Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/368

354 attained very great eminence as conversationalists, as actresses, and as novelists. In the ethics of intellect they are decidedly inferior. Women very rarely love truth, though they love passionately what they call 'the truth,' or opinions they have received from others. They are little capable of impartiality or of doubt; their thinking is chiefly a mode of feeling; though very generous in their acts they are rarely generous in their opinions, and their leaning is naturally to the side of restriction. They persuade rather than convince, and value belief rather as a source of consolation than as a faithful expression of the reality of things. They are less capable than men of distinguishing the personal character of an opponent from the opinions he maintains. Their affections are concentrated rather on leaders than on causes, and if they care for a great cause it is generally because it is represented by a great man, or connected with some one whom they love. In politics their enthusiasm is more naturally loyalty than patriotism. In benevolence they excel in charity rather than in philanthropy." While I can not believe that Lecky's statement is entirely unprejudiced, I think no one will deny that the views which I have quoted agree in the main with those which have gained general acceptance in the past. At the present time, however, there is a growing tendency to regard the relations of the sexes as due in great part to male selfishness; and while the substantial correctness of our view of the differences between the male and the female character is acknowledged, its origin is attributed to the "subjection" of women by men. In this paper I have attempted to present reasons, which I believe are new, for regarding the differences as natural and of the greatest importance to the race.

Those who acknowledge the weight of my argument, as applied to evolution in the past, may, however, question its applicability to the human evolution of the future. It may fairly be urged that while we grant that the course of evolution from the lower forms of life up to rational man has been by the slow process of variation and heredity, we have now passed into a new order of things, and the great advances of the human race have been and are now brought about by the much more rapid and totally dissimilar process of intelligent education. It may be urged that heredity does very little more for the civilized than for the savage child, and that the wide difference between the savage and the civilized adult is mainly the result of the training and instruction of the individual; that it has not been brought about by the destruction of those children whose congenital share in the results of the intellectual advancement of the race is most scanty. It may be urged that, since man has reached a point where progress is almost entirely intellectual, and depends upon his own efforts, he is free from the laws by which development up to that point was reached.

We are not concerned at present with the question how far progress might be accelerated by intelligent selection, and we may therefore conditionally accept the view that future progress, for some time