Page:The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage.djvu/20

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PREFACE
17

attaches to reasonings based upon premisses arrived at by the method of diacritical judgment.

It is, I hasten to notify the reader, not the method, but only the name here assigned to it, which is unfamiliar. As soon as I exhibit it in the working, the reader will identify it as that by which every generalisation and definition ought to be put to the proof.

I may for this purpose take the general statements or definitions which serve as premisses for my reasonings in the text.

I bring forward those generalisations and definitions because they commend themselves to my diacritical judgment. In other words, I set them forth as results which have been reached after reiterated efforts to call up to mind the totality of my experience, and to detect the factor which is common to all the individual experiences.

When for instance I propose a definition, I have endeavoured to call to mind all the different uses of the word with which I am fa-