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INTRODUCTION

From of old the comparative psychology of man and woman has been on a false route, and there it still wanders to-day. The custom is to compare dominant males with females whose position is subordinate or at least inferior in rank, the comparison being thus between groups whose position is fundamentally unequal. But the differences shown to exist between such groups are just as likely to depend upon sociological causes, and to be the outcome of the reciprocal position of the sexes, as to be due to congenital divergencies. It is erroneous, therefore, to do what is usually done at the present time, and to describe the differences in question without further consideration as sexual characters.

The error presumably arises from a not unnatural identification of the male sex with dominance and of the female sex with subordination. The respective associations have been regarded as inseparable. The extant inequality in the positions of men and women has consequently been looked upon as itself an expression of sex differentiation, and a search for additional factors of the inequality has been considered superfluous. Yet the steady advance of the female sex towards the attainment of equal rights has been enough to show that the foregoing assumption is invalid. The course of this investigation will make the fallacy manifest on other grounds.

A new basis of comparison is the essential pre-

requisite to a precise comparison of man and woman, a comparison which shall enable us to discover the truly congenital differentiæ of sex. We must compare the sexes when their position is precisely similar. We must either compare men where masculine dominance prevails with women where feminine dominance prevails; or else we must compare women in a community where men are dominant with men in a community where women are dominant; or else we must compare men and women under conditions where complete equality prevails between the sexes. We must not, as hitherto, compare dominant men with subordinate women; we are only entitled to compare dominant men with dominant women, subordinate men with subordinate women, or the two sexes under absolutely equal rights.

To-day we are still far from any such equivalence of powers. Nominally, indeed, there is an equivalence of rights, but in reality men continue to exercise a notable predominance. Consequently the sexes cannot at present be unreservedly compared. But among quite a number of peoples women have been dominant, and the women and the men of these peoples can be compared with the men and the women of peoples where masculine dominion prevails. A comparison between the sexes when this precaution is observed will throw an entirely new light upon the psychology of men and women respectively. Furthermore and simultaneously, it will furnish remarkable elucidations in the domains of the ethnography, sexology, anthropology, and sociology of the sexes. Our investigation has enabled us to ascertain the extremely important fundamental law that the contemporary peculiarities of women are mainly determined by the existence of the

Men's State, and that they are accurately and fully paralleled by the peculiarities of men in the Women's State.

Such is the general thesis we hope to establish in the present volume. To do so, we must proceed to examine the question in detail.