growth, originate in the male, and are then preserved by women, and the context leaves no room to doubt that the "really superior woman" which filled the author's memory at the time this passage was written, was a woman in whom this feminine characteristic was well developed; that she was a woman filled with the fruits of human experience; and it is a little strange that he fails to see that the relation with which, for a man of speculation, there is nothing comparable, may have a wider value, and be of the greatest importance to humanity as a whole.

The next passage which I shall quote is still more to the point. He says: "Let us now consider another of the admitted superiorities of clever women, greater quickness of apprehension. Is this not pre-eminently a quality which fits a person for practice? In action everything depends upon deciding promptly. In speculation nothing does. A mere thinker can wait, can take time to consider, can collect additional evidence; he is not obliged to complete his philosophy at once lest the opportunity should go by. The power of drawing the best conclusion possible from insufficient data is not, indeed, useless in philosophy; the construction of a provisional hypothesis consistent with all known facts is often the needful basis for further inquiry. But this faculty is rather serviceable in philosophy than the main qualification for it; and for the auxiliary as well as for the main question the philosopher can allow himself any time he pleases. He is in no need of doing rapidly what he does; what he rather needs is patience to work on slowly until imperfect lights have become perfect, and a conjecture has ripened into a theorem. For those, on the contrary, whose business is with the fugitive and perishable—with individual facts, not kinds of facts-rapidity of thought

is a qualification next only in importance to the power of thought itself. He who has not his faculties under immediate command in the contingencies of action. might as well not have them at all. He may be fit to criticise, but he is not fit to act. Now it is in this that women, and the men who are most like women, confessedly excel. The other sort of man, however pre-eminent may be his faculties, arrives slowly at complete command of them; rapidity of judgment and promptitude of judicious action, even in the things he knows best, are the gradual and late result of strenuous effort grown into habit."

I have quoted these passages from Mill at length, as they give a very clear although somewhat narrow statement, by the strongest advocate of the fundamental likeness of the sexes, of what I take to be the most important psychological difference between them.

According to Mill-and I think that universal experience will justify his view-the highest type of woman is distinguished by her power of intuition, by her concrete acquaintance with the laws and principles which have been established by experience and generalization, by a constitutional knowledge of these laws which amounts to habit, so that she is able to recognize in actual practical life the action which is proper in any given case, without the necessity for a slow process of comparison and thought; by that immediate command of the faculties which is necessary for action.

This power of correctly and promptly applying the established scientific laws, which are the result of all the experience of the past, to the actions of ordinary practical life, is common sense, as distinguished from originality.

The highest type of male intelligence, on the other hand, is distinguished by the power to abstract and com

pare, and by a slow process of thought to reach new generalizations and laws, and to see these in their abstract and ideal form, freed from all the complications of their concrete manifestations. To this power is often joined a woful and disastrous lack of common sense, or power of prompt and proper decision and action in special cases. Lecky, in his "History of European Morals," gives an excellent summary of the most marked differences between the male mind and the female; and, although we do not agree with him in thinking that a departure from the male type is in all cases to be regarded as inferiority, we cannot fail to note how exactly his account agrees with the demands of our hypothesis.

He says: "Intellectually a certain inferiority of the female sex can hardly be denied when we remember how almost exclusively the foremost places in every department of science, literature, and art have been occupied by men; how infinitesimally small is the number of women who have shown in any form the very highest order of genius; how many of the greatest men have achieved their greatness in defiance of the most adverse circumstances, and how completely women have failed in obtaining the first position, even in music and painting, for the cultivation of which their circumstances would appear most propitious. It is as impossible to find a female Raphael or a female Handel as a female Shakespeare or a female Newton. Women are intellectually more desultory and volatile than men; they are more occupied with practical instances than with general principles; they judge rather by intuitive perception than by deliberate reasoning or past experience. They are, however, usually superior to men in nimbleness and rapidity of thought, and in the gift of tact, the power of seizing rapidly and faithfully the finer impulses of feeling, and

they have therefore often attained very great eminence as conversationalists, as actresses, and as novelists. In the ethics of intellect they are decidedly inferior. Women very rarely love truth, though they love passionately what they call 'the truth,' or opinions they have received from others. They are little capable of impartiality or of doubt; their thinking is chiefly a mode of feeling; though very generous in their acts, they are rarely generous in their opinions, and their leaning is naturally to the side of restriction. They persuade rather than convince, and value belief rather as a source of consolation than as a faithful expression of the reality of things. They are less capable than men of distinguishing the personal character of an opponent from the opinions he maintains. Their affections are concentrated rather on leaders than on causes, and if they care for a great cause it is generally because it is represented by a great man, or connected with some one whom they love. In politics their enthusiasm is more naturally loyalty than patriotism. In benevolence they excel in charity rather than in philanthropy." While I cannot believe that Lecky's statement is entirely unprejudiced, I think no one will deny that the views which I have quoted agree in the main with those which have gained general acceptance in the past. At the present time, however, there is a growing tendency to regard the relations of the sexes as due in great part to male selfishness; and while the substantial correctness of our view of the differences between the male and the female character is acknowledged, its origin is attributed to the "subjection" of women by men. In this paper I have attempted to present reasons, which I believe are new, for regarding the differences as natural and of the greatest importance to the race.

Those who acknowledge the weight of my argument, as applied to evolution in the past, may, however, question its applicability to the human evolution of the future. It may fairly be urged that while we grant that the course of evolution from the lower forms of life up to rational man has been by the slow process of variation. and heredity, we have now passed into a new order of things, and the great advances of the human race have. been and now are brought about by the much more rapid and totally dissimilar process of intelligent education. It may be urged that heredity does very little more for the civilized than for the savage child, and that the wide difference between the savage and the civilized adult is mainly the result of the training and instruction of the individual; that it has not been brought about by the destruction of those children whose congenital share in the results of the intellectual advancement of the race is most scanty. It may be urged that, since man has reached a point where progress is almost entirely intellectual, and depends upon his own efforts, he is free from the laws by which development up to that point was reached.

We are not concerned at present with the question how far progress might be accelerated by intelligent selection, and we may therefore conditionally accept the view that future progress, for some time to come at any rate, must depend almost entirely upon education; but, far from holding that this conclusion will allow us to ignore or obliterate the differences between the male and the female intellect, I believe that the full significance of these differences can be appreciated only in their relation to higher education. The scope of the present paper will only allow the space for an outline sketch of the reasons for this belief. As the field of human knowl