Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/12

 but also the political rights of women. In my own case, my faith in the benefit to be derived from woman suffrage was enhanced by the circumstance, over which I shall always rejoice, that it was my good fortune to take in early manhood a decided though insignificant part in promoting the education of women. In the success of Bedford College, of Newnham College, and of Somerville College, I felt, and I trust shall always feel, the keenest interest. For many years I identified the extension of women's political power with the effort to procure for them every possible opportunity for the development and employment of their natural gifts.

It is never easy to trace the influences which have brought about an honest change in any of one's own beliefs, whether political or religious. These influences are a quite different thing from the reasons by which a change may rightly be justified. They are not so much arguments as the conditions under which reasons which at one time seemed decisive lose their force, whilst reasoning, which at one time seemed to carry little weight, gains for one's own mind a new power and significance.