WOMAN'S INTELLECTUAL CAPACITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 75, 29 March 1928, Page 6

WOMAN'S INTELLECTUAL CAPACITY.

"Sweet Seventeen" tries very hard to prow that woman is mentally the equal of man. If she can only make her out to be superiof so much the better. She studiously ignores that prominent characteristic of the human female, the inability to follow out a logical argument, coupled with the unwillingness to admit the plainest fact or proof which tellf against a cherished prejudice or emotion. How often do we find a woman, confronted by such a fact or proof stop her ears or rush out of the room with some such outburst as, "Oh, leave off; I can't bear it!" I would ask "Sweet Seventeen" if she has erer heard of a man acting in this way. Or, again, how many women has she known who do not change their opinions with their moods or ■with changes in their relations with persons. Dora Russell, in her book "The Right to Be Happy," says: "'Think of the middle-class ladies one meets in railway trains who exact every kind of service and respect, particularly from men, and who, as individuals, are really so worthless that they had far better not have existed." I admit that Rose Macaulay and the other ladies mentioned by ''Sweet Seventeen" are worthy of great admiration, but I fear that I cannot believe their intellectual achievements are comparable to those of such a genius as the author of "The Golden Bough," Sir •lames Frazer. Perhaps "Sweet Seventeen"* does not know it is the grey matter of tbe brain which is correlated with sensation, thought and conscious action, while the white matter consists of nerve strands communicating between the cell-group centres of grey matter. Hence the obvious fact that uj>on the quality and the amount of the £rey matter depend the amount and quality of the intellect of the individual. It is a further well-ascer-tained fact that the comparison of the brains of the average man and woman shows a vastly greater preponderance of grey to white cells in the former than in the latter. S.G.