PSYCHOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL ASPECTS. 27 1 



of the altruistic emotions. The males being usually stronger, 

 have greater independence and courage ; the females excel 

 in constancy of affection and in sympathy. The spasmodic 

 bursts of activity characteristic of males contrast with the 

 continuous patience of the females, which we take to be an 

 expression of constitutional contrast, and by no means, as some 

 would have us believe, a mere product of masculine bullying. 

 The stronger lust and passion of males is likewise the obverse 

 of predominant katabolism. 



That men should have greater cerebral variability and there- 

 fore more originality, while women have greater stability and 

 therefore more "common sense," are facts both consistent with 

 the general theory of sex and verifiable in common experience. 

 The woman, conserving the effects of past variations, has what 

 may be called the greater integrating intelligence ; the man, in- 

 troducing new variations, is stronger in differentiation. The 

 feminine passivity is expressed in greater patience, more open- 

 mindedness, greater appreciation of subtle details, and con- 

 sequently what we call more rapid intuition. The masculine 

 activity lends a greater power of maximum effort, of scientific 

 insight, or cerebral experiment with impressions, and is 

 associated with an unobservant or impatient disregard of 

 minute details, but with a stronger grasp of generalities. Man 

 thinks more, women feels more. He discovers more, but 

 remembers less ; she is more receptive, and less forgetful. 



§ 5. The Love for Offspring.— ']\ist as it is impossible to 

 point to the stage where psychical sympathies enhance the re- 

 productive impulse into the love of mates, so we cannot tell 

 where parental care becomes disinterested enough to warrant 

 our calling it love of offspring. For, as no one can be foolish 

 enough deliberately to ignore the sexual or physical basis of 

 "love" in the higher and highest organisms, so it must be 

 allowed that even maternal care has its selfish side. To take 

 only one example, that of lactation. The unrelieved pressure 

 in the mammary glands of a mother animal robbed of her young 

 is no doubt largely concerned in prompting her to adopt young 

 ones not her own, yet we soon see these established in her 

 affections. So in normal cases, there naturally remains an alloy 

 which prevents us from regarding even maternal care as alto- 

 gether disinterested. In all such cases, our interpretations risk 

 an undue materialism on the one hand, and an undue transcend- 

 entalism on the other; and while our modern temper may 



