en."[1136] Their tact is attributed to their quicker perception
and to their lack of egoism. "The man, being more self-absorbed than the
woman, is often less alive than she to what is going on around."[1137]
The man has a more stable nervous system than the woman. Combativeness
and courage produce that stability; emotional development is
antagonistic to it. "In proportion as the emotions are brought under
intellectual control, in that proportion, other things being equal, will
the nervous system become more stable."[1138] Ages of subjection are
also said to have produced in women a sense of dependence. Resignation
and endurance are two of women's chief characteristics. "They have been
educated in her from the remotest times."[1139] Throughout the animal
kingdom males are more variable than females. Man varies through a wider
scale than woman. Dwarfs and giants, geniuses and idiots, are more
common amongst men than amongst women.[1140] Women use less philosophy;
they do not think things out in their relations and analysis as men do.
Miss Kingsley said that she "had met many African men who were
philosophers, thinking in the terms of fetich, but never a woman so
doing."[1141]

On the facts of observation here enumerated nearly all will agree. The
traits are certainly handed down by tradition and education. Whether
they are evolutionary is far more doubtful. They are thought to be such
by virtue of applications of some generalizations of evolutionary
philosophy whose correctness, and whose application to this domain, have
never been proved.

+360. The sex distinction; family institution; marriage in the mores.+
The division of the human race into two sexes is the most important of
all anthropological facts. The sexes differ so much in structure and
function, and consequently in traits of feeling and character, that
their interests are antagonistic. At the same time they are, in regard
to reproduction, complementary. There is nothing in the sex relation, or
in procreation, to bring about any continuing relation between a man and
a woman. It is the care and education of children which first calls for
such a continuing relation. The continuing relation is not therefore "in
nature." It is institutional and conventional. A man and a woman were
brought together, probably against their will, by a higher interest in
the struggle for existence. The woman with a child needed the union
more, and probably she was more unwilling to en