G. Delauney

“ If the girl begins thus to fall behind the boy at a certain point after having enjoyed the same training, it must be that her inferiority is real, and can not be ascribed to a difference in education that does not exist. ”

“ How comes it then that, although there are incomparably more women than men following music as a profession, women furnish good performers but no composers? The same observation is applicable to painting and the culinary art. Why is it that, while all the men who devote themselves to the latter art become good cooks, there are among the thousands of women who exercise it as a profession so few of the first quality? ”

“ THE sentimental pretensions put forward by a political school which holds that woman is intellectually the equal of man, give a character of actuality to the question of the comparison of the sexes. This question, which it has been the custom to treat from a metaphysical point of view, is to us purely anthropological, or rather zoological; for we propose to show by characteristic examples borrowed from the whole animal kingdom that sexuality undergoes the same evolution in all species, including the human species. The female surpasses the male in certain inferior species. ”

“ We are not authorized to conclude, from the fact that they have not yet figured as inventors, that they will always be incapable of discovering anything. The future only can tell whether woman is simply an imitator, or whether she is a creator in the same sense as man. ”

“ The partisans of equality meet this fact by alleging that the laws have sacrificed woman because they were made by men. Moralists have also noticed that women are merrier, more changeable, and more capricious than men; they are likewise more heedless and less circumspect. All philosophers and moralists admit that women are more superstitious, more prepossessed, more imitative, and more addicted to routine, more talkative, and more timid, than men. Some men of science also hold that women are less intelligent than men. Broca says they are a little less so. ”

“ It results as a whole from this parallel between the sexes that, among the superior species, the male excels the female not only in the intensity of the nutritive phenomena, but also in muscular force and intellectual development; because man, more strongly nourished than woman, fabricates more force than she, he is correspondingly stronger in physical and intellectual qualities than she. ”

“ Women incontestably commit a smaller proportion of crimes against persons than men. Quetelet suggests that they are more restrained by shame and modesty, by their condition of dependence, their more retired habits, and their physical weakness. When they do thus offend, they are more apt to adopt poisoning, the weapon of cowards. It is universally admitted, again, that woman is more devout and more charitable than man. ”

“ So, in the human species, regarding the stature, color of hah', muscular strength, voice, tastes, ideas, and even handwriting, we shall find a great resemblance among women and a great diversity among men. Although, as we have seen, man excels woman among the European races, this is not the case in certain inferior races, where the feminine sex is more vigorous and more intelligent than the masculine. ”

“ We gather from this review that the female sex surpasses the male in certain points during the first twelve years; then the male gains upon the female and acquires a pre-eminence that increases till the age of maturity, after which it falls off during old age. This pre-eminence is parallel with the progress of evolution, for its maximum corresponds with the apogee of evolution, which, we know, occurs at between forty and fifty years. ”

“ We have already seen that in mixed schools, where children of both sexes receive precisely the same education till they are fifteen years old, the girls at first are ahead by virtue of their natural precocity, but, on passing twelve years, fall behind the boys. The arrest in the development that takes place in woman at about this time is the real cause of the growing pre-eminence of man, who continues to develop till an advanced age. ”

“ The nutritive phenomena in birds and mammals, including the human species, are more intensive in the male than in the female. The blood is denser, redder, contains more red globules and hemiglobine (Quinquand, Korniloff) , fewer white globules, and less water. M. Malassez has found a million more red globules in a cubic millimetre of man's than of woman's blood. Man eats more than woman. Public charities recognize that it costs more to feed a boy than a girl. But, though she eats less, woman is more of a gourmand (Brillat-Savarin) , and eats more frequently, being oftener pressed by hunger. ”

“ The male is more intelligent than the female in all the superior species. Trainers of trick-dogs prefer males. Regarding the human species, all known systems of legislation recognize an intellectual inferiority of the female sex to the male, and treat woman as a minor not able to take care of herself, and needing a guide and tutor. ”

“ According to my researches the foot of woman is flatter and less arched than that of man, a fact which women of fashion try to hide by means of high heels. The female voice is always higher than that of the male, in animals and in man. ”

“ Broca has found that the clavicle of the woman is longer in proportion to the humerus; similar differences are observed between inferior and superior races.
The male individual is always larger than the female. This is observable in our domestic animals. M. Topinard fixes the average difference in height between man and woman at twelve centimetres (four and two thirds inches) . Woman is also lighter than man, although she often appears larger on account of the greater development of her adipose system. Topinard says that in the whole Indo-European series woman is more prognathous than man. ”

“ The artistic and literary paths which man is abandoning for the scientific road are now taken possession of by the female sex. According to the librarians and the directors of reading-rooms, while the men are interested in the study of history, philosophy, and science, the women are still inquiring for novels. ”

“ According to M. Le Bon's researches, the different social classes should be ranked by their cranial capacity as follows: literary and scientific men, middle-class men (bourgeois) , nobles, servants, peasants. The separation of which we speak widens as we rise from the peasant to the man of science, passing the servant, the noble, and the middle-class man. ”

“ We might also cite the opinion of manufacturers and merchants who, employing both sexes, have been able to compare their faculties. All those whom we have consulted think women are more assiduous but less intelligent than men. In printing offices, for example, women work minutely, mechanically, without knowing very well what they are doing. They succeed well in reprint, which does not exact intelligence, and poorly in manuscript.
In the evolution of tastes and ideas, woman marches about a century behind man. ”

“ The occipital lobes, the seat of the sentiments, are more voluminous in woman. According to Professor Wagner, the brain of woman as a whole is always in a more or less embryonic condition. Huschke says that woman is only a child in growth, and belies her infantine type no more by her brain than by the other parts of her body. Some anatomists allege that the right side of the brain is superior in women and the left side in men; hence women pass to the left and men to the right. ”

“ The difference in favor of the male in the weight of the brain about triples itself in the course of the first twenty years, and amounts, according to Broca, to seven per cent, between twenty-one and thirty years, to eleven per cent, between thirty-one and forty, then falls to ten per cent, between forty-one and fifty, and to eight per cent, between fifty-one and sixty years. ”

“ Darwin remarks that men go further than women in all that they undertake where profound thought, reason, imagination, or the application of the senses and the hands are concerned, and that if we should draw up a list of the dozen men and a similar list of the dozen women most distinguished in poetry, painting, sculpture, science, and philosophy, the two lists would bear no comparison. ”

“ Whether we consider the organism in general or the several organs separately, we shall find that the differences, null during fetal life and slight at birth, go on increasing till they reach their sum at adult age, then diminish during old age. ”

“ The Patagonian women, according to De Rochas, are almost as large and as brave as the men, and a woman is chief; and when in an inferior race the man surpasses the woman, his pre-eminence is always less than it is among the superior races. ”

“ The advocates of Paris who are accustomed to plead for the workmen have remarked that the women are able to put their cases much better than their husbands, and often say to the latter, "Send me your wife." ”

“ Women in the cities eat between-meals, like children. In asylums for the aged, where women are not allowed more meals than men, they abstract food from each meal to eat in the intervals, so as to double the number of their meals. ”

“ What we have noticed relative to living inferior tribes is equally observed among ancient inferior races. Some of the peoples of antiquity were governed by women, of whom Semiramis, Dido, Athalia, Cleopatra, Zenobia, etc., are examples. Diodorus speaks of the equality of the sexes among the ancient Scythians. ”

“ Girls grow faster than boys till they are seventeen, after which the man keeps on growing and the woman remains at a stand-still. So, in the intellectual point, teachers in mixed schools observe that girls hold the first rank till they are twelve years old, and a lower rank afterward. Woman is, therefore, physically, intellectually, and morally, more precocious than man. ”

“ The women are equal or superior among certain African tribes—as in Dahomey, where they are the soldiers and have a higher official rank—among some of the hill tribes of India, among the Pueblos of North America, in Kamtchatka according to Meiners, among some Afghan tribes in Java, and among the Morotokos of South America. ”

“ According to the Roman historians, the Teutonic, Cimbrian, and Gallic women fought with as much courage as the men. Among some of the Pelasgian peoples and the Ibero-Ligurians, women decided concerning war and peace. The physical and intellectual predominance of the men was, on the other hand, considerable among the Greeks and Romans. ”

“ M. Primer Bey having remarked that among non-civilized races the women have masculine forms approaching that of a man, adds that the same phenomenon exists, although in a smaller degree, among the "inferior classes" of civilized races. ”

“ It may he added that more biological differences are found between the males than between the females of the same race. If, for example, we take ten Crèvecœur cocks, we shall find that they differ much more from each other in size and the development of the locomotive organs than ten hens of the same variety. ”