THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE FEMALE MIND. 



29 



contagious disease, the question really turns on whether the 

 health or the morals of a nation are of the most importance. Of 

 course in ultimate analysis there is no antagonism between health 

 and morals, for they are the same — health, wholeness and 

 holiness come from the same stock. For an answer to the false 

 issue raised, we have but to turn to Russia and ask whether the 

 health or the morals of the Bolshevists are of most importance to 

 Europe and the world. 



According to Starkweather's law, " Sex is determined by the 

 superior parent, who produces the opposite sex" ; in other words, 

 men mostly reproduce the characters of their mothers, and 

 daughters that of their fathers. Hence, for the training of the 

 coming race it is indubitably of supreme and national import- 

 ance to the prospective mothers of the next generation that the 

 right education of intellect and spirit should be given. 



There are well-marked differences in the mental outlook of 

 the sexes, but to me there is no question of the inferiority of the 

 one to the other. A close examination of the psychology of the 

 female mind, however, makes one conscious that men after all 

 can only see it exoterically from without ; and one longs and waits, 

 as I have said, for some woman of deep insight to give us the 

 true esoteric view. 



All women are changing, and if to-day we say that the two 

 chief differences between the male and female minds is the 

 indifference of the latter to their own psychology and to abstract 

 thought, we have to repeat that both these characteristics may 

 soon disappear ; for both, to a quite indefinite extent, are due 

 to woman's cramped life in the past. 



How much of the difference is permanent because arising from 

 sex and not from environment we cannot yet estimate. 



When, however, we compare the spiritual outlook of the two 

 sexes instead of the intellectual, the task of differentiating becomes 

 still harder. Women generally are more spiritual as well as 

 more emotional than men ; though the difference is not so well 

 marked as in earlier ages, owing doubtless to the slow approxima- 

 tion in type of men and women, which in its turn, curiously enough, 

 is due not only to the emancipation of women, but to the invention 

 of machinery — a great leveller of sex. This seems a startling 

 conclusion to arrive at, and one which will repay a moment's 

 consideration. 



In earlier times man's physique took up nearly all his attention, 

 and the value of his body was supreme ; and at that time a 



