generalisation may legitimately be got out of the way by
characterising it as a prejudice. This is a fundamentally important
question not only in connexion with such an issue as woman suffrage,
but in connexion with all search for truth in those regions where
crucial scientific experiments cannot be instituted.

In the whole of this region of thought we have to guide ourselves by
generalisations.

Now every generalisation is in a sense a _prejudgment_. We make
inferences from cases or individuals that have already presented
themselves to such cases or individuals of the same class as may
afterwards present themselves. And if our generalisation happens to be
an unfavourable one, we shall of necessity have prejudged the case
against those who are exceptions to their class.

Thus, for example, the proposition that woman is incapable of usefully
exercising the parliamentary franchise prejudges the case against a
certain number of capable women. It would none the less be absolutely
anarchical to propose to abandon the system of guiding ourselves by
prejudgments; and unfavourable prejudgments or prejudices are
logically as well justified, and are obviously as indispensable to us
as favourable prejudgments.

The suffragist who proposes to dispose of generalisations which are
unfavourable to woman as prejudices ought therefore to be told to
stand down.

It has probably never suggested itself to her that, if there were a
mind which was not stored with both favourable prejudgments and