The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage | Page 2

further point out that practically every decision which we take in
ordinary life, and all legislative action without exception, is based upon
generalisations; and again, that the question of the suffrage, and with it
the larger question as to the proper sphere of woman, finally turns upon
the question as to what imprint woman's sexual system leaves upon her
physical frame, character, and intellect: in more technical terms, it turns
upon the question as to what are the secondary sexual character[istic]s
of woman.
Now only by a felicitous exercise of the faculty of successful
generalisation can we arrive at a knowledge of these.
With respect to the restriction that nothing which might offend
woman's amour propre [self love] shall be said in public, it may be
pointed out that, while it was perfectly proper and equitable that no evil
(and, as Pericles proposed, also no good) should be said of woman in
public so long as she confined herself to the domestic sphere, the action
of that section of women who have sought to effect an entrance into
public life, has now brought down upon woman, as one of the penalties,
the abrogation of that convention.
A consideration which perhaps ranks only next in importance to that
with which we have been dealing, is that of the logical sanction of the

propositions which are enunciated in the course of such controversial
discussions as that in which we are here involved.
It is clearly a precondition of all useful discussion that the author and
reader should be in accord with respect to the authority of the
generalisations and definitions which supply the premisses for his
reasonings.
Though this might perhaps to the reader appear an impractical ideal, I
would propose here to attempt to reach it by explaining the logical
method which I have set myself to follow.
Although I have from literary necessity employed in my text some of
the verbal forms of dogmatism, I am very far from laying claim to any
dogmatic authority. More than that, I would desire categorically to
repudiate such a claim.
For I do not conceal from myself that, if I took up such a position, I
should wantonly be placing myself at the mercy of my reader. For he
could then, by merely refusing to see in me an authority, bring down
the whole edifice of my argument like a house of cards.
Moreover I am not blind to what would happen if, after I claimed to be
taken as an authority, the reader was indulgent enough still to go on to
read what I have written.
He would in such a case, the moment he encountered a statement with
which he disagreed, simply waive me on one side with the words, "So
you say."
And if he should encounter a statement with which he agreed, he would
in his wisdom, censure me for neglecting to provide for that proposition
a satisfactory logical foundation.
If it is far from my thoughts to claim a right of dictation, it is equally
remote from them to take up the position that I have in my arguments
furnished proof of the thesis which I set out to establish.

It would be culpable misuse of language to speak in such connexion of
proof or disproof.
Proof by testimony, which is available in con-nexion with questions of
fact, is unavailable in connexion with general truths; and logical proof
is obtainable only in that comparatively narrow sphere where reasoning
is based--as in mathematics--upon axioms, or--as in certain really
crucial experiments in the mathematic sciences--upon quasi- axiomatic
premisses.
Everywhere else we base our reasonings on premisses which are simply
more or less probable; and accordingly the conclusions which we arrive
at have in them always an element of insecurity.
It will be clear that in philosophy, in jurisprudence, in political
economy and sociology, and in literary criticism and such like, we are
dealing not with certainties but with propositions which are, for literary
convenience, invested with the garb of certainties.
What kind of logical sanction is it, then, which can attach to reasonings
such as are to be set out here?
They have in point of fact the sanction which attaches to reasonings
based upon premisses arrived at by the method of _diacritical
judgment._
It is, I hasten to notify the reader, not the method, but only the name
here assigned to it, which is unfamiliar. As soon as I exhibit it in the
working, the reader will identify it as that by which every
generalisation and definition ought to be put to the proof.
I may for this purpose take the general statements or definitions which
serve as premisses for my reasonings in the text.
I bring forward those generalisations and definitions because they
commend themselves to my diacritical judgment. In