Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/627

Rh In women, if there is a greater arrest of individual growth than in men, the difference begins in the fœtal life; their comparative weight and size at birth are the same as at maturity; and, if the former finish their growth earlier, it must be because relatively they grow more rapidly. The feminine circulation and respiration are both quicker; and so are the female mental processes. When the whole subject has been quantitatively investigated with sufficient exactness, I believe it will be found that, what man has gained in "massiveness," woman has gained in rapidity of action; and that all their powers of body and mind, mathematically computed, are, and will continue to be, real and true equivalents. The premises are already sufficiently known to compel me to this conclusion.

One point more. Physical and psychical growth in man are not arrested simultaneously. After the body has ceased to grow, the brain-system still enlarging and compacting its highly-mobile structure, mental power increases long after the more rigid, merely mechanical forces have reached their maximum. The same law applies, at least, in equal degrees to woman. If there is any proof that feminine psychical powers normally reach an earlier cessation of growth than the masculine, then, so far as I can learn, no scientist has yet collated the facts and put them before the world in evidence. On the contrary, so far is the earlier physical maturity of woman from necessitating a corresponding earlier psychical maturity, that, in the light of physiological relations, we may deduce the exactly opposite hypothesis.

In woman, maximum mental power should be reached at a considerably later period than in man, because the greater cost of reproduction, though related chiefly to the physical economy, is indirectly psychical; tending to diminish intellectual action also, and to retard its evolution. The cost of all reproductive provisions fully met, and the child-bearing age at an end, the special constitutional tendency to accumulate reserve force will not be immediately destroyed. Functions, active hitherto in the interest of posterity, go on now to accumulate in the interest of the individual. Still further, the naturally less overtaxed intellectual faculties of woman now have this advantage also over those of man—an advantage at least as great as the previous disadvantage.

When the vast weight of past social conditions is considered, that women thus far have failed to acquire large powers of abstract thinking and feeling, affords no reason for supposing that there is a corresponding constitutional lack of ability in this direction. They attain an earlier growth, but, that they reach the highest point even of physical vigor earlier than men, we have no evidence. Many facts indicate otherwise. Men and women live to equal ages, retain their vigor to equal ages—those using the greater force more slowly, those the lesser force more rapidly—thus with uneven steps keeping even pace in