men have had a monopoly of property and of law-making they have shaped
laws mainly for the protection of property, and in a secondary degree
for the protection of the person. Under these laws a man who beats
another nearly to death is less severely punished than one who signs the
wrong name to a check for five dollars. Man's katabolic nature and his
greater freedom have given him almost a monopoly of crime under these
laws which he has made. Offences against the coming generation, against
health, social efficiency and good taste have until recently been left
to the tribunal of public opinion as expressed in social usage; and
here, as we have seen, women are generally the judges and executioners.
In this, her own field of moral judgment, woman is idealistic and
uncompromising. If one of her sisters falls from virtue she will often
pursue her unmercifully. If a man, on the other hand, commits a burglary
or forgery her sympathy and mercy may make her a very lenient judge.

[15] WILLIAM I. THOMAS, _Sex and Society_, p. 149. University of Chicago
Press, 1907. ELLEN KEY, in _Love and Marriage,_ G.P. Putnam's Sons,
1911, traces the same lines of growth.

In æsthetics, the differences follow the same general law. Women express
beauty in themselves; jewels are for their ornament; and rooms are
furnished as a setting for themselves. The lives of millions of workers
go to the adornment of women. In painting they sometimes excel, but a
Madame Le Brun does her best work when she paints herself and her child,
and when Angelica Kauffmann would paint a vestal virgin, she drapes a
veil over her own head and transfers her features to the canvas.
Sculpture and architecture are too impersonal and abstract to attract
much attention from women at present. Even a sculptor like Mrs. Bessie
Potter Vonnoh finds her truest theme in statuettes of mothers with their
children about them.