SEXUAL CEREBRATION. 299 



cal differences which constitute sex. The fact that the ratio of the 

 extent to which women perpetrate crimes against property is to crimes 

 against persons the same as the ratio of strength between men and 

 women, j^roves that her less degree of physical power, whicli is a 

 sexual property, so affects mental action that her deliberate acts are 

 capable of tabulation, and, contrasted with those of men, show a con- 

 stant series of differences year by year. Were it otherwise, we would 

 expect that these uniform ratios, which point so unerringly to the 

 workings of a law, would disappear, and in their place we should 

 have tabulated confusion. 



"We obtained an idea of love differentially as it exists in the sexes 

 by observing the degree to which it affects men and women as a prob- 

 able cause of insanity. In the same manner I think we can gain a 

 knowledge of the comparative intensity with which emotions and 

 states of consciousness, common to both sexes, exist in intellection, 

 by observing the extent to which they react as a probable cause of 

 mental alienation. For my purpose I shall use Dr. Kirkbride's report 

 for the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane. The analysis is based 

 upon the supposed causes of insanity in 6,899 cases. Domestic diffi- 

 culties are the probable causes of mental disease in 47 men and 86 

 women. Nearly two to one expresses the difference in intensity in 

 the action of this cause. Fright resulted in insanity in 16 men and 

 36 women. Grief affected "77 men and 256 women, a difference of 

 more than three to one. Religious excitement acts as the cause in 79 

 men and 127 women, a difference of sixty-two per cent. Nostalgia, 7 

 women, and no men. From mental anxiety there are 164 men and 261 

 women insane. These causes, which present such dissimilarity, have 

 one bond of union ; they affect the emotional part of the psychical 

 nature. From this I would not conclude that women are less able to 

 bear the operation of these exciting causes than men; but, that the 

 emotional nature of woman is more largely developed, and thus more 

 exposed to the action of such causes as directly affect it. If I am 

 right in this, we would expect to see in women the emotional forms 

 of insanity developed in excess of the same in men ; and this is just 

 what we find. Continuing to analyze the tables of Dr. Kirkbride re- 

 lating to the same cases as above, we find the number of women to 

 be 3,220, the number of men exceeding them by 459 ; and yet, there 

 are 1,032 cases of melancholia among the women to 832 in men. Prof. 

 Maudsley defines this form of insanity as " great oppression of the 

 self-feeling, with corresponding gloomy morbid idea." * 



The emotions, it is evident, are both the main recipients of the 

 cause and the field of its morbid expression. Now, from what we 

 know of the mental and physical constitution of woman, we should 

 expect to find this form of insanity developed in excess of all others 

 at the period of greatest sexual activity, and consequently of greatest 



1 " The Physiology and Pathology of the Mind," p. 320. 



