3 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



conduce to social influence will become more attractive. Further, it 

 is to be anticipated that the higher culture of women, carried on 

 within such limits as shall not unduly tax the physique (and here, by 

 higher culture, I do not mean mere language-learning and an exten- 

 sion of the detestable cramming-system at present in use), will in other 

 ways reduce the contrast. Slowly leading to the result everywhere 

 seen throughout the organic world, of a self-preserving power inversely 

 proportionate to the race-preserving power, it will entail a less early 

 arrest of individual evolution, and a diminution of those mental dif- 

 ferences between men and women which the early arrest produces. 



Admitting such to be changes which the future will probably see 

 wrought out, we have meanwhile to bear in mind these traits of intel- 

 lect and feeling which distinguish women, and to take note of them 

 as factors in social phenomena — much more important factors than we 

 commonly suppose. Considering them in the above order, we may 

 note, first, that the love of the helpless, which in her maternal capacity 

 woman displays in a more special form than man, inevitably affects all 

 her thoughts and sentiments ; and, this being joined in her with a less 

 developed sentiment of abstract justice, she responds more readily 

 when appeals to pity are made than when appeals are made to equity. 

 In foregoing chapters we have seen how much our social policy disre- 

 gards the claims of individuals to whatever their efforts purchase, so 

 long as no obvious misery is brought on them by the disregard ; but, 

 when individuals suffer in ways conspicuous enough to excite com- 

 miseration, they get aid, and often as much aid if their sufferings are 

 caused by themselves as if they are caused by others — often greater 

 aid, indeed. This social policy, to which men tend in an injurious de- 

 gree, women tend to still more. The maternal instinct delights in 

 yielding benefits apart from deserts ; and, being partially excited by 

 whatever shows a feebleness that appeals for help (supposing antago- 

 nism has not been aroused), carries into social action this preference 

 of generosity to justice, even more than men do. A further tendency, 

 having the same general direction, results from the aptitude which 

 the feminine intellect has to dwell on the concrete and proximate 

 rather than on the abstract and remote. The representative faculty 

 in women deals quickly and clearly with the personal, the special, 

 and the immediate ; but less readily grasps the general and the im- 

 personal. A vivid imagination of simple direct consequences mostly 

 shuts out from her mind the imagination of consequences that are 

 complex and indirect. The respective behaviors of mothers and 

 fathers to children sufficiently exemplify this difference : mothers 

 thinking chiefly of present effects on the conduct of children, and re- 

 garding less the distant effects on their characters; while fathers 

 often repress the promptings of their sympathies with a view to ul- 

 timate benefits. And this difference between their ways of estimat- 

 ing consequences, affecting their judgments on social affairs as on 



