And gave
me as an authority for the statement Aristotle, before whom, of course,
I bow.

A singular and suggestive fact is that woman generally displays pitiless
logic when she is dealing with things that she knows well. An expert
housekeeper is the type, and there are no lapses in her argument with a
tradesman. It is a platitude to mention the business capacity of the
Frenchwoman, and many women are expert in the investment of money, in
the administration of detail, in hospital management, in the rotation of
servants' holidays (which, in large households, is most complex). It
would appear that woman is unconcentrated and inconsequent only where
she has not been properly educated, and this has a profound bearing on
her future development. There is a growing class, of which Mrs. Fawcett,
Mrs. Havelock Ellis, the Countess of Warwick, Miss Jane Addams, are
typical, who have bent their minds upon intellectual problems; women
like Miss Emma Goldman; like Miss Mary McArthur, whose grasp of
industrial questions is as good as any man's. They differ profoundly
from the average feminine literary artist, who is almost invariably
unable to write of anything except love. I can think of only one modern
exception,--Miss Amber Reeves; among her seniors, Mrs. Humphry Ward is
the most notable exception, but not quite notable enough.

This tendency is, I believe, entirely due to woman having always been
divorced from business and politics, to her having been until recently
encouraged to delight in small material possessions, while discouraged
from focusing on anything non-material except religion, and from
considering general ideas. Particularly as regards general ideas woman
has lived in a bad atmosphere. The French king who said to his queen,
"Madam, we have taken you to give us children and not to give us
advice," was blowing a chill breath upon the tender shoot of woman's
intelligence. Neither he nor other men wished women to conceive general
ideas: women became incapable of conceiving or understanding them.
Thence sprang generalization, the tendency in woman to make sweeping
statements, such as "All men are deceivers," or "Men can do what they
like in the world," or "Men cannot feel as women do." It is not that
they dislike general questions, but that they have been thrust back from
general questions, so that they cannot hold them. Here is a case:

_Case 2_

With the object of entertaining an elderly lady, who is an invalid, I