man than in
man.[93] A table prepared by Topinard shows that woman from 20 to 60
years of age has from 126 to 164 grams less brain weight than man,
while her deficit from 60 to 90 years is from 123 to 158 grams.[94]

The only explanation at hand of this relative superiority of
brain weight in old women is that with the close of the period of
reproduction (the anabolic surplus being no longer consumed in the
processes associated with reproduction) the constructive tendency
still asserts itself, and a slight access of growth and vitality
results to the organism.

* * * * *

It must be confessed that the testimony of anthropologists on the
difference in variability of men and women is to be accepted with
great caution. As a class they have gone on the assumption that
woman is an inferior creation, and have almost totally neglected
to distinguish between the congenital characters of woman and those
acquired as the result of a totally different relation to society
on the part of women and men. They have also failed to appreciate
the fact that differences from man are not necessarily points of
inferiority, but adaptations to different and specialized modes of
functioning. But, whatever may be the final interpretation of details,
I think the evidence is sufficient to establish the following
main propositions: Man consumes energy more rapidly; woman is more
conservative of it. The structural variability of man is mainly toward
motion; woman's variational tendency is not toward motion, but toward
reproduction. Man is fitted for feats of strength and bursts of
energy; woman has more stability and endurance. While woman remains
nearer to the infantile type, man approaches more to the senile.
The extreme variational tendency of man expresses itself in a larger
percentage of genius, insanity, and idiocy; woman remains more nearly
normal.

The fact that society is composed of two sexes, numerically almost
equal, but differing in organic and social habits, is too significant
to remain without influence on the structural and occupational sides
of human life, and in the following chapters we shall note some of the
influences of sex, and of the differences in bodily habit of men and
women, on social forms and activities.

SEX AND PRIMITIVE SOCIAL CONTROL

The greater strength and restlessness of man and the more stationary
condition of woman have a striking social expression in the fact that