VARIATION IN MAN AND WOMAN. 241 



ondary sexual character is too obvious to need definition. As a matter 

 of fact there is considerable difference of opinion. Since Hunter first 

 spoke of the 'secondary properties' of sex, which he regarded as 

 dependent on the primary, only developing at puberty, and principally, 

 though not entirely, confined to the male, the conception has very 

 much changed; there has been a tendency to throw all sorts of mis- 

 cellaneous sexual differences into the category. I have suggested that 

 it would be convenient to introduce a group of 'tertiary' sexual char- 

 acters, keeping the term 'secondary' to its original sense and reserving 

 as 'tertiary' all those minor differences which are not obvious, which 

 can have no direct influence on mating, and only exist as averages; 

 such are the composition of the blood and the shape of the bones.* 

 It is difficult to correct all the errors and confusions which Pro- 

 fessor Pearson falls into at this point. He remarks that we must 

 not regard the greater prevalence of idiocy among men as evidence 

 of greater male variability, unless we count on the other side the 

 greater prevalence of insanity among women. The error here is 

 double. As a matter of fact, although in England and Wales during 

 recent years the incidence of insanity has been as great on women 

 as on men,f nearly everywhere else it is markedly greater in the 

 case of men. Indeed even in England and Wales, at the present 

 time, if we may trust the Commissioners in Lunacy in their latest 

 annual report (1902), the incidence of insanity as indicated by the 

 admissions to asylums, is, in ratio to the male population, still slightly 

 greater in the case of men. Professor Pearson has been misled by 

 the greater accumulation of females in asylums, failing to take into 

 consideration the greater longevity of women, which among the insane 

 is specially marked. J But even if the facts had been as stated by 



* Professor Waldeyer, who has done me the honor of critically examining 

 some of the main points in my book (in the form of an address at one of the 

 annual meetings of the German Anthropological Society) is inclined to doubt 

 the value of this distinction since there is no clear line of demarcation between 

 secondary and tertiary characters. That, however, I had myself pointed out, 

 and the objection cannot logically be held by any one who accepts secondary 

 sexual characters and recognizes that they merge into the primary. There 

 are many natural groups which have nuclei but no definite boundary walls. 



f It so happens that I was the first to call attention to the fact that 

 towards the end of the last century the number of women admitted to asylums 

 in England and Wales had for the first time begun to exceed the number of men. 

 (Art: 'Influence of Sex on Insanity,' in Tuke's 'Dictionary of Psychological 

 Medicine.') 



I How serious this fallacy is may be indicated by an illustration that 

 chances to come to hand almost as I write. I read in a South American medical 

 journal that in the Asylum of Santiago in Chili on the 1st of January, 1901, 

 there were 560 men and 655 women, but, during the year, 539 men were admitted 

 and only 351 women. 



VOL. lxii. 16. 



