‘It is difficult, more difficult than one ever suspects, for a Minister to do good. Alas! my dear, John Coryton’s case is only one of many.’
‘I know,’ replied Constance sighing. ‘Yet what can I do! Our greatest enemies are—ourselves. Oh, Professor! when I think of the men working at their looms from morning until night, cooking the dinners and looking after the children, while the women sit about the village pump or in their clubs, to talk unmeaning politics—Tell me, logician, why our theories are all so logical, and our practice is so bad?’
‘Everything,’ said the Professor, ‘in our system is rigorously logical and just. If it could not be proved scientifically—if it were not absolutely certain—the system could never be accepted by the exact intellect of cultivated women. Have not Oxford and Cambridge proclaimed this from a hundred pulpits and in a thousand text-books? My dear Lady Carlyon, you yourself proved it when you took your degree in the most brilliant essay ever written.’
The Countess winced.
‘Must we, then,’ she asked, ‘cease to believe in logic?’
‘Nay,’ replied Professor Ingleby; ‘I said not that. But every conclusion depends upon the minor premiss. That, dear Countess, in the case of our system, appears to me a little uncertain.’
‘But where is the uncertainty? Surely you will allow me, my dear Professor,’—Constance smiled,—‘although I am only a graduate of two years’ standing, to know enough logic to examine a syllogism?’
‘Surely, Constance. My dear, I do not presume to doubt your reasoning powers. It was only an expression of perplexity. We are so right, and things go so wrong.’
Both ladies were silent for a few moments, and Constance sighed.
‘For instance,’ the Professor went on, ‘we were logically right when we suppressed the Sovereignty. In a perfect State, the head must also be perfect. Whom, then, could we acknowledge as head but the Perfect Woman? So we became a pure theocracy. Then, again, we were right when we abolished the Lower House; for in a perfect State, the best rulers must be those who are well-born, well-educated, and well-bred. All this requires no demonstration. Yet——’