e man may brag of having "been there
before" as often as possible; of man lovelacing for his credit's sake
and woman adventuring at her peril.

8

I submit that each man and woman has two heredities: one the ordinary
heredity from two parents and their forbears, the other more complex and
purely mental--the tradition of sex. Heredity through sex may be defined
as the resultant of consecutive environments. I mean that a woman, for
instance, is considerably influenced by the ideas and attitudes of her
mother, grandmothers, and all female ascendants. They had a tradition,
and it is the basis of her outlook. Any boy born in a slum can, as he
grows educated, realize that the world lies before him; literature and
history soon show him that many as lowly as he have risen to fame, as
artists, scientists, statesmen; he may even dream of becoming a king,
like Bonaparte. To the boy nothing is impossible; if he is brave, there
is nothing he may not tear from the world. He knows it, and it
strengthens him; it gives him confidence. What his fathers did, he may
do; the male sexual heredity is a proud heritage, and only yesterday a
man said to me, "Thank God, I am a man." Contrast with this the
corresponding type of heredity in woman. Woman carries in her the slave
tradition of her maternal forbears, of people who never did anything
because they were never allowed to; who were told that they could do
nothing but please, until they at last believed it, until by believing
they lost the power of action; who were never taught, and because
uneducated were ashamed; who were never helped to understand the work of
the world, political, financial, scientific, and, therefore, grew to
believe that such realms were not for them. I need not labor the
comparison: obviously any woman, inspired by centuries of dependence,
instinctively feels that, while everything is open to man, very little
is open to her. She comes into the arena with a leaden sword; in most
cases she hardly has energy to struggle.

A little while ago, when Britain was floating a large war loan, one
woman told me that she could not understand its terms. We went into them
together, and she found that she understood perfectly. _She was
surprised._ She had always assumed that she did not understand finance,
and the assumption had kept her down, prevented her from understanding
it. Likewise, and until they try, many women think they cannot read maps
and time-tables.

With that he