All the reports agree in this—that
“Women are more docile and amenable to discipline, they do light work as well as men, and are steadier in some respects; on the other hand, they more often remain away from work on the ground of trifling indisposition, are more likely to fail to meet severe demands, and show less intelligence in respect of tasks lying outside the course of their current work, and in general show less desire and less capacity for self-culture.”
Unquestionable is the greater suggestibility of women, doubtless dependent on organic peculiarities, in consequence of which they so quickly become subject to the influence of persons and opinions, when the latter exercise a sufficiently powerful effect upon their emotional life. The independent, the poietic,[26] are more distant from women, are more foreign to their nature, than in the case of men. But that these are quite impossible to them I am compelled to doubt. And when, for example, Havelock Ellis considers it unthinkable that a woman should have discovered the Copernican system, I need merely call to mind the widely known physical discoveries of Madame Curie, whose thoroughly independent work qualified her to succeed her husband as professor at the Sorbonne. We cannot therefore exclude the possibility that in the sphere of the natural sciences notable discoveries and inventions may be made in the future in consequence of the independent work of women.
Very interesting are the observations of Paul Lafitte on the differences between the higher intellectual qualities of man and woman. After drawing attention to the greater receptivity of woman, he says:
“When children of both sexes are educated together, during the first year the girls lead; at this time they have to do chiefly with the reception and retention of impressions, and we see every day that women put men in the shade by the vividness of their impressions and the excellence of their memory. In addition to this we must take into account the inborn sense of women for symmetry, from which it is readily explicable that they generally receive geometrical instruction with very beneficial results. In correspondence with this, we find that woman students of medicine excel in the examinations in physiology and general pathology, and show a clearness of apprehension of series of facts which is really remarkable; on the other hand, they are distinctly inferior in clinical investigations, in which other intellectual qualities are involved. In general, women are more receptive for facts than for laws, more for the concrete than for general ideas. If we chance to hear an opinion expressed regarding someone with whom we are acquainted, a man’s opinion will probably be more accurate in the general outlines, but a woman’s will show a clearer perception of the nuances of character.”
Thus it is that among women concrete philosophers are greater favourites than abstract metaphysicians. According to the experience of a London bookseller, ladies of the West End of London prefer Schopenhauer, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Renan; that is to say, the most concrete, the most personal, the most poetical, and the most religious of thinkers. This last quality especially fascinates the mind of woman. At the same time, want of relationship between the strong suggestibility of woman and her slight power of independent production also strikingly manifests itself in woman’s position with regard to the religious phenomena of the spiritual life. Havelock Ellis shows that ninety-nine in every hundred of the great religious movements of the world have received their initial impulse from men. And yet it has always been women who have been the first to attach themselves to the founders of religions.
In contrast with this, women appear to possess more independent significance in the sphere of politics, as is shown by the fact that there has been such a large number of celebrated women rulers. Diplomatic adroitness, finesse, and self-command, to the extent to which these qualities favour political activity, are indeed specific feminine peculiarities.
The above-mentioned greater suggestibility of woman is connected with her greater emotivity; that is, woman reacts to physical and psychical stimuli more quickly than man. The “vasomotor theory” of the emotions, originated by Mosso and C. Lange, is true to a greater extent of woman than of man. Woman’s neuro-muscular system is more irritable, as is especially shown in the case of the pupil of the eye, and in that of the urinary bladder. By Mosso and Pellacani the bladder is termed the most sensitive psychometer in the body. Contraction of the bladder is well known to occur in many emotional states, such as fear, expectation, tension, and bashfulness. This is much commoner in women and children than in men. The fact that in women under the influence of strong excitement there arises a powerful impulse to urinate, is a fact extremely well known to medical men and others with special opportunities for observation.
The greater neuro-muscular irritability of woman may also be explained as the result of the relatively greater size of her abdominal organs.
To this greater irritability of woman there corresponds a greater susceptibility to fatigue. It appears as a result of any long-lasting task; it is, in fact, a safeguard against over-exertion, which in man so commonly leads to complete exhaustion, because he works too long. The ease with which a woman becomes exhausted is no doubt partly dependent upon the physiological anæmia to which we alluded in the last chapter—to the larger quantity of water and the smaller quantity of red blood-corpuscles (erythrocytes) in her blood.