Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/226

216 lies rather with the finished product. Of the 483,517 patents issued by the U. S. Patent Office prior to October, 1892, 3,458 were granted to women. In general, woman's thought is less methodical and less deep. The arts, sciences, and philosophy owe their progress more to man than to woman. Whether one studies the history of logic, mathematics, or philosophic thought, of the special sciences or scientific discovery and invention, of poetry or general literature, of musical composition or technique, of painting, sculpture, or architecture, one is engaged more with the names of men than of women. Even in those spheres for which woman by her peculiar physical or mental qualities is particularly adapted, such as vocal music, the stage, and the writing of novels, it is doubtful whether a list of the greatest artists would include more women than men. Even in the arts of cooking and dressmaking, when men undertake them they often excel. Woman, owing to her greater patience, her intuition, and her retentive memory, as well as her constant association with the young, is especially qualified for teaching and has equal or greater success in this work than man. Yet all educational reforms, from the kindergarten to the university, have originated with the latter.

What woman loses in profundity she gains in quickness. She excels in tact, and extricates herself from a difficulty with astonishing adroitness. In language she is more apt than man. Girls learn to speak earlier than boys, and old women are more talkative than old men. Among the uneducated the wife can express herself more intelligently than the husband. Experience in coeducational institutions shows that women are more faithful and punctilious than men, and at least equally apt. In colleges where a record of standing is kept the women gain probably a somewhat higher average. In the years immediately following graduation the men make much greater intellectual progress. Women reach their mental maturity at an earlier age, and develop relatively less after maturity. In many kinds of routine work, especially that requiring patience, women are superior, but they are less able to endure protracted overwork.

We have seen that woman is less modified physically than man and varies less from the average. The same is true mentally. Women are more alike than men and more normal, as it were. The geniuses have been men for the most part, and so have the cranks. Woman's thought pursues old rather than new lines. Her tendency is toward reproduction, while man's is toward production. Woman loves the old, the tried, and the customary. She is conservative, and acts as society's balance-wheel. Man represents variation. He reforms, explores, thinks out a new way.

One of the most marked differences between man and woman is the greater excitability of the nerve centers in the latter. Woman