July 31, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



137 



versity, as well as the high school. The 

 cause, apparently unaffected by national 

 conditions of prosperity or distress, has 

 not been satisfactorily explained. Doubt- 

 less a partial explanation is that fewer 

 vocations in life are open to woman and 

 she, therefore, seeks that higher training 

 afforded by the college of arts which will 

 fit her for her more peculiar vocation, that 

 of teaching in the secondary schools. On 

 the other hand, it is equally certain that a 

 larger proportion than ever before of yoiuig 

 men are seeking professional and technical 

 education, notwithstanding the greatly in- 

 crea.sed requirements. 



By every teacher of wide experience in 

 higher education certain fundamental dif- 

 ferences in the mental characteristics of 

 men and women students are, I think, ac- 

 knowledged. "Whether these differences 

 are inherent or whether the.v are acquired 

 is by no means certain, and does not con- 

 cern us here. But that there are si;eh dif- 

 ferences, I believe every teacher of the 

 natural sciences at least will admit. 



The woman student is usually more 

 faithful in attention to duty, she is less 

 distracted by outside influences, less fitful 

 and wayward in her work. That woman 

 has greater fortitude than man in suffering 

 and misfortune is universally acknowl- 

 edged; the same trait is displayed in her 

 greater conscientiousness in the perform- 

 ance of the routine duties of life. Her 

 memory is better than, and her power of 

 application as good as, are those faculties 

 in man. As a result she averages better 

 in all those college studies w-here memory 

 and faithfulness are most conducive to ex- 

 cellence. In language, literature and reci- 

 tative science work the larger proportion 

 of the better students are women, where 

 the sexes are equally divided in number. 

 In the coeducational colleges, the propor- 

 tion of women who attain the distinction 

 of membership in Phi Beta Kappa is nearly 



three fifths of the whole, though those 

 eligible for such distinction are scarcely 

 more than those of the men. Moreover, 

 the age of graduation of women from the 

 college is distinctly less than that of men. 

 Certain causes partly account for the un- 

 doubted superiority of women in the gen- 

 eral college course, though not wholly. 

 There are decidedly more girls than boys 

 who graduate from the high school, and as 

 fewer girls than boys take up college work, 

 there is a larger selection of the more able 

 and serious women. Family ambitions, 

 and the mistaken idea that it is the proper 

 social thing, send many a worthless young 

 man to college, while most women who go 

 do so because of some serious purpose. 

 Furthermore, as every physiologist knows, 

 women reach maturity earlier than do men. 

 A girl of eighteen has the intellectual ma- 

 turity of the boy of twenty. 



That all women students do not excel, of 

 course goes without saying. Indeed, the 

 frivolous girl, she who goes to college 

 chiefly for the social or sorority advantages 

 she hopes to find there, is usually quite as 

 worthless, from an educational point of 

 view, as the young man whose chief aim 

 is a good time or athletics. I really think 

 that we may truthfully say of the woman 

 student that 'When she is good, she is very 

 good ; but when she is bad, she is horrid. ' 



On the other hand, the woman student 

 in the science laboratory is a comparative 

 failure. She has less inventiveness and 

 originality, less independence and self-re- 

 liance: she invariably needs more assist- 

 ance and guidance. In the concrete, ob- 

 servational sciences, she is less able to 

 draw conclusions. In other words, she is 

 deficient in research ability, save perhaps 

 in abstract mathematics. On the other 

 hand, opportunities for women in scientific 

 research are probably even greater than 

 they are for young men; the bright scien- 

 tific woman is reallv more certain of a 



