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10 in support of the correctness of this view is often proclaimed as conclusive; and ranged behind it is the authority of sundry notable physiologists, psychologists, sociologists and gentlemen of fashion. The contrary view in accordance with which women are allowed to possess ideas, some of them even original, is supported by evidence almost as intelligible and by partisans quite as eminent and quite as confident. The fact seems to be that it is extremely difficult to demonstrate how much of a woman's intellectual bent is due to the sexual bias of her mind, and how much to the influences which surround her from cradle to grave. It may be, for example, that literature is intrinsically feminine in its character, and that exact science is dominantly masculine. In the meantime it must certainly be granted that the conditions environing many girls are from childhood on such as tend to cultivate a mild but definite variety of sentimentalism. It has been suggested that some of the methods of studying literature current in these days tend also to sentimentalism, and so appeal to established habits of the feminine mind, while repelling the masculine temper. Courses dealing with the more emotional and esthetic forms of literary criticism and appreciation must necessarily be exposed to some danger from this source. Possibly a slight corrective and palliative for the excessive cultivation of such courses by women might be found in a larger emphasis upon more masculine points of view.

It seems improbable, however, that the relatively small number of men in the courses in belles-lettres in coeducational institutions is due in any considerable degree to this asserted fact regarding native masculine tastes, nor in any indisposition on the part of the men to sit in classes with women. For, as regards the second point, it must be remembered that there are many courses in which both men and women are well represented, and in which the ratio of the sexes to one another has changed but little throughout considerable periods. This is true, for example, of certain courses in history. The first point gains an interesting side light from the observation that in several important eastern institutions for men, where the modes of exposition and instruction in literature do not differ absolutely from those in vogue in western coeducational colleges, the attendance upon such courses shows in recent years no extreme shrinkage, and, as regards certain courses in English, even exhibits a marked development. The most obvious explanation of this difference between the east and the west (over and above the influence of the stimulating personality of certain successful instructors) is unquestionably to be found in the social conditions of which we have already spoken. The appreciation of the educational value of literature is necessarily more circumscribed in new and less wealthy communities than in those which have been