quality but we are not now concerned with the question of origins. Most
women find it easy to live from day to day; the man is more given to
systematizing and planning. Thus in offices, men are more efficient as
heads of departments, while women handle details admirably. In public
life we have recently seen thousands of women eager to depose a United
States Senator, accused of polygamy, without regard to the bearing of
the concrete act on constitutional guarantees. Women have done little
with abstract studies like metaphysics; they have done much with the
novel, where ideas are presented in the concrete and particular.

This habit of dealing with particulars, and disinclination for
abstraction, leads easily to habitual action. It is easy for women to
stock up their lower nerve centers with reflex actions. This, of course,
goes along with the general anabolic characteristics of the sex. Hence
women are the conservers of traditions; rules of conducting social
intercourse appeal to them; and they are the final supporters of
theological dogmas.[12] Women naturally uphold caste, and Daughters of
the Revolution and Colonial Dames flourish on the scantiest foundations
of ancestral excellence. Man, on the other hand, is more radical and
creative. He has perfected most of our inventions; he has painted our
great pictures; carved our great statues; he has written music, while
women have interpreted it.

[12] HELEN B. THOMPSON, _Psychological Norms in Men and Women_, p. 171,
University of Chicago Press, 1903.

Along with these fixed qualities of action, women have a tendency to
indirection when they advance. We say they have diplomacy, tact and
coquetry, while man is more direct and bald in his methods. Of course,
one easily understands how these qualities may have arisen, since "fraud