kind in respect to the influences which form human character.
Whatever any portion of the human species now are, or seem to be,
such, it is supposed, they have a natural tendency to be: even when
the most elementary knowledge of the circumstances in which they have
been placed, clearly points out the causes that made them what they
are. Because a cottier deeply in arrears to his landlord is not
industrious, there are people who think that the Irish are naturally
idle. Because constitutions can be overthrown when the authorities
appointed to execute them turn their arms against them, there are
people who think the French incapable of free government. Because the
Greeks cheated the Turks, and the Turks only plundered the Greeks,
there are persons who think that the Turks are naturally more
sincere: and because women, as is often said, care nothing about
politics except their personalities, it is supposed that the general
good is naturally less interesting to women than to men. History,
which is now so much better understood than formerly, teaches another
lesson: if only by showing the extraordinary susceptibility of human
nature to external influences, and the extreme variableness of those
of its manifestations which are supposed to be most universal and
uniform. But in history, as in travelling, men usually see only what
they already had in their own minds; and few learn much from history,
who do not bring much with them to its study.

Hence, in regard to that most difficult question, what are the
natural differences between the two sexes--a subject on which it is
impossible in the present state of society to obtain complete and
correct knowledge--while almost everybody dogmatizes upon it, almost
all neglect and make light of the only means by which any partial
insight can be obtained into it. This is, an analytic study of the
most important department of psychology, the laws of the influence of
circumstances on character. For, however great and apparently
ineradicable the moral and intellectual differences between men and
women might be, the evidence of their being natural differences could
only be negative. Those only could be inferred to be natural which
could not possibly be artificial--the residuum, after deducting every
characteristic of either sex which can admit of being explained from
education or external circumstances. The profoundest knowledge of the
laws of the formation of character is indispensable to enti