THE CONDITION OF WOMEN. ' 353 



very clear although somewhat narrow statement, by the strongest ad- 

 vocate of the fundamental likeness of the sexes, of what I take to be 

 the most important psychological difference between them. 



According to Mill and I think that universal experience will 

 justify his view the highest type of woman is distinguished by her 

 power of intuition, by her concrete acquaintance with the laws and 

 principles which have been established by experience and generaliza- 

 tion, by a constitutional knowledge of these laws which amounts to 

 habit, so that she is able to recognize in actual practical life the action 

 which is proper in any given case, without the necessity for a slow 

 process of comparison and thought ; by that immediate command of 

 the faculties which is necessary for action. 



This power of correctly and promptly applying the established 

 scientific laws, which are the result of all the experience of the past, 

 to the actions of ordinary practical life, is common sense, as distin- 

 guished from originality. 



The highest type of male intelligence, on the other hand, is distin- 

 guished by the power to abstract and compare, and by a slow process 

 of thought to reach new generalizations and laws, and to see these in 

 their abstract and ideal form, freed from all the complications of their 

 concrete manifestations. To this power is often joined a woful and 

 disastrous lack of common sense, or power of prompt and proper deci- 

 sion and action in special cases. 



Lecky, in his " History of European Morals," gives an excellent sum- 

 mary of the most marked differences between the male mind and the 

 female ; and, although we do not agree with him in thinking that a 

 departure from the male type is in all cases to be regarded as an infe- 

 riority, we can not fail to note how exactly his account agrees with 

 the demands of our hypothesis. 



He says : " Intellectually a certain inferiority of the female sex can 

 hardly be denied when we remember how almost exclusively the fore- 

 most places in every department of science, literature, and art have 

 been occupied by men ; how infinitesimally small is the number of wo- 

 men who have shown in any form the very highest order of genius; how 

 many of the greatest men have achieved their greatness in defiance of 

 the most adverse circumstances, and how completely women have failed 

 in obtaining the first position, even in music and painting, for the cul- 

 tivation of which their circumstances would appear most propitious. 

 It is as impossible to find a female Raphael or a female Handel as a 

 female Shakespeare or a female Newton. Women are intellectually 

 more desultory and volatile than men ; they are more occupied with 

 practical instances than with general principles ; they judge rather by 

 intuitive perception than by deliberate reasoning or past experience. 

 They are, however, usually superior to men in nimbleness and rapidi- 

 ty of thought, and in the gift of tact, the power of seizing rapidly and 

 faithfully the finer impulses of feeling, and they have therefore often 

 vol. xv. 23 



