Page:Sexology.djvu/147

 painting she excels in miniature. "We are forced to con- clude that she is destined for light and easy work, and that she thwarts the designs of Nature whenever she engages in exercises which call for the employment of considerahle strength. So we can never behold woman condemned to rude labor, as among semi -barbarous people, without the deepest pity. Under the dominion of this custom they gradually lose their feminine attributes, and, without acquiring any of the characteristics of manly beauty, they, one by one, are divested of their own peculiar graces, and fall into a condition of premature senility — recognizable neither as men nor women.

Woman measures less space in walking, and accomplishes long marches with greater difficulty, but her step has a grace and lightness which man's can never equal. In general, her organs are relatively smaller, and by compensation, of keener susceptibility and of finer organic texture, which give them the advantage in operations requiring less of receptivity and force than of quickness and acuteness. The globe of her eye is smaller, and the lens more convex, so that if she receives fewer rays of light she can see more closely. Skillful to distinguish delicate shades and minute differences, she has difficulty in estimating the proportions of distant or voluminous objects. Iler ear is smaller, and the canal more constricted, but this canal is round rather than funnel-shaped; it narrows less abruptly; hence, if it admits less noise, if it loses distant sounds, those which it does receive reach the membrane of the drum more directly, and she can distinguish the tone of the faintest sounds. Her organs of taste and smell have also less development and more tenuity; so she prefers sweet aliments and delicate perfumes.

These differential relations in external properties and