152 TABOO AND GENETICS 



nothing but an astonishing refinement of the 

 senses through fear. . . . Waiting in fear was 

 made the hfe task of the sex." (12.) 



Lester F. Ward had a somewhat different 

 view. (13.) He thought that woman's psychic 

 power came from the sympathy based on the 

 maternal instinct, which " though in itself an 

 entirely different faculty, early blended with 

 or helped to create, the derivative reason-born 

 faculty of altruism." With Ward's view Olive 

 Schreiner agrees, saying : " We have no certain 

 proof that it is so at present, but woman's long 

 years of servitude and physical subjection, and 

 her experience as childbearer and protector of 

 infancy, may be found in the future to have 

 endowed her . . . with an exceptional width 

 of human sympathy and instinctive compre- 

 hension." (14.) 



In all probability Lombroso came nearer to 

 the truth in his explanation of feminine pene- 

 tration. " That woman is more subject to 

 hysteria is a known fact," he says, " but few 

 know how hable she is to hypnotic phenomena, 

 which easily opens up the unfoldment of spiritual 

 faculties. . . . The history of observation proves 

 that hysteria and hypnotism take the form of 

 magic, sorcery, and divination or prophecy, 

 among savage peoples. ' Women,' say the 

 Pishawar peoples, ' are all witches ; for several 

 reasons they may not exert their inborn powers.' 



