What is the difference for the psychologist, between the mental state of a being who acts from reason, and of one who acts from intuition? It is not a difference of the _kind of mind_ which controls him, but of the _kind of knowledge_ upon which his present conduct is based. If one individual has got at his command a lot of general propositions bearing upon the case in hand, and if his familiarity with them is not such that they flow together without conscious effort, then he must laboriously piece them together, and think out the conclusions which they necessitate. If another individual, having led a different life, has had a lot of experiences which cover just such cases as this, and if he has been taught by thousands of instances that under these circumstances a certain course of conduct will nearly always lead to good results, then he can trust to his hands or his feet to execute that course of conduct without a moment’s aid from conscious reflection; he can go on with his novel, or whatever other pleasant occupation engages his attention, without the wear and tear of mind which is involved in consciously thinking about the circumstances in question. Now the differences in the mental processes of men and women are exactly of this nature. They are differences dependent upon the fact that the _knowledge_ at their command—that is, the stored up premises upon which action is based—is, to a certain extent, of a different kind, and got from different sources. So far as the knowledge is not of a different kind, the character of the action is not of a different kind. There is an immense number of conclusions which men and women alike “jump at,” every hour in the day; and some of them represent reasoning so fixedly instinctive, that even the closest attention does not enable us to drag it up into the light of consciousness. How many people know that a certain feeling of strain in the muscles which move the eyes is a sign of a certain distance of an object looked at, and a different feeling of strain, a sign of a different distance; and that when the eyes are fixed upon one point, objects in the lateral field of view are judged to be nearer or farther away than that point, according as the two disparate images which they cast upon the two retinas are, the right-hand one or the left hand one, the brighter? The common man _knows_ that one object is near and the other far, but he is not _conscious_ even of the feeling of strain, nor of the existence of double images; the physiological psychologist knows the unconscious syllogism by which he _must_ reach his conclusion, but even he cannot, by any possibility, make it cease to be instinctive,—that is, make himself conscious of its different steps. On the other hand, no one, whether man or woman, can pass from one proposition in geometry to another by a process which is in any sense unconscious, though one person may be obliged to give a much more strained attention to what he is doing than another.