so prompt as women in
thinking, nor so quick to feel. Large bodies take more time to get
into full action. On the other hand, when once got thoroughly into
play, men's brain would bear more work. It would be more persistent
in the line first taken; it would have more difficulty in changing
from one mode of action to another, but, in the one thing it was
doing, it could go on longer without loss of power or sense of
fatigue. And do we not find that the things in which men most excel
women are those which require most plodding and long hammering at a
single thought, while women do best what must be done rapidly? A
woman's brain is sooner fatigued, sooner exhausted; but given the
degree of exhaustion, we should expect to find that it would recover
itself sooner. I repeat that this speculation is entirely
hypothetical; it pretends to no more than to suggest a line of
enquiry. I have before repudiated the notion of its being yet
certainly known that there is any natural difference at all in the
average strength or direction of the mental capacities of the two
sexes, much less what that difference is. Nor is it possible that
this should be known, so long as the psychological laws of the
formation of character have been so little studied, even in a general
way, and in the particular case never scientifically applied at all;
so long as the most obvious external causes of difference of
character are habitually disregarded--left unnoticed by the observer,
and looked down upon with a kind of supercilious contempt by the
prevalent schools both of natural history and of mental philosophy:
who, whether they look for the source of what mainly distinguishes
human beings from one another, in the world of matter or in that of
spirit, agree in running down those who prefer to explain these
differences by the different relations of human beings to society and
life.

To so ridiculous an extent are the notions formed of the nature of
women, mere empirical generalizations, framed, without philosophy or
analysis, upon the first instances which present themselves, that the
popular idea of it is different in different countries, according as
the opinions and social circumstances of the country have given to
the women living in it any speciality of development or
non-development. An Oriental thinks that women are by nature
peculiarly voluptuous; see the violent abuse of them on this ground
in Hindoo writings. An Englishman usually thinks that