this is the reverse of the truth there can be now no doubt John Hunter pointed out long since the greater tendency of males among the lower animals to exhibit modifications of structure. 1 Burdach emphasised the greater variability of the human female. Darwin, in his Descent of Man, fully expounded and illustrated the same fact both in Man and in the lower animals. He instanced, for example, the sexual differences in hairiness among human races, and pointed out that while the differences in the amount and arrangement of the hair on the head and body in women are com- paratively slight, the variations in the distribution and amount of hair on the face in men are very numerous among different races as well as among different individuals. He also brought forward the evidence at that time existing to show the greater frequency of abnormalities of various kinds in males. Since Darwin wrote the evidence has accumulated, and the greater variational tendency of males has never been questioned. It cannot, however, be asserted that all the implications of this fact are yet clearly recognised. The tendency of men to be abnormal has to con- tend at an early period of life with a very powerful force on the side of equality and mediocrity. This, as we have already seen (p. 66), is the narrowness of the maternal pelvic outlet, which, while usually allow- ing girls to pass through readily, sometimes places immense obstacles in the way of boys. Still-born children are much more frequently boys than girls, the proportion in this country being about 140 males to 100 females. If it were not for this levelling influence there can be no doubt that the proportion of men remarkable for exceptional physical or mental qualities would be even larger than it actually is. Thus Boyd's tables have shown that the average brain- mass in the children who are born dead at full time is larger than in those who live; and that while the 1 Thus in his Essays and Observations (vol. i. p. 186) he remarks: •* It is always the male that goes off from the female."
Google 360 MAN AND WOMAN.
average new-born living male child at full time has a total brain-mass only about ij4 ounces heavier than the female (and the maximum brain-weight in a living child was actually found by Boyd in a female), among the still-born the maximum male brain is nearly seven ounces larger than the maximum female brain, although the minimum still-born male brain is only a little over an ounce larger than the minimum female brain. Statistics of English and Scotch infants collected by the Anthropometric Committee of the British Association showed that while the range of height in the male infants was 10 inches, in the female infants it was only 8 inches. Exceptional weight in new-born children is most usually found among the males; in France, for weights above 3500 grammes there are 29 boys to only 19 girls. 1 Abnormalities of most kinds having their origin in some arrest of development, or unknown patho- logical accident at an early period of embryonic growth, are for the most part more common in males than in females. This is shown both by the Registrar- General's Reports and the surgical records of any large hospital. If we consider the deaths per million from congenital defects we find, taking the five years 1884-88 (as Campbell has pointed out), that the aver- age is 49.6 for the male sex, 442 for the female. 2 Surgical experience among the living gives a similar result Thus at St. Thomas's Hospital, if we take, for instance, the years 1881-87, we find that hare-lip, for example, was found in 43 males to 20 females. Bryant's note-book (according to Braxton Hicks) showed 44 males to 20 females, almost the same proportion, while Manley 3 found 27 males to only 6 females. Double hare-lip is almost exclusively found in males. Hare-lip with cleft-palate is always more frequently found in males; according to Bryant, 1 Depaul, Art. " Nouveau-ne*" in Diet, ency. des Sci. Mid 2 H. Campbell, Nervous Organisation of Man and Woman, p. 133. 8 International Med. Mag., April 1893.
Google VARIATIONAL TENDENCY OF MEN. 361 in 17 males to only 4 females. Cleft-palate alone is, however, more often found in females; in 58 females to 37 males, according to the experience at St. Thomas's. Spina bifida is also usually slightly more common in females; 13 males to 17 females, according to Bryant, though the records at St. Thomas's appear to show a majority of males. Nearly every other important form of malformation is found more frequently in males than in females. Talipes equino-varus, the most important form of club-foot, usually indicates an arrest of develop- ment, as it represents the normal position of the foot in the apes and in man before birth; it is much more frequent in males, the proportions being (according to experience at St Thomas's Hospital) 44 males to 26 females; while, if we include all forms of club-foot, the proportion is 80 males to 53 females. If we take larger figures we find, according to Duval, that 364 males exhibit congenital club-foot as against 210 females, while the acquired forms are also more common in males. Imperforate anus, meningocele, ectopia vesicae (1 female in 10 cases, according to John Wood), abnormality of the vermiform appendix, are all more common in males. Con- genital dislocation of hip is a marked exception, the proportion being about 4 or 5 females to 1 male, and another exception (according to J. H. Morgan) is furnished by macrostoma congenitum or fissure of the cheek; both these defects, like those which are more common in males, are probably due to arrest of development It is not yet quite clear that we can generalise concerning the developmental defects most common in males and in females, though this may be possible when our knowledge is more complete.
Supernumerary digits are much more frequently found in males than in females. Supernumerary nipples are also much commoner in men; among several hundred persons Mitchell Bruce found that 9.1 per cent men and only 4.8 per cent women possessed an extra nipple, so that it is nearly twice ^ Google 362 MAN AND WOMAN.
as frequent in males. 1 The majority of cases of transposition of viscera (in which the heart and the stomach are found on the right side and the liver on the left) are found in males. An additional (eighth) true rib is an interesting anomaly which has been especially studied by Professor Cunningham; he finds it to occur twice in a male to once in a female; it is normal among the lower apes and in the chim- panzee, and may therefore be regarded as a reversion. 2 The majority of muscular abnormalities are found in male subjects. It would be of little interest to consider in detail the results reached by Wood, Schwalbe, Macalister, Wenzel Gruber, and others, but on the whole there seems to be little doubt of the fact, although there are exceptions as regards certain muscles, and Testut is of opinion that the sexes may be regarded as about equal in this respect The following remarks by Professor Macalister concerning muscular anomalies are worth quoting: — " Varieties are prob- ably more common in males than females; those of fission and suppression occur more frequently in the latter, as they usually possess a weaker muscular system. Anomalies of duality, altered course and attachment, and coalescence most frequently are to be found in males. New muscular germs are more frequently developed in the male sex, although an excep- tion has been claimed for some." The muscle germs are muscles usually found in other animals, not in Man. To this class belong also cases of muscular duality, depending on vegetative repetition, and some cases of suppression; while muscle-fission and some cases of suppression depend on deficient growth, and are associated with weakness; and coal- escence is dependent on exuberant growth and is associated with strength. (Alexander Macalister, " Further Notes on Muscular Anomalies/* Proc. Roy. Irish Academy, vol. x., 1867, p. 121.)
The sexual differences in abnormality are somewhat complex. We may, for example, take the anomalies of the ear, which have been carefully studied by numerous investigators in various countries. It is pretty generally agreed that, as Ranke states, the ear in women is more finely modelled and less 1 Journal of Anal., vol. xiii. p. 423.
2 D. J. Cunningham, " Occasional Eighth True Rib in Man," Journal of Anal., October 1889.
Google VARIATIONAL TENDENCY OF MEN. 363 subject to abnormality than in men, though Schaeffer is of opinion that this difference is apparent only, and is merely due to the ear in women being smaller and defects less obvious. Schwalbe argues that the male ear is much closer to that of the apes than the female ear; " We are here concerned," he says, "with a very remarkable fact, that the female sex here does not exhibit the more primitive forms, as, for example, in the formation of the sexual organs, but the derived form." He shows that in various respects the ear in women is further removed from the apes than the ear in men, more especi- ally as regards the Darwinian tubercle; thus, taking chiefly Alsatians, he finds that among 109 men and 102 women 73.4 per cent of the male ears showed the tubercle, and only 32.8 per cent of the female ears; while more than three-fourths of the men and nearly three-fourths of their ears, collectively, exhibited the Darwinian tubercle, hardly half the women and only a third of their ears showed it Schaeffer found it in 47 per cent women; while in men it varied greatly in different regions, but was usually more frequent; he considers the peculiarity especially common in England, and very un- usually so among English women; while he found it in only 22 per cent ears in Swabia and Upper Bavaria, he found it in 55 per cent English ears; in Jewesses, on the other hand, abnormal ears are rare. Gradenigo finds the ear normal in 56 per cent men, in 66 per cent women; he finds every abnor- mality, even adherent lobule, more common in men. Vali has found every abnormality with the exception of adherent lobule more common in men. Warner in an extensive investigation of English school children finds abnormal ears very much com- moner in boys than in girls. Lannois's investigations show the proportion of normal ears to be 28 per cent, in men and 41 per cent, in women. The prominent outstanding ear (ad ansa) is everywhere more common in men (11 per cent, males and 3 per cent, females, according to Gradenigo); it is usually associated with a large mastoid process. Wilder- muth's ear (antihelix projecting beyond helix) is usually found to be more frequent in women; Lannois found it in 27 per cent women, 20 per cent men; Gradenigo in 20 percent, women, 7 per cent. men. Adherent lobule is also more common in women in the experience of most observers. Laycock many years ago considered that the lobule and also the helix are both relatively and absolutely smaller in women; in men of feminine character he found the helix and lobule like those of women, and he thought that active instincts and appetites are often associated with large lobules. (J. Ranke, Der Mensch; Schwalbe, "Beitrage zur Anthropologic des Ohres," Rudolf Virchow Festschrift \ Berlin, 1891, Bd. i.; Laycock, " Lectures on Physiognomical Diagnosis," Medical Times, 22nd March Google 364 MAN AND WOMAN.
1862; Lannois, "Pavilion de POreille chez les Sujets Sains," Archives de FAnth. Crim. f Juillet, 1892; Oscar Schaeffer, " Ueber Ohrentwickelung und Ohrformen," Arch/2/, filr A nth., Bd. xxl, 1892; Amelia, Naturpeschietye fa Verhr+^fcrr* If we turn to those congenital variations which are very closely allied to mental characters we still find, and in an even more marked degree, that men have a greater tendency to abnormality than women. There are nearly everywhere more male than female deaf- mutes; thus, according to the last census, in Scotland 1 195 men and 930 women are deaf-mutes, and if we take the proportion to population for Great Britain generally the sexual difference is still more marked; deaf-mutism is especially common among Jewish males; and in Norway, according to Uchermann, for every 100 deaf-mute males there are only 89 females. Idiocy and imbecility probably possess very great significance as forms of congenital mental variability, and are probably to some extent mixed up with other forms of mental variability with which they are far from having any obvious relationship. Idiocy is almost everywhere recognised as more common in males than in females; Mitchell estimated the pro- portion as 100 males to 79 females in Scotland. 1 The Prussian census shows that precisely the same proportion of idiots are born in that country; in France the proportion is 100 males to nearly 76 females. Langdon Down some years ago found that the ratio in which the sexes are afflicted is 2.1 to.9, and this is about the proportion in which the sexes are found in idiot asylums to-day in England — a somewhat larger proportion of males than among idiots in the general population. Endemic cretinism, a particular form of idiocy in which there is degeneration of the thyroid gland, is also more common in males, in the proportion, according to Lunier, of 5 to 4, varying, however, according to the region. Crimin- 1 Edin. Med. Journal, vol. xi. p. 639.
VARIATIONAL TENDENCY OF MEN. 365 ality and insanity and the tendency to suicide I have dealt with in another chapter; they all usually arise on a basis of congenital mental abnormality, and are all on the whole more prominent in men than in women. That form of insanity which is sometimes called "moral insanity," or perhaps more properly "moral imbecility," and which is almost identical with what is now frequently called congenital or instinctive criminality, is a truly inborn abnormality, and is far more common in males than in females. The "mattoid" or "crank," again, whose whole life pursues an eccentric and futile orbit of its own, is a congenitally abnormal person, although his abnor- mality may not develop until late; the mattoid is very rarely a woman, although that very mild mattoid, the "faddist," is perhaps quite as usually a woman as a man; x this fact is doubtless part of the general affectability of women under the influ- ence of minor stimuli (referred to elsewhere), and according to which, for instance, while women more often suffer from indigestion than men, the latter much more often suffer from cancer of the stomach. We found also when dealing with " hypnotic pheno- mena " that in their general and more physiological forms they are common in women; if we had taken some special violent and pathological varieties of such phenomena — epilepsy, for instance — we should no longer have found this to be the case.
To turn to a somewhat higher but still undoubtedly congenital form of mental abnormality, we may take arithmetical prodigies; Dr. Scripture has studied these with some fulness. 2 Taking into account all 1 Sexual perversions, again, are more common in men than in women. I find that of 198 cases recorded in detail by Krafft-Ebing, only about II per cent, are women {Psychopathia Sexua/is, Stuttgart, 1893). Although there may be some fallacy here, and it is probable that minor anomalies of the sexual instinct are fairly common in women, there can be no doubt that the more developed perversions, congenital or acquired, are usually met with in men.
2 E. W. Scripture, "Arithmetical Prodigies," Am. Journal PsycA., April 1891.
Google 366 MAN AND WOMAN.
those of whom we have record, from Nikomachus down, he finds not less than twenty-one men to one woman — Lord Mansfield's daughter, who almost equalled Colbourn. The only calculator of the first rank who has appeared since Scripture wrote, Inaudi, serves to increase the male proportion. While a few distinguished men, like Ampere and Gauss, are to be numbered among arithmetical prodigies, this abnor- mality is by no means due to education, and is sometimes found in uneducated persons who are almost idiots. Scripture gives further references to extraordinary memory for figures, though not strictly of calculation. All the examples given are men.
The arithmetical prodigy leads us up to the most interesting and important of all forms of psychic abnormality, that which we usually call "genius." We must regard genius as an organic congenital abnormality (although the evidence in proof of this cannot be entered into here), and in nearly every department it is, undeniably, of more frequent occur- rence among men than among women. The state- ment of this fact has sometimes been regarded by women as a slur upon their sex; they have sought to explain it by lack of opportunity, education, etc. It does not appear that women have been equally anxious to find fallacies in the statement that idiocy is more common among men. Yet the two state- ments must be taken together. Genius is more common among men by virtue of the same general tendency by which idiocy is more common among men. The two facts are but two aspects of a larger zoological fact — the greater variability of the male.
As might be anticipated, the greater variability of men in mental capacity is on the anatomical side connected with a greater variability in the size of the skull and the brain. The very large-headed are more usually men; so also are the microcephalic, or very small-headed. Weisbach found that in nearly every respect the limits of variation in the male skull are greater than in the female skull ("Der deutsche Weiber- Google VARIATIONAL TENDENCY OF MEN. 367 scbadel," Archiv. fiir An/n. 9 Bd. iii., 1868, p. 66). Many observers have pointed this out, besides finding that various abnormalities of the brain and skull are more frequent in men. The late Professor Marshall, in his examination of Boyd's tables, has made some remarks on this question of variation which are worth quoting. He insists that individual variation is the chief factor in producing brain differences, being much stronger than sex or any other factor. The brain is thus an organ in some degree independent of the body. While the sexual difference, he remarks, is about 5 oz., the age difference about 3 oz., and the stature difference about 2 oz., the individual varia- tion in 26 males is 19.3 oz., and in 26 females 14.3 oz. "As the range of stature in the males averaged 4.2 ins. (69-64.8) and in the females 5 ins. (64.5-59.5), it is obvious that not only does the male brain vary more than the female in its absolute weight, but also relatively to the stature...Not only as regards absolute weight, but also as regards the stature-ratio, the male brain varies more than the female brain, the amount of variation in the former being.245 oz., and in the latter only.175 oz. [expressed in decimal parts of an ounce to an inch of height]." Taking the 13 tallest and the 13 shortest men, and also similar groups of women, at the different quinquennial periods of life, " the difference between the two groups of males is 2.4 oz., and that between the two groups of females is only 1.83 oz.; and as the difference in the average statures are shown to be the same — viz., 12.7 ins., it is evident that the range of absolute variation between tall and short individuals is greater in the male sex." (J. Marshall, "On the Relation between the Weight of the Brain and its Parts," etc, Journal of Anal, and Phys. y July 1892.)
From an organic standpoint, therefore, men represent the more variable and the more progressive element, women the more stable and conservative element, in evolution. It is a metaphorical as well as a literal truth that the centre of gravity is lower in women and less easily disturbed. In various parts of the world anthropologists have found reason to suppose that the primitive racial elements in a population are more distinctly preserved by the women than by the men. Lagneau has remarked with reference to the Saracenic element in France, to the Basques and to some other races, that the women seem to preserve ethnic peculiarities better than the men. Dally has some observations to the same Google 368 MAN AND WOMAN.
effect 1 Jacobs, referring to the comparatively small variations of physical type among Jewesses as com- pared to Jews, remarks: — "I seem to observe that Jewesses have more uniformly what we term the Jewish face than Jews have." 2 The men of Aries — of old, the Gallic Rome — are of very ordinary physical character; the women of Aries, on the con- trary, are famous for their beauty; they are like Italians, with pale faces, black hair, and noble carriage; it is probable that they recall the characters of the population of Aries when that decayed and crumbling place was a city of palaces. 8 The Giao-Chi, an ancient race regarded by the Annamites as their ancestors, are remarkable for the position of the big toe, set at a considerable angle to the foot, and almost opposable to the other toes. Notwithstanding a very large amount of mingling with other races, this ata- vistic peculiarity is still met with in the Tonquin delta, says Dumoutier, more especially among the women.* There can be little doubt that the smaller size of women as compared to men is connected with the preservation of a primitive character. Zoologists believe that the early or ancestral members of a group are of small size, and that the study of the smaller members within given groups of animals promises the best results as to their phylogeny. Women by their smaller size approximate to the probably smaller stature of Man's ancestors.
On the psychic side women are more inclined than men to preserve ancient customs and ancient methods of thought In Russia spells and other primitive methods of solving the 1 E. Dally, Art. " Femmes," Diet eney. des Set. Mid.
2 J. Jacobs, " On the Racial Characteristics of Modern Jews,'* Journal Anth. InsU> 24th Feb. 1885.
8 And see Elisee Reclus {La France, p. 507) for some remarks on this point, and references.
4 " Notes Ethnologiques sur les Giao-Chi," V Anthropologic, Nov.
Google VARIATIONAL TENDENCY OF MEN. 369 difficulties of life are in the hands of women who have a recognised position as witches and soothsayers. (Gregor Kupczanko, " Krankheitsbeschworungen bei russischen Bauern in der Bukowina," Am Ur-Quell, 1891, p. 12.) In Sardinia, Sicily, and the remote valleys of Umbria many ancient beliefs and pagan rites, which are perhaps of even prehistoric character, are still preserved by women. (Lombroso and Laschi, // Delitto Politico, vol. ii. p. 8.) Archaeologists carrying on excavations in remote districts of the north of Scotland have repeatedly found that the women, still inspired by pagan feelings, have dissuaded their male folk from giving assistance. In some parts of France artificial deformation of the skull still persists. It appears that in Normandy, Limousin, Languedoc — wherever the custom persists at all — boys wear the bandages for but a short time; with girls and women the custom is life-long. (Delisle, " Sur les Deformations artificielles du cr&ne," Bull. Soc. d*Anth. de Parts, Sdrie III., t. xii. p. 649.) All forms of astrology are now chiefly supported by women, although at one time they were equally sought after by both sexes; Mr. Edgar Lee, who has answered nearly thirteen thousand astrological queries, found that 70 per cent of the inquirers were women who wished to know if they were going to be married; it should be added that they belonged chiefly to the middle and upper classes. (E. Lee, "Astrology Fin de Steele," Arena, Nov. 1892.) Lombroso and Ferrero have also given various examples of the conserva- tism and misoneism of women, La Donna Delinquente, pp.
We have, therefore, to recognise that in men, as in males generally, there is an organic variational tend- ency to diverge and to progress; in women, as in females generally, an organic tendency, notwithstand- ing all their facility for minor oscillations, to stability and conservatism, involving a diminished individual- ism and variability. So that when women do vary, as Burdach long ago remarked, they tend to vary more intemperately than men. Men show a more marked variational tendency than women, and this fact is closely allied with the fact to which I have had to call attention in another chapter, that men exhibit more marked pathological characters; for, as Virchow insists, every deviation from the parent type must have its foundation in a pathological accident It may not be out of place to add that in emphasising 24 Google 370 MAN AND WOMAN.
the variational tendency in men, the conservative tendency in women, we are not talking politics, nor throwing any light whatever on the possible effects of women's suffrage. It is undeniably true that the greater variational tendency of the male is a psychic as well as a physical fact, but zoological facts cannot easily be brought within the small and shifting sphere of politics. Organic conservatism may often involve political revolution. Socialism and nihilism are not, I believe, usually regarded by politicians as conserva- tive movements, but from the organic point of view of the race they may be truly conservative, and, as is well known, these movements have powerfully ap- pealed to women. Women opposed the French Revolution. " If it were not for women," it was said, " the Republic would be safe;" but, on the other hand, the establishment of Christianity, the most revolu- tionary movement that has ever been seen in Europe, was to a considerable extent furthered by women. It is difficult to argue from zoological facts to an order of facts which is of purely local and temporary character. The mistake is often made, and it is, therefore, not out of place to refer to it here.
We must not, therefore, conclude that the broader biological facts have no bearing whatever on social and political move- ments. The fascination which Christianity, notwithstanding its revolutionary character, possessed for women lay in its special appeal to the conservative instincts of women and its liberation of their most native impulses. A recent writer, after discussing the worship of love among primitive peoples and its suppres- sion in Roman times, remarks: — " In the midst of the general disintegration was heard anew the voice of Aphrodite, the forgotten enchantress. The cult of love, after having accom- plished the cycle of its evolution, returned to the point of its departure. This was the marvellous star which conducted the Magi to Bethlehem towards the cradle of the Divine Child. The celestial call of love, of the love which extends over all our thoughts and our actions, of the love of our neighbour, of love faithful and indissoluble for woman, in a word the call of love itself, entire and eternal, which the first Christian word pro- claimed, appeared as the veritable culte de? amour and replaced the Epicurism of decadent Rome." (O. K. Notovitch, L Amour, Google VARIATIONAL TENDENCY OF MEN. 37 1 Etude Psycho-philosophique) Paris.) It is curious to note that this aspect of the matter had not suggested itself to the founders of Christianity, and New Testament writers, notably St. Paul, regarded the functions of women as very subordinate; hence, probably, the dubious influence exerted by Christianity on the practical position of women. But if Christianity had been made for women only it could scarcely have been bettered. The erotico-mystic character of Russian social and revolutionary movements is well known; it approximates them to early Christian movements, and in a large measure accounts for the part which women have played in them.
A large part of the joy that men and women take in each other is rooted in this sexual difference in variability. The progressive and divergent energies of men call out and satisfy the twin instincts of women to accept and follow a leader, and to expend tenderness on a reckless and erring child, instincts often intermingled in delicious confusion. And in women men find beings who have not wandered so far as they have from the typical life of earth's creatures; women are for men the human embodi- ments of the restful responsiveness of Nature. To every man, as Michelet has put it, the woman whom he loves is as the Earth was to her legendary son; he has but to fall down and kiss her breast and he is strong again. Woman is more in harmony with Nature than man, as Burdach said, and she brings man into harmony with Nature. This organically primitive nature of women, in form and function and instinct, is always restful to men tortured by their vagrant energies; it was certainly with genuine satisfaction that the tender and sympathetic Diderot wrote of women that " they are real savages inside." It is because of this that the ascetics, those very erratic and abnormal examples of the variational tendency, have hated women with hatred so bitter and intense that no language could be found strong enough to express their horror. They knew that every natural impulse of a woman is the condemna- tion of asceticism. All true lovers of the artificial Google 372 MAN AND WOMAN.
and perverse find woman repulsive; " Woman is natural," it is written among the sayings of Baude- laire, " that is to say abominable." But for most men and women this sexual difference has added to the charm of life: it has also added to the everlasting difficulty of life.
Google CHAPTER XVI I.
NATALITY AND MORTALITY.
THE BIRTH-RATE OF MALES HIGHER THAN OF FEMALES — THEIR DEATH-RATE STILL HIGHER — CAUSES OF THE GREATER MORTALITY AMONG MALES — THE RESISTANCE OF WOMEN TO DISEASE — AS ILLUSTRATED BY SCARLET FEVER, SMALL-POX, INFLUENZA, ETC — RECENT IM- PROVEMENTS IN THE DEATH-RATE HAVE SPECIALLY BENEFITED WOMEN — GREATER LONGEVITY OF WOMEN — THE CHARACTERISTIC SIGNS OF OLD AGE LESS MARKED IN WOMEN — THE GREATER TENDENCY TO SUDDEN DEATH IN MEN — THE GREATER RESISTANCE OF WOMEN TO DISEASE AND DEATH A ZOOLOGICAL FACT.
IN turning to the birth-rates and death-rates to seek what light they may have to throw on the organisa- tion of man and woman, we are entering the region of demography. It requires a skilful statistician to reach any assured results here, and I propose to touch very lightly on the matter. From the most reliable investigations into sexual differences in natality and mortality, however, emerge certain results which have a very distinct bearing on the points we are here mainly concerned with. It is necessary at all events to point out this bearing, however briefly.