The position of woman: actual and ideal / with preface by Sir Oliver Lodge.

Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The position of woman: actual and ideal / with preface by Sir Oliver Lodge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    offspring, because those are essentially emotional and affect family life, which is among the most important and practical of the relationships of the emotions. There are no definite means of testing the intensity of the emotions. As to bodily sensation the tests by the aesthesiometer seem to show that it is somewhat less in woman than man. If the intensity of the emotions is tried by its expression in poetry, which is the literature of feeling, man has given proof of a higher depth of feeling than woman, but this may be partly because his power of literary expression has been more developed. It may be taken as fairly proved that man has more power of controlling the out- ward expression of emotion than woman. This, if a fact, has many social aspects. Woman, however, educated according to modern standards, is gradually acquiring more power of controlling her emotions, up to a certain point at least. This acquisition of control over the emotions and their expression is one of the psychological results that, in my judgement at least, will be a counteractive to some of the social dangers to which I shall afterwards refer. It will affect conduct, for it will give time for some consideration and thought before certain emotions are acted on. It cannot fail to have a steadying influence on woman. It will diminish unreasoning and impulsive action in the case of many women, and so give time for the cui bono? to come in. The emotions of anger and jealousy and even those of satisfaction and