peers, chiefly with the object of supplementing the legal element in the Chamber. Many English writers have alleged, and with great show of reason, that, if an upper Chamber is useful and if the hereditary principle is to be respected, it is expedient to leaven the anomaly with a large infusion of some popular element, and that the most conservative process by which this change can be effected is to create life-peers from such members of the Commons as have served the public in the lower House well and for some time. But, if the experiment were tried on a small scale, it would have but little effect on the very large hereditary element which can, if it pleases, present itself in the House of Lords; and if it were largely used, apart from the fact that it would make the Lords inconveniently numerous, the expedient would continually weaken the lower House by drafting off its ablest members, and probably would disparage those who quitted the popular for the irresponsible Chamber. The admirers of a brand-new peer are always far fewer than those of a popular leader, as Chatham discovered, and many inferior men have found since. A man may be excused the dignity which he has inherited; it is another thing to run after Naaman the Syrian, and get a change of raiment from him. There are of course vain men, insignificant men, and adventurers, whom titular dignity makes neither better nor worse. But there has been sound political good sense in the attitude which the two most considerable English statesmen of modern times, Peel and Gladstone, have taken in reference to what was once thought the final course of a political career-the acceptance of a peerage.

JAMES E. THOROLD ROGERS.

THE ETHICS OF SEX.

THE main psychological distinction between men and women is that men think more than women, and that their thinking is of a better quality, because it is carried on chiefly in the form of reasoning, and is drawn from a wider field of facts. This is not a random inference, but may be scientifically verified by any observer who will approach this question in the same impartially critical spirit which should guide investigation upon every subject. Brainactivity is a constant phenomenon in both sexes during waking hours; but much of this activity is merely emotional in women. A great part of the conversation of women is a helpless playing with facts, a bringing of them together like the words of a dictionary, with little endeavor to found any conclusions upon them; and it is among women that we hear the most positive expressions of approval, condemnation, or pity. An intense personality modifies their decisions on most questions. The scientific spirit which desires to possess the truth and the philosophic spirit which impels to reason upon that truth are rarely found in women.

Nature has exacted the penalty for this constitutional narrowness by keeping their activity within narrow bounds. To verify this, we have only to take the testimony found in the records of modern civilization. Wherever we look we find woman caring for the individual, while man has cared for the individual and for the community. General interests have fallen into his hands, while personal ones have been left to hers. This division of labor has been so strictly based upon natural facts that we see that those facts must hold a fundamental cause of such results. In many of the processes of civilization we get the combined influence of the sexes; but we have one institution which shows the record of unmixed masculine activity; and this institution is the state. The moral evolution of national life has been shared by women; but

the intellectual bases of all governments have been devised by men. The modern state, in its two forms of republic and constitutional monarchy, covers a vast variety of relations, and attempts the orderly adjustment of the needs and duties of immense communities, all agreeing or endeavoring to live in accordance with its requirements. These requirements are called laws-the constitution being the soil out of which laws grow to answer special needs. Not only is the plan of the modern state an emanation from the masculine mind, but its administration has been wholly in the hands of men. Queens have leaned upon masculine advisers so completely as to have left their reigns practically to masculine guidance.

Now, the course of history does not show any deliberate exclusion of woman from the affairs of government; but it does show, most clearly, that her want of participation in governments has been due to her defective reasoning powers, and to her incapacity for judging of general interests. Her small brain has limited her to a small field of activity; and her activity in this narrow field has been so intense as to give great perfection to those departments of life which have fallen under her care. She has ruled well in her small realm, and has shown a fine ability in organizing and applying her small forces.

Women have made four important contributions to modern civilization they have cared for the body in its immediate needs by the preparation of food and clothing, and by ministration to the sick; they have been the conservers of moral forces, and have insisted on special standards of conduct in society and in the home; they have guided the rudimentary intellectual training of children; and they have contributed to the aesthetic development of the race by creating and combining beautiful forms and colors in dress, in decoration, and in household art. These four departments have been mainly controlled by women, and the comfort and beauty of every-day life proclaim their success.

Moral claims or rights exist only in the fitness of the claimant to do the work involved in such rights. Man's right to found states was in his comprehension of the immense interests involved in them. Women could not possibly have organized any modern state. There has never been any body of women of sufficient largeness of mind and inductive reasoning power to have grasped and dealt with the facts and principles which go to the making of any one of our better national constitutions. In every civilized commu

nity it has always been possible to select a larger number of intellectual men than of women equally endowed; and it is safe to say that, if nation-making had been left to women, the elements would still have been in seething confusion. But, now that the wild horse is caught and tamed, answers obediently to word, bit, and bridle, we may all take a holiday ride! We may even hold the reins and guide him over the smooth road. The owner is at hand to relieve us if he grows restless, and it is our right to take advantage of a holiday prepared for us by the foresight of generations of thoughtful men. It is not true that men have legislated for themselves alone. If they have fought for their altars and firesides, they have also legislated for them. Nothing is so plain to the scientific student of history as that the inconspicuous position of women in the state has been due to a natural lack of power to deal with great questions. Small brains can not give birth to great thoughts. Certainly there can have been no conspiracy on the part of man throughout the centuries to lessen the amount of woman's brain. Men lay far-reaching plans; they project undertakings which are to cover wide territories and affect large communities. Women's plans rarely extend beyond the few immediately about them. It is true that the modern movement for woman suffrage has been originated and mainly carried on by women; but this is the only project of great magnitude which they have originated. Putting the man's share in creating civilization beside woman's, the latter shrinks to a mere speck in contrast with the mighty achievements of men. This contrast has rarely been stated and dwelt upon with the emphasis which it deserves. Woman's work has been temporary in character, accomplished, expended, and repeated day by day. Much of man's work has been permanent. The principles of mathematics and optics, the invention of machinery, the immense industrial enterprises which feed millions, systems of trade, voyages of discovery, the art of printing, the creations of architecture, temples, palaces, bridges, ships, the great accumulation of facts in natural science, marine geography, meteorology, medicine, jurisprudence, musical composition, sculpture, creative painting, and literature are, with slight exceptions, the work of men. The only one of these departments to which women have considerably contributed is literature; here their creations have been mostly of poetry and fiction. In history, philosophy, criticism, and the drama, they have done nothing of great value or amount. The names of the few women really distinguished in literature belong to the last century

of our history, and the list is a very short one-Madame de Staël, George Sand, Charlotte Brontë, Mrs. Browning, Miss Martineau, Frances Power Cobbe, and one name which by its superiority refuses to be classified with the rest, George Eliot. America has produced only two women that could be called great: these are Margaret Fuller and Charlotte Cushman. Yet the life of Margaret Fuller was rather an aspiration than an achievement, and she is but an intense type of the American woman of the nineteenth century, who shows a divine discontent with her present intellectual status and a desire to grow to her full development. But in the nature of things this desire can not expand into a reality, save in rare cases, for many generations. Under the most favorable conditions women can not hope to overtake men in intellectual pursuits; for the same stimulating circumstances which impel woman forward act with equal force upon man, and there is little danger that he will play the role of the tortoise in the fable, and lie down to repose while she presses on to the goal.

Yet he might sleep for a thousand years, and wake to find that he had not yet lost his preeminence in intellectual power. A certain body of reformers have so persistently held up the names of a few eminent women as types that the unscientific observer is continually tempted to base his conclusions on a few reiterated and conspicuous facts instead of on a survey of the whole field. It is a curious problem for the scientific student of the evolution of the human intellect to calculate from carefully gathered data, and using an ascertained rate of brain-development as a unit of measurement, how long it will take for the average feminine brain to reach the present development of the average masculine brain. Studied from the physiological side and under the known law that, qualities being identical, the amount of power in any two brains will be determined by their relative quantities, we must admit that, unless it can be shown that the quality of woman's brain is superior to man's, the conclusion will show him to be permanent master in the domain of intellect.

Now, the question of quality can be readily settled by an appeal to facts. The intellectual and aesthetic productions of men are of finer quality than those of women because they contain and express a larger range of emotional experiences. With the one exception of George Eliot, we can not name a woman who is worthy of comparison with Shakespeare, Schiller, Goethe, and Auerbach, in the department of imaginative literature; for the novel and drama may VOL. CXXXI.-NO. 284.

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