Page:The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage.djvu/29

 there was in point of fact a risk of the human race dying out by reason of the inadequate imperativeness of its sexual instincts.

Mill's unfaithfulness to the facts cannot, however, all be put down to constitutional defects of vision. When he deals with woman he is no longer scrupulously conscientious. We begin to have our suspicions of his uprightness when we find him in his Subjection of Women laying it down as a fundamental postulate that the subjection of woman to man is always morally indefensible. For no upright mind can fail to see that the woman who lives in a condition of financial dependence upon man has no moral claim to unrestricted liberty. The suspicion of Mill's honesty which is thus awakened is confirmed by further critical reading of his treatise. In that skilful tractate one comes across, every here and there, a suggestio falsi, or a suppressio veri, or a fallacious analogy nebulously expressed, or a mendacious metaphor, or a passage which is contrived to lead off attention