34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



rare cases, there is joined with it skill in psychological analysis, there 

 results an extremely remarkable ability to interpret the mental states 

 of others. Of this ability we have a living example never hitherto 

 paralleled among women, and in but few, if any, cases exceeded among 

 men. 



Of course, it is not asserted that the specialties of mind here de- 

 scribed as having been developed in women, by the necessities of de- 

 fense in their dealings with men, are peculiar to them : in men also 

 they have been developed as aids to defense in their dealings with one 

 another. But the difference is, that, whereas, in their dealings with 

 one another, men depended on these aids only in some measure, women 

 in their dealings with men depended upon them almost wholly — 

 within the domestic circle as well as without it. Hence, in virtue of 

 that partial limitation of heredity by sex, which many facts through- 

 out Nature show us, they have come to be more marked in women 

 than in men. 1 



One further distinctive mental trait in women springs out of the 

 relation of the sexes as adjusted to the welfare of the race. I refer to 

 the effect which the manifestation of power of every kind in men has 

 in determining the attachments of women. That this is a trait in- 

 evitably produced will be manifest, on asking what would have hap- 

 pened if women had by preference attached themselves to the weaker 

 men. If the weaker men had habitually left posterity when the 

 stronger did not, a progressive deterioration of the race would have 

 resulted. Clearly, therefore, it has happened (at least since the cessa- 

 tion of marriage by capture or by purchase has allowed feminine 

 choice to play an important part) that, among women unlike in their 



1 As the validity of this group of inferences depends on the occurrence of that partial 

 limitation of heredity of sex here assumed, it may be said that I should furnish proof of 

 its occurrence. Were the place fit, this might be done. I might detail evidence that 

 has been collected showing the much greater liability there is for a parent to bequeath 

 malformations and diseases to children of the same sex, than to those of the opposite sex. 

 I might cite the multitudinous instances of sexual distinctions, as of plumage in birds and 

 coloring in insects, and especially those marvelous ones of dimorphism and polymor- 

 phism among females of certain species of Lepidoptera, as necessarily implying (to those 

 who accept the Hypothesis of Evolution) the predominant transmission of traits to de- 

 scendants of the same sex. It will suffice, however, to instance, as more especially rele- 

 vant, the cases of sexual distinctions within the human race itself, which have arisen in 

 some varieties and not in others. That in some varieties the men are bearded, and in 

 others not, may be taken as strong evidence of this partial limitation of heredity ; and, 

 perhaps, still stronger evidence is yielded by that peculiarity of feminine form found in 

 some of the negro races, and especially the Hottentots, which does not distinguish to any 

 such extent the women of other races from the men. There is also the fact, to which 

 Agassiz draws attention, that, among the South American Indians, males and females 

 differ less than they do among the negroes and the higher races ; and this reminds us 

 that among European and Eastern nations the men and women differ, both bodily and 

 mentally, not quite in the same ways and to the same degrees, but in somewhat different 

 ways and degrees — a fact which would be inexplicable were there no partial limitation 

 of heredity by sex. 



