is should a woman wear a skirt?” or some such similar fundamental question, it would probably have been said that it had nothing to do with matter, and yet this question of _artificial_ difference between the sexes is really fundamental to the whole subject. But the rationalist will find that he will not meet me in this statement. The woman who wishes to retain certain privileges, and yet accept certain other privileges, will at once find reasons why she should wear a skirt and yet have the vote. She will tell me all sorts of things about her physical disabilities, things which she believes to be fundamental truths, many of which, in fact, are fundamentally wrong, but accepted as truths because they lead to rationalization being able to support her wishes. In a similar way, on the much discussed subject of “prohibition” the prohibitionist will rationalise on a certain few facts, in order to support his emotions and desires. A moderate drinker will do exactly the same, in the opposite direction. Neither of them will have the courage to ignore his personal feelings, nor may he have the power to do so, and to take all the facts into consideration and come to a conclusion, irrespective of his wishes on the subject.[7] Of course, one of the other difficulties in the way of coming to correct conclusions in all these things is that people will insist on arguing upon subjects, when the amount of real scientific knowledge they have on the subjects is extremely small. The newspaper editor will quote a few popular facts, in order to support some theory of his own, having but a limited knowledge of psychology, physiology, anatomy, or of some other science which has considerable bearing on the subject, he will end by producing a series of conclusions probably entirely wrong. This, of course, is inevitable in our limited circumstances; but it should not be equally inevitable that we should hold firmly to our beliefs, when we realise how limited is our knowledge of any one subject. And in order to examine facts and to get rid of rationalization as far as possible, we must try, with the utmost power at our command to refuse that reaction of self-defence and self-pride, which prevents us from looking at ourselves and from realising that most of our opinions about ourselves may be completely erroneous. We must be prepared to accept temporary, not fixed, judgments, based upon the evidence which we have. We must be prepared to reverse those judgments in the light of new evidence. We must be careful not to reject this evidence merely because we do not like it.