104 FUNCTIONAL INERTIA 



The allusion to certain forms of etiquette being 

 more particularly observable in the behaviour 

 of women, may lead us to the subject of the re- 

 lation of psychic inertia to sex. Long before the 

 above-mentioned work on Japan came into my 

 hands, I had held that through the female parent 

 rather than through the male were transmitted 

 those conservative tendencies which we have 

 learnt to identify with anabolic inertia. As regards 

 the two metabolic phases, the female exhibits re- 

 latively more anabolism than the male ; this seems 

 to be in the main conclusion arrived at by the 

 researches of Geddes and Thomson.* 



The female mind is not characterised by ori- 

 ginality, desire for innovation or reform ; history 

 does not give us many examples of its creative 

 powers in pictorial art, music, science, or politics ; 

 women prefer rather to follow leaders and carry 

 out schemes suggested to them. Conventional 

 attitudes of thought, fine distinctions in etiquette, 

 the authority of usage, the sanction of custom 

 these things influence them, and by them are per- 

 petuated from one generation to another. Even 

 in the arts to which their activities have been so 

 long confined, culinary processes, the concerns of 

 the fashions of clothes and the study of the piano- 

 forte, in none of these do they attain that degree 

 of excellence evinced by the man-cook, the male 

 designer of dress, and the masculine pianist. 



* Geddes and Thomson, " The Evolution of Sex," Contemp. 

 Science Series. 



