Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/248

242 Mr. Pearson, his inference would still have been wrong; idiocy is mainly a congenital condition and therefore a fairly good test of organic variational tendency; insanity, though usually on a hereditary basis, is invariably an acquired condition, dependent on all sorts of environmental influences, so that it can not possibly furnish an equally fundamental test. Color-blindness, Mr. Pearson also tells us, is a peculiarly male 'disease,' and must not be used as an argument for greater variability in men unless we use the prevalence of cancer of the breast in women on the other side. Again there is a double error; not only is a congenital anomaly improperly compared to an acquired disease, but a gland like the breast which is only functional in one sex is paired off with an organ like the eye which is equally functional in both sexes. The prevalence of gout among men is, again, paired off against the prevalence of hysteria among women. Here the error is still more complex. Not only is gout not a truly congenital condition, though, like insanity, it frequently has a hereditary basis, but if we take into account conditions of 'suppressed' gout it is by no means more prevalent in men than in women, and even if we do not take such conditions into account, it is still not possible to pair off gout against hysteria, since, although in some countries hysteria is more prevalent in women, in others (as, according to some of the best authorities, in France) it is found more prevalent in men. But it would be tedious to explore further this confused jungle of misstatements.

From the point of view of sexual differences in variational tendency it is not necessary to exclude rigidly either 'tertiary,' 'secondary,' or even 'primary' sexual characters, provided we are careful to avoid fallacies which are fairly obvious, and do not compare organs and characters which are not truly comparable. Even those secondary sexual characters which are almost or entirely confined to one sex may properly be allowed a certain amount of weight as evidence, especially if we grant that such characters are merely the perpetuation of congenital variations. If, therefore, as is generally agreed, such characters more often occur in males, that fact is a presumption on the side of a greater male variational tendency which there is no reason entirely to ignore. It is not conclusive, but it must receive its due weight. To assume, with Professor Pearson, that a variation has no variational significance because it occurs often in one sex and seldom in the other seems altogether unwarrantable.

If, however, Professor Pearson's attempt to discriminate between different kinds of sexual characters from the point of view of sexual