242 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Mr. Pearson, his inference would still have been wrong; idiocy is 

 mainly a congenital condition and therefore a fairly good test of 

 organic variational tendency; insanity, though usually on a hereditary 

 basis, is invariably an acquired condition, dependent on all sorts 

 of environmental influences, so that it can not possibly furnish an 

 equally fundamental test. Color-blindness, Mr. Pearson also tells us, is 

 a peculiarly male 'disease,' and must not be used as an argument for 

 greater variability in men unless we use the prevalence of cancer 

 of the breast in women on the other side. Again there is a double 

 error; not only is a congenital anomaly improperly compared to an 

 acquired disease, but a gland like the breast which is only functional 

 in one sex is paired off with an organ like the eye which is equally 

 functional in both sexes. The prevalence of gout among men is, 

 again, paired off against the prevalence of hysteria among women. 

 Here the error is still more complex. Not only is gout not a truly 

 congenital condition, though, like insanity, it frequently has a hered- 

 itary basis, but if we take into account conditions of 'suppressed' 

 gout it is by no means more prevalent in men than in women, and 

 even if we do not take such conditions into account, it is still not 

 possible to pair off gout against hysteria, since, although in some 

 countries hysteria is more prevalent in women, in others (as, accord- 

 ing to some of the best authorities, in France) it is found more 

 prevalent in men. But it would be tedious to explore further this 

 confused jungle of misstatements. 



From the point of view of sexual differences in variational tend- 

 ency it is not necessary to exclude rigidly either 'tertiary,' 'secondary,' 

 or even 'primary' sexual characters, provided we are careful to avoid 

 fallacies which are fairly obvious, and do not compare organs and char- 

 acters which are not truly comparable. Even those secondary sexual 

 characters which are almost or entirely confined to one sex may prop- 

 erly be allowed a certain amount of weight as evidence, especially 

 if we grant that such characters are merely the perpetuation of con- 

 genital variations. If, therefore, as is generally agreed, such char- 

 acters more often occur in males, that fact is a presumption on the 

 side of a greater male variational tendency which there is no reason 

 entirely to ignore. It is not conclusive, but it must receive its due 

 weight. To assume, with Professor Pearson, that a variation has no 

 variational significance because it occurs often in one sex and seldom 

 in the other* seems altogether unwarrantable. 



If, however, Professor Pearson's attempt to discriminate between 

 different kinds of sexual characters from the point of view of sexual 



* In the case of ordinary gout, which Professor Pearson regards as typical 

 of the tests to be excluded, opinions differ considerably as to sexual liability; 

 according to one leading authority it is 68 men to 12 women. 



