The mind and the personality are largely built up by suggestion from the outside, and if the suggestions are limited and particular, so will be the mind.  The world of modern intellectual life is in reality a white man’s world.  Few women and perhaps no blacks have ever entered this world in the fullest sense.  To enter it in the fullest sense would be to be in it at every moment from the time of birth to the time of death, and to absorb it unconsciously and consciously, as the child absorbs language.  When something like this happens, we shall be in a position to judge of the mental efficiency of woman and the lower races.  At present we seem justified in inferring that the differences in mental expression between the higher and lower races and between men and women are no greater than they should be in view of the existing differences in opportunity.

Indeed, when we take into consideration the superior cunning as well as the superior endurance of women, we may even raise the question whether their capacity for intellectual work is not under equal conditions greater than in men.  Cunning is the analogue of constructive thought—­an indirect, mediated, and intelligent approach to a problem—­and characteristic of the female, in contrast with the more direct and open procedure of the male.  Owing to the limited and personal nature of the activities of woman, this trait has expressed itself historically in womankind as intrigue rather than invention, but that it is very deeply based in the instincts is shown by the important role it plays in the life of the female in animal life.  Endurance is also a factor of prime importance in intellectual performance, for here as in business life “it is doggedness as does it;” and if woman’s endurance and natural ingenuity were combined in intellectual pursuits, it might prove that the gray mare is the better horse in this field as well as in peasant life.  The most serious objection, also, to the view that woman is fitted to do continuous and hard work, arises from her relation to child-bearing; but this is at bottom trivial.  The period of child-bearing is not only not continuous through life, but it is not serious from the standpoint of the time lost.  No work is without interruption, and child-birth is an incident in the life of normal woman of no more significance, when viewed in the aggregate and from the standpoint of time, than the interruption of the work of men by their in-and out-of-door games.  The important point in all work is not to be uninterrupted, but to begin again.

Whether the characteristic mental life of women and the lower races will prove to be identical with those of the white man or different in quality is a different question, and problematical.  It is certain, at any rate, that our civilization is not of the highest type possible.  In all our relations there is too much of primitive man’s fighting instinct and technique; and it is not impossible that the participation of woman and the lower races will contribute new elements, change the stress of attention, disturb the equilibrium, and force a crisis which will result in the reconstruction of our habits on more sympathetic and equitable principles.  Certain it is that no civilization can remain the highest if another civilization adds to the intelligence of its men the intelligence of its women.