Training undoubtedly accentuates inborn sex
differences, and it is true that a reversal of training does lessen
this difference; however, the weight of opinion at present is that
differences in intellect and character do exist because of
differences of sex, but that these have been unduly magnified. H.B.
Thompson, in her investigation entitled _The Mental Traits of Sex_,
finds that 'Motor ability in most of its forms is better developed in
men than in women. In strength, rapidity of movement, and rate of
fatigue, they have a very decided advantage, and in precision of
movement a slight advantage.... The thresholds are on the whole lower
in women, discriminative sensibility is on the whole better in
men.... All these differences, however, are slight. As for the
intellectual faculties, women are decidedly superior to men in
memory, and possibly more rapid in associative thinking. Men are
probably superior in ingenuity.... The data on the life of feeling
indicate that there is little, if any, sexual difference in the
degree of domination by emotion, and that social consciousness is
more prominent in men, and religious consciousness in women.'
"Pearson, in his measurement of traits, not by objective tests but by
opinions of people who know the individual, finds that boys are more
athletic, noisy, self-assertive, self-conscious; less popular, duller
in conscience, quicker-tempered, less sullen, a little duller
intellectually and less efficient in penmanship.
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