324 BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HUMAN PROBLEMS 



pretense of educated people, and is particularly 

 severe in its judgment of women who have become 

 pretentious in the course of the educational process. 

 But it is hardly fair to blame education for the 

 appearance of this defect in character either in 

 women or men. The education that makes for 

 pretense is at best a half education, dealing too 

 much with the routine processes of memorization 

 and too little with the real understanding and the 

 finer feelings. A true and balanced education, while 

 strengthening the quality of self-reliance, must tend 

 to inhibit the overappraisal of self by showing more 

 and more clearly how little is attainable by one indi- 

 vidual in comparison with the range of human knowl- 

 edge and capacity. It may, perhaps, be success- 

 fully maintained that the education of women, as of 

 men, often operates to make them less contented 

 with themselves and with their fate, but it is hardly 

 just to attribute to sound education the development 

 of pretense and egotism. 



The refinement and control of the sex impulse, 

 which I have described as one of the most significant 

 evidences of advancing civilization, has been asso- 

 ciated with what western nations regard as an im- 

 proved condition in the status of women. In some 

 countries, notably in the United States, the extreme 

 license of women and the exactions often practiced 

 by them on their husbands, parents, and children 

 have led thoughtful people to wonder whether the 

 male sentiment and generosity which have made 



