IT has come to be believed that everything that has a bearing upon the concession of the suffrage to woman has already been brought forward.
In reality, however, the influence of women has caused man to leave unsaid many things which he ought to have said.
Especially in two respects has woman restricted the discussion.
She has placed her taboo upon all generalisations about women, taking exception to these on the threefold ground that there would be no generalisations which would hold true of all women; that generalisations when reached possess no practical utility; and that the element of sex does not leave upon women any general imprint such as could properly be brought up in connexion with the question of admitting them to the electorate.
Woman has further stifled discussion by placing her taboo upon anything seriously unflattering being said about her in public.
I would suggest, and would propose here myself to act upon the suggestion, that, in connexion with the discussion of woman’s suffrage, these restrictions should be laid aside.
In connexion with the setting aside of the restriction upon generalising, I may perhaps profitably point out that all generalisations,and not only generalisations which relate to women, are ex hypothesi [by hypothesis] subject to individual exceptions. (It is to generalisations that the proverb that “the exception proves the rule” really applies.) I may 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 connexion 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 other words, I set them forth as results which have been reached after reiterated efforts to call up to mind the totality of my experience, and to detect the factor which is common to all the individual experiences.
When for instance I propose a definition, I have endeavoured to call to mind all the different uses of the word with which I am familiar–eliminating, of course, all the obviously incorrect uses.
And when I venture to attempt a generalisation about woman, I endeavour to recall to mind without distinction all the different women I have encountered, and to extricate from my impressions what was common to all, –omitting from consideration (except only when I am dealing specifically with these) all plainly abnormal women.
Having by this procedure arrived at a generalisation–which may of course be correct or incorrect–I submit it to my reader, and ask from him that he should, after going through the same mental operations as myself, review my judgment, and pronounce his verdict.
If it should then so happen that the reader comes, in the case of any generalisation, to the same verdict as that which I have reached, that particular generalisation will, I submit, now go forward not as a datum of my individual experience, but as the intellectual resultant of two separate and distinct experiences. It will thereby be immensely fortified.
If, on the other hand, the reader comes to the conclusion that a particular generalisation is out of conformity with his experience, that generalisation will go forward shorn of some, or perchance all, its authority.
But in any case each individual generalisation must be referred further.
And at the end it will, according as it finds, or fails to find, acceptance among the thoughtful, be endorsed as a truth, and be gathered into the garner of human knowledge; or be recognised as an error, and find its place with the tares, which the householder, in time of the harvest, will tell the reapers to bind in bundles to burn them.
