THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN. 217 



possesses in a higher degree than man the fundamental property 

 of all nervous tissue, irritability, or response to any stimulus. The 

 vasomotor system is particularly excitable, and this fact is in 

 immediate connection with her emotional life. That woman is 

 more emotional than man is only another way of stating the same 

 fact. Various expressions and bodily changes which are really 

 the ground of emotions, such, for instance, as laughing, crying, 

 blushing, quickening of the heart-beat, are more common in 

 woman, and in general her face is more mobile and witnesses more 

 to her mental states. Various forms of abnormal mental condi- 

 tions, closely connected with the emotions, such as hysteria, are 

 more frequent among women. Women are more easily influenced 

 by suggestion than men, and a larger percentage of them may be 

 hypnotized. Trance mediums are usually women. The word 

 witch has been narrowed almost wholly to the female, and this 

 may be explained by the fact that various forms of mental dis- 

 turbance connected with superstitious notions are more frequently 

 manifested in women. Sympathy, pity, and charity are stronger 

 in woman, and she is more prominent in works that spring from 

 these sentiments, such as philanthropy and humane and charitable 

 movements. Woman is more generous than man. Her maternal 

 instincts lead her to lend her sympathy to the weak and helpless. 

 She cares for the sick and protects the friendless, and, seeing pres- 

 ent rather than remote consequences, she feeds the pauper and 

 pardons the criminal. 



In morals a few distinctions between the sexes are well deter- 

 mined. Male criminals outnumber female criminals about six to 

 one. Woman's sympathy and love, her physical weakness and 

 timid nature, her domestic and quiet habits, ill adapt her to the 

 criminal life. Morally bad women too usually find other more at- 

 tractive fields open to them. Some forms of crime, indeed, such as 

 murder by poisoning, domestic theft, and infanticide, are much 

 more common among women. When women do become criminals 

 their crimes are often marked by greater heinousness, cruelty, and 

 depravity. It is said by Lombroso and his school that in respect 

 to cruelty in general woman surpasses man, particularly in her 

 conduct to her own sex. Woman's appetites are not so strong and 

 her passions are less intense. She is freer from intemperance and 

 related forms of vice. The most marked moral superiority of 

 woman appears in her altruism ; her greatest moral defect in her 

 untruthfulness. In her altruistic life of love and self-sacrifice 

 woman shows herself the leader in the supreme virtue of Christian 

 civilization. As far as she leads in this, so far does she fall behind 

 in veracity. She has not the same conception of abstract truth as 

 man, but thinks more of the good to be attained. Deception and 

 ruse in woman, far more than in man, have become a habit of 



