otable sense, but merely a wholesaler of notions so infantile that
they must needs disgust a sentient suckling--in brief, a spouting geyser
of fallacies and sentimentalities, a cataract of unsupported assumptions
and hollow moralizings, a tedious phrase-merchant and platitudinarian,
a fellow whose noblest flights of thought were flattered when they were
called comprehensible--specifically, a Wilson, a Taft, a Roosevelt, or a
Harding.

This was the male champion. I do not venture upon the cruelty of
comparing his bombastic flummeries to the clear reasoning of a woman
of like fame and position; all I ask of you is that you weigh them, for
sense, for shrewdness, for intelligent grasp of obscure relations, for
intellectual honesty and courage, with the ideas of the average midwife.

34. The Suffragette

I have spoken with some disdain of the suffragette. What is the matter
with her, fundamentally, is simple: she is a woman who has stupidly
carried her envy of certain of the superficial privileges of men to such
a point that it takes on the character of an obsession, and makes her
blind to their valueless and often chiefly imaginary character. In
particular, she centres this frenzy of hers upon one definite privilege,
to wit, the alleged privilege of promiscuity in amour, the modern droit
du seigneur. Read the books of the chief lady Savonarolas, and you will
find running through them an hysterical denunciation of what is called
the double standard of morality; there is, indeed, a whole literature
devoted exclusively to it. The existence of this double standard seems
to drive the poor girls half frantic. They bellow raucously for its
abrogation, and demand that the frivolous male be visited with even more
idiotic penalties than those which now visit the aberrant female; some
even advocate gravely his mutilation by surgery, that he may be forced
into rectitude by a physical disability for sin.

All this, of course, is hocus-pocus, and the judicious are not deceived
by it for an instant. What these virtuous bel dames actually desire in
their hearts is not that the male be reduced to chemical purity, but
that the franchise of dalliance be extended to themselves. The most
elementary acquaintance with Freudian psychology exposes their secret
animus. Unable to ensnare males under the present system, or at all
events, unable to ensnare males sufficiently appetizing to arouse the
envy of other women, they leap to the