Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/362

348, are fixed and definite, and have been substantially unchanged for almost, if not quite, the whole period of human development, we see at once that, if the female mind is especially rich in the past experiences of the race, so far as these have resulted in laws of conduct, it follows that, since these experiences have been the same for all members of the race, there must be a greater uniformity in female character than in male character. As this statement is very abstract, I will try to put it in a less general form:

Experience of the order of events has shown that under certain circumstances, of frequent occurrence, certain conduct is proper and conducive to welfare, while its opposite is hurtful.

This experience being constantly repeated, the tendency to do the proper thing when the circumstances occur gradually takes the shape of an instinct, intuition, habit, or law of duty. Henceforward, all persons who have the impulse which has thus been formed will act in the same way when the circumstances arise, but two persons who have not the impulse will follow their individual judgments, and may or may not act alike.

As the female mind is characterized by the possession of these impulses, it is plain that it must be much more easy for one average woman to predict what another average woman will do, or feel, or think, or say in any given case, than for one average man to predict in the same way of another average man.

We may carry this line of thought a little further. Since male minds have the element of originality, male characters differ among themselves; but, since all are members of the same species, fundamental similarity must underlie this individual diversity, and this fundamental similarity must subsist between female and male characters also. The average female character will therefore have more resemblance to two or more male characters than these latter will have to each other, and accordingly, in all cases where relationship or education has not led two men into the same way of looking at things, a woman will be better able than either of them to foresee the conduct of the other under given circumstances, and of course the advantage of a woman over a man in understanding the conduct of a woman will be still greater.

Since on the whole the differences between male characters are slight when compared with their resemblances, and since the points of resemblance are also points of resemblance to women, we should expect that, although the power of women to foresee male conduct is greater than the power of men to foresee female conduct, the superiority is not so marked as in the other three cases. This superiority of women in predicting conduct will be shown by their possession, to a much greater degree than men, of the power to influence or persuade as distinguished from the power to convince or move by arguments; for to convince is to innovate and place matters in a new light, but the