always been driven to
supplement her weakness with tact, from the days of Jael and Delilah
down to the present day adventuress.

These qualities of mind naturally drive women to literary interests
which are concrete, personal and emotional. Men turn more easily than
women to the abstract generalizations of science. Of course, there are
marked exceptions to these general statements, in both sexes. Madame
Curie, who was recently a candidate for the honors of the French
Academy, and who, in 1911, was given the Nobel prize for her
distinguished services to chemistry, is but one of many women who are
famous to-day in the world of science. Still the private life of these
women, as in the case of Sonya Kovalevsky, seems to bear out our general
conclusion. Men, on the other hand, as milliners and editors of ladies'
journals, show marked skill in catering to women's tastes; but on the
whole the differences indicated seem important and widely diffused.

Another profound difference between men and women is the woman's greater
tendency to periodicity in all her functions and adjustments to
life.[13] In all normal societies the life of the man is fairly regular
and constant from birth to old age. He moves along lines mainly
predetermined by his heredity and his environment, his habits and his
work. Even puberty is less disturbing in its effect upon a boy than upon
a girl; and often by eighteen we can anticipate the life of a young man
with great accuracy. The one element in his life hardest to forecast is
the effect of his love-affairs.

[13] See chapter on Periodicity in G. STANLEY HALL'S _Adolescence_, Vol.
I, p. 472.

With a woman, it is quite different. As a girl, the period of puberty
produces profound changes; and after that, for more than thirty years
she passes through periodical exaltations and depressions that must play
a large part in determining her health, happiness and efficiency. In the
forties, comes another great change which affects her life to a degree
strangely ignored by those who have dealt with her possibilities in the
past.[14]

[14] KARIN MICHAELIS, _The Dangerous Age_, John Lane Co., 1911, is said
to have sold 80,000 in six weeks when it first appeared in Berlin. _The
Bride of the Mistletoe_, by JAMES LANE ALLEN (Macmillan), deals with the
same period.

But the great element of uncertainty, always fronting the girl and young
woman, is marriage. Marriage for her generally means abandonment of old
wor