INERTIA AS RELATED TO CONSCIOUSNESS 105 



It is with the female sex that superstition lingers ; 

 it is women who mistake dogma for truth, it is 

 they who revere authority, and to whom the sanction 

 of a name, the example of a leader, is of the utmost 

 consequence. They will take neither initiative nor 

 responsibility ; but this is what I mean by saying 

 that, as compared with the male, they have 

 relatively more psychic anabolic inertia. I say 

 these things not in any spirit of disrespect, and not 

 as characterising certain bright exceptions among 

 women, but as describing the predominant human 

 female type of mind or mental attitude as it has 

 been in the past most frequently exhibited. Ex- 

 ceptions most certainly there have been, are now, 

 and with increasing frequency will be in the future ; 

 hitherto we have had to describe these as women 

 with masculine minds, with the male type of brains, 

 of whom George Eliot may be taken as an example. 

 In all probability it would not tend to the happiness 

 of the race were things otherwise than the present 

 normal for the female sex ; all I contend for is that 

 the female mental differentiae follow from the 

 possession by that sex of a higher degree of psychic 

 anabolic inertia than is found in the male. This 

 is, in the opinion of many, strikingly true in politics, 

 so much so that the majority of radical politicians 

 at this moment hesitate to grant the parliamentary 

 franchise to women on the ground that, in virtue 

 of this very mental characteristic, they would 

 almost certainly vote on " conservative lines/' that 

 is to say for the maintenance of the status quo. 



