Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/68

case, when it became a reproach to be "intellectual." But if these are the characteristics of women, according to Mr. Harrison, we may smile to see how he gives himself away, unintentionally, when he comes to those of men. He has just been alluding to the "fair, impartial temper" with which men "habitually weigh all sides of a question," and declaring that "all political questions and all parliamentary elections really turn, or ought to turn, on nicely balanced judgments"; yet when he comes to anticipate what would be the effect of women's enfranchisement upon the judicial mind, the fair impartial temper of men, he declares that it would weaken men's respect for women's opinion and even their respect for women: "The women's vote would always be actually or possibly on the wrong side." (Italics mine.) The conversation of the wolf with the lamb in La Fontaine's fable is an admirable expression of this state of mind, but to call it "fair and impartial" throws a queer light on Mr. Harrison's own particular quality of male mind. He alludes pathetically to the sufferings men have endured at the hands of women when men have felt it their duty to oppose something women desired. It is a pity when rancour and spite manifest themselves, but have women never suffered at the hands of men? How about the witch trials? Did men make the path of Joan of Arc, of Josephine Butler, of Doctor Jex-Blake, even of Florence Nightingale a path of roses? Are not suffragists even now having all sorts of preposterous