mathematical problems, and master scientific detail in a manner wholly
indistinguishable: as illustrated by the fact that in modern universities
the papers sent in by male and female candidates are as a rule absolutely
identical in type. Placed in like external conditions, their tastes and
emotions, over a vast part of the surface of life, are identical; and, in
an immense number of those cases where psychic sex differences appear to
exist, subject to rigid analysis they are found to be purely artificial
creations, for, when other races or classes are studied, they are found
non-existent as sexual characteristics; as when the female is supposed by
ignorant persons in modern European societies to have an inherent love for
bright colours and ornaments, not shared by the male; while experience of
other societies and past social conditions prove that it is as often the
male who has been even more desirous of attiring himself in bright raiment
and adorning himself with brilliant jewels; or as when, among certain
tribes of savages, the use of tobacco is supposed to be a peculiarly female
prerogative, while, in some modern societies, it is supposed to have some
relation to masculinity. (The savage male of today when attired in his
paint, feathers, cats' tails and necklaces is an immeasurably more
ornamented and imposing figure than his female, even when fully attired for
a dance in beads and bangles: the Oriental male has sometimes scarcely
been able to walk under the weight of his ornaments; and the males of
Europe a couple of centuries ago, with their powdered wigs, lace ruffles
and cuffs, paste buckles, feathered cocked hats, and patches were quite as
ridiculous in their excess of adornment as the complementary females of
their own day, or the most parasitic females of this. Both in the class
and the individual, whether male or female, an intense love of dress and
meretricious external adornment is almost invariably the concomitant and
outcome of parasitism. Were the parasite female class in our own societies
today to pass away, French fashions with their easeless and grotesque
variations (shaped not for use or beauty, but the attracting of attention)