wn, to our present method, where each contending party
hires a champion to represent him, and these fight it out in a wordy
war, with tricks and devices of complex ingenuity, enjoying this kind of
struggle as they enjoy all other kinds.

It is the old masculine spirit of government as authority which is so
slow in adapting itself to the democratic idea of government as
service. That it should be a representative government they grasp, but
representative of what? of the common will, they say; the will of
the majority;--never thinking that it is the common good, the common
welfare, that government should represent.

It is the inextricable masculinity in our idea of government which so
revolts at the idea of women as voters. "To govern:" that means to boss,
to control, to have authority; and that only, to most minds. They
cannot bear to think of the woman as having control over even their own
affairs; to control is masculine, they assume. Seeing only self-interest
as a natural impulse, and the ruling powers of the state as a sort of
umpire, an authority to preserve the rules of the game while men fight
it out forever; they see in a democracy merely a wider range of self
interest, and a wider, freer field to fight in.

The law dictates the rules, the government enforces them, but the
main business of life, hitherto, has been esteemed as one long fierce
struggle; each man seeking for himself. To deliberately legislate for
the service of all the people, to use the government as the main engine
of that service, is a new process, wholly human, and difficult of
development under an androcentric culture.

Furthermore they put forth those naively androcentric protests,--women
cannot fight, and in case their laws were resisted by men they could not
enforce them,--_therefore_ they should not vote!

What they do not so plainly say, but very strongly think, is that women
should not share the loot which to their minds is so large a part of
politics.

Here we may trace clearly the social heredity of male government.

Fix clearly in your mind the first head-ship of man--the leader of the
pack as it were--the Chief Hunter. Then the second head-ship, the Chief
Fighter. Then the third head-ship, the Chief of the Family. Then the
long line of Chiefs and Captains, Warlords and Landlords, Rulers and
Kings.

The Hunter hunted for prey, and got it. The Fighter enriched himself
with the spoils of the vanquished. The Patriarch lived on th