MENTAL DIFFERENCES OF MEN AND WOMEN. 385 



tion that the female mind stands considerably below the male. It is 

 much more apt to take superficial views of circumstances calling for 

 decision, and also to be guided by less impartiality. Undue influence 

 is more frequently exercised from the side of the emotions ; and, in 

 general, all the elements which go to constitute what is understood by 

 a characteristically judicial mind of comparatively feeble development. 

 Of course, here, as elsewhere, I am speaking of average standards. It 

 would be easy to find multitudes of instances where women display 

 better judgment than men, just as in the analogous cases of learning 

 and creative work. But that as a general rule the judgment of women 

 is inferior to that of men has been a matter of universal recognition 

 from the earliest times. The man has always been regarded as the 

 rightful lord of the woman, to whom she is by nature subject, as both 

 mentally and physically the weaker vessel ; and when in individual 

 cases these relations happen to be inverted, the accident becomes a 

 favorite theme for humorists thus showing that in the general estima- 

 tion such a state of matters is regarded as incongruous. 



But if woman has been a loser in the intellectual race as regards 

 acquisition, origination, and judgment, she has gained, even on the 

 intellectual side, certain very conspicuous advantages. First among 

 these we must place refinement of the senses, or higher evolution of 

 sense-organs. Next we must place rapidity of perception, which no 

 doubt in part arises from this higher evolution of the sense-organs or, 

 rather, both arise from a greater refinement of nervous organization. 

 Houdin, who paid special attention to the acquirement of rapidity in 

 acts of complex perception, say3 he has known ladies who, while see- 

 ing another lady " pass at full-speed in a carriage, could analyze her 

 toilet from her bonnet to her shoes, and be able to describe not only 

 the fashion and quality of the stuffs, but also to say if the lace were 

 real or only machine-made." Again, reading implies enormously in- 

 tricate processes of perception, both of the sensuous and intellectual 

 order ; and I have tried a series of experiments, wherein reading was 

 chosen as a test of the rapidity of perception in different persons. 

 Having seated a number of well-educated individuals round a table, I 

 presented to them successively the same paragraph of a book, which 

 they were each to read as rapidily as they could, ten seconds being 

 allowed for twenty lines. As soon as time was up I removed the para- 

 graph, immediately after which the reader wrote down all that he or 

 she could remember of it. Now, in these experiments, where every 

 one read the same paragraph as rapidly as possible, I found that the 

 palm was usually carried off by the ladies. Moreover, besides being 

 able to read quicker, they were better able to remember what they had 

 just read that is, to give a better account of the paragraph as a whole. 

 One lady, for example, could read exactly four times as fast as her 

 husband, and could then give a better account even of that portion of 

 the paragraph which alone he had had time to get through. For the 

 vol. xxxi. 25 



