Feminism / by Correa Moylan Walsh.

  • Correa Moylan Walsh
Date:
1917
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Feminism / by Correa Moylan Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    feminist physician August Forel is even more emphatic, assert- ing that “ the mental correlative sexual characters are much more important than those of the body: the psychology of men is differ- ent from that of women.” ** Girls are more precocious than boys, as are also the children of low races compared with the highly civilised. Women read and think more rapidly, men more deliberately.2> Men are more taciturn, women more loquacious.” Women are more receptive of opinions from others, less origin- ative of ideas, and less tenacious of tenets, of their own; less able to stand alone, craving sympathy more, not having the same sturdy independence as men.2” Ellis finds that of six hundred religious sects prior to about a century ago, only seven were founded by women.”® In impersonal emotions women are in- ferior to men, in personal emotions superior, especially in paren- tal, if not in connubial love.2® Hence their virtues are different, not absolutely, but in degree, as we have already had occasion to remark; and in general men hold more to justice, and women incline more to mercy.2® Women are more extensive in their labours, men more intensive; but in space women are more con- fined, and men spread more. For women are more centripetal — clasping and holding to the bosom; while men are more centri- fugal — pushing aside and shoving their way through. Women, 24The Sexual Question, 65. Forel says further: ‘‘ The difference in the sexual functions leads to the formation of differences in other parts of the body, and in instincts and sentiments, which find their material expression in the different de- velopment of the brain,” 50. He holds that in women the sexual appetite is situated in the higher brain, the seat of love, while ‘‘the masculine appetite is situated more in the lower cerebral centres,” and therefore is more separable from love, 258, cf. 67, 77, 128-9; 95, 98. Hence, too, “the brain is the true seat of nearly all sexual anomalies,” 208. Physicians often attack venereal troubles by applications to the brain and the spine. 25 Frederic Harrison: Woman’s intellect is ‘‘ more agile,’’ but ‘‘less capable of prolonged tension,’ Realities and Ideals, London, 1908, p. 73; similarly, 87-8, 94, 134. “‘Women in general,’ says William James; ‘‘train their peripheral visual at- tention more than men,” Psychology, i. 437.. Even Mill had asserted that women have ‘greater quickness of apprehension,” but their minds are “sooner fatigued’’ and they ‘“‘do best what must be done rapidly,” Subjection of Women, 110-11, 122. 26.A difference supposed to have been slowly acquired through primeval ages when the women worked together, and with their children, at home, while the men hunted or fished solitarily, or in company on military expeditions had to keep silence: cf. Mason, op. cit., 190. On the importance of women’s “ chatter,” to teach language to children, see Miss Ida Tarbell’s The Ways of Woman, 68 (following Remy de Gourmont). 27 “‘ The truth remains,” says Mrs. Gallichan, ‘‘ woman’s need of love is greater than man’s need, and for this reason, where love fails her, her desire for salvation is deeper than man’s desire,” The Truth about Woman, 322. 28 Man and Woman, 1060. 29 Cf. Finck, Romantic Love and Personal Beauty, 19. Women, says Frederic Harrison, are at their best in affection, men in activity, Realities and Ideals, 75, cf. 95, 99-100. 30So E, D. Cope: “In departments of morals which depend on the emotional nature, women are the superior; for those which depend on the rational nature, man is the superior. When the balance is struck, I can see no inferiority on either side. But,” he adds, ‘‘the quality of justice remains with the male,’ The Relation of the Sexes to Government, 13-14. For the last cf. E. M. Cullen in The New York Times, Sept. 3d, 1915; also Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena, ii. § 379, and Aristotle, Physiognomonica, c. v.
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