Page:Woman and her possibilities.djvu/21

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HER POSSIBILITIES
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spine, pelvis, hair, and tint of skin, Physiological differences are found in touch, sensibility to pain, smell, taste, sight, hearing, muscular strength, quickness of movement, manual dexterity, resistance to disease and death, and in the cyclic life. Psychological differences are seen in rapidity of perception, dreaming and the states allied thereto, the emotions, artistic impulses, and religious feeling.

Speaking generally: Bodily and mentally women are the more stable, are less changeful in structure, present fewer anatomical abnormalities, comprise fewer geniuses and fewer idiots, are more near the typical or race- form. They are really the race-stiffening material; are more fitted for endurance and stability (the home stayers, the permanent centres) as contrasted with men (the roamers about), who are capable of feats of strength, violence, speed, and bursts of energy. Women are more devout than men, more tyrannical, more bigoted and intolerant, more jealous, more deceitful, more cruel.

As to what the position of women has been and is, the injustice of all sorts—legal, social, religious, industrial, individual—from which women have suffered and are suffering, I propose to say little. I have no doubt you are competent to say enough on this subject for yourselves. You will find materials in books like Lecky's "History of European Morals," in Havelock Ellis's writings, as well as in books of anthropology, to give you a fairly accurate idea of woman's position under man-made customs, man-made superstitions, man-made laws, man-made history, man-made holy scripture, and man-made exegetics thereof. Nor do I mean to say much on what has been done by way of removing legal disabilities, granting equal privileges in education and in industrial occupations and such like.