In like manner the suffragist is fond of picturing to herself that
woman is for all ordinary purposes the intellectual equal, and that
the intelligent woman is the superior of the ordinary man.

These results are arrived at by fixing the attention upon the fact
that an ordinary man and an ordinary woman are, from the point of view
of memory and apprehension, very much on a level; and that a highly
intelligent woman has a quicker memory and a more rapid power of
apprehension than the ordinary man; and further, by leaving out of
regard that it is not so much a quick memory or a rapid power of
apprehension which is required for effective intellectual work, as
originality, or at any rate independence of thought, a faculty of
felicitious generalisations and diacritical judgment, long-sustained
intellectual effort, an unselective mirroring of the world in the
mind, and that relative immunity to fallacy which goes together with a
stable and comparatively unresponsive nervous system.

When we consider that the intellect of the quite ungifted man works
with this last-mentioned physiological advantage, we can see that the
male intellect must be, and--_pace [with the permission of]_ the woman
suffragist--it in point of fact is, within its range, a better
instrument for dealing with the practical affairs of life than that of
the intelligent woman.

How far off we are in the case of woman from an unselective mirroring
of the world in the mind is shown by the fact that large and important
factors of life may be represented in woman's mind by lacunae [gaps]
of which she is totally unconscious.