Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/304

290 much to a womanly habit, as to a womanly brain as well as body. Sex is a law to body as well as brain. Sex pervades all Nature, not for the sake of the individual, but for that of the species.

In the insect-world, some bright little creature lives but a few hours, deposits its egg and dies. The sum of its life is sex. Not less do I believe does man, notwithstanding the grandeur of his intellect, conform to the same inexorable law.

Before we enter upon the more difficult part of our subject, there are certain conceded mental attributes peculiar to the sexes which are legitimate subjects of investigation. I say there are mental differences conceded; because, without thought, we include them in our ideal of women, or of men. In the same manner, we need not recall to our minds, or to the minds of others, that women are characterized nearly the world over by peculiarities of dress which distinguish them as a sex. It is part of our ideal of women, because they have ever been associated with such peculiarities. In literature and art, woman has maintained her lofty place, separated more widely from man by her mental trait than by her differences in form. It has ever been a theme more of mind than of matter which has inspired the poet to entwine women in his graceful verse. Her truth, her gentleness, her constancy, these are immortal themes; these are the chords of her nature which have found responsive vibrations in the hearts of poets, and made the monuments of their genius eternal. When the poet and the artist see more in the enticements of woman's form than in her mind, the best of men shrink from the picture. Is it not because our ideal woman in art is associated more with sexual graces of mind than of body? When that strange poet, Algernon Swinburne, clothed in his matchless English the gospel of the flesh, the world of literature recoiled. This union of the gentle nature of woman as a theme with the beautiful in literature, dates back to the cradle of art. Now, what are these conceded mental differences between the sexes.—"Soothing, unspeakable charm of gentle womanhood! which supersedes all acquisitions, all accomplishments," says George Eliot, in "Scenes of Clerical Life."

We may assume gentleness of mind as a sexual mental trait. It does not spring from any process of conscious reasoning. It has no main-spring in a sense of expediency. Unconsciousness and spontaneity are the conditions of its existence. The practical bearing of this paper is to estimate the value of these mental traits as affecting the affairs of daily life. Necessarily, therefore, we must have an approximate standard of measurement. I seek this standard in that class which usually deals with the active affairs of life the masculine type of mind. Not only for this reason do I select this criterion; but, also, this is the type women are endeavoring to reach in essaying a career in the professions. The two types of mind, masculine and feminine, by mutual contrast afford the surest indication of sexual