262 Heredity. 



It seems hardly necessary to point out the fact that in 

 cases where sex is a motive and influences the conduct 

 directly, the law stated in this table does not hold. 



According to our hypothesis, the first line of the table 

 should give the arrangement in which the difference is 

 greatest. In the next line the difference is less; still 

 less in the next; and least of all in the last case. In all 

 cases, however, the superiority of women in this respect 

 should be very marked. 



Since our feelings are necessarily much more numer- 

 ous than our judgments, we should expect to find it 

 much more easy to persuade either a man or a woman 

 than to convince; but, if our theory is correct, the ad- 

 vantage of influence over argument should be much 

 greater when a woman is to be moved than when the ef- 

 fort is directed to a man. 



Another difference between the sexes will at once be 

 seen to follow from the above parallel. Since male 

 character has the variable element, and may vary 

 toward either good or bad, it follows that the ideally 

 perfect male character will be more hard to define and 

 more seldom realized than the ideal female character. 

 It is difficult to prove such a statement as this, for the 

 sentiments upon which individual opinion of the subject 

 is based hardly admit of exact statement, but that there 

 is an accepted standard of female excellence, and that 

 the women who realize it are not rare exceptions, can, I 

 think, be shown by the study of female character as de- 

 picted by dramatists, novelists and poets. An appeal 

 to this test is unfavorable to our hypothesis, for charac- 

 ters are selected for novels or poems on account of their 

 originality; but I think that any one who will review 

 Shakespeare, Thackeray or George Eliot with the sub- 

 ject in mind, and who will compare the more important 

 female characters, will find that they might be trans- 



