第2章 THE SUFFRAGIST(2)

But as we know there are no instincts in any of these directions,these analogies are not only false but false on the cardinal fact.I do not speak of the comparative comfort or merit of these different things:Isay they are different.It may be that love turned to hate is terribly common in sexual matters:it may be that hate turned to love is not uncommon in the rivalries of race or class.But any philosophy about the sexes that begins with anything but the mutual attraction of the sexes,begins with a fallacy;and all its historical comparisons are as irrelevant and impertinent as puns.

But to expose such cold negation of the instincts is easy:to express or even half express the instincts is very hard.The instincts are very much concerned with what literary people call "style"in letters or more vulgar people call "style"in dress.They are much concerned with how a thing is done,as well as whether one may do it:and the deepest elements in their attraction or aversion can often only be conveyed by stray examples or sudden images.When Danton was defending himself before the Jacobin tribunal he spoke so loud that his voice was heard across the Seine,in quite remote streets on the other side of the river.

He must have bellowed like a bull of Bashan.Yet none of us would think of that prodigy except as something poetical and appropriate.None of us would instinctively feel that Danton was less of a man or even less of a gentleman,for speaking so in such an hour.But suppose we heard that Marie Antoinette,when tried before the same tribunal,had howled so that she could be heard in the Faubourg St.Germain--well,I leave it to the instincts,if there are any left.It is not wrong to howl.Neither is it right.It is simply a question of the instant impression on the artistic and even animal parts of humanity,if the noise were heard suddenly like a gun.

Perhaps the nearest verbal analysis of the instinct may he found in the gestures of the orator addressing a crowd.For the true orator must always be a demagogue:even if the mob be a small mob,like the.French committee or the English House of Lords.And "demagogue,"in the good Greek meaning,does not mean one who pleases the populace,but one who leads it:and if you will notice,you will see that all the instinctive gestures of oratory are gestures of military leadership;pointing the people to a path or waving them on to an advance.Notice that long sweep of the arm across the body and outward,which great orators use naturally and cheap orators artificially.It is almost the exact gesture of the drawing of a sword.

The point is not that women are unworthy of votes;it is not even that votes are unworthy of women.It is that votes are unworthy of men,so long as they are merely votes;and have nothing in them of this ancient militarism of democracy.The only crowd worth talking to is the crowd that is ready to go somewhere and do something;the only demagogue worth hearing is he who can point at something to be done:and,if he points with a sword,will only feel it familiar and useful like an elongated finger.Now,except in some mystical exceptions which prove the rule,these are not the gestures,and therefore not the instincts,of women.

No honest man dislikes the public woman.He can only dislike the political woman;an entirely different thing.The instinct has nothing to do with any desire to keep women curtained or captive:if such a desire exists.A husband would be pleased if his wife wore a gold crown and proclaimed laws from a throne of marble;or if she uttered oracles from the tripod of a priestess;or if she could walk in mystical motherhood before the procession of some great religious order.But that she should stand on a platform in the exact altitude in which he stands;leaning forward a little more than is graceful and holding her mouth open a little longer and wider than is dignified--well,I only write here of the facts of natural history;and the fact is that it is this,and not publicity or importance,that hurts.It is for the modern world to judge whether such instincts are indeed danger signals;and whether the hurting of moral as of material nerves is a tocsin and a warning of nature.