32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



from a somewhat earlier arrest of individual evolution in women than 

 in men, necessitated by the reservation of vital power to meet the cost 

 of reproduction. Whereas, in man, individual evolution continues 

 until the physiological cost of self-maintenance very nearly balances 

 what nutrition supplies, in woman, an arrest of individual development 

 takes place while there is yet a considerable margin of nutrition : 

 otherwise there could be no offspring. Hence the fact that girls come 

 earlier to maturity than boys. Hence, too, the chief contrasts in bodily 

 form : the masculine figure being distinguished from the feminine by 

 the greater relative sizes of the parts which carry on external actions 

 and entail physiological cost — the limbs, and those thoracic viscera 

 which their activity immediately taxes. And hence, too, the physio- 

 logical truth that, throughout their lives, but especially during the 

 child-bearing age, women exhale smaller quantities of carbonic acid, 

 relatively to their weights, than men do ; showing that the evolution 

 of energy is relatively less as well as absolutely less. This rather 

 earlier cessation of individual evolution thus necessitated, showing 

 itself in a rather smaller growth of the nervo-muscular system, so that 

 both the limbs which act and the brain which makes them act are 

 somewhat less, has two results on the mind. The mental manifesta- 

 tions have somewhat less of general power or massiveness ; and be- 

 yond this there is a perceptible falling short in those two faculties, in- 

 tellectual and emotional, which are the latest products of human evo- 

 lution — the power of abstract reasoning and that most abstract of the 

 emotions, the sentiment of justice — the sentiment which regulates con- 

 duct irrespective of personal attachments and the likes or dislikes felt 

 for individuals. 1 



After this quantitative mental distinction, which becomes incident- 

 ally qualitative by telling most upon the most recent and most com- 

 plex faculties, there come the qualitative mental distinctions conse- 

 quent on the relations of men and women to their children and to one 

 another. Though the parental instinct, which, considered in its essen- 

 tial nature, is a love of the helpless, is common to the two ; yet it is 

 obviously not identical in the two. That the particular form of it 

 which responds to infantine helplessness is more dominant in women 

 than in men, cannot be questioned. In man the instinct is not so 

 habitually excited by the very helpless, but has a more generalized re- 

 lation to all the relatively weak who are dependent upon him. Doubt- 

 less, along w T ith this more specialized instinct in women, there go spe- 

 cial aptitudes for dealing with infantine life — an adapted power of in- 

 tuition and a fit adjustment of behavior. That there is here a mental 

 specialization, joined with the bodily specialization, is undeniable ; 



1 Of course it is to be understood that in this, and in the succeeding statements, ref- 

 erence is made to men and women of the same society, in the same age. If women of a 

 more-evolved race are compared with men of a less-evolved race, the statement will not 

 be true. 



