The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

mistaken, women whose work is outside the home
differ from men in this respect almost as much as
those who work at home. They find it, that is to
say, very difficult to be interested in anything that
has for them no practical importance. Their
purposes govern their thoughts and their activities,
and they seldom become absorbed in some wholly
irresponsible interest. I do not of course deny that
exceptions exist, but I am speaking of what seems
to me to be the usual rule. In a women’s college,
for example, the women teachers, if no man is
present, talk shop in the evening, while in a men’ s
college the men do not. This characteristic appears
to women as a higher degree of conscientiousness
than that of men, but I do not think that in the long
run it improves the quality of their work. And it
tends to produce a certain narrowness of outlook
leading not infrequently to a kind of fanaticism.
All impersonal interests, apart from their
importance as relaxation, have various other uses.
To begin with, they help a man to retain his sense
of proportion. It is very easy to become so