The suggestion of Plato, of the Stoics, of medieval thinkers like Agrippa, and of so many more recent observers, that the chief mental difference between the sexes is a difference in education and experience, has been borne out by the whole experience of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The medieval world regarded the Jew with infantine wonder, and its theologians speculated learnedly on his aloofness, his distrust, his narrow capacities, and so forth. Luther broke in on their sophistry with the sensible remark that if you treat a man as a dog he may be forced to act as one. The freedom we have given to the Jew has brought out his essential humanity and capacity. We may apply the parable to the position of woman. She has been treated, politically, as a child. The moment we begin to abandon that treatment we find the maturity of her power. * * * * * * When, in 1866 and 1867, Lord Elcho, Lord Sherbrooke, and the "Adullamite" Whigs made public reflections on the political capacity of the hundreds of thousands of working men whom Gladstone proposed to enfranchise, and Disraeli did enfranchise, the working men retorted with a violence and disorder that one may regard as not unnatural. To-day the sons of these enfranchised workers make less polite reflections on the capacity of women, and are shocked at the "hysteria" that sometimes ensues. For my part, I have felt it unpleasant to have to discuss the question whether the prospective women electors of Britain are mentally inferior to the male electors. My apology must be that not only have I found the belief of their inferiority to lie at the root of most of the prejudices against the movement, but that, if their competence be granted, the argument is over. Hundreds of thousands of obviously competent women demand the vote to-day. No matter how many more thousands may not, we maintain an offensive medieval injustice when we continue to refuse it to those who do. But a last word may be devoted to those women and men who think the granting of the vote would injure woman, and, indirectly, the community. It is, unfortunately, very difficult to grasp the precise fear that finds expression in this objection. The frequent statement that woman's "refined" and "angelic" nature should not be "dragged into politics" is usually a piece of insincere flippancy both as regards woman and politics. At the most, if political life were so corrupt, one would think the introduction of "angels" would greatly benefit it. But it is difficult to see, however prone one may be to pessimism, that the reading of a political journal every day, an occasional attendance at a political meeting, or membership of a political club, would greatly sully woman's high nature. The moment you reflect what the exercise of the vote really involves in the concrete, a great many rhetorical balloons collapse.