THE EDUCATION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 35! 



not regular, is an event to be expected, and may take 

 almost any form of expression. 



In this connection the consideration of the problems 

 of education, as modified by sex, forms an important 

 topic. While from the anthropological standpoint there 

 is a typical man and typical woman for each race, 

 these are not the same for different races. In the 

 secondary sexual characters there are some distinctions 

 of general applicability for instance, women are on the 

 average smaller than men. Stature and weight are, 

 together with proportion, the best marked secondary 

 characters by which the sexes are distinguished, and yet 

 these overlap in every way. Among such secondary 

 characters is that of the nervous system, and there we 

 find a similar overlapping. There is no question about 

 the fact that women have on the average smaller brains, 

 though the record from a better class of women than 

 those furnishing the data now employed would perhaps 

 raise the average, but these in turn must be compared 

 with records from a better class of men. This small 

 absolute weight is in no wise mitigated by the fact that 

 the weight of the brain as compared with the weight of 

 the body is greater in women than in men, for, as we 

 have seen in earlier chapters, if that were a criterion, we 

 should all bend before the massive intelligence of the 

 new-born child, whose proportional brain-weight is six 

 times greater than that of the adult. The suggestion 

 has been made that the female brain is lighter because 

 its structural elements are smaller. Granting this, the 

 significance of the absolute size of the elements still 

 requires to be explained. The only interpretation that 

 we have for the size of these elements is as an expres- 

 sion of the power to store and discharge force in a 

 short period of time, 'and to furnish branches for struc- 

 tural connections. Such a brain of small elements, no 



