the history of the intellectually freed and active sexes for countless
generations, that a decided preference of the female intellect for
mathematics, engineering, or statecraft may be made clear; and that a like
marked inclination in the male to excel in acting, music, or astronomy may
by careful and large comparison be shown. But, for the present, we have no
adequate scientific data from which to draw any conclusion, and any attempt
to divide the occupations in which male and female intellects and wills
should be employed, must be to attempt a purely artificial and arbitrary
division: a division not more rational and scientific than an attempt to
determine by the colour of his eyes and the shape and strength of his legs,
whether a lad should be an astronomer or an engraver. Those physical
differences among mankind which divide races and nations--not merely those
differences, enormously greater as they are generally, than any physical
differences between male and female of the same race, which divide the Jew
and the Swede, the Japanese and the Englishman, but even those subtle
physical differences which divide closely allied races such as the English
and German--often appear to be allied with certain subtle differences in
intellectual aptitudes. Yet even with regard to these differences, it is
almost impossible to determine scientifically in how far they are the
result of national traditions, environment, and education, and in how far
the result of real differences in organic conformation. (In thinking of
physical sex differences, the civilised man of modern times has always to
guard himself against being unconsciously misled by the very exaggerated
external sex differences which our unnatural method of sex clothing and
dressing the hair produces. The unclothed and natural human male and
female bodies are not more divided from each other than those of the lion
and lioness. Our remote Saxon ancestors, with their great, almost naked,
white bodies and flowing hair worn long by both sexes, were but little
distinguished from each other; while among their modern descendants the
short hair, darkly clothed, manifestly two-legged male differs absolutely