Chapter XXVI:
Female Intuition.

It is proverbial that the female mind, unaccustomed as it is, in the present state of society, to reason closely, passes to correct conclusions in many cases where the logical mind of man misses the truth after the most careful consideration. — Dynamic Sociology, II, 327.

Looking at women as they are known in experience, it may be said of them, with more truth than belongs to most generalizations on the subject, that the general bent of their talents is toward the practical. — John Stuart Mill: Subjection of Women, p. 105.

If the female organism is the conservative organism, to which is intrusted the keeping of all that has been gained during the past history of the race, it must follow that the female mind is a storehouse filled with the instincts, habits, intuitions, and laws of conduct which have been gained by past experience. The male organism, on the contrary, being the variable organism, the originating element in the process of evolution, the male mind must have the power of extending experience over new fields, and, by comparison and generalization, of discovering new laws of nature, which are in their turn to become rules of action, and to be added on to the series of past experiences. — W. K. Brooks: Popular Science Monthly, June, 1879 (Vol. XV, p. 154).

I use the expression female intuition as the title of this chapter in preference to that of woman's intuition, because, while it is of course chiefly displayed by women, I believe it has its roots in the subhuman stage, and that woman's intuitional nature is a direct outgrowth of the earlier and simpler mental characteristics of the females of many animals. It should, however, be admitted that there is scarcely any generic distinction between woman's intuition and the intuitive judgment as set forth in the preceding chapter.

The important thing to be noted about woman's intuition from the modern biological standpoint is that it is a highly specialized development of a faculty of the mind which originally had as its sole purpose the protection of the mother and offspring. It is a part of the maternal instinct, and like all instincts, its acuteness and subtlely are proportioned to the narrowness of its purpose. The power in woman of instantaneous and accurate judgment as to what to do when her safety or that of her children is in jeopardy, was developed during the early history of the human race as it emerged from the animal into the properly human state; its only use was to protect the mother and the young from such dangers as beset them — dangers which increased with the growth of the intellectual faculty and the dispersion of the race over the globe. And with the origin and progress of civilization this power has increased in complexity, and has ever been the safeguard of the family against all attacks, strifes, and abuses from whatever quarter. In the highest stages of enlightenment it still comes daily and hourly into use in guarding the virtue of woman, detecting the infidelity of man, protecting the youth of both sexes from temptations and pitfalls of every kind, evading the wrongs of unjust husbands and cruel fathers, checking dangerous financial extravagance or undue liberality in men, and in a thousand other ways. Upon such questions the judgments of women are already formed in the mind, inherited as organized experiences of an indefinite past, with their appropriate cortical centers of nervous discharge constitutionally developed in the brain; so that when an occasion arises no time is lost in reflection or deliberation. The dangers that have threatened woman and her helpless charges throughout all history have usually left, her no time for these slower mental operations. She must act at once or all is lost; and natural selection has preserved those who could thus act, so that in modern society it is still true, and in a far wider sense than Addison supposed, that

"The woman that deliberates is lost."

This protective quality has been referred to by some authors. Mr. Spencer says (Study of Sociology, p. 376): “In barbarous times a woman who could from a movement, tone of voice, or expression of face, instantly detect in her savage husband the passion that was rising, would be likely to escape dangers run into by a woman less skilled in interpreting the natural language of feeling. Hence, from perpetual exercise of this power, and the survival of those having most of it, we may infer its establishment as a feminine faculty. Ordinarily, this feminine faculty, showing itself in an aptitude for guessing the state of mind through the external signs, ends simply in intuitions formed without assignable reasons; but when, as happens in rare cases, there is joined with it skill in psychological analysis, there results an extremely remarkable ability to interpret the mental states of others."

We may, however, go much farther back in attempting to understand female intuition. In Chap. XXII it was shown that the intuitive perception acquired by animals in circumventing others, and especially that of the males in coping with others of their own species in their rivalry for the females, reacted to some degree upon the females themselves and thus saved this attribute of mind from becoming an exclusively secondary sexual character. It was also pointed out that in a somewhat modified form it was called out in the female by her constant vigils over her young. This latter I believe to be the real origin of the more fully developed female intuition now under consideration, and as already remarked, it is still around the offspring that it chiefly centers, even in developed woman.

Its essentially feminine character is exhibited in several ways. It is a leading feminine characteristic to be always on the defensive. The great end of female action is protection. With the safety of the future members of the race in her charge the mother has had developed a mental constitution which is ever on the alert to perceive and ward off the least danger. She never takes any risks. Non-seafaring people often notice that old sea captains will always choose the safer of two courses, even where either would seem to be perfectly secure, and at first this apparent timidity does not seem to be in harmony with the known intrepidity of these hardy mariners. But it results from a settled rule of life always to choose when at sea the safest way. Now, the female mind possesses this quality of caution as part of its constitution, and it applies not merely to navigation or to any one particularly hazardous employment, but to everything that is done. No matter how secure a woman may be under any circumstances if there is any difference from this point of view between two courses of action she may be depended upon to select the one that she regards as the safer. I say, that she regards as such, because it is this supposed safety, and not necessarily her real safety, that determines her action. She usually bases her judgment on experience, and hence her course will be that which she has formerly pursued and found to be safe. Every one has observed that women will prefer to go the way they have already been, if safe, although there may be a really far better but untried way, and usually no amount of argument drawn from the experience of others or from the natural circumstances of the case will be satisfactory to them. This mental constitution of the female mind manifests itself in all the affairs of life. Its central characteristic is extreme conservatism. All innovation is looked upon as likely to be attended with danger. Life is possible under existing conditions, and although it may be scarcely worth its cost it is better than to risk a change. Thus woman becomes the balance-wheel of society, keeping it in a steady and fixed condition of growth. It is for this work that woman's intuition is adapted.

It might be supposed from this essentially conservative nature of woman that she would never be found figuring in the capacity of a reformer, since all reform implies some change in the existing order. The well known facts, therefore, that many women are reformers, that many reforms are led chiefly by women, that their chief argument for political power is based on the claim that they would inaugurate reforms that men will not undertake, and that in the capacity of reformers they are much more ardent and uncompromising than men, certainly seem inconsistent with the position here assumed. But I think it can be shown that the inconsistency is only apparent, and that these facts are reconcilable with true conservatism. Or rather, that conservatism does not alone describe the female attribute in its entirety. Or more accurately still, perhaps, it may be said that woman's conservatism is not directed toward institutions and surrounding conditions, but is centered on self and offspring. It is self-preservation, rather than the preservation of institutions that is ingrained in her nature, and therefore her conservatism is limited to those institutions which she believes to constitute personal safeguards. It is a fact that she is never found advocating the reform of anything that is held to be good in itself, however much it may be capable of improvement. This men are constantly doing. They are not satisfied that it should be merely good, better than nothing; they insist that it shall be improved if it is capable of improvement, and are never satisfied till it is the best it can be made. This is true reform. On the other hand the so-called reforms in which women engage are properly speaking not reforms at all, they are more nearly revolutions. The only institutions they have any interest in reforming are those that they believe to be bad, and the way they propose to reform them is simply to abolish them. It is self-preservation all the time. The bad is the unsafe, the dangerous, and women's reforms are simply crusades against real or supposed evils that threaten the safety of themselves and their children. Viewed in this light the most radical reform is the most complete conservatism, the conservation of all that they cherish in life.

It will thus be seen that female intuition is in strong contrast with the forms treated in Chapters XXII and XXIII. Those forms are adapted to securing the objects of desire. They are the supports of the psychic forces in seeking enjoyment and thus fulfling the prime functions of existence. They may, therefore, from this point of view, be called positive or active intuition in contrast with the female quality which may be called negative or passive intuition. The latter does not impel the agent actively to go about any labor or undertaking. It merely prepares for action should it be necessary, or it puts a check upon proposed action if it seems inadvisable. A further contrast lies in the fact that female intuition involves no deception, whereas male intuition, as the other form might also be called, has for its essential characteristic the principle of deception. It is true that both these qualities belong, to a certain extent, to both sexes, that intuitive judgment, as defined in the last chapter and seen to be a general property of mind, does not essentially differ in principle from female intuition, while, on the other hand, intuitive reason is often well developed in women. Still, it is also true that when the mental constitution of the two sexes is broadly contrasted, those qualities comprehended under the term intuitive reason, viz., shrewdness, diplomacy, strategy, and the like, are preeminently male characteristics; they are the active, positive, and progressive elements of society, while the passive, negative, and conservative elements of caution, timidity, and apprehensiveness, constituting intuitive judgment, are especially feminine traits. In the next chapter we shall see this contrast still more strongly drawn in a form of intuition not hitherto considered.

It is not, therefore, perhaps too much to say, when all the qualifications are made, that the intuitive faculty has developed along two distinct lines corresponding closely to those followed by the two sexes, and that there practically exist a male and a female trunk of the primary intellectual faculty, the one adapted to the sustentation and continuation, and the other to the protection and conservation of the race. Or the male trunk may be conceived as devoted to the active increase, development, and advancement, and the female to the passive stability, permanence, and persistence of the type. The dominant characteristic of the male faculty is courage, that of the female, prudence. These two antithetical psychologic factors are paralleled by the two biologic factors of male activity, favorable to adaptation and variability, as contrasted with female passivity, favorable to hereditary transmission and permanence of type. They also have their analogues in the two sociologic factors consisting of an ever-present radical party of progress held in check by an ever-present conservative party of order.

A concluding thought on female intuition in general and woman's intuition in particular should not go unexpressed. In Chap. XV occasion was taken to remark that in view of the superior antiquity and general importance of the feelings to the intellect, woman, in whom the former are admitted to predominate, must be accorded at least an equal rank with man in the economy of social life. And now from the point of view of intellectual development itself we find her side by side, and shoulder to shoulder with him furnishing, from the very outset, far back in prehistoric, presocial, and even prehuman times, the necessary complement to his otherwise one-sided, headlong, and wayward career, without which he would soon have warped and distorted the race and rendered it incapable of the very progress which he claims exclusively to inspire. And therefore again, even in the realm of intellect, where he would fain reign supreme, she has proved herself fully his equal and is entitled to her share of whatever credit attaches to human progress thereby achieved.