Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/167

Rh be so prompt as to forbid deliberation or thought. The power of quick and proper action in the innumerable exigencies of ordinary life, independent of reflection, is at least equally important with the power to extend our field of rational action.

By the former power we hold on to what has already been gained, while the latter power enables us to increase our advantage in the struggle for existence, and to widen our control over the laws of nature. Psychological variation is the result of the latter power, psychological heredity the result of the former, and psychological evolution and human progress the result of their combined action.

If the female mind is especially rich in the fruit of this past experience, we should expect women to excel men in the promptness and accuracy with which the conduct of ordinary life is decided, and in the range of circumstances over which this power of rational action without reflection extends; that is, we should expect men to excel in judgment, women in common sense.

This important and fundamental difference between the male intellect and the female must have a very great influence in determining the occupations or professions in which each sex is most likely to succeed when brought into fair competition with the other sex.

The originating or progressive power of the male mind is shown in its highest forms by the ability to pursue original trains of abstract thought, to reach the great generalizations of science, and to give rise to the new creations of poetry and art. The capacity for work of this character is of course very exceptional among men; and, although history shows that it is almost exclusively confined to men, it must not enter into our conception of the ordinary male mind. The same power of originating and of generalizing from new experiences is possessed, in a lesser degree, however, by ordinary men, and gives them an especial fitness for and an advantage over women in those trades, professions, and occupations where competition is closest, and where marked success depends upon the union of the knowledge and skill, shared by competitors, to the inventiveness or originality necessary to gain the advantage over them.

Women, on the other hand, would seem to be better fitted for those occupations where ready tact and versatility are of more importance than the narrow technical skill which comes from apprenticeship or training, and where success does not involve competition with rivals.

The adequate examination of this aspect of our subject would furnish material for a treatise, and it is out of place here, as all that is necessary for the purposes of our argument at present is to point out the difference, and to show that it is the necessary consequence of our view of the manner in which sex has been evolved: that it is not due to the subjection of one sex by the other, but is the means by which the progress of the race is to be accomplished.