268 Heredity. 



is a qualification next only in importance to the power 

 of thought itself. lie who has not his faculties under 

 immediate command in the contingencies of action 

 might as well not have them at all. He may be fit to 

 criticise, but he is not fit to act. Now it is in this that 

 women, and the men who are most like women, con- 

 fessedly excel. The other sort of man, however pre-em- 

 inent may be his faculties, arrives slowly at complete 

 command of them; rapidity of judgment and prompti- 

 tude of judicious action, even in the things he knows 

 best, are the gradual and late result of strenuous effort 

 grown into habit." 



I have quoted these passages from Mill at length, as 

 they give a very clear although somewhat narrow state- 

 ment, by the strongest advocate of the fundamental 

 likeness of the sexes, of what I take to be the most im- 

 portant psychological difference between them. 



According to Mill and I think that universal experi- 

 ence 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 generalization, by a con- 

 stitutional 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, with- 

 out 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 distinguished from originality. 



The highest type of male intelligence, on the other 

 hand, is distinguished by the power to abstract and com- 



