Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/171

 and Elizabeth Barrett Browning had never written a line, we may doubt exceedingly whether the work of Maurice or of Robert Barrett would have been any better than it was. I once heard a youthful politician, now in Parliament, gravely oppose the eligibility of women to Parliament, on the ground that, if women went into Parliament, their babies would tumble into the fire. Now, quite apart from the circumstance that very few of the wives of existing Members of Parliament act all day and night as fireguards, there was this absurdity that there are only six hundred and seventy Members of Parliament, and, if they were every one of them women, there would still be many millions of mothers left to look after the babies. It might—we may grant this to the alarmists—be very uncomfortable if all women were, or tried to be, geniuses and Members of Parliament, but the mere fact that they are not forbidden will not make them all throw their energies in these directions, any more than it afflicts men so.

Like so much of the talk about women, this about genius is very little relevant to any practical problem. Even if it were true that women had never shown, and never would show, genius in art or abstract science, this is no reason for preventing them from using what ability they have in the directions they prefer, and it seems very likely that they have genius in directions hitherto almost forbidden to them; I mean in organisation, and leadership, and in the power to govern. They