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1 Luke Owen Pike, On the Claims of Women to Political Power xlvii (1869)

handle is hein.peggy/ocwop0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Pike on the Claims of TromenT to Political Power. FOR THE LIBRARY. From the AUTHOR-On Vegetable Products used by American Indians: Robert Brown, Esq. From the LIBRARY-Tenth Annual Report of the Public Free Library of Manchester. The following paper was then read:- On the Claims of Women to Political Power. By LUKE OWEN PIIKE, Esq., M.A., F.A.S.L. It is no uncommon event to hear the question,-What is the aim of Anthropology? To that question I do not presume to attempt any complete answer in the present paper; but I hold that the science, in order to be worthy of the name, must deal with practical as well as speculative difficulties, and I know of no subject upon which it ought to give a more authoritative decision than upon the claims of women to political power. Let it not be supposed that I wish to trespass on the domain of the statesman; he is the judge of times and seasons, of present expediency or inexpediency, with which the mere anthropologist has no concern; but if the science of mankind is un- able to throw some light upon the proper relative position of the two sexes in matters of government, there can be but little hope that it will ever fulfil the expectations of its votaries. There is an impression on the mind of the public, that philoso- phers desire to see women on a footing of complete political equality with men; and there is also a tendency to confound the philosopher with the man of science. Unless, therefore, a protest is raised in time, it is by no means improbable that the anthropologist will be confounded with the metaphysician. Much has been said about the abstract right of every human being, and therefore of every woman, to a vote. I need hardly remark that such an expression as the abstract right of woman is quite meaningless to the scientific student of mankind. He knows that a right in the abstract is often only a synonym for a wrong in the concrete ; he detects in the very use of the word right an A- priori assunption instead of an inductive gene- ralisation; he recognises in the use of the word abstract a favourite resource of loose reasoners ; and he suspects that the inventor of the whole phrase would shrink from a definition of woman. But to the eye of the public, the self-elected champion of feminine virility is an anthropologist, until anthropologists disavow his opinions. I do not, of course, propose to discuss the matter on the ground of abstract right; but women are encouraged to enter upon active political life by those who appear, at first sight, to bring forward arguments of a wholly different character; and what I hope to prove, is that all these specious arguments are in reality only metaphysical; that they had their origin, in one form or other, long before man had conceived his present ideas of science, and that they show a deficient insight into the laws of nature. But I must, at the same time, admit that some of the advocates for this sexual revolution have done good ser- vice in bringing prominently forward the great problem -which under- Xlvii

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