Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/288

 282 TEE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

The Psychological Data, — ^Let ns now turn to the argument from psychology. Formerly it was held by men of science and laymen alike that women were mentally inferior to men, on the average; that if the mental abilities of all men and of all women could be averaged sep- arately the result would show a great advantage in favor of men. Exact experiment and class-room experience, however, have led many men of science to abandon the hypothesis that women are on the average men- tally inferior to men.

It should be noted that the laboratory experiments purporting to establish sex differences are frequently without bearing on the question of differences in the higher mental processes, and that perfect correla- tion between efficiency in laboratory tests and efficiency in normal pur- auits has not been established. Indeed, Heymans, a careful and con- BcientiouB thinker, in his monograph on feminine psychology* falls back almost entirely on the direct estimates of university professors as to their men and women students. To be sure, his informants, on the whole, support the time-honored view that women are more industrious, but lack creative power and independence of thought, yet, as Heymans himself recognizes, these judgments may have been largely affected by the judges' initial bias. That this is indeed so i^ suggested by a comparison of equally offhand judgments by various scholars not cited by Heymans. Thus, Paul Bartels^ is convinced that the average woman is as competent as the average man, whether at the chessboard or in politics, in science or at the stock exchaTige, or wherever else in life activity depends predominantly on the intellect. Her great inferiority appears, according to this writer, where efficiency is the re- sult of a weU-developed personality : she fails as a leader of crowds or captain of a ship, in poetry, as a physician, as a teacher and leader of boys, etc. In striking contrast to this view stands that of Forel, who considers women and men on a par emotionally, men superior intel- lectually, and women superior in point of volition. In the face of such disagreement, we may well doubt whether the time has come for a defi- nite statement as to the psychological equipment of woman as compared to man. To revert to the method employed by Heymans, it is inter- esting to note that a number of American professors who have answered Professor Sedgwick's article in the New York Times find no inferior- ity on the part of their female students. The general change of attitude noticeable on this subject in academic circles gives at least presumptive evidence to the effect that the older opinion was a doctrine of more or less rationalized folk-belief without adequate foundation in fact.

Nevertheless, it is true that woman's intellectual achievement as recorded in histoiy has been inferior, and even scholars who admit the

• "Die Psyeliologie der Frau." T X. C; p. 48.

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