tle any
one to affirm even that there is any difference, much more what the
difference is, between the two sexes considered as moral and rational
beings; and since no one, as yet, has that knowledge, (for there is
hardly any subject which, in proportion to its importance, has been
so little studied), no one is thus far entitled to any positive
opinion on the subject. Conjectures are all that can at present be
made; conjectures more or less probable, according as more or less
authorized by such knowledge as we yet have of the laws of
psychology, as applied to the formation of character.

Even the preliminary knowledge, what the differences between the
sexes now are, apart from all question as to how they are made what
they are, is still in the crudest and most incomplete state. Medical
practitioners and physiologists have ascertained, to some extent, the
differences in bodily constitution; and this is an important element
to the psychologist: but hardly any medical practitioner is a
psychologist. Respecting the mental characteristics of women; their
observations are of no more worth than those of common men. It is a
subject on which nothing final can be known, so long as those who
alone can really know it, women themselves, have given but little
testimony, and that little, mostly suborned. It is easy to know
stupid women. Stupidity is much the same all the world over. A stupid
person's notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those
which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded. Not so
with those whose opinions and feelings are an emanation from their
own nature and faculties. It is only a man here and there who has any
tolerable knowledge of the character even of the women of his own
family. I do not mean, of their capabilities; these nobody knows, not
even themselves, because most of them have never been called out. I
mean their actually existing thoughts and feelings. Many a man thinks
he perfectly understands women, because he has had amatory relations
with several, perhaps with many of them. If he is a good observer,
and his experience extends to quality as well as quantity, he may
have learnt something of one narrow department of their nature--an
important department, no doubt. But of all the rest of it, few
persons are generally more ignorant, because there are few from whom
it is so carefully hidden. The most favourable case which a man can
generally have for studying the character of