. And no measure of redistribution could ever set that right.
There may find place here also the consideration that the voting of
women would be an unsettling element in the government of the State,
forasmuch as they would, by reason of a general lack of interest in
public affairs, only very; seldom come to the poll: would, in fact,
come to the poll in full strength only when some special appeal had
come home to their emotions.
Now an electorate which includes a very large proportion of quite
uninterested voters would be in the same case as a legislature which
included a very large proportion of members who made a practice of
staying away. It would be in the same case, because the absentees, who
would not have acquired the training which comes from consecutive
attention to public affairs, might at any moment step in and upset the
stability of State by voting for some quite unconsidered measure.
Coming back in conclusion to our main issue, I would re-emphasise an
aspect of the question upon which I have already elsewhere insisted.[1]
I have in view the fact that woman does, and should, stand to physical
violence in a fundamentally different relation to man. Nothing can
alter the fact that, the very moment woman resorts to violence, she
places herself within the jurisdiction of an ethical law, which is as
old as civilisation, and which was framed in its interests.
[1] _Vide_ Appendix, pp. 176-179.
II
WOMAN'S DISABILITY IN THE MATTER OF INTELLECT
Characteristics of the Feminine Mind--Suffragist Illusions 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 statement primarily to the mental
images which it evokes, and only secondarily--and sometimes not at
all--to what is predicated in the statement. It is over-influenced by
individual instances; arrives at conclusions on incomplete evidence;
has a very imperfect sense of proportion; accepts the congenial as
true, and rejects the uncongenial as false; takes the imaginary 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
intellectual 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 images.
[1] Certain of these have already been referred to in the letter printed
in the Appendix (_ vide_ p.167 _infra_).
In order to satisfy the physical yearning 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 intellectual 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 because it is to her, when she is a suffragist,
uncongenial that there should exist another principle of justice which
demands from the physically 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 actively
hostile to the Woman's Suffrage Movement.
In further illustration of what has been said above, it may be pointed
out that woman, even intelligent woman, nurses all sorts of
misconceptions 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 severe physical hardships have to be
confronted; and that hardly any one would, if other alternative
offered, employ a woman in any work which imposed upon her a combined
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 attention 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
felicitious generalisations and diacritical judgment, long-sustained
intellectual effort, an unselective 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 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 lacunae [gaps]
of which she is totally unconscious.
Thus, for instance, that not very unusual type of spinster who is in a
condition of retarded 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 sexuality is an intellectual disability.
Sufficient illustration will now have been given of woman's incapacity
to take a complete 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 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 written 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 sexual characters, by making
quite phenomenal advances within the lifetime of the present
generation; and, above all, whether there is any basis for woman's
confident assurance that, when for a few generations she shall have
enjoyed 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 is the belief that it is a
law of heredity that acquired characteristics are handed down; and,
let it be observed, that whereas this theory found, not many decades
ago, under the influence 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 scientific basis for the
belief that educational advantages carried on from generation to
generation would level up woman's intellect to man's; and whether, as
the suffragist also believes, the narrow education of past generations
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 relatively to man
except upon the condition that the acquired characteristics of woman,
instead 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 education will teach her not to retard him overmuch by her
lagging in the rear.
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 banners and bannerets; but one
can actually see her going back."
III
WOMAN'S DISABILITY IN THE MATTER OF PUBLIC MORALITY
Standards by which Morality can be Appraised--Conflict 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 consideration in connexion with the
woman voter. This is, that she would be pernicious to the State also
by virtue of her defective moral equipment.
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 different standards.
We may appraise it by reference to a transcendental religious ideal
which demands that the physical shall be subordinated to the
spiritual, 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 according 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 contact, 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 different 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 requirements of all the other moralities.
It might, for example, be urged that if a man strive after the
achievement of a transcendental ideal in which self shall be annulled,
he will _pro tanto [to such extent]_ be bringing welfare to his
domestic circle; or again, that it would be impossible 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 reality, just as there is eternal conflict between
egoism and altruism, so there is conflict between the different
moralities.
To take examples, the attempt to actualise 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-militarist 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
national 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
utterance 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, however, 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 station and degree will be determined by the election
which he makes where egoism and altruism, 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 narrower moralities when this involves a violation of the
precepts of the wider morality is axiomatic. Criminal and anti-social
actions are not excused by the fact that motives which impelled their
commission were not purely egoistic.
But the ethical law demands more than abstention from definitely
anti-social actions. It demands from every individual that he shall
recognise the precepts of public morality as of superior obligation to
those of egoism 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 morality began and was summed up in personal morality,
it is gradually coming to be recognised 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 advance. And we find full recognition of the superior
claim of the larger morality in that other virile dictum of Bishop
Magee, "I would rather have England free, than England sober." That
is, "I would maintain the conditions 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 personal
morality that they are called upon to obey a higher allegiance. For
there has always 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 precepts of abstract morality before one
may ethically indulge oneself in the lower moralities of philanthropy
and personal benevolence.
The view point from which I would propose to survey the morality of
woman has now been reached. It has, however, still to be pointed out
that we may appropriately, in comparing 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
morality--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
inappreciable 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 quality of his work as
affecting the interest of those who have to place dependence upon it;
behaviour to those who are casually brought into relations with him;
the discharge of his indebtedness to the community; and the proper
conduct of public affairs.
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,
administered.
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 considerations of private advantage; and, when
called to serve on a jury, to apply legal classifications without
distinction of person.
Furthermore, in all times of crisis he may be counted upon to apply
the principles of communal 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
communal law which lays it upon him, when involved in a catastrophe,
to save first the women and children.
Lastly, we come to the man who is intolerant 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 vibrate
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.
And even when altruism has had her perfect work, woman feels no
interest in, and no responsibility towards, any abstract moral ideal.
And though the suffragist may protest, instancing 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 domestic
morality making it a matter of _amour propre_ to respond to a call of
public morality; and difficult to conceive of a woman recovering lost
self-respect by fulfilling such an obligation.
But one knows that woman will rise and respond to the call of any
strong human or transcendental 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--morality.
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 interests
of her children, or of a devoted husband, were involved. And even to
consider the question of being in such a case intellectually just to
any one who came into competition with personal belongings like
husband and 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 executing
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 anybody that the baser sort of
man can at any time be diverted from the path of public morality 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
movement in which he has no belief; nor vote for this or that
candidate just to please a son; or censure a member of Parliament who
has in voting on female suffrage failed to consider the predilections
of his wife.
But woman, whether she be politically enfranchised as in Australasia,
or unenfranchised 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 interests
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 political crime among women to
advert to the want of conscience which permits, in connexion with
professedly idealistic causes, not only misrepresentations, but the
making of deliberately false statements on matters of public concern.
It is, for example, an illustration of the profoundly 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 naively
confessed to it, seeing nothing whatever amiss in her action.
And it did not appear that any other woman suffragist could discern
any kind of immorality 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 statement 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 consider a question which is inextricably mixed up with
the question of the admission of woman to the suffrage. This is the
mental attitude and the programme of the female legislative reformer.
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 nothing except the moral influence of woman, exerted
through the legislation, which her practical 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 proposing legislation for these.
_First_ would come those evils which result from individuals seeking
advantage to themselves 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 refreshments and excitements, which are, according
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 deliberately inflicted by man upon man with a view
to preventing worse evils. The evil of war would come under this
category. In this same category might also come the much lesser evil
of punitive measures inflicted upon criminals. And with this might be
coupled the evil of killing and inflicting physical suffering upon
animals for the advantage of man.
We may now consider how the rational legislative 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 assumption 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 unintended 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 whether a projected law which
satisfied the condition of being workable would give a balance of
advantages over disadvantages.
In connexion with a proposal for the prevention of sweating he would,
for instance, take expert advice as to whether its provisions could be
enforced; and whether, if enforceable, they would impose added
hardships on any class of employees or penalties on any innocent class
of employers.
In like manner in connexion with a proposed 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 complete impracticability of
abolishing by legislative prohibition physiological indulgences and
the evils which sometimes attend upon them.
He would consider instead whether these attendant 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 personal 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 himself.
In connexion with the evils which are deliberately inflicted by man
with a view to reaping either personal profit, or profit for the
nation, or profit for humanity, the reasonable reformer would begin by
making clear to himself that the world we live in is not such 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 protected only by armed force; that civilisation can be
safeguarded only by punishing violations 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 achievement of the
knowledge which is required to combat disease.
And the reasonable reformer will, in conformity 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
relinquishment 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 everywhere measure and scale--not sentimentally
forbidding in connexion with one form of utilisation of animals what
is freely allowed in connexion with another--but differentiating, if
differentiating at all in favour of permitting the infliction of
proportionately greater suffering in the case where national and
humanitarian interests, than in the case where mere recreation and
luxury and personal profit, are at stake.
Having recognised what reason would prescribe to the legislative
reformer, we have next 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 animals 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 presuppositions.
He, for instance, would fall in with the proposition that morality
does not require from man that he should give up taking life or
inflicting physical suffering. And he would not cavil with the
statement that man should put reasonable limits to the amount of
suffering he inflicts, and confine this within as narrow 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 opinion 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
knowledge; and as to how far the physical suffering which might be
involved in these experiments can be minimised or abolished. But not
every man is prepared to fall in with this programme of inflicting
physical suffering for the relief of physical suffering. There is also
a type of spiritually-minded man who in this world of violence sets
his face uncompromisingly against the taking of any life and the
infliction of any physical suffering--refusing to make himself a
partaker of evil.
An idealist of this type will, like Tolstoy, be an anti-militarist.
He will advocate a general 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,
consistently with his conviction that it is immoral to resort to
force, refuse to take any part in legislation 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 from the exercise of force are
prepared to untake 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 hybrid. This male hybrid will descant on the general
iniquity of violence, and then not only connive at those forms of
violence which minister 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 manner
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 allow him to do any really
serious injury to the community.
To become formidable this quasi-male person 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--except where important constitutional issues were
in question--been accustomed to leave actual legislation to the
expert, the female reformer gives notice beforehand that she will, as
soon as ever she gets the suffrage, insist on pressing forward by her
vote her reforming 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 praetor
and the jurisconsult; and the legal system of the Greeks, which was
the creation of a popular assembly--and it was a popular assembly
which was quite ideally intelligent.
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 reforming woman will neither stand to the principle
that man may, where this gives a balance of advantage, inflict on his
fellow-man, and _a fortiori_ upon animals, death and physical
suffering; nor yet will she stand to the principle that it is
ethically unlawful to do deeds of violence.
She spends her life halting between these two opinions, eternally
shilly-shallying.
She will, for instance, begin by announcing that it can never be
lawful to do evil that good may come; and that killing and inflicting
suffering is an evil. (In reality the precept of not doing evil that
good may come has relation 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 punishment 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 application of force is an
intolerable evil.
Or, again, she will concede that the slaughtering 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-bearing animals are for her
comfort and adornment massacred and tortured in traps.
When a man crank who is co-responsible for these things begins to talk
idealistic reforms, the ordinary decent man refuses to have anything
more to say to him.
But when a woman crank holds this language, 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 accommodate himself to a world of violence presents 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 to do
this--to the compunctious visitings of nature.
What is required is to find the proper compromise. 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 nature had fixed upon--and it is
one which, ministering 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 progressively 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--for
in civilised war non-combatants and prisoners and wounded are excluded
from the application 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 nation within a still
narrower one.
Following out the same principle, we include 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 households 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, 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 obligations.
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 humanitarian
arrangement by which the general body of non-combatants immensely
benefits.
Exactly the same principle finds, as already pointed out, application
when a woman employs direct violence, or aspires to exercise by voting
indirect violence.
One always wonders if the suffragist appreciates all that woman stands
to lose and all 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 legislative
reformer would seek to impose by the aid of her vote.
Her proposal, as the reader will have discerned, 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 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 herself very little with
those evils which do not furnish her with a text for recriminations
against man.
Conspicuous in this programme is the absence 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 conditions--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 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
expert opinion. One also recognises that from a purely human point of
view such tactics are judicious. For if the schemes of the female
legislative reformer were once to be reviewed from the point of view
of their practicability, 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 the female legislative
reformer that to go about proposing to reform the laws means to
abandon that special field of usefulness which lies open to woman in
alleviating misery and redressing 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?
V
ULTERIOR ENDS WHICH THE WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT HAS IN VIEW
We have now sufficiently considered the suffragist's humanitarian
schemes, and we may lead up to the consideration of her further
projects by contrasting woman's suffrage as it presents itself under
colonial conditions--_i.e._ woman's suffrage without the female
legislative reformer and the feminist--with the woman suffrage which
is being agitated for in England--_i.e._ woman suffrage with the
female legislative reformer and the feminist.
In the colonies and undeveloped countries generally where women are in
a minority, and where owing to the fact that practically all have an
opportunity of marrying, there are not for woman any difficult
economic and physiological conditions, there is no woman's question;
and by consequence no female legislative reformer or feminist. The
woman voter follows, as the opportunist politicians who enfranchised
her intended, the lead of her men-folk--serving only a pawn in the
game of politics. Under such conditions woman's suffrage kleaves
things as they are, except only that it undermines the logical
foundations of the law, and still further debases the standard of
public efficiency and public morality.
In countries, such as England, where an excess female population [1]
has made economic difficulties for woman, and where the severe sexual
restrictions, which here obtains, have bred in her sex-hostility, the
suffrage movement has as its avowed ulterior object the abrogation of
all distinctions which depend upon sex; and the achievement of the
economic independence of woman.
[1] In England and Wales there are, in a population of 8,000,000 women
between the ages of twenty and fifty, 3,000,000 unmarried women.
To secure this economic independence every post, occupation, and
Government service is to be thrown open to woman; she is to receive
everywhere the same wages as man; male and female are to work side by
side; and they are indiscriminately to be put in command the one over
the other. Furthermore, legal rights are to be secured to the wife over
her husband's property and earnings. The programme is, in fact, to give
to woman an economic independence out of the earnings and taxes of man.
Nor does feminist ambition stop short here. It demands that women
shall be included in every advisory committee, every governing board,
every jury, every judicial bench, every electorate, every parliament,
and every ministerial cabinet; further, that every masculine
foundation, university, school of learning, academy, trade union,
professional corporation and scientific society shall be converted
into an epicene institution--until we shall have everywhere one vast
cock-and-hen show.
The proposal to bring man and woman together everywhere into extremely
intimate relationships raises very grave questions. It brings up,
first, the question of sexual complications; secondly, the question as
to whether the tradition of modesty and reticence between the sexes is
to be definitely sacrificed; and, most important of all, the question
as to whether epicene conditions would place obstacles in the way of
intellectual work.
Of these issues the feminist puts the first two quite out of account.
I have already elsewhere said my say upon these matters.[1] With regard
to the third, the feminist either fails to realise that purely
intellectual intercourse--as distinguished from an intercommunion of
mental images--with woman is to a large section of men repugnant; or
else, perceiving this, she makes up her mind that, this
notwithstanding, she will get her way by denouncing the man who does
not welcome her as _selfish_; and by insisting that under feminism
(the quotation is from Mill, the italics which question his sincerity
are mine) "the mass of mental faculties available for the higher service
of mankind would be _doubled_."
[1] _Vide_ Appendix, pp. 169-173.
The matter cannot so lightly be disposed of. It will be necessary for
us to find out whether really intimate association with woman on the
purely intellectual plane is realisable. And if it is, in fact,
unrealisable, it will be necessary to consider whether it is the
exclusion of women from masculine corporations; or the perpetual
attempt of women to force their way into these, which would deserve to
be characterised as _selfish_.
In connexion with the former of these issues, we have to consider here
not whether that form of intellectual co-operation in which the man
plays the game, and the woman moves the pawns under his orders, is
possible. That form of co-operation is of course possible, and it has,
doubtless, certain utilities.
Nor yet have we to consider whether quite intimate and purely
intellectual association on an equal footing between a particular man
and a selected woman may or may not be possible. It will suffice to
note that the feminist alleges that this also is possible; but
everybody knows that the woman very often marries the man.
What we have to ask is whether--even if we leave out of regard the
whole system of attractions or, as the case may be, repulsions which
come into operation when the sexes are thrown together--purely
intellectual intercourse between man and the typical unselected woman
is not barred by the intellectual immoralities and limitations which
appear to be secondary sexual characters of woman.
With regard to this issue, there would seem to be very little real
difference of opinion among men. But there are great differences in
the matter of candour. There are men who speak out, and who enunciate
like Nietzsche that "man and woman are alien--never yet has any one
conceived how alien."
There are men who, from motives of delicacy or policy, do not speak
out--averse to saying anything that might be unflattering to woman.
And there are men who are by their profession of the feminist faith
debarred from speaking out, but who upon occasion give themselves
away.
Of such is the man who in the House of Commons champions the cause of
woman's suffrage, impassionately appealing to Justice; and then
betrays himself by announcing that he would shake off from his feet
the dust of its purlieus if ever women were admitted as
members--_i.e._ if ever women were forced upon _him_ as close
intellectual associates.
Wherever we look we find aversion to compulsory intellectual
co-operation with woman. We see it in the sullen attitude which the
ordinary male student takes up towards the presence of women students
in his classes. We see it in the fact that the older English
universities, which have conceded everything else to women, have made
a strong stand against making them actual members of the university;
for this would impose them on men as intellectual associates. Again we
see the aversion in the opposition to the admission of women to the
bar. But we need not look so far afield. Practically every man feels
that there is in woman--patent, or hidden away--an element of unreason
which, when you come upon it, summarily puts an end to purely
intellectual intercourse. One may reflect, for example, upon the way
the woman's suffrage controversy has been conducted.
Proceeding now on the assumption that these things are so, and that
man feels that he and woman belong to different intellectual castes,
we come now to the question as to whether it is man who is selfish
when he excludes women from his institutions, or woman when she
unceasingly importunes for admittance. And we may define as _selfish_
all such conduct as pursues the advantage of the agent at the cost of
the happiness and welfare of the general body of mankind.
We shall be in a better position to pronounce judgment on this
question of ethics when we have considered the following series of
analogies:
When a group of earnest and devout believers meet together for special
intercession and worship, we do not tax them with selfishness if they
exclude unbelievers.
Nor do we call people who are really devoted to music selfish if,
coming together for this, they make a special point of excluding the
unmusical.
Nor again would the imputation of selfishness lie against members of a
club for black-balling a candidate who would, they feel, be
uncongenial.
Nor should we regard it as an act of selfishness if the members of a
family circle, or of the same nation, or of any social circle, desired
to come together quite by themselves.
Nor yet would the term selfish apply to an East End music hall
audience when they eject any one who belongs to a different social
class to themselves and wears good clothes.
And the like would hold true of servants resenting their employers
intruding upon them in their hours of leisure or entertainments.
If we do not characterise such exclusions as selfish, but rather
respect and sympathise with them, it is because we recognise that the
whole object and _raison d' etre_ of association would in each case be
nullified by the weak-minded admission of the incompatible intruder.
We recognise that if any charge of selfishness would lie, it would lie
against that intruder.
Now if this holds in the case where the interests of religious worship
or music, or family, national, or social life, or recreation and
relaxation after labour are in question, it will hold true even more
emphatically where the interests of intellectual work are involved.
But the feminist will want to argue. She will--taking it as always
for granted that woman has a right to all that men's hands or brains
have fashioned--argue that it is very important for the intellectual
development of woman that she should have exactly the same
opportunities as man. And she will, scouting [rejecting with contempt]
the idea of any differences between the intelligences of man and
woman, discourse to you of their intimate affinity.
It will, perhaps, be well to clear up these points.
The importance of the higher development of woman is unquestionable.
But after all it is the intellect of man which really comes into
account in connexion with "the mass of mental faculties available for
the higher service of mankind."
The maintenance of the conditions which allow of man's doing his best
intellectual work is therefore an interest which is superior to that
of the intellectual development of woman. And woman might quite
properly be referred for her intellectual development to instructional
institutions which should be special to herself.
Coming to the question of the intimate resemblances between the
masculine and the feminine intelligence, no man would be venturesome
enough to dispute these, but he may be pardoned if he thinks--one
would hope in no spirit of exaltation--also of the differences.
We have an instructive analogy in connexion with the learned
societies.
It is uncontrovertible that every candidate for election into such a
society will have, and will feel that he has, affinities with the
members of that association. And he is invited to set these forth in
his application. But there may also be differences of which he is not
sensible. On that question the electors are the judges; and they are
the final court of appeal.
There would seem to be here a moral which the feminist would do well
to lay to heart.
There is also another lesson which she might very profitably consider.
A quite small difference will often constitute as effective a bar to a
useful and congenial co-operation as a more fundamental difference.
In the case of a body of intellectual workers one might at first sight
suppose that so small a distinction as that of belonging to a
different nationality--sex, of course, is an infinitely profounder
difference--would not be a bar to unrestricted intellectual
co-operation.
But in point of fact it is in every country, in every learned society,
a uniform rule that when foreign scientists or scholars are admitted
they are placed not on the ordinary list of working members, but on a
special list.
One discerns that there is justification for this in the fact that a
foreigner would in certain eventualities be an incompatible person.
One may think of the eventuality of the learned society deciding to
recognise a national service, or to take part in a national movement.
And one is not sure that a foreigner might not be an incompatible
person in the eventuality of a scientist or scholar belonging to a
nationality with which the foreigner's country was at feud being
brought forward for election. And he would, of course, be an
impossible person in a society if he were, in a spirit of chauvinism,
to press for a larger representation of his own fellow-countrymen.
Now this is precisely the kind of way man feels about woman. He
recognises that she is by virtue of her sex for certain purposes an
incompatible person; and that, quite apart from this, her secondary
sexual characters might in certain eventualities make her an
impossible person.
We may note, before passing on, that these considerations would seem
to prescribe that woman should be admitted to masculine institutions
only when real humanitarian grounds demand it; that she
should--following here the analogy of what is done in the learned
societies with respect to foreigners--be invited to co-operate with
men only when she is quite specially eminent, or beyond all question
useful for the particular purpose in hand; and lastly, that when
co-opted into any masculine institution woman should always be placed
upon a special list, to show that it was proposed to confine her
co-operation within certain specified limits.
From these general questions, which affect only the woman with
intellectual aspirations, we pass to consider what would be the effect
of feminism upon the rank and file of women if it made of these
co-partners with man in work. They would suffer not only because
woman's physiological disabilities and the restrictions which arise
out of her sex place her at a great disadvantage when she has to enter
into competition with man, but also because under feminism man would
be less and less disposed to take off woman's shoulders a part of her
burden.
And there can be no dispute that the most valuable financial asset of
the ordinary woman is the possibility that a man may be willing--and
may, if only woman is disposed to fulfil her part of the bargain, be
not only willing but anxious--to support her and to secure for her, if
he can, a measure of that freedom which comes from the possession of
money.
In view of this every one who has a real fellow-feeling for woman, and
who is concerned for her material welfare, as a father is concerned
for his daughter's, will above everything else desire to nurture and
encourage in man the sentiment of chivalry, and in woman that
disposition of mind that makes chivalry possible.
And the woman workers who have to fight the battle of life for
themselves would indirectly profit from this fostering of chivalry;
for those women who are supported by men do not compete in the limited
labour market which is open to the woman worker.
From every point of view, therefore, except perhaps that of the
exceptional woman who would be able to hold her own against masculine
competition--and men always issue informal letters of naturalisation
to such an exceptional woman--the woman suffrage which leads up to
feminism would be a social disaster.