Havelock Ellis has detected a decline in the emotivity of modern woman, under the influence of custom and education, especially as a result of the great diffusion of bodily sports among girls. But he does not believe that anything of the kind can lead to a complete abolition of the emotional differences between the sexes, since these depend upon firmly established bodily differences, such as the greater extension of the sexual sphere and of the visceral functions in woman, upon woman’s physiological anæmia, and upon the more marked periodicity of her vital processes.
“So many factors work in combination, in order to give a basis for the play of the emotions, whose greater extension can be overcome by no alteration of the milieu, or of custom. The emotivity of woman may be reduced to finer and more delicate shades, but it can never be brought down to the level of the emotivity of the male sex.”
In respect of artistic endowment the male sex is unquestionably superior to the female. The long series of male poets, musicians, painters, sculptors, of the highest genius cannot be matched by any notable number of striking female personalities in the same sphere of artistic activity. Even the art of cooking has been further developed by men. Without doubt the differences in sexuality are the principal causes of this deficiency. The impetuous, aggressive character of the male sexual impulse also favours poietic endeavours, the transformation of sexual energy into higher plastic activity, as it fulfils itself in the moments of most exalted artistic conception. The greater variability of the male also serves to explain the greater frequency of male artists of the first rank.
John Hunter, Burdach, Darwin, Havelock Ellis, and others, have shown that there exists a greater tendency on the part of man to divergence from type. In the course of evolution, man represents the more variable and progressive, woman the more monotonous and conservative, moiety of mankind. These differences find no less clear expression in the psychical sphere. Notwithstanding increasing individual differentiation—in truth, affecting only the minority, the élite among women, as Rosa Mayreder very rightly insists—this great difference in the variability of the sexes will ever continue. This biological fact is certainly of great importance in respect of civilization and of the relation between the sexes.
In a comparison between man and woman, the important fact of menstruation must never be forgotten. Menstruation is only the expression, only a phase, of a continuous undulatory movement in the entire feminine organism. The intellectual and emotional state of woman is, beyond question, a different one in different phases of the monthly cycle. Icard, and recently Francillon (“Essai sur la Puberté chez la Femme”—“Essay on Puberty in Woman,” pp. 189-198; Paris, 1906), have given us exact information on this subject.
“In all tests of strength and cleverness,” says Havelock Ellis, “the woman’s degree of strength and exactitude is related to the level of her monthly curve. Moreover, in every criminal procedure, the relation between the time of occurrence of the alleged crime and the accused’s monthly cycle should invariably be taken into consideration.”
The results obtained by Helen Bradford Thompson by experimental research in her “Comparative Psychology of the Sexes” (Würzburg, 1905) agree in general with the details we have already given as the result of earlier researches. In her experiment also
“man proved better developed in respect of motor capacity and accuracy of judgment. Woman had, indeed, sharper senses and a better memory. The opinion, however, that emotional excitement plays a greater part in the life of woman has not been confirmed. On the contrary, woman’s greater tendency towards religion and towards superstition is a proof of her conservative nature, of her function to guard established beliefs and modes of action.”
Thus we cannot expel from the world the fact that man and woman are eminently different alike physically and mentally. Whether, as Alfons Bilharz declares, they are really throughout equivalent opposites, or, as he expresses the comparison, like +1 and -1, their sum is equivalent to nil, must remain at present undetermined. But that ineradicable differences exist is certain. There is no question here of an inferiority to man. What woman lacks on one side she has more of on another. She is through and through a creature constructed on other lines, standing nearer to Nature than man, and for this reason, like Nature, problematical, the great guardian of the secrets of Nature (Bärenbach).
“Who shall explain the wonderful
Magic power of woman?”