384 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



than that of men and therefore less able to sustain the fatigue of 

 serious or prolonged brain-action we should also, on physiological 

 grounds, be prepared to entertain a similar anticipation. In actual fact 

 we find that the inferiority displays itself most conspicuously in a 

 comparative absence of originality, and this more especially in the 

 higher levels of intellectual work. In her powers of acquisition the 

 woman certainly stands nearer to the man than she docs in her powers 

 of creative thought, although even as regards the former there is a 

 marked difference. The difference, however, is one which does not 

 assert itself till the period of adolescence young girls being, indeed, 

 usually more acquisitive than boys of the same age, as is proved by 

 recent educational experiences both in this country and in America. 

 But as soon as the brain, and with it the organism as a whole, reaches 

 the stage of full development, it becames apparent that there is a 

 greater power of amassing knowledge on the part of the male. Whether 

 we look to the general average or to the intellectual giants of both 

 sexes, we are similarly met with the general fact that a woman's in- 

 formation is less wide, and deep, and thorough, than that of a man. 

 "What we regard as a highly-cultured woman is usually one who has 

 read largely but superficially ; and even in the few instances that can 

 be quoted of extraordinary female industry which, on account of their 

 rarity, stand out as exceptions to prove the rule we find a long dis- 

 tance between them and the much more numerous instances of pro- 

 found erudition among men. As musical executants, however, I think 

 that equality may be fairly asserted. 



But it is in original work, as already observed, that the disparity 

 is most conspicuous. For it is a matter of ordinary comment that 

 in no one department of creative thought can women be said to have 

 at all approached men, save in fiction. Yet in poetry, music, and 

 painting, if not also in history, philosophy, and science, the field 

 has always been open to both.* For, as I will presently show, the 

 disabilities under which women have labored with regard to education, 

 social opinion, and so forth, have certainly not been sufficient to explain 

 this general dearth among them of the products of creative genius. 



Lastly, with regard to judgment, I think there can be no real ques- 



but also receives less than a proportional supply of blood. For these reasons, and also 

 because the differences in question date from an embryonic period of life, he concludes 

 that they constitute "a fundamental sexual distinction, and not one that can be explained 

 on the hypothesis that the educational advantages enjoyed cither by the individual man 

 or by the male sex generally through a long series of generations have stimulated the 

 growth of the brain in the one sex more than in the other." 



* The disparity in question is especially suggestive in the ease of poetry, seeing that 

 this is the oldest of the fine arts which have come down to us in a high degree of develop- 

 ment, that its exercise requires least special education or technical knowledge, that at no 

 level of culture has such exercise been ostracized as unfemininc, that nearly all lauguages 

 present several monuments of poetic genius of the first order, and yet that no one of 

 these has been reared by a woman. 



