The circumstance, too, that phenomena of this kind are more frequently developed in women than in men, and that they are merely the consequence of her greater nervous irritability, has been made another objection to them—an objection, however, which Dr. Passavent considers founded on ignorance of the essential difference between the sexes, which is not merely a physical but a psychological one. Man is more productive than receptive. In a state of perfectibility, both attributes would be equally developed in him; but in this terrestrial life, only imperfect phases of the entire sum of the soul’s faculties are so. Mankind are but children, male or female, young or old; of man, in his totality, we have but faint adumbrations, here and there. Thus the ecstatic woman will be more frequently a seer, instinctive and intuitive; man, a doer and a worker; and as all genius is a degree of ecstasy or clear-seeing, we perceive the reason wherefore in man it is more productive than in woman, and that our greatest poets and artists, in all kinds, are of the former sex, and even the most remarkable women produce but little in science or art; while on the other hand, the feminine instinct, and tact, and intuitive seeing of truth, are frequently more sure than the ripe and deliberate judgment of man; and it is hence that solitude and such conditions as develop the passive or receptive at the expense of the active, tend to produce this state, and to assimilate the man more to the nature of the woman; while in her they intensify these distinguishing characteristics; and this is also the reason that simple and child-like people and races are the most frequent subjects of these phenomena. It is only necessary to read Mozart’s account of his own moments of inspiration, to comprehend not only the similarity, but the positive identity, of the ecstatic state with the state of genius in activity. “When all goes well with me,” he says—“when I am in a carriage, or walking, or when I can not sleep at night, the thoughts come streaming in upon me most fluently: whence, or how, is more than I can tell. What comes, I hum to myself as it proceeds. Then follow the counterpoint and the clang of the different instruments; and, if I am not disturbed, my soul is fixed, and the thing grows greater, and broader, and clearer; and I have it all in my head, even when the piece is a long one; and I see it like a beautiful picture—not hearing the different parts in succession as they must be played, but the whole at once. That is the delight! The composing and the making is like a beautiful and vivid dream; but this hearing of it is the best of all.”