THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE FEMALE MIND. 



31 



illustrated with diagrams in our physiologies ; but which now 

 have almost wholly disappeared, together with the small waist 

 of which they were the product. 



At one time I wrote a good deal on the radical difference 

 between the woman's costal and the man's diaphragmatic types 

 of respiration, believing them to be permanent ; and lo, they 

 have largely vanished ! 



I feel, in the same way, that it is rash to dogmatize on sex 

 differences till the new picture is fully before our eyes. In my 

 opinion, no man can safely predict what the feminine type 

 will eventually be, even twenty years hence. 



With regard to morals, one interesting difference between the 

 sexes has long been observed ; men being more scrupulous as 

 to means (" playing the game and women as to ends. 



Pursuing our subject into the higher regions of the spirit, a 

 woman is more religious than a man. There is more of the 

 emotional and the mystic in her. True religion, while indeed 

 it transcends all the powers of the intellect, is primarily connected 

 with the emotional ego. It is the heart not the head that is 

 asked for, and which is the seat of the spiritual life. Love, 

 which in its highest expression, is the nature of God, and the power 

 of Christianity, is more feminine than masculine. I think, too, 

 that woman is more altruistic than man, though this is fairly 

 debatable; because although, when the "other one" is her 

 own offspring she will freely give her all for it, it is not so clear 

 how far her altruism is impersonal. The two forces, the material 

 and brutal of Paganism and the immaterial and Divine of 

 Christianity, are well contrasted in Samson and Christ, and more 

 broadly in the last war ; for while both sides used the lower 

 force, one side only was also governed by the higher, which the 

 other was never weary of repudiating with scorn. 



In a minor way, some such difference is sexually marked, 

 though to a less extent than formerly. 



The actual production of children has and for ever will have 

 a far-reaching effect on the psychology of the female mind, that 

 may be profitably contrasted with the more temporary effects 

 produced by woman's environment. Her great works are not 

 to be found in libraries signed with their own names, but in the 

 living world of life where their unsigned works abound in the 

 men and women of to-day. When we really grasp these sex 

 facts — that the actual production of the race as well as its early 

 education and formation of character is the definite province of 



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