These quotations will illustrate that curious depreciation of the female element in nature and especially in man which is one of the weaker points in the treatise. It is continually recurring; for example, in describing the hair of animals these are the reasons given for baldness: The front part of the head goes bald because the brain is there and man is the only animal to go bald, because his brain is much the largest and moistest. _Women do not go bald._[14] So in the discussion of voice we read: The voice of the female is higher than that of the male in all animals, and in man this is especially noticeable. A deep note is _better_ than a high pitched: depth belongs to the nobler nature, and depth of tone shows a sort of superiority.[15] Nor is this view of the physical, and consequently the mental, inferiority of the female confined to the _De Generatione_: it permeates the _History of Animals_, and finds its clearest expression there in a passage which perhaps gives the ultimate reason of Aristotle’s error: In all genera in which the distinction of male and female is found, Nature makes a similar differentiation in the mental characteristics of the two sexes. This differentiation is the most obvious in the case of human-kind and in that of the larger animals and the viviparous quadrupeds. In the case of these latter the female is softer in character, is the sooner tamed, admits more readily of caressing, and is more apt in the way of learning. With all animals, except the bear and the leopard, the female is softer in disposition than the male, is more mischievous, less simple, more impulsive, and more attentive to the nurture of the young. The traces of these differentiated characteristics are more or less visible in every species, but they are especially visible where character is the more developed, and most of all in man. The fact is, the nature of man is the most rounded off and complete, and consequently in man the qualities above referred to are found in their perfection. Hence woman is more compassionate than man, more easily moved to tears, at the same time is more jealous, more querulous, more apt to scold. She is, furthermore, more prone to despondency and less hopeful than the man, more void of shame or self-respect, more false of speech, more deceptive, and of more retentive memory. She is also more wakeful, more shrinking, more difficult to rouse to action, and requires a smaller quantity of nutriment.[16]