ing differences in opportunity.

Indeed, when we take into consideration the superior cunning as well
as the superior endurance of women, we may even raise the question
whether their capacity for intellectual work is not under equal
conditions greater than in men. Cunning is the analogue of
constructive thought--an indirect, mediated, and intelligent approach
to a problem--and characteristic of the female, in contrast with the
more direct and open procedure of the male. Owing to the limited and
personal nature of the activities of woman, this trait has expressed
itself historically in womankind as intrigue rather than invention,
but that it is very deeply based in the instincts is shown by the
important role it plays in the life of the female in animal life.
Endurance is also a factor of prime importance in intellectual
performance, for here as in business life "it is doggedness as does
it;" and if woman's endurance and natural ingenuity were combined in
intellectual pursuits, it might prove that the gray mare is the better
horse in this field as well as in peasant life. The most serious
objection, also, to the view that woman is fitted to do continuous and
hard work, arises from her relation to child-bearing; but this is at
bottom trivial. The period of child-bearing is not only not continuous
through life, but it is not serious from the standpoint of the time
lost. No work is without interruption, and child-birth is an incident
in the life of normal woman of no more significance, when viewed in
the aggregate and from the standpoint of time, than the interruption
of the work of men by their in-and out-of-door games. The important
point in all work is not to be uninterrupted, but to begin again.

Whether the characteristic mental life of women and the lower races
will prove to be identical with those of the white man or different
in quality is a different question, and problematical. It is certain,
at any rate, that our civilization is not of the highest type
possible. In all our relations there is too much of primitive man's
fighting instinct and technique; and it is not impossible that
the participation of woman and the lower races will contribute new
elements, change the stress of attention, disturb the equilibrium, and
force a crisis which will result in the reconstruction of our habits
on more sympathetic and equitable principles. Certain it is that no
civilization can remain the highest if another civilization ad