ng to give indication of
such a fact, and it seems highly improbable, that, in some subtle
manner now incomprehensible, there might tend to be a subtle correlation
between that condition of the brain and nervous system which accompanies
ability in the direction of certain modern forms of mental, social
labour, and the particular form of reproductive function possessed by
an individual. It may be that, inexplicable as it seems, there may
ultimately be found to be some connection between that condition of the
brain and nervous system which fits the individual for the study of the
higher mathematics, let us say, and the nature of their sex attributes.
The mere fact that, of the handful of women who, up to the present,
have received training and been allowed to devote themselves to abstract
study, several have excelled in the higher mathematics, proves of
necessity no pre-eminent tendency on the part of the female sex in
the direction of mathematics, as compared to labour in the fields of
statesmanship, administration, or law; as into these fields there has
been practically no admittance for women. It is sometimes stated,
that as several women of genius in modern times have sought to find
expression for their creative powers in the art of fiction, there must
be some inherent connection in the human brain between the ovarian sex
function and the art of fiction. The fact is, that modern fiction being
merely a description of human life in any of its phases, and being
the only art that can be exercised without special training or special
appliances, and produced in the moments stolen from the multifarious,
brain-destroying occupations which fill the average woman's life, they
have been driven to find this outlet for their powers as the only one
presenting itself. How far otherwise might have been the directions in
which their genius would naturally have expressed itself can be known
only partially even to the women themselves; what the world has lost by
that compulsory expression of genius, in a form which may not have been
its most natural form of expression, or only one of its forms, no one
can ever know. Even in the little third-rate novelist whose works cumber
the ground, we see often a pathetic figure, when we recognise that
beneath that failure in a complex and difficult art, may lie buried
a sound legislator, an able architect, an original scientific
investigator, or a good judge. Scientifically speaking, it is as
unprove