Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/16

 contained in his treatise 'On Liberty.' Later reflection has, indeed, shown me that, whilst his 'Subjection of Women' contains, side by side with much noble sentiment, some singularly fallacious reasoning, the treatise 'On Liberty,' so far from supporting the claim of women to political authority, really supplies an argument against the moral claim either of woman or of any other class of the community to share in political power if such participation is opposed to the welfare of the State. It was a great relief, at any rate to myself, to discover that I could reconcile my enthusiasm for everything which promotes the personal freedom and the education of women with the strenuous denial to them of any share in sovereign power.

By degrees, too, the admiration for Mill's extraordinary gift of logical exposition, as well as gratitude for much of his teaching, became in my mind compatible with the admission that with him the reality, though not the form, of logic is often sacrificed to the influence of moral emotion, and that this subordination of his reason to the force of generous passion is nowhere more noticeable