CHAPTER XIV

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FEMININITY

"I consider it presumptuous in any one to pretend to decide what women are or are not, can or cannot be, by natural constitution. They have always hitherto been kept, as far as regards spontaneous development, in so unnatural a state that their nature cannot but have been greatly distorted and disguised, and no one can safely pronounce, that if woman's nature were left to choose its direction as freely as men's, and if no artificial bent were attempted to be given to it except that required by the conditions of human society, and given to both sexes alike, there would be any material difference, or, perhaps, any difference at all, in the character and capacities which would unfold themselves."-JOHN STUART MILL.

"We are probably in about the same position and stage with reference to the questions of sex as were the men of the eighteenth century with reference to the question of evolution."— LESTER F. WARD.

IN discussing the difference between men and women, the words "male" and "female" are perfectly definite, but in the related terms "masculine " and " feminine " there is included a large number of physical, mental, and social characteristics which are variable and unstable, sometimes capable of a precise description, but oftener as accidental and temporary as the fashions of the times. The scientists who have tried to measure

women by the physical and mental standards of men quite frankly admit that, beyond the primary sex differences, and a very few permanent secondary qualities, there is a vast debatable area of variation which must engage the attention of future investigators. There is no debate about the significance of a smooth face in women and of a beard in men, nor about the contrasting timbre of their voices, but whether the fact that women have fewer red corpuscles than men signifies that they are a feebler race, or merely less developed than men in our age and time, is an open question.

Whether less sensitiveness to pain and greater sensitiveness to emotions on the part of woman indicates an ineradicable difference of nerve centers, or merely of conventional training; whether she was born unstable and changeable, or made so by the limitations of her life-these and similar disputes have been settled, only to be unsettled soon afterward by equally scientific authority. In such a conspicuous matter as mentality the dogmatisms of research with regard to the inferior brain capacity and intellectual products of women, were scarcely uttered before they became untenable by reason of the achievements of women themselves-at first of a few brilliant exceptions only, and shortly afterwards, of an increasing number as education and oppor

As a current

tunity were extended to them. journal humorously puts it: women have lived to do everything that it was said they could not do, except grow whiskers.

It is only a short time-as progress goessince men as far-seeing as Darwin and Huxley held that the "intuitive" or womanly" quality of mind, the quick perception, and rapid imitation characteristic of women, put them in the same category with bygone civilizations and the lower races. But from the time that Buckle showed that the most important discoveries of modern time have resulted from the deductive method, that is, from the feminine habit of mind, there has been an increasing tendency to believe that imagination and intuition were effecting quite as much progress as the logical understanding. Certainly there is a consensus of opinion among modern psychologists and sociologists in placing higher value upon the very mental quality which was not long ago held to establish finally woman's inferiority.

The ground of the disputes over the qualities and capacity of women has come to lie quite outside the primary sex-functions, or even the secondary sex characters, which were evolved apparently to insure reproduction. Indeed, the characteristics in dispute range from the sig nificance of the larger thyroid gland in the human

female to the effect of voting on her loyalty to domestic duty-from the investigation of her senses to the causes of divorce. In short, it is no longer a question of what women could or could not do if they had an equal chance, but of what is likely to be the effect of their trying to do, under a handicap, whatever they have the courage to attempt. In our present stage, the conclusions as to the permanence or significance of any feminine peculiarity at which any observer will arrive are in accordance usually with his habitual anti- or pro-feminine bias. In this respect, the discussion resembles the attempt to determine species and sub-species in natural history. In any large number of specimens there are always some on the border-line; whether these will be named as new species or relegated to a lower place as sub-species or varieties, depends almost wholly on the personal idiosyncrasy of the naturalist.

In some aspects the woman-questions are analogous to race questions. We know tolerably well what degree of civilization the darker races have attained in their native habitats; but there is very little accurate, unbiased information as to the degree and conditions of the progress which any of these races has made in other climates, and under the stimulus of new environments. Only two decades ago it was confidently predicted