to the Equality of Man and Woman as Workers--Prospect for the
Intellectual Future of Woman--Has Woman Advanced?

The woman voter would be pernicious to the State not only because she
could not back her vote by physical force, but also by reason of her
intellectual defects.

Woman's mind attends in appraising a statement primarily to the mental
images which it evokes, and only secondarily--and sometimes not at
all--to what is predicated in the statement. It is over-influenced by
individual instances; arrives at conclusions on incomplete evidence;
has a very imperfect sense of proportion; accepts the congenial as
true, and rejects the uncongenial as false; takes the imaginary which
is desired for reality, and treats the undesired reality which is out
of sight as non-existent--building up for itself in this way, when
biased by predilections and aversions, a very unreal picture of the
external world.

The explanation of this is to be found in all the physiological
attachments of woman's mind:[1] in the fact that mental images are in
her over-intimately linked up with emotional reflex responses; that
yielding to such reflex responses gives gratification; that
intellectual analysis and suspense of judgment involve an inhibition
of reflex responses which is felt as neural distress; that precipitate
judgment brings relief from this physiological strain; and that woman
looks upon her mind not as an implement for the pursuit of truth, but
as an instrument for providing her with creature comforts in the form
of agreeable mental images.

[1] Certain of these have already been referred to in the letter printed