In particular, it will be to him a matter of concern that the law shall be established upon classifications which are just (in the sense of being conformable to public advantage); and that the laws shall everywhere be justly, that is to say rigorously and impartially, administered.

If we now turn to the man in the street we shall not find him especially sensible to the appeals of morality.  But when the special call comes it will generally be possible to trust him:  as an elector, to vote uninfluenced by considerations of private advantage; and, when called to serve on a jury, to apply legal classifications without distinction of person.

Furthermore, in all times of crisis he may be counted upon to apply the principles of communal morality which have been handed down in the race.

The Titanic disaster, for example, showed in a conspicuous manner that the ordinary man will, “letting his own life go,” obey the communal law which lays it upon him, when involved in a catastrophe, to save first the women and children.

Lastly, we come to the man who is intolerant of all the ordinary restraints of personal and domestic morality.  Even in him the seeds of communal morality will often be found deeply implanted.

Time and again a regiment of scallawags, who have let all other morality go hang, have, when the proper chord has been made to vibrate in them, heard the call of communal morality, and done deeds which make the ears of whosoever heareth of them to tingle.

We come into an entirely different land when we come to the morality of woman.  It is personal and domestic, not public, morality which is instinctive in her.

In other words, when egoism gives ground to altruism, that altruism is exercised towards those who are linked up to her by a bond of sexual affection, or a community in blood, or failing this, by a relation of personal friendship, or by some other personal relation.

And even when altruism has had her perfect work, woman feels no interest in, and no responsibility towards, any abstract moral ideal.

And though the suffragist may protest, instancing in disproof of this her own burning enthusiasm for justice, we, for our part, may legitimately ask whether evidence of a moral enthusiasm for justice would be furnished by a desire to render to others their due, or by vehement insistence upon one’s own rights, and systematic attempts to extort, under the cover of the word “justice,” advantages for oneself.

But it will be well to dwell a little longer on, and to bring out more clearly, the point that woman’s moral ideals are personal and domestic, as distinguished from impersonal and public.

Let us note in this connexion that it would be difficult to conceive of a woman who had become deaf to the appeal of personal and domestic morality making it a matter of amour propre to respond to a call of public morality; and difficult to conceive of a woman recovering lost self-respect by fulfilling such an obligation.