244 BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HUMAN PROBLEMS 



more on a parity with those of boys and men in 

 respect to education, it will be impossible to esti- 

 mate justly the degree of the assumed inherited 

 disparity between men and women in the high- 

 est types of creative endeavor involving an aes- 

 thetic factor. 



That there is a profound difference between the 

 attitude of men and women toward some of the most 

 important questions must be apparent to all who have 

 taken the trouble to observe and think on the sub- 

 ject. Men are, it would seem, much more deter- 

 mined to carry on creative intellectual pursuits for 

 the sake of the satisfaction that is derivable from 

 such activity. When women are engaged in occu- 

 pations of this kind, they are more readily turned 

 aside by claims of family or friendship, and even by 

 less excusable distractions. Whether this difference 

 is an inherent one, or one due mainly to educative 

 and conventional habits it is not possible to say with 

 certainty, but we may suspect that there is an inher- 

 ent divergence which no amount of education can 

 wipe out. We have to remember, in comparing the 

 minds of man and woman, that the intellectual 

 superiority of man is only apparent among the highest 

 types of the race, and that if there are many ineffec- 

 tuals among women, there are probably quite as 

 many among men. Among educated people, in 

 general, it is difficult to discern any real superiority, 

 even of an intellectual kind, on the part of men. 

 There is, I believe, a strong tendency to lay too much 



