Page:The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage.djvu/16

This page has been validated.
PREFACE
13

tem leaves upon her physical frame, character, and intellect: in more technical terms, it turns upon the question as to what are the secondary sexual characters 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 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