For it stands to reason that
the offspring may be vaguely intermediate between two parents, may
resemble one or both in certain particulars and not in others, may hark
back to ancestral types or bear no appreciable likeness to any one
discoverable. It is a theme admitting of endless combinations and
permutations. Or again, in reference to the first proposition, it would
be easy for any traveller in this country to point out, for example, a
woman who portrays the qualities of her father in the clearest manner. I
know a dozen such cases. Hundreds of them would not make them otherwise
than what I think they are--rarer here than in England.
Granting that both these propositions are correct, what should we expect
to find? That in Italy the male type of character and temperament is
more constant, more intimately associated with the male type of feature;
and the same with the female. In other words, that the categories into
which their men and women fall are fewer and more clearly defined, by
reason of the fact that their mental and moral sex-characteristics are
more closely correlated with their physical sex-characteristics. That
the Englishman, on the other hand, male or female, does not fall so
easily into categories; he is complex and difficult to "place," the
psychological sex-boundaries being more hazily demarcated. There is
iridescence and ambiguity here, whereas Italians of either sex, once the
rainbow period of youth is over, are relatively unambiguous; easily
"placed.
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