dition of the human faculties, even for speculative
uses. I believe that what is gained in special development by this
concentration, is lost in the capacity of the mind for the other
purposes of life; and even in abstract thought, it is my decided
opinion that the mind does more by frequently returning to a
difficult problem, than by sticking to it without interruption. For
the purposes, at all events, of practice, from its highest to its
humblest departments, the capacity of passing promptly from one
subject of consideration to another, without letting the active
spring of the intellect run down between the two, is a power far more
valuable; and this power women pre-eminently possess, by virtue of
the very mobility of which they are accused. They perhaps have it
from nature, but they certainly have it by training and education;
for nearly the whole of the occupations of women consist in the
management of small but multitudinous details, on each of which the
mind cannot dwell even for a minute, but must pass on to other
things, and if anything requires longer thought, must steal time at
odd moments for thinking of it. The capacity indeed which women show
for doing their thinking in circumstances and at times which almost
any man would make an excuse to himself for not attempting it, has
often been noticed: and a woman's mind, though it may be occupied
only with small things, can hardly ever permit itself to be vacant,
as a man's so often is when not engaged in what he chooses to
consider the business of his life. The business of a woman's ordinary
life is things in general, and can as little cease to go on as the
world to go round.

But (it is said) there is anatomical evidence of the superior mental
capacity of men compared with women: they have a larger brain. I
reply, that in the first place the fact itself is doubtful. It is by
no means established that the brain of a woman is smaller than that
of a man. If it is inferred merely because a woman's bodily frame
generally is of less dimensions than a man's, this criterion would
lead to strange consequences. A tall and large-boned man must on this
showing be wonderfully superior in intelligence to a small man, and
an elephant or a whale must prodigiously excel mankind. The size of
the brain in human beings, anatomists say, varies much less than the
size of the body, or even of the head, and the one cannot be at all
inferred from the other. It is certain that some wome