The Evidence from Intellectual Differences. 269 



pare, and by a slow process of thought to reach new gen- 

 eralizations and laws, and to see these in their abstract 

 and ideal form, freed from all the complications of their 

 concrete manifestations. To tliis power is often joined 

 a woful and disastrous lack of common sense, or power 

 of prompt and proper decision and action in special cases. 



Lecky, in his "History of European Morals/' gives an 

 excellent summary of the most marked differences be- 

 tween 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 inferiority, 

 we cannot 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 foremost places in every depart- 

 ment 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 circum- 

 stances, and how completely women have failed in ob- 

 taining the first position, even in music and painting, 

 for the cultivation of which their circumstances would 

 appear most propitious. It is as impossible to find a 

 female Raphael or a female Handel as a female Shake- 

 speare or a female Newton. Women are intellectually 

 more desultory and volatile than men; they are more 

 occupied with practical instances than with general prin- 

 ciples; they judge rather by intuitive perception than by 

 deliberate reasoning or past experience. They are, how- 

 ever, usually superior to men in nimbleness and rapidity 

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

 rapidly and faithfully the finer impulses of feeling, and 



