g
conduct and, in particular, mental expression. It is the very A B C of
the question that appropriate training and opportunities of use are
essential if any mind is to develop. Supply such mental stimuli to the
boy and man, deny them to the girl and woman, and then call "the art
impulse of the nature of a male secondary sexual character," because
woman has as yet played but a small and secondary part in any of the
arts! The source of error is so plain that one can only wonder at the
fallacies that have been accepted as truth. Thus, when one finds so
just and careful an investigator as Havelock Ellis saying, "It is
unthinkable that a woman should have discovered the Copernician
system!" it can but be regarded as an example of that sex-bias which
marks so strikingly men's statements on this subject of mental
sex-differences. We may well ask, Why unthinkable? As answer I will
give the finely just acknowledgment of Iwan Bloch on this very
question. He refers to this statement of Havelock Ellis, and then
says, "I need merely call to mind the widely known physical
discoveries of Madame Curie, whose thoroughly independent work
qualified her to succeed her husband as professor at the Sorbonne. We
cannot, therefore, exclude the possibility that in the sphere of the
natural sciences notable discoveries and inventions may be made in the
future in consequence of the independent work of women."[322] To take
another instance. We find the fact that so far women have gained very
small distinction in music, contrasted with the great number of girls
who are trained to play on musical instruments. But this is surely to
show a complete misunderstanding of the question. It is like saying
that the best preparation for a painter to know the colours reflected
on water by a cloudy or sunny sky would be a course of optics. Music
is at once the most imaginative and the most severely abstract of the
arts, and the absence of women from music must be referred to deeper
causes, which yet, it seems to me, are not far to seek.

Mind, I make no claim for women. I acknowledge fully that in all the
arts, except in acting and in dancing, woman's achievement has been
infinitely less than man's. There have been a few great women
poets--notably a Sappho, many good writers of fiction, and some
capable painters. But to bring forward these particular women and to
try either to exaggerate or belittle their importance can serve
nothing. This search for ability a