In this sense it can probably be said that no woman has ever been an
intellectual. A few may have pretensions, as, for instance, "Vernon
Lee," Mrs. Sidney Webb, Mrs. Wharton, perhaps Mrs. Hetty Green. I do not
know, for these women can be judged only by their works. The greatest
women in history--Catherine of Russia, Joan of Arc, Sappho, Queen
Elizabeth--appear to have been swayed largely by their passions,
physical or religious. I do not suppose that this will always be the
case. For reasons which I shall indicate further on in this chapter, I
believe that woman's intellect will tend toward approximation with that
of man. But meanwhile it would be futile not to recognize that there
exist to-day between man and woman some sharp intellectual divergences.
One of the sharpest lies in woman's logical faculty. This may be due to
her education (which is seldom mathematical or scientific); it may
proceed from a habit of mind; it may be the result of a secular
withdrawal from responsibilities other than domestic. Whatever the
cause, it must be acknowledged that, with certain trained exceptions,
woman has not of logic the same conception as man. I have devoted
particular care to this issue, and have collected a number of cases
where the feminine conception of logic clashes with that of man. Here
are a few transcribed from my notebook:
_Case 33_
My remark: "Most people practice a religion because they are too
cowardly to face the idea of annihilation."
Case 33: "I don't see that they are any more cowardly than you. It
doesn't matter whether you have a faith or not, it will be all the same
in the end."
The reader will observe that Case 33 evades the original proposition; in
her reply she ignores the set question, namely why people practice a
religion.
_Case 17_
_Votes for Women_, of January 22, 1915, prints a parallel, presumably
drawn by a woman, between two police-court cases. In the first a man,
charged with having struck his wife, is discharged because his wife
intercedes for him. In the second a woman, charged with theft, is sent
to prison in spite of her husband's plea. The writer appears to think
that these cases are parallel; the difference of treatment of the two
offenders offends her logic. From a masculine point of view two points
differentiate the cases:
In the first case the person who may be sent to prison is the
bread-winner; in the second case it is the housekeeper, which is
inconvenient but less serious.
In the first case the person who intercedes, the wife, is the one who
has suffered; in the second case the person who intercedes, the husband,
has not suffered injury. The person who has suffered injury is the one
who lost the goods.
_Case 51_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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