ucated' is not the result of
over-population or of a too liberal supply of competent men. It is
caused by uniformity of attainment; and until this is generally
realized, one of the most pressing social problems cannot hope to find a
solution.

CHAPTER IX

WOMAN'S EMPIRE OVER MAN

Men have always been reluctant to acknowledge the truth about woman's
real position in the world. They keep up a beautiful kind of masculine
myth about the mastery of the sterner sex and their mental superiority,
and they talk of woman in a patronizing way as man's helpmate.

There is no doubt--it is a physiological fact--that man possesses more
brain-power or capacity than woman. But woman has, on the other hand, an
enormous advantage in the use to which she has put her mental machinery
from time immemorial. The truth is that women think out things for
themselves a great deal more than does the average man. As, however,
they concentrate their attention for the most part on what are called
the minor interests of life, whilst men are occupied with bigger and
more important things, it has come to be accepted that the mind of woman
is inferior to the mind of man.

In one sense this is true. Potentially, woman's mind has not the
capacity of man's. One has only to look for female Shakespeares,
Newtons, Bismarcks, Raphaels, and Beethovens, to verify the fact beyond
dispute. But we are dealing here with existing circumstances, not with
potentialities. Therefore I have no hesitation in saying that, as a
general rule, women use what brain power they have to much better
advantage than men; which amounts to a confession that woman, apart from
intellectual specialization, is, on the average, man's mental superior.

This is a sweeping statement to make, but it is made only in the
interests of truth, and it admits of a great deal of plausible
explanation.

Man's mental training, as has been fully pointed out, consists almost
entirely in pouring facts into a vacuum created by the careful
elimination of original thought. Until recently, women have not been
subjected to this agreeable process. For a very long time they were not
educated at all, and when governesses first came into fashion in better
class families, the idea was rather to endow girls with a few graceful
accomplishments than to cram them with dates and other kinds of
mechanical knowledge.

This tradition is still kept up to a certain degree in the higher social
circles; but ther