e have also sprung up a large number of girls'
colleges, in which all the bad points of masculine education are
carefully copied. These colleges are frequented by girls of the upper
and middle classes, chiefly the latter, and no doubt they are gradually
working a revolution in feminine character. But heredity--especially
when it is, within a generation or so, the heredity of long ages--is a
very potent factor in the formation of both mind and body, and offers a
steady resistance to innovation. The full effects, therefore, of this
educational revolution in respect to womankind are not yet apparent.

The net result of this is that the majority of women are still addicted
to thought. Facts have not yet entirely taken the place of ideas in
their minds, except in extreme cases which may be called exceptional,
although it must be confessed that they are becoming every day less
rare. They think, no doubt, for the most part about the commonplace
incidents of their daily life, and possibly they are given too much to
morbid introspection. But anything that serves to make a human being
exercise the function for which his brain was originally intended should
be regarded with thankfulness. It is a thousand times better for the
development of the mind to speculate about the motives of acquaintances,
or to philosophize on the shortcomings of the maid-of-all-work, than to
babble off the dates of the Sovereigns from William the Conqueror, or to
construe Horace's Odes without taking in a syllable of their sense.

Women have thus formed a habit of reflection about trifles, which the
more gifted amongst them extend to weightier topics. And it is in this
way that they are able to gain an ascendancy over man that is the more
potent because it is unobtrusive. The average woman sees things the
subtleties of which escape man altogether, and she perceives them
because her mind has been trained, by natural development, to
observation.

The average man, on the other hand, is the most unobservant creature
under the sun. He rarely understands even what is going on under his
nose. It is all very well to say that his superior mind is wrapt up in
percentages, or absorbed in grand schemes for the regeneration of
mankind. The plain truth is that he does not possess the faculty of
applying his intelligence to everything within his range of observation.
Evolution intended him to possess it; but education systems, which
harbour very little respect for the