By his nature, man succeeds in manual or mechanical work more than he succeeds in social relations; he finds a pleasure in politics and adventure that woman rarely finds, for he belongs to the stronger sex and is content in that. This is the sum of what certain psychologists and sociologists have arrived at; and they have acknowledged the error of the theory which holds that man is the sum of environmental conditionings and cultural upbringing.
Dr. Margaret Mead, after a study of tribal life, pointed to the differences that exist within the same sex from tribe to tribe: every person feels that his conduct harmonizes fully with the environment that lives about him. She tells of a tribesman marked by the traits of manliness — energy, love of possession, self-assertion, and demandingness — yet these very traits made him an outcast from his tribe. Dr. Mead says that one clan requires of woman and man alike an equality of tenderness and gentleness, and she goes on in her account to point out that one tribe grants woman the right of authority and the bearing of responsibility, while the man feels nothing of it, since he depends upon her in work and in affection.
It does not matter to woman to discover man's points of weakness and grow intoxicated with a feeling of superiority and power; what she loves is to take refuge in a strong man who can protect her. And man loves to be the superior one — the idea comforts him — yet he secretly delights that the beloved with whom he finds his ease should bring him all he asks on a tray of gold!
The duty of parents, then, is to accustom their son to behave as a boy while also being sensitive and gentle in his social relations. This does not mean that every man must be perfect, for he has points of weakness just as woman does; and mental or emotional strain influences a man's conduct in many cases, leading him to drink and to smoking. Medicine
has made it clear that man lives a shorter span than woman, and the cause of it is the difficulty he meets in life, which strikes him a blow — for he has not been exposed to hardships as she has faced them and grown strong in bearing them. A medical report has shown that deaths among males exceed those among females at the rate of twenty-two percent.
And now we come to intelligence. Without doubt, a boy may give proof of surpassing success on the intellectual side, yet girls' progress in the elementary school outstrips the boys, who before long apply themselves to make it up in the secondary school; the reason is that they believe that early success to be of no value, and then there rises in their souls an idea that spurs them on to eminence. And man is still unprepared for woman's freedom, finding himself perplexed and confused before it; his notion is built upon the basis of his past history, when he was the guardian over her freedom and her conduct. And finally, life in his reckoning is a trade, winning at one time and losing at another; so, to overcome despair and withstand hardships, woman's mind must support and strengthen him!
Trinal
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