Anyone who has an extensive knowledge of women—even of the most cultivated among them—is aware of how constantly they are guided in their conclusions concerning what is true by hedonistic considerations. Indeed, it is the most difficult thing to persuade a woman, even of the most obvious truth, if that truth strikes her as being too unpleasant to be comfortably assimilated to her previous stock of knowledge. In addition to her vital indifference to truth, therefore, woman’s emotions add a further disability to her nature in this department. Her convictions are so intimately and unconsciously interwoven with her deepest interests and long-cherished beliefs, that if, to accept a certain truth, these convictions have to be outraged, she prefers to reject that truth as unacceptable. In this sense, woman’s thinking is largely feeling, and her thoughts are largely sensations.[234] The more emphatic and stubborn a woman is in any belief, the more strongly you may suspect that she has not facts, but emotional reasons for holding it.[235] That is why women are so notoriously bad at giving reasons for their opinions, and why they are so untrustworthy as judges of matters of fact, where impartiality is a pre-requisite. A woman Feminist, for instance, will emphatically claim (I have actually heard a body of them claim this) that the music of Dame Ethel Smyth is equal to any that has been composed by the best male musicians, and she will reiterate this claim and press it the more aggressively and stubbornly the more you try to appeal to her reason with the view of showing her the absurdity of her position. Now the cause of this is not the female Feminist’s _intellectual_ conviction that Dame Ethel Smyth’s music is actually equal to the best male music, but her strong emotional desire that it should be so; and this strong emotional desire makes her utterly unfit to express an impartial opinion upon it. The truth, which is that Dame Ethel Smyth’s music is by no means equal to the most superior male music, is too unpleasant to be accepted: therefore, without any further ado, it is rejected as untrue. It is enormously difficult for a woman to divorce her wishes, her likes and dislikes, from her beliefs and from her conclusions; and this, in addition to her natural indifference to the truth, and her lack of originality, is enough to explain the fundamental unsuitability of her sex for any scientific pursuit.[236]