MENTAL DIFFERENCES OF MEN AND WOMEN 387 



question of female education, however, I shall have more to say at the 

 close of this paper, and only allude to the matter at the present stage 

 in order to temper what I feel to be the almost brutal frankness of my 

 remarks. 



But now, the meritorious qualities wherein the female mind stands 

 pre-eminent are, affection, sympathy, devotion, self-denial, modesty ; 

 long-suffering, or patience under pain, disappointment, and adversity ; 

 reverence, veneration, religious feeling, and general morality. In 

 these virtues which agree pretty closely with those against which the 

 apostle says there is no law it will be noticed that the gentler pre- 

 dominate over the heroic ; and it is observable in this connection that 

 when heroism of any kind is displayed by a woman, the prompting 

 emotions are almost certain to be of an unselfish kind. 



All the aesthetic emotions are, as a rule, more strongly marked in 

 women than in men or, perhaps, I should rather say, they are much 

 more generally present in women. This remark applies especially to 

 the aesthetic emotions which depend upon refinement of perception. 

 Hence feminine " taste " is proverbially good in regard to the smaller 

 matters of every-day life, although it becomes, as a rule, untrustworthy 

 in proportion to the necessity for intellectual judgment. In the 

 arrangement of flowers, the furnishing of rooms, the choice of com- 

 binations in apparel, and so forth, we generally find that we may be 

 most safely guided by the taste of women ; while in matters of artistic 

 or literary criticism we turn instinctively to the judgment of men. 



If we now look in somewhat more detail at the habitual display of 

 these various feelings and virtues on the part of women, we may notice, 

 with regard to affection, that, in a much larger measure than men, they 

 derive pleasure from receiving as well as from bestowing : in both 

 cases affection is felt by them to be, as it were, of more emotional 

 value. The same remark applies to sympathy. It is very rare to find 

 a woman who does not derive consolation from a display of sympathy, 

 whether her sorrow be great or small ; while it is by no means an 

 unusual thing to find a man who rejects all offers of the kind with a 

 feeling of active aversion. 



Touching devotion, we may note that it is directed by women 

 pretty equally toward inferiors and superiors spending and being 

 spent in the tending of children ; ministering to the poor, the afflicted, 

 and the weak ; clinging to husbands, parents, brothers, often without 

 and even against reason. 



Again, purity and religion are, as it were, the natural heritage of 

 women in all but the lowest grades of culture. But it is within the 

 limit of Christendom that both these characters are most strongly 

 pronounced ; as, indeed, may equally well be said of nearly all the 

 other virtues which we have just been considering. And the reason 

 is that Christianity, while crowning the virtue of chastity with an 

 aureole of mysticism more awful than was ever conceived even by 



