ABSTRACT
THIS type is extremely difficult to describe. It is indeed inscrutable to its possessor. Its limits are not confined to what is usually styled the conscious brain. In addition to the reasoning faculty which it possesses in common with the masculine type, but upon which it by no means like the latter exclusively relies, it depends largely on intuition, on instinct, that, like the homing instincts of birds and animals, lead it aright across spaces that are apparently destitute of any guide or pathway. The vast majority of women have this class of mind, and we recognize in their deep instincts, such as that of maternity, in their unselfish love, in certain of their intuitive decisions, and in their quick insight into character, a faculty that guides them to a knowledge in which reason and experience play no part. Other and entirely non-sexual 25instincts are present in both men and women who are of this mental type, creative, decorative, imaginative, spiritual in kind. Genius is of this order. It is there, standing unsupported as it were and quite escaping the ring-fence of any verbal definition founded on cause and effect. It is said to be a gift, another word for instinct but not an explanation thereof. The great ideas that in history have moved mankind and swayed destinies are products of high-class feminine types of mind, and while in a region of ultimates, where there can exist no standards, one cannot accord priority of rank, yet one may legitimately entertain a “ strong doubt ” as to whether the feminine is not the higher. The two types are often said to be complementary one of the other, though there is not much sense or finality in the remark. But there it is, the type so common in all women, and in both sexes of the Latin and Celtic races, and its existence lies at the very root of the great differences of opinion — the causa causans of the wide chasm—that prevent a perfect understanding between peoples. The masculine and feminine types when in 26different sexes blend admirably, but never in different nations who perpetually fail to do justice to each other’s motives because of the mental medium by which alone they can judge being essentially different in colour.
