The opposition to the granting of equal suffrage is, as I have said, based mainly upon five classes of contentions: 

  I. The theological. 
 II.  The physiological. 
III.  The social or political. 
 IV.  The intellectual. 
  V. The moral.

A consideration and an analysis of these five classes of objections will constitute a summary of the relations of woman to the community, and may also serve as a guide or suggestion to the possibility of a legitimate development, in the near future, of her rights as a citizen.

I. The theological argument is based upon the distinctly evil conception of woman, presented in Genesis, as the cause of misery in this world and upon the subordinate position assigned to her by Paul and Peter.  Christ himself has left us no teachings on the subject.  The Hebrew and Oriental creed of woman’s sphere permeated the West as Christianity expanded and forced to extinction the Roman principle of equality.  Only within fifty years, has the female sex regained the rights enjoyed by women under the law of the Empire seventeen centuries ago.  The Apostolic theory of complete subordination gained strength with each succeeding age.  I have already cited instances of ecclesiastical vehemence.  As a final example I may recall that when, early in the nineteenth century, chloroform was first used to help women in childbirth, a number of Protestant divines denounced the practice as a sin against the Creator, who had expressly commanded that woman should bring forth in sorrow and tribulation.  Yet times have so far changed within two decades that the theological argument is practically obsolete among Protestants, although it is still influential in the Roman Catholic Church, which holds fast to the doctrine laid down by the Apostles.  We may say, however, that of all the objections, the theological has, in practice, the least weight among the bulk of the population.  The word obey in the clerical formula love, honour, and obey provokes a smile.

II.  The physiological argument is more powerful.  Its supporters assert that the constitution of woman is too delicate, too finely wrought to compete with man in his chosen fields.  The physiological argument makes its appearance most persistently in the statement that woman should have no vote because she could not defend her property or her country in time of war.  In reply to this some partisans of equal suffrage have thought it necessary to prove that women are physically equal in all respects to men.  But the issues between nations which in the centuries past it had been believed could be adjusted only by war, by being fought out (not, of course, to any logical conclusion, but to a result which showed simply that one party was stronger than the other), are now, in the great majority of cases, determined by the more reasonable, the more civilised, method of arbitration.