SEX AND SOCIETY 20T 



great tenacity of life in women. They are 

 longer lived. Alike in infancy and in old 

 age they show a greater power of resist- 

 ing death. Indeed at every age, except 

 fifteen to twenty, their tenacity of life is 

 greater than man's. Their constitution has 

 staying qualities, probably wrapped up with 

 femaleness. 



We have said enough to illustrate the 

 differences between man and woman; three 

 general impressions are suggested by the 

 inquiry. The first is that the differences 

 are correlated, they hang together, they are 

 outcrops of the deep fundamental distinction. 

 We may say that the tenacity of life, the longer 

 life, the characteristic endurance, the greater 

 resistance to disease, the smaller percentage of 

 genius, insanity, idiocy, suicide, and crime, 

 and so on, are all correlated with the dis- 

 tinctively female constitution, which may be 

 theoretically regarded as relatively more con- 

 structive in its protoplasmic metabolism. 



Secondly, the correlation of differences in- 

 cludes the mental as well as the bodily, for we 

 cannot separate them. We may assert this on 

 general grounds which lead us to recognise 

 the unity of the organism; but it can also 

 be proved, in indirect ways at least. Thus 

 we may refer to Karl Pearson's beautiful 

 demonstration that the inheritance of well- 

 defined psychical characters can be formulated 

 like that of physical characters. " We inherit 

 our parents' tempers, our parents' conscien- 

 tiousness, shyness, and ability, as we inherit 

 their stature, forearm, and span." The 



