Fehling states that the little girl's command of speech is superior to the little boy's at a very early age, and it is a curious but undoubted fact that women are seldom found to stammer. 1 Negroes are very eloquent, as is well known, taking their moderate intellectual powers into consideration. I have heard good speeches (on missionary topics) by a man and a woman belonging to so low a race as the Austra- lians; the woman was especially fluent and effective. It may be said that these apprehensions quickly finding expression have been generally recognised in women. An eminent physician, Currie, mentions (according to Buckle) that when a labourer and his wife came to consult him it was always from the woman that he gained the clearest and most precise information, the intellect of the man moving too slowly for his purpose. This is by no means an uncommon medical experience. It appears also that Parisian lawyers have discovered that women can explain things best, and they say to their working- class clients, " Send me your wife." 2 Precocity. — There is good reason to believe that girls are more precocious in intelligence than boys. The point, so far as I am aware, has not been definitely proved at present, but it would be in harmony with what we know of the physical devel- opment of the sexes, and it has been observed independently. Thus Delaunay remarks that among children under the age of twelve, teachers in mixed schools find that girls are cleverer than boys. 3 It is an interesting fact, and perhaps of some significance, that among primitive races in all parts of the world the child- ren at an early age are very precocious in intelligence. It is 1 Men are three times more liable to this defect, according to Ssikorski, Ueber das Stottern, 1 89 1. The proverbs of many nations bear witness to women's facility of speech; see, for example, Lombroso and Ferrero, p. 175.
12 Google 178 MAN AND WOMAN.
so among the Eskimo as well as among the Australians. Among the African Fantis, Lord Wolseley remarks, " The boy is far brighter, quicker, and cleverer than the man. You can appar- ently teach the boy anything until he reaches puberty, then he becomes gradually duller and more stupid, more lazy, and more useless every day." Among the lower yellow races the same phenomenon is witnessed Thus Leclere, in his study of the Cambodgians, found that the children are very intelligent when young, but that at the age of fifteen they become stationary and less active; a certain obscurity— un fieu de nuit— -comes on their minds, and at the same time their features become less regular and beautiful than they were before. (Leclere, "Moeurs et Coutumes des Cambodgiens," Revue Scientifique, 21 Juin, 1893.) It seems that the lower the race the more marked is this precocity and its arrest at puberty. It is a fact that must be taken in connection with the peculiarly human characters of the youthful anthropoid apes and the more de- graded morphological characters of the adults.
Among the civilised European races precocity of intelli- gence, speaking generally, is not a fact of good augury for intelligence in after-life. This statement is scarcely qualified by the fact that among persons of abnormal intellect or genius, extraordinary precocity is sometimes found. The average results of precocity on after-development cannot at present be definitely stated as regards intelligence, but appear more clearly in other fields which are more easily open to exact observation. Thus Galton, considering the results of certain tables of the height of the male population which he had prepared, and which appear in the Report of the Anthropometric Committee of the Bntish Association (1881), remarks: "Precocity is, on the whole, of no advantage in later life, and it may be a disad- vantage. It is certain that the precocious portion do not maintain their lead to the full extent; it is possible that they may actually fall back, and that many of those who occupied a low place in the statistical series between the ages of 14 and 16 occupy a high place after those years."
It is probable that results of interest in reference to sexual differences in intelligence and its develop- ment would be obtained by the careful use of school-records. Something has already been done in this direction by Roussel, by Riccardi, and others; and such questions are now being seriously taken up in America. 1 Roussel, for instance, has com- 1 Thus Professor Earl Barnes writes: "With a study now in pro- gress on 2900 children from Monterey County, California, following Google THE INTELLECTUAL IMPULSE. 1 79 pared the punishments received by boys and girls at different Belgian schools. He found that out of 100 boys, 9 or 10 are punished for pilfering; out of 100 girls not one: out of 100 boys, 54 are punished for quarrelling and striking; out of 100 girls only 17. On the other hand, he found that girls are more idle than boys in the proportion of 21 girls to 2 boys. On the whole, during 1860-79, 31 per cent of the boys were punished, 26 per cent of the girls. 1 Riccardi finds from an examination of several hundred school children of Modena and Bologna that girls have a greater fondness for study than boys (61 per cent, against 43 per cent); that girls have also a greater fondness for manual work (27 per cent against 22 per cent); while the number of boys without any pre- ference is much greater than of girls (35 per cent against 12 per cent). Riccardi considers that women have greater educability, sociability, domesticity, dili- gence, and a more profound psychic atavism than men. 2 It is not until after the age of sixteen that the intellectual superiority of boys asserts itself. It will be seen Riccardi's results do not seem quite to accord with Roussel's as to the frequency of idleness among girls. It may be added that in lunatic asylums there is usually said to be more difficulty in persuading the women to work than the men. The best field for studying objectively the development of sexual differences in character and mental develop- ment is in mixed schools.
It will perhaps be found that to some extent the Binet's tests in perception, we are certainly able to demonstrate that the girls in that county from eleven to thirteen years old have a con- siderably more detailed and extended knowledge of common objects about them than is possessed by boys of the same age, or else they have superior power of expression." — Pedagogical Seminary, March 1893. This journal is a valuable storehouse of psychological -data for the study of childhood and adolescence.
1 T. Roussel, Enqutte sur les Orphelinats y etc., 1 88 1.
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sexes change their character and mental aptitude on the approach of puberty. This would account for some of the recorded observations, and is rendered more likely by the probable mental precocity of the girls. But the recorded observations will have to be much more precise and extensive than they are at present before it will be possible to attain any clear and definite conclusions.
Industrial and Business Capacities. — The gradual opening up of various occupations has caused many practical experiments to be made concerning sexual differences in business capacity, though it can scarcely be said that the results have been very accurately observed and recorded. 1 It must be added also that it is by no means so easy to find men and women doing the same work under the same conditions; a process of sexual differentiation seems always to come immediately into operation by which the women are enabled to do higher work under easier conditions; this is so even in the Post-office, where a very large number of women are employed.
Delaunay consulted a number of merchants con- cerning sexual differences in industrial occupations, and they generally agreed that "women are more industrious but less intelligent than men;" thus in printing establishments, for instance, women were found to work mechanically, with minute attention to detail, but without fully understanding what they were doing, so that they composed very well from printed copy, but not so well from manuscript as mefi. 2 Mr. Sidney Webb remarks that the Prudential Life Assurance Company employs considerably over 1 The opportunities for such observation are rapidly increasing; thus, for instance, in Massachusetts the proportion of women employed in "gainful occupations," which in 1875 was 21.3 per cent, of the whole, had increased to 30 per cent, in 1885; or, stated in another way, while the female population had increased 17.7 per cent., employed women had increased 64.6 per cent. See also " Contribution au Mouvement F^ministe," Journal des Economistes, Mars 1893.
Google THE INTELLECTUAL IMPULSE. l8l 200 ladies in routine clerical work (copying letters, filling up forms, etc.). "This work they perform, I am assured, rather better and more rapidly than men. But they are absent from sickness (usually only slight indisposition) more than twice as much as the men." Moreover, it has been found impossible to entrust them with more than routine work, which is a drawback to their advantageousness to the employer. 1 In routine work, however — that is to say, continuous w;ork at a low pressure — it is probable that they are superior to men, possessing thus greater application and patience; this seems a characteristic of the work of both civilised and uncivilised women. 2 It seemed to me a matter of some interest to ascertain the experiences of the Post-office, so large an employer of both men and women, as to sexual differences in capacity. It is not altogether easy to obtain such information, and it does not seem possible at present to obtain it in a definite and precise form. I have, however, received from an authoritative source a number of opinions which represent the experience of various large post-offices in different parts of the kingdom, and which are regarded as being typical and reliable results. Thus, one of the chief post- masters is of opinion that as counter and instrumental clerks, doing concurrently money order and savings bank duties, taking in telegrams, and signalling and receiving telegrams, and in attending to rough and illiterate persons, women clerks are preferable to men. They keep their stocks in neater order, and are more careful with money; they speak better, as a rule, and are more patient. In another (west country) district where the telegraph work is entirely performed by women, it is stated to be admirably done. At a very large provincial office it is found that women compare 1 S. Webb, "Alleged Differences in the Wages paid to Men and to Women for Similar Work," Economic Journal \ 1891, p. 635.
a Lombroso and Ferrero (pp. 177-178) bring forward evidence on this point.
Google 1 82 MAN AND WOMAN.
favourably with telegraphists of the other sex, doing their work, as a rule, with equal intelligence and accuracy. But it is found that their handwriting is not usually so good, and that they rarely exhibit the same desire as men to obtain a technical knowledge of telegraphy] On the postal side they are also regarded as a distinct success at the city in question. Complaints from the public of inattention and in- civility are less frequent in the case of offices where women are employed; and women keep their stamp stocks in better order, are less troublesome in matters of discipline, and are regarded as less liable to go wrong in money matters than men. As a rule they do their work with intelligence and accuracy, and under ordinary conditions they probably do it almost as quickly; but at times of pressure they are not able to maintain a competition with men at the heavier kinds of work, especially at Wheatstone circuits, etc, owing to a lack of staying power. Another report also expresses doubt as to the strength and staying power of women for the continuous work of a heavy head office counter, and male assistance has been required. As a general rule, in the opinion of another postmaster, female telegraphists perform counter duties satis- factorily, but in cases of emergency they are not equal to male officers, and the proportion of errors is generally greater among females than males. The latter also are found better able to maintain order and discipline among the messengers. As regards instru- ment room duties, women work moderately busy circuits just as well as men, but it is considered generally necessary to staff the busiest circuits with male telegraphists; this applies more particularly to news wires, the work being too heavy for women, who do not seem to possess the wrist-power requisite for rapid writing, and at the same time for making the required number of copies. Moreover, for this class of work male telegraphists are better qualified because, as a rule, they are much better informed on all topics Google THE INTELLECTUAL IMPULSE. 1 83 of general public interest, which is an element of importance in dealing with news traffic According to another opinion, finally, as supervising officers women cannot so well stand the continuous walking about the instrument room which is regarded as very necessary, and it is also found that they evince no desire to acquire technical knowledge.
The general sense of these and other authoritative opinions is fairly harmonious as to the relative capacity of men and women for post-office duties. There appears to be general agreement that women are more docile and amenable to discipline; that they can do light work equally well; that they are steadier in some respects; but that, on the other hand, they are oftener absent on account of slight indisposition, they break down sooner under strain (although considera- tion is shown them in the matter of hours, etc.), and exhibit less intelligence outside the ordinary routine, not showing the same ability or willingness (possibly because they look forward to marriage) to acquire technical knowledge. In London it is the general experience that women are lacking in courtesy to the public; many complaints are received concern- ing the discourtesy of the female clerks, and some post-officers have an objection to the employment of women on this account Whether the attitude of the public may not be a factor in this discourtesy seems a matter for question; in any case, it is worth noting that in some of the large provincial offices it is found that women are more courteous than men. These results seem to coincide fairly with those obtained from other sources.
The employment of women in the Post-office is much cheaper (by about 25 per cent.) than that of men, but from the official point of view it is attended by various disadvantages: (1) They are much more frequently absent on account of sickness; statistics on this point are given in Webb's paper. (2) They are not required to work at night, and it is at night that a large part of the work is done. (3) They cannot do much overtime work, and at Christmas, etc., there is great additional Google 1 84 MAN AND WOMAN.
pressure. (4) In offices where women are employed (as at Hatton Garden) it is necessary to have the presence of a man during part of the day to afford protection in case of an attempt at robbery. When women are substituted for men an office worked by three or four men will require four or five women, chiefly, it seems, because it is not considered safe to leave a woman alone at any time. (5) The provision of separate lava- tories, etc., for women is expensive and often, for want of space, impracticable. The last reason, more perhaps than any other, has militated against the immediate employment of women in provincial offices generally.
It is to be regretted that the Post-office authorities by no means offer facilities for the registration, or at all events for the publication, of facts regarding sexual differences in capacity. Now that the employment of women is becoming so widespread this question becomes one of considerable general interest and importance. Instead of discouraging such inquiries (which need not involve the publication of any facts which for any reason it is desirable to withhold) a post- office official, whose sole duty it would be to obtain returns regarding such sexual differences, and to put them into statistical shape, would be performing a useful public duty. His reports would give, in a reliable and well-supported form, valuable indications as to the advantageousness of employing men or women in a variety of occupations.
Mr. Sidney Webb, who has studied some of the points touched on in this section, although from an economic rather than a psychological standpoint, reaches the following conclusions: — " The attraction to the employer of women's labour is often less in its actual cheapness than in its ' docility ' and want of com- bination. 'Women strike less/ says one. A similar fact is recorded as to the employment of the negro in manufacturing industries in the 'New South' (United States)...I find it difficult to draw any general conclusion from the foregoing facts. But they suggest to me that the frequent inferiority of women's earnings in manual work is due, in the main, to a general but not invariable inferiority of productive power, usually in quantity, sometimes in quality, and nearly always in nett advantageous- ness to the employer...The problem of the inequality of wages is one of great plurality of causes and intermixture of Google THE INTELLECTUAL IMPULSE. 1 85 effects, and one might not improbably find that, as is often the case, there is no special women's question in the matter." (Sidney Webb, "Alleged Differences in the Wages," etc., Economic Journal^ 1891.)
Abstract Thought — It is easier to compare the higher and more exceptional intellectual qualities of men and women than their average mental qualities, although in both cases we have the same difficulty — which cannot at present be definitely resolved — in determining precisely the boundary between or- ganic constitution and education.
There is no such thing — one cannot too often repeat it — as pure rationality. The thought that we call abstract has its foundation in the organic and emotional character of the individual. Abstract thought in women seems usually to be marked by a certain docility and receptiveness. Even in trivial matters the average woman more easily accepts statements and opinions than a man, and in more serious matters she is prepared to die for a statement or an opinion, provided it is uttered with such authority and unction that her emotional nature is sufficiently thrilled. This is allied with woman's suggestibility, and it seems to have to some extent an organic basis, so that while the culture of the more abstract powers of thought may make it impossible to obey this instinct, there is still a struggle; or else the more purely rational method is attained — and often distorted in the attaining — by the complete suppression of the other elements. Professor Stanley Hall, in the course of a series of very careful and suggestive observations on children, remarks that " the normal child feels the heroism of the unaccountable instinct of self-sacrifice far earlier and more keenly than it can appreciate the sublimity of truth." 1 In this respect women remain children, and that they do seems to result from the organic 1 "Children's Lies," Am. Journal of Psychology > January 1890.
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facts of women's life. 1 I think we may agree that, as Burdach said long ago, "Women take truth as they find it, while men want to create truth." The latter method leads further, if only further into error. It is not simply that women are more ready than men to accept what is already accepted and what is most in accordance with appearances 2 — and that it is inconceivable, for instance, that a woman should have devised the Copernican system — but they are less able than men to stand alone. It is difficult to re- call examples of women who have patiently and slowly fought their way at once to perfection and to fame in the face of complete indifference, like, for instance, Balzac, — apart from the fact that a woman of talent is usually in more command of her means and able to reach a certain degree of success at an early period. It is still more difficult to recall a woman who for any abstract and intellectual end has fought her way to success through obloquy and contempt, or without reaching success, like a Roger Bacon or a Galileo, a Wagner or an Ibsen. Not only does the woman crave more for sympathy, but she has not 1 There are far more women than men who can say with Mrs. Besant: " Looking back to-day over my life I see that its key-note — through all the blunders and the blind mistakes and clumsy follies — has been this longing for sacrifice to something felt as greater than the self." — Autobiography \ xiv. While the instinct of self-sacrifice is common among women it cannot be said that the appreciation of " the sublimity of truth" is a masculine characteristic in anything like a corresponding degree.
2 The influence of education must here be taken into account; women are trained to accept conventional standards. Thus a careful investigation (inaugurated by Professor Stanley Hall) of many hundred American children as to their ideas of right and wrong showed that the answers of the girls differ from the boys in two marked ways; they more often name specific acts and nearly twice as often conventional ones, the former difference being most common in naming right, the latter in naming wrong things. Boys say it is wrong to steal, fight, kick, break windows, get drunk, stick pins into others, or to "sass," "cuss," shoot them, while girls are more apt to say it is wrong not to comb the hair, to get butter on the dress, climb trees, unfold the hands, cry, catch flies, etc, — Pedagogical Seminary, vol. i., 1891, Google THE INTELLECTUAL IMPULSE. 1 87 the same sturdy independence. The hero of Ibsen's Enemy of the People^ who had realised that the strongest man in the world is the man who stands most alone, could scarcely have been a woman. When a man is attacked by gftifql p ara1 y Q j g he usually displays an extravagant degree of e goism and self-reliance; when a woman is the victim of the same disease it is not self-reliant egQJSffl but extreme vanity which sGe displays. The disease liberates the tendencies that are latent in each — the man's to independence, the woman's to dependence on the opinion of others. It must be added to this that what appears to be women's tendency to be vividly impressed by immediate facts, and to neglect those that are remote, is fatal to the philosophic thought which must see all things sub specie ceter- nitaiis. It is probably to such causes as these that we must attribute the fact that in the first rank of those who have devoted themselves to metaphysics there is not one woman, while in the second and third ranks, from Hypatia to Constance Naden, it is very hard to find women who occupy an honourable place.
It can scarcely be said that we have much warrant beyond her fame for assigning a high place to Hypatia. That she was of a curiously analytical and unemotional — to the ordinary masculine person it may even seem cynical — habit of mind is indicated by the untranslatable anecdote recorded by Suidas (though we cannot accept this as unquestionably authoritative): " Cum de auditoribus quidam earn deperiret, pannos mensibus fcedatos illi ostendisse dicitur et dixisse: ' Hoc quidem adamas, o adolescens '; et sic animum ejus sanasse." It is a curious fact, referred to by Lombroso and Ferrero (p. 171), that among the Greeks thirty-four women distinguished themselves in the Pythagorean school of philosophy, and scarcely three or four in any other school, only one among the Cynics. This is due, according to these writers, to the Pythagorean school being " a sort of company of Jesus, appealing to the emotions rather than the intelligence, a monastic association with rites possessing special moral aims and inculcating family virtues." That Con- stance Naden possessed in a high degree the purely metaphysical impulse there can be no doubt, although, whether in conse- Google 1 88 MAN AND WOMAN.
quence of her early death or otherwise, she achieved no monument of philosophic thought It is worth while to quote Herbert Spencer's estimat e of her intellect and remarks on intellect in women generally (contained in a letter published in the newspapers a few years ago):-/" Very generally receptivity and originality are not associated, T>ut in her mind they appear to have been equally great. I can think of no woman, save George Eliot, in whom there has been this union of high philo- sophical capacity with extensive acquisition. Unquestionably her subtle intelligence would have done much in furtherance of rational thought, and her death has entailed a serious loss. While I say this, however, I cannot let pass the occasion for remarking that in her case, as in other cases, the mental powers so highly developed in a woman are in some measure abnormal, and involve a physiological cost which her feminine organisa- tion will not bear without injury more or less profound." 3^ Paul Lafitte (Le Paradoxe de PEgaliM, 1887, pp. 117 et seq.) has some observations on the differences in the higher mental qualities of men and women which are worth quoting, as they are much fairer and more judicious than such observations usually are. He remarks that in women the receptive faculties are most developed, and continues: — " When children of both sexes are educated together, it is the ^irls who are at the top during the first years j it is at that time above all a question of receiving impressions and keeping them, and we see every day that women by the vivacity of their impressions and their memory are superior to the men who surround them. To this facility in seizing and re taining facts must be added the taste for symmetry which seems innate in them; you will understand the aptitude which they always show for the study of geometry. In the same way at the examinations at the School of Medjcine^, we may see young women shine in p hysio logy or p atholo gy"; they have seized the series of facts with a clearness which strikes the examiners; but for the most part they are inferior in the clinical tests which bring other mental faculties into play. Generally speaking, a woman seems more touched by the fact than by the law, by the particular idea than by the general idea. If it is a question of pronouncing an opinion on a known indi- vidual, that of the man will perhaps be more exact in general outline; but if we pass to shades of character the woman immediately has the advantage: a familiar gesture, a word employed more often than another, a wrinkle forming at certain moments, a look, a smile, all are noted by her, catalogued, and appreciated at their just value. The same differences are found in literary works: a woman's book, whether by Madame de Stael or George Eliot, is worth more in detail than as a whole. No one questions that women are superior to us in the epistolary style. Whence comes this superiority? We compose a letter Google THE INTELLECTUAL IMPULSE. 1 89 as we would draw up a report, and write coldly: a woman, on the contrary, writes under the impression of the facts; she re- traces them, leaving to each its own physiognomy, and naturally, without research or rhetoric, she finds life and movement at the tip of her pen. The habit of mind differs as the faculties differ; we are more interested in the relations of things than in the things themselves. La Bruyere, on more than one side, is a feminine genius; Descartes is the type of the masculine genius; it would have been possible for a woman to write the Carac- tlreS) but I doubt if any woman could ever remake the Pis - cours de la Methode. In a word, there are equivalent faculties, Eut they are not the same; the woman's mind is more concrete, the main's more ab strac t."
It may be added That a certain number of women have attained eminence in mathematics, although none are associated with any great achievement. Thus Maria Lewen published a book of astronomical tables in the seventeenth century; the Mar- quise du Chatellet translated Newton's Principiaj Madame Le- pante contributed to her husband's work on horology a table of the lengths of pendulums, and in conjunction with Lalande calcu- lated the perturbations of Halle/s comet, a work which, says Lalande, "occupied us during six months from morning to night; we calculated sometimes even at meals; " Maria Agnesi wrote a book on the Differential and Integral Calculus which has been highly praised by mathematicians; Laura Bassi was appointed to a professorial chair at Bologna; Miss Herschell was distinguished as an assistant to her brother; Mrs. Somer- ville obtained a wide reputation by her mathematical and general scientific abilities; and Madame Sophie K pwalevskv possessed great mathematical powers, which obtained for her a professorial chair in Sweden. I take many of these facts from D. Beale, Reports issued by the Schools* Inquiry Commission on the Education of Girls [no date], p. xiii. In this collection of Reports by highly competent inquirers will be found a number of interesting opinions on the mental capacities of women, as well as on the nature and results of their educational training.