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.
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).
