THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE FEMALE MIND. 



35 



Nation of ttie subject of the psychology of the female mind, 

 and of the proper equipment of this mind for its vast responsi- 

 bilities, the Victoria Institute will have done a national service. 



Passing on to another mental phase presented by the modern 

 woman, I note the advent of a cheerful almost asexual race in 

 the vast army of spinsters ; that will, I think, succeed in giving 

 us a new ideal of this class. It is undoubtedly the result of 

 more than one mental factor. 



The combination of the fuller opening up of commercial and 

 industrial life, the admittance into the professions, the 

 independent status of the twentieth century, all combine to 

 make the spinster's life happier and more dignified because on 

 a sounder economic basis of self-support. 



In alluding to economics I am touching on one of the most 

 profound factors in the psychology of the female mind. In the 

 earliest days the position of women was different. We are told 

 that the economic and social unit was the gens,^ the head of which 

 was a woman ; the union of several gentes forming a tribe ; 

 the family, as we now know it, before the establishment of 

 monogamous marriage, being unknown, property, position and 

 power being centred in the female head of the gens. Kinship, 

 for obvious reasons, was only traced in the female line. The 

 transition in feminine status took place gradually, as the per- 

 manence of the marriage tie became recognized, and monogamy 

 established, but the change of descent and kinship to the male 

 line was probably due to other causes. 



From Bachofen we find that in Greece the change from the 

 female to the male line was effected, owing to the theory that 

 the " pneuma " or personal spirit was derived from the male 

 and not from the female. Hence in Greece descent was in the 

 male line, and Rome soon followed ; in this, as in other instances, 

 copying the example of Greece. 



I need hardly point out that this assumption as to the 

 " pneuma " is baseless, and that while daughters appear generally 

 to possess more of the father's "pneuma" than the mother's, 

 boys certainly are the reverse, and owe their character mainly 

 to the mother. 



The deeper psychology of the development of the " pneuma " 

 in the embryo, and the time of its advent and entrance into the 

 physique of the potential child, fortunately does not fall within 



* C. S. Wake, Kinship and Marriage^ p. 16. 



