. And what is it that enables him to do this, if
it is not a greater sensitiveness and a finer response to every
outward suggestion? It would seem, then, that genius must possess the
emotional qualities that are the natural endowment of woman; while
woman herself is to be excluded from genius. A conclusion that is
plainly absurd.

The further we follow this the more striking the likeness between the
qualities of genius and the high, nervous affectability of woman
becomes. The intuition of woman is really direct vision and may mean
only a quicker power of reasoning. Exactly the same quality must be
acknowledged as distinguishing the genius. He, too, _knows, rather
than reasons how he knows_.

Take, again, the alleged superiority of the feminine mind in matter of
memory. There is the same difference between the memory of the
ordinary man and the man of genius. Mental recognition is proportional
to the intensity of consciousness. Because the life of the genius is
more continuously emotional--nearer, in fact, in its nature to the
woman's--he is more ready to receive impressions and to keep them. And
here we may note the incitement towards autobiography common to gifted
men, which would seem to arise from the same psychological condition
which forces women so strongly to self-revelations. So also with all
the mental qualities we shall find, I believe, the same connection
between the special characters of woman and those of genius. Woman's
mental mobility, her tendency towards nervous outbursts, with a
corresponding irritability and greater susceptibility to fatigue,
except under the support of excitement, as also in the resulting
qualities of her power of ready adaptation to changes of habits and
response to new influences, her tact, her keener insight into
character, her quickness in pity, her impulsiveness, her finer
discrimination, her innate sense of symmetry or fitness--each of these
qualities may be said to accord also with the character of genius, but
no one among them is common to the ordinary man.

Even in so obvious a point as facial expression the same relation may
be traced. It is a matter of constant observation that women's faces
are more expressive than men's, showing greater mobility, through the
instinctive response to suggestions from without and within. A similar
mobility will be readily noted in the appearance of almost all men of
special giftedness. The faces of such men rarely exhibit the
stereotype