That it is a woman’s destiny to create human beings, whether she fulfils it or not, is amply confirmed by the natural bias of her interests. In spite of convention her interest in human beings is stronger and more spontaneous than her interest in anything else. Almost from the cradle a girl studies the people around her more attentively than a boy does, and is quicker in imitating their tricks of speech and behaviour. A little later she turns naturally to dolls, not because of an absurdly precocious maternal instinct, but because dolls are substitutes for human beings, and her creative fancy can play upon them without restriction. A doll is not necessarily a son or daughter: it is by turns a confidant, a scapegoat, and a talisman. Later still her interest in other people becomes practically a ruling passion: and since she is not merely a potential wife and mother but a potential woman, she is interested not only in possible sweethearts but in everybody. She is inquisitive about human relationships of every kind. She is indifferent to things which have no human interest: she values things for their associations, or the power they give her over other people. The intimacy between an adolescent girl and her bosom friend for the time being is based on a mutual interest in human nature and a common standard of critical values which they apply to each other as well as to the world. They analyse motives, provoke moods, love and hate with such intensity that emotional explosions are inevitable. Their interest is not that of mere spectators at the human comedy: they are ready to play important parts in it; and they test at every point their influence over others. When fifteen-year-old girls write essays on “What I should like to be,” the aspirations disclosed are rarely intellectual or material. Nearly every girl wants to be popular, to be an influence for good, to establish a reputation for cheerfulness and kindness, in short, to be successful in handling human beings. When she leaves school the same bias continues. The average girl is more interested in the people around her than in her work, especially if her work has little direct human interest. If her daily work does not consist of personal relations to other people, her efficiency in it depends upon the approval of her employers rather than upon her pride in the work itself. She sees herself as the sunbeam in the office, or as the comforter of her employer’s broken life, or as a moral influence--in other words, where no human interest exists in her surroundings she takes pains to invent it. It is this entirely womanly impulse which generates most of the sentiment and scandal among women.