ction. The habitual direction of her mind to dealing
with things as individuals rather than in groups, and (what is
closely connected with it) her more lively interest in the present
feelings of persons, which makes her consider first of all, in
anything which claims to be applied to practice, in what manner
persons will be affected by it--these two things make her extremely
unlikely to put faith in any speculation which loses sight of
individuals, and deals with things as if they existed for the benefit
of some imaginary entity, some mere creation of the mind, not
resolvable into the feelings of living beings. Women's thoughts are
thus as useful in giving reality to those of thinking men, as men's
thoughts in giving width and largeness to those of women. In depth,
as distinguished from breadth, I greatly doubt if even now, women,
compared with men, are at any disadvantage.

If the existing mental characteristics of women are thus valuable
even in aid of speculation, they are still more important, when
speculation has done its work, for carrying out the results of
speculation into practice. For the reasons already given, women are
comparatively unlikely to fall into the common error of men, that of
sticking to their rules in a case whose specialities either take it
out of the class to which the rules are applicable, or require a
special adaptation of them. Let us now consider another of the
admitted superiorities of clever women, greater quickness of
apprehension. Is not this pre-eminently a quality which fits a person
for practice? In action, everything continually depends upon deciding
promptly. In speculation, nothing does. A mere thinker can wait, can
take time to consider, can collect additional evidence; he is not
obliged to complete his philosophy at once, lest the opportunity
should go by. The power of drawing the best conclusion possible from
insufficient data is not indeed useless in philosophy; the
construction of a provisional hypothesis consistent with all known
facts is often the needful basis for further inquiry. But this
faculty is rather serviceable in philosophy, than the main
qualification for it: and, for the auxiliary as well as for the main
operation, the philosopher can allow himself any time he pleases. He
is in no need of the capacity of doing rapidly what he does; what he
rather needs is patience, to work on slowly until imperfect lights
have become perfect, and a conjecture has ripened into a