MR. ROMANES ON MEN'S AND WOMEN'S POWER OF WILL.
MR. ROMANES publishes, in the May number of the Nineteenth Century, his interesting lecture on the mental differences between men and women. His general ver3ict is that while, as a general rule, men have more of the qualities which grow out of active rivalry, more capacity of intellect as well as more physical strength, more momentum, more weight of judgment, more initiative and originality, more tenacity of purpose, more power of specialisation (that is, of turning their mental qualities into special channels of activity, professional or otherwise), and more active courage, women have finer senses, more delicately receptive natures, nimbler faculties of acquisition and application, readier tact, more tender feelings, more humility, more loyalty, and more courage of endurance. These distinctions he partly deduces from the larger brains of men, and the more continuous and coarser struggles in which they engage for the ordinary purposes of life,—struggles which, while they train them for strife, are very apt to render their finer feelings duller and lees sensitive, just as rough usage renders the skin thicker,—and partly confirms from the common experience of the race. As regards the greater quickness of feminine perceptions, Mr. Romanes rests his opinion on actual experiment. He found that when he gave a paragraph of twenty lines in length to a number of educated men and women, leaving it with each for exactly ten seconds, more of the women could read it in the time, and give an adequate account of what they had read, than of the men :—" One lady, for example, read exactly four times as fast as her husband, and could then give a better account even of that portion of the paragraph which alone he had had time to get through." Did Mr. Romanes test the sight of the readers, and form his generalisation on the case of persons of equally good sight ? If not, we doubt whether, so far as the rapidity of the reading was concerned, the experiment was worth much. Long sight tells greatly in favour of quick reading, and short sight greatly against it. But we feel very little doubt that even with men and women of equally quick and keen sight, the general result would have been very much what Mr. Romance has stated. Indeed, Mr. Romanes only confirms as regards activity of intellect the evidence which Mr. Galton long ago gave from his observations on men alone, that the men of small round heads are generally more nimble-minded, more active, than men of large heads, who are very apt to show a good deal of inertia of character,—that is, of slowness in getting their minds under weigh. Now as women's brains are, as a rule, less weighty than men's, one would expect by analogy that their intellects, though less influential, would be more nimble and available, more ready of wit, more swift of perception, as Mr. Romanes states that by actual experience he has discovered them to be. We feel bat little doubt, then, that Mr. Romanes is right in his general conclusions as to the comparative intellectual character of men and women, though it is certainly not possible now to found any sure prophecy of the course of development for the intellectual future of women, on the as yet very inadequate experience of the past.
But, to come to the point where Mr. Romanes's paper seems to us to be somewhat unsatisfactory, he makes what we believe to be the mistake of regarding general weight and momentum of nature as more or less identical with resoluteness of character. Accordingly, he attributes to men a higher share of resolution, and to women a tendency to vacillation of purpose quite without reference to the particular sphere in which resolution or irresolu- tion is to be shown. He quotes from Mr. Galion a passage in which "the willy-nilly disposition of the female" is spoken of as manifest in all stages of the animal world ; and he himself says that the weakness of women, by causing timidity and a sense of dependence, results in a "comparative feebleness of will and vacillation of purpose," sines "they are always dimly conscious of lacking the muscular strength which in the last resort, and especially in primitive stages of culture, is the measure of executive capacity." But to hesitate only because you do not see your way to carrying out your purpose, is hardly weakness of will. Under similar circumstances, every one would be wise to hesitate. Weakness of will properly means vacillation where the power of carrying out your purpose depends on your own resolution, and on that alone. And we should deny emphatically that in this sense vacillation, or weakness of will, is feminine rather than masculine. What is true is that the larger and more massive nature,—which is usually the man's,—gives more momentum to a strong and resolute will, and more impressiveness even in its inertia to an uncertain or slowly moulded will, than can be given to either one or the other by a smaller and less massive nature ; that the man's will, when it is prompt and strong, carries matters with a much greater rush than a woman's will of corresponding calibre, and similarly that a man's will, when it is hesitating and vacil- lating, disturbs the moral atmosphere in the neighbourhood much more effectively than a woman's of corresponding calibre. But so far as we can judge, it is not at all true that women have shown, as a rule, either more tendency to vacillate than men, in the region which they understand, or less tenacity of purpose, though both their resolution and their vacillation may create less stir, and affect leas visibly the whole atmosphere of the world in which they live. Amongst the female Sovereigns, for instance, have we not more instances, in proportion to their number, of persons of imperious will than amongst the male Sovereign? Should we say of Elizabeth and Mary Tudor that they were less remarkable for power of volition than their father and their grandfather P Would any one hold Mary Stuart less strong in will than her son or grandsons P Who would ascribe to Catherine de Medici or Catherine of Russia any deficiency in power of will ? Was either the great Isabella of Spain a weak Sovereign, or even the Isabella of recent years, the mother of Alfonso, to whom, indeed, she seems to have transmitted her force of character without her worse qualities P But there are, perhaps, too few female Sovereigns to afford us any good test of the comparative force of will of men and women So, let any one consider his acquaintances among men and women generally, and we will venture to say that, testing them by matters which they understand,—of coarse it would be easy to show women to be irresolute enough where they have to deal with matters which they have never been taught to understand,—he will not find more examples of resolute men than of resolute women. We quite admit that the irresolute men,—and they are very numerous,—make a much greater spectacle of their irresolution than irresolute women, and BO sometimes even manage to give an air of impressiveness and magnitude to the very inertia which renders their action so hesitating,-just as a great ship which answers her helm much more slowly than a small ship, creates a much greater stir in the process. But compare an ordinary woman's decision in her nursery with an ordinary man's deoision in his business, and we believe there will be nothing to choose between the two, unless, indeed, the mother's maternal instinct gives, on the whole, greater promptitude to her volition than the man's professional training gives to his. Or, compare the completeness and promptness with which an ordinary woman carries through a series of economies in her household, when that becomes necessary, with the completeness and promptness with which an ordinary man carries through a series of economies in his manufactory or trade, when that is necessary ; and again we doubt whether there will be found anything to choose between the two. It is true, of course, that men have more initiative, more enterprise, more disposition to enter on novel experiences and untried fields than women; that is part of the special masculine character, as we cordially agree with Mr. Romanee. But that, after all, does not proceed from volition, but from restlessness of nature. Measure volition by the tenacity with which a cherished purpose is pursued, and we venture to say that the tenacity of women is quite equal to the tenacity of men, though it may be quite true that the cherished purposes of women will be determined more by their affections and less by their ambitions, and therefore will seem more natural and less difficult to adhere to than men's. A woman's purpose, once formed, is at least as stable an affair as a man's. Look to the great masters of literature, and we shall find as much definite- ness and decision and volition in the women they have painted for us as in the men. Indeed, irresolution proper has much oftener been depicted in men than in women. Hamlet, for instance, in Shakespeare, and Tasso and Wilhelm Meister in Goethe, present us with pictures of irresolution much more notable than any we can recollect in the characters of women. To go to the antique world, Clytemnestra is more resolute than /Egisthus, and Antigone's is a far more resolute nature than that of her lover. Shakespeare paints Lady Macbeth as towering far above her husband in sheer resolve. And in all Sir Walter Scott's studies of human nature, there is no study of heroic will so noble as that of Jeanie Deans,-will to resist overwhelming temptation, will to execute a great and difficult enterprise. Of course, we do not mean to argue from such cases that the masters of literature think women's wills stronger than men's, for the very selection of a woman for a part involving heroic resolve is often due to the wish to paint, a highly impressive situation. But we do maintain that the great dramatists, though they rightly attributed more massiveness to the character of their chief heroes than to those of their chief heroines, and more momentum to their resolves, recognised in the women at least as high and strenuous a power of carrying out their resolves, where they fully understood the nature of the choice submitted to them, as in the men. A. woman's volition is launched with much less noise, and makes much less disturbance in the world than a man's ; but we venture to say that it is quite as steady, quite as keen, and quite as likely to cut its way to its intended goal. There is more initiative, more spontaneousness of move- ment, more momentum, about men's resolves, but there is not more tenacity or constancy or coherence of aim.
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