Dr. Jacobi says: "Manhood Suffrage in America may seem to result, historically, from the general average equality of social conditions among the inhabitants of the Thirteen States. But it may also be deduced as a philosophical necessity from the Idea of Individualism, which became the core of the Federal Union. This idea, at first suggested only for men, has, little by little, spread to women also."
Individualism, in the sense of personal moral responsibility, became the core, first of the Hebrew Theocracy, and last of the American National life. But that republicanism which has come to rest on sex distinction is the combined result of Individualism and Authority. Suffrage discussion for years has turned upon the idea of Individualism _versus_ Authority.
In a government like ours, where all the intelligence and all the weakness _are_ represented for their own welfare and defence, authority must to a certain extent hold a stern hand over individualism, because freedom for all means license for not a single one, be it man or woman. Mrs. Fanny Ames says: "Any argument [against Suffrage] worth anything at all, comes down to this--an argument against American democracy--and must rest there." Many arguments have been adduced against Woman Suffrage that were also arguments against democracy; because there are always people, and wise people too, who fear the test of the ultimate experiment. To this fear the Suffragists catered when, in contradiction to their own dictum of universal suffrage, they asked Congress for a sixteenth amendment that should require an educational qualification for all, both men and women. But, guided by the statesmanship that seeks to form a true and enduring democracy, this Republic has come to the sex basis.
Dr. Jacobi says: "The complex contradictions in the present distributions of sovereign power are further intensified by the vulgarization of the general ideal. It is one thing to say, 'Some men shall rule,' quite another to declare, 'All men shall rule,' and that in virtue of the most primitive and rudimentary attribute they possess,--that, namely, of sex. If the original contempt for masses of men has ever diminished, and the conception of mankind been ennobled, it is because, upon the primitive animal foundation, human imagination has built a fair structure of mental and moral attribute and possibility, and habitually deals with that. This indeed is no new thing to do; for it was to this moral man that Pericles addressed his funeral oration, and of whom Lincoln thought in his speech at Gettysburg. Of this moral man, women--the sex hitherto so despised--are now recognized to constitute an integral part. It is useless, therefore, to attempt to throw them out by an appeal to the primitive conditions of a physical force to which no one appeals for any other purpose."