Page:"Homo Sum" being a letter to an anti-suffragist from an anthropologist.djvu/7

 Being a Letter to an Anti- Suffragist from an Anthropologist.

,—

Will it induce you to read this letter if I tell you at the outset that the possession of a vote would grievously embarrass me? Personally, I have no more interest in or aptitude for politics than I have for plumbing. But, embarrassing though I should find the possession of a vote, I strongly feel that it is a gift which ought to be given, a gift which I must nerve myself to receive. May I also add that, had your Society been founded some ten or twenty years ago, I might very possibly have joined it. I cannot do so now, because my point of view has changed. How this change came about, I should like to explain a little later. For the present, will you, by way of apology for this letter, accept the fact that there is between us the deep-down sympathy of a conviction once shared?

And further, by way of preface, may I say that I do not want to argue, probably because I find that in my own case disputation rarely, if ever, is an efficient instrument in my search after truth. What always interests and often helps me is to be told of any conviction seriously and strongly felt by another mind,