WORK AND REST: GENIUS AND STUPIDITY. 417 



from one state to the other, and the same thing may be said of other 

 savage peoples as well. Something of this ability to change from the 

 commonplace to the intense is seen in the quick perception and 

 nimble action of woman's thought to-day:* "Whenever a man and 

 a woman are found under compromising circumstances it is nearly 

 always the woman who with ready wit audaciously retrieves the situation. 

 Every one is acquainted with instances from life or from history of 

 women whose quick and cunning ruses have saved lover or husband or 

 child." The Breton fisherman confesses to a like quality in the other 

 sex, when he replies to his questioner, 'See my wife about it,' and this 

 is largely true of the lower and ignorant classes on the one hand, and 

 of ' society ' on the other, in most civilized communities. In this 

 matter, as in many others, woman probably is leading the race. Traces 

 of the night-inspiration, of the influence of the primitive fire-group, 

 abound in woman. Indeed, it may be said (the life of southern Europe 

 and of American society of to-day illustrates the point abundantly) that 

 she is, in a sense, a 'night-being,' for the activity physical and mental 

 of modern women (revealed, e. g., in the dance and the nocturnal in- 

 tellectualities of society) in this direction is remarkable. Perhaps we 

 may style a good deal of her ordinary day labor as ' rest,' or the common- 

 places and banalities of her existence, her evening and night life being 

 the true genius side of her activities. It is an interesting fact that in 

 acting and dancing, two professions essentially of the night, woman 

 shows marked genius, exceeding even that of man. Singing may be- 

 long here also, in part at least. Havelock Ellis f finds the organic basis 

 of women's success in acting in the fact that 'in women mental proc- 

 esses are usually more rapid than in men ; they have also an emotional 

 explosiveness much more marked than men possess, and more easily 

 within call.' Again, 'women are more susceptible than men to the 

 immediate stimulus of admiration and applause supplied by contact 

 with an audience.' Legouve saidij "It has been reserved to the 

 female sex to produce the marvel which we admire to-day of a young 

 girl reaching in a few months the heights of dramatic art which Talma,. 

 Lekain and Baron only attained to after long labor and in the maturity 

 of their age." In fiction women have also scored marked success, be- 

 cause, as Havelock Ellis remarks : " What it demands is a quick per- 

 ception of human character and social life colored by a more or less 

 intense emotional background." These things our poets have sung 

 to us time and again. Thus, when we consider women in the fields 

 in which her highest genius asserts itself, we find that in general she 

 conforms to the theory here advanced. Altogether the life of woman 



* Havelock Ellis. Op. cit., p. 174. 



t Op. cit., p. 324. 



t Cited in Havelock Ellis's ' Man and Woman,' p. 326. 



VOL. LX. — 27. 



