in fact,
without incurring severe moral reprobation. But there is an exception
which, unfortunately, links Chesterton pretty firmly with the sweater,
and other undesirable lords of creation. He is an anti-suffragist.

In a little essay Chesterton once wrote on Tolstoy, he argued that the
thing that has driven men mad was logic, from the beginning of time,
whereas the thing that has kept them sane was mysticism. Tolstoy,
lacking mysticism, was at the mercy of his pitiless logic, which led
him to condemn things which are entirely natural and human. This
attitude, one feels (and it is only to be arrived at by feeling), is
absolutely right. We all start off with certain scarce expressible
feelings that certain things are fundamentally decent and permissible,
and that others are the reverse, just as we do not take our idea of
blackness and whiteness from a text-book. If anybody proposed that all
Scotsmen should be compelled to eat sago with every meal, the idea,
although novel to most of us, would be instantly dismissed, even, it is
probable, by those with sago interests, because it would be contrary to
our instinct of what is decent. In fact, we all believe in natural
rights, or at any rate we claim the enjoyment of some. Now natural
rights have no logical basis. The late Professor D. G. Ritchie very
brilliantly examined the theory of natural rights, and by means of much
subtle dissection and argument found that there were no natural rights;
law was the only basis of privilege. It is quite easy to be convinced by
the author's delightful dialectic, but the conviction is apt to vanish
suddenly in the presence of a dog being ill-treated.

Now on a basis of common decency--the basis of all democratic political
thought--the case for woman suffrage is irresistible. It is not decent
that the sweated woman worker should be denied what, in the opinion of
many competent judges, might be the instrument of her salvation. It is
not decent that women should share a disqualification with lunatics,
criminals, children, and no others of their own race. It is not decent
that the sex which knows most about babies should have no opportunity to
influence directly legislation dealing with babies. It is not decent
that a large, important and necessary section of humanity, with highly
gregarious instincts, should not be allowed to exercise the only
gregarious function which concerns the whole nation at once.

These propositions are fundamental;