point of view, man
considerably excels woman in his creative imagination, his faculty for
combination and discovery, and by his critical mind. For a long time
this was said to be explained by the statement that women had not the
opportunity of measuring their intelligence against that of men; but,
thanks to the modern movement of the emancipation of women, this
assertion becomes more and more untenable. It is so with regard to
artistic creations, for women have at all times taken part in works of
art. When certain people maintain that a few generations of activity
suffice to elevate the intellectual development of women, they
confound the results of education with those of heredity and phylogeny
(vide Chapter II). Education is a purely individual matter and only
requires one generation to produce its results. But neither mnemic
engraphia, nor even selection can modify hereditary energies in two or
three generations. Tied down hitherto partly by servitude, the mental
faculties of woman will doubtless rise and flourish in all their
natural power as soon as they are absolutely free to develop in
society equally with those of men, by the aid of equal rights. But
what does not exist in the hereditary mneme, that is to say in the
energies of germs, inherited through thousands or millions of years,
cannot be created in a few generations. The specific characters and
consequently the sexual characters have quite another constancy than
is believed by the superficial prattlers, who deafen us with their
jargon on a question of which they only grasp the surface. There is no
excuse, at the present day, for confounding hereditary correlative
sexual characters with the individual results of education. The latter
are acquired by habit and can only be inherited as such by an
infinitesimal engraphia, possibly after hundreds of generations.

On the other hand woman possesses, from the intellectual point of
view, a faculty of reception and comprehension as well as a facility
of reproduction which are almost equal to those of man. In higher
education at the universities the women I have had the opportunity of
observing at Zurich for many years, show a more equal level than that
of the men. The most intelligent men reproduce best and the most
stupid men reproduce worse than the corresponding female extremes. I
do not think one can say much more concerning the purely intellectual
domain.

Artistic production confirms this opinion. Woman is