THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN. 215 



We come now to the well-worn theme of the purely mental dif- 

 ferences between the sexes, and here I shall make a brief summary 

 of the more important and well-recognized differences, citing 

 experiments and statistics where they are possible. In percep- 

 tion, woman is in general decidedly quicker than man. She reads 

 a paragraph or book more quickly, and, knowledge of the subject 

 being equal, she grasps more of it. In perception of objects she 

 grasps more quickly a number of wholes or groups, and has a rapid 

 unreasoned perception of relations which has the appearance of 

 intuition. Her perception of details, however, is less accurate 

 than man's, and her rapid reference of things to their proper 

 classes extends only to matters of common human experience. In 

 apperception the subjective factor is larger in woman, and she sees 

 things more from the standpoint of her own experience, wishes, 

 and prejudices. Even more than in man, where feeling is strong, 

 objective perception is blind. Hence women make poorer critics 

 than men, and more rarely are they impartial judges. For the 

 formation of concepts, especially the more abstract ones, woman's 

 mind is less adapted than man's. She thinks more in terms of 

 the concrete and individual. Hence number forms and the asso- 

 ciations of colors with sounds are, as is found, more common 

 among women. Differences in habits of thought between the 

 sexes may be well illustrated by a simple experiment in associa- 

 tion. If fifty men and fifty women be required to write as rapidly 

 as possible one hundred words without time for thought, in the 

 women's lists more than in the men's will be found words relat- 

 ing to the concrete rather than the abstract, the whole rather 

 than the part, the particular rather than the general, and asso- 

 ciations in space rather than in time. As Lotze keenly remarks, 

 women excel in arranging things in the order of space, men in 

 the order of time. Men try to bring things under a general rule, 

 without so much regard to the fitness or symmetry of the result. 

 "Women care less for general rules, and are inclined to look only 

 to the immediate end in view, aiming to make each thing com- 

 plete in itself and harmonious with its surroundings. 



In respect to memory, as far as any general statements can be 

 made, woman is superior. In memory tests college girls surpass 

 boys. In Gilbert's tests on New Haven school children, however, 

 the boys were superior in the exact reproduction of an interval of 

 time. In reasoning of the quick associative kind women are more 

 apt than men, but in slow logical reasoning, whether deductive or 

 inductive, they are markedly deficient. They lack logical feeling, 

 and are less disturbed by inconsistency. Analysis is relatively 

 distasteful to them, and they less readily comprehend the relation 

 of the part to the whole. They are thus less adapted to the plod- 

 ding, analytical work of science, discovery, or invention. Their in- 



