pass through strains and recover in a way few men can do. But as we shall have occasion to revert to these two points at greater length later on, we refrain from saying more here.
How then, after consideration, shall we judge of the Feminist thesis, affirmed and reaffirmed, insisted upon by so many as an incontrovertible axiom, that woman is the equal, intellectually and morally, if not physically, of man? Surely that it has all the characteristics of a true dogma. Its votaries might well say with Tertullian, credo quia absurdum. It contradicts the whole experience of mankind in the past. It is refuted by all impartial observation in the present. The facts which undermine it are seriously denied by none save those committed to the dogma in question. Like all dogmas, it is supported by “bluff.” In this case the “bluff” is to the effect that it is the “part, mark, business, lot” (as the Latin grammars of our youth would have had it) of the “advanced” man who considers himself up to date, and not “Early Victorian,” to regard it as unchallengeable. Theological dogmas are backed up by the bluff of authority, either of scriptures or of churches. This dogma of the Feminist cult is not vouchsafed by the authority of a Communion of saints but by that of the Communion of advanced persons up to date. Unfortunately dogma does not sit so well upon the community of advanced persons up to date—who otherwise profess to, and generally
