PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SEXES. 35 



tastes, those who were fascinated by power, bodily or mental, and who 

 married men able to protect them and their children, were more likely 

 to survive in posterity than women to whom weaker men were pleas- 

 ing, and whose children were both less efficiently guarded and less ca- 

 pable of self-preservation if they reached maturity. To this admiration 

 for power, caused thus inevitably, is ascribable the fact sometimes com- 

 mented upon as strange, that women will continue attached to men who 

 use them ill, but whose brutality goes along with power, more than they 

 will continue attached to weaker men who use them well. With this ad- 

 miration of power, primarily having this function, there goes the admira- 

 tion of power in general, which is more marked in women than in men, 

 and shows itself both theologically and politically. That the emotion 

 of awe aroused by contemplating whatever suggests transcendent force 

 or capacity, which constitutes religious feeling, is strongest in women, 

 is proved in many ways. We read that among the Greeks the women 

 were more religiously excitable than the men. Sir Rutherford Alcock 

 tells us of the Japanese that " in the temples it is very rare to see any 

 congregation except women and children ; the men, at any time, are 

 very few, and those generally of the lower classes." Of the pilgrims 

 to the temple of Juggernaut, it is stated that " at least five-sixths, and 

 often nine-tenths, of them are females." And we are also told of the 

 Sikhs, that the women believe in more gods than the men do. Which 

 facts, coming from different races and times, sufficiently show us that 

 the like fact, familiar to us in Roman Catholic countries, and to some 

 extent at home, is not, as many think, due to the education of women, 

 but has a deeper cause in natural character. And to this same cause 

 is in like manner to be ascribed the greater respect felt by women for 

 all embodiments and symbols of authority, governmental and social. 



Thus the a priori inference, that fitness for their respective paren- 

 tal functions implies mental differences between the sexes, as it im- 

 plies bodily differences, is justified ; as is also the kindred inference 

 that secondary differences are necessitated by their relations to one 

 another. Those unlikenesses of mind between men and women, which, 

 under the conditions, were to be expected, are the unlikenesses we 

 actually find. That they are fixed in degree, by no means follows : 

 indeed, the contrary follows. Determined as we see they some of 

 them are by adaptation of primitive women's natures to the natures 

 of primitive men, it is inferable that as civilization readjusts men's na- 

 tures to higher social requirements, there goes on a corresponding re- 

 adjustment between the natures of men and women, tending in sundry 

 respects to diminish their differences. Especially may we anticipate 

 that those mental peculiarities developed in women, as aids to defense 

 against men in barbarous times, will diminish. It is probable, too, 

 that, though all kinds of power will continue to be attractive to them, 

 the attractiveness of physical strength and the mental attributes that 

 commonly go along with it will decline, while the attributes which 



