FOOTNOTES:
[256] Histoire des Sciences et des Savants, p. 271, Genève-Bale, 1885.
[257] Ibid., p. 270.
[258] A writer in the English magazine, Nature, under date of January 12, 1911, when the European press was discussing Mme. Curie's claims to membership in the French Academy of Sciences, makes the following sane observations on the admission of women to the various academies of the French Institute:
"There may be room for difference of opinion as to the wisdom or expediency of permitting women to embark on the troubled sea of politics, or of allowing them a determinate voice in the settlement of questions which may affect the existence or the destiny of a nation; but surely there ought to be no question that in the peaceful walks of art, literature and science, there should be the freest possible scope extended to them, and that, as human beings, every avenue to distinction and success should unreservedly be open to them.
"All academies tend to be conservative and to move slowly; they are the homes of privilege and of vested interest. Some of them incline to be reactionary. They were created by men for men and for the most part at a time when women played little or no part in those occupations which such societies were intended to foster and develop. But the times have changed. Women have gradually won for themselves their rightful position as human beings. We have now to recognize that academies as seats of learning were made for humanity and that, as members of the human race, women have the right to look upon their heritage and property no less than men. This consummation may not at once be reached, but, as it is based upon reason and justice, it is certain to be attained eventually."
A fortnight later the same magazine contained a second article, in which the matter is treated in an equally manly fashion.
"As scientific work," the writer pertinently observes, "must ultimately be judged by its merits, and not by the nationality or sex of its author, we believe that the opposition to the election of women into scientific societies will soon be seen to be unjust and detrimental to the progress of natural knowledge. By no pedantic reasoning can the rejection of a candidate for membership of a scientific society be justified, if the work done places the candidate in the leading position among other competitors. Science knows no nationality and should recognize no distinction of sex, color or creed among those who are contributing to its advancement. Believing that this is the conclusion to which consideration of the question must inevitably lead, we have confidence that the doors of all scientific societies will eventually be open to women on equal terms with men."
[259] Lettres et Opuscules Inédits du Comte Joseph de Maistre, Tom. I, p. 194, Paris, 1851.
It was this same brusque and original writer who asserted that "science was a most dangerous thing for women; that no woman should study science under penalty of becoming ridiculous and unhappy; that a coquette can more readily get married than a savante." And he it was who declared that women who attempted to emulate men in the pursuit of science are monkeys and donne barbute—bearded women—and who designated Mme. de Staël as "la science en jupons, une impertinente femelette"—science in petticoats, a silly, impertinent female.
He, however, met an opponent worthy of his steel in the person of the eloquent bishop of Orleans, Mgr. Dupanloup. In a lengthy and brilliant critique of De Maistre's views he shows them to be untenable, if not ridiculous. "I by no means," he writes, "agree with M. de Maistre that 'la science en jupons,' as he calls it, or talents of any kind whatsoever, militates in the slightest against a woman being a good wife or a good mother. Quite the contrary." And considering woman as the companion and aid of man—socia et adjutorium—he expresses a view which is quite the opposite of that championed by his distinguished adversary for, in words precise and pregnant, he asserts that the education of women cannot be too consistent, too serious, and too solid—"L'éducation des femmes ne saurait être trop suivie, trop sérieuse et trop forte." La Femme Studieuse, p. 160, Paris, 1895.
[260] The Subjection of Women, p. 81, London, 1909.
[261] The late Mr. Gladstone asserts that "It would be hard to discover any period of history or country of the world, not being Christian, in which they"—women—"stood so high as with the Greeks of the Heroic Age"—when the position of the Greek woman was so remarkable and "so elevated, both absolutely and in comparison with what it became in the Historic Ages of Greece and Rome amidst their elaborate civilization." Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. II, p. 479 et seq., Oxford, 1858. Cf. also the same author's Juventus Mundi, p. 405 et seq., London, 1869.
[262] La Femme de Demain, pp. 45, 46, Paris, 1912.
[263] Dr. Johnson expressed the same sentiment when he declared that a man of sense should meet a suitable companion in a wife. "It was a miserable thing," he asserted in characteristic fashion, "when the conversation could only be such as whether the mutton should be boiled or roasted, and a probable dispute about that."
Sidney Smith, in a forceful and trenchant essay On the Education of Women, written for the Edinburgh Review a century ago, gives it as his deliberate opinion that "The instruction of women improves the stock of natural talents, and employs more minds for the instruction and amusement of the world; it increases the pleasures of society by multiplying the topics upon which the two sexes take a common interest; and makes marriage an intercourse of understanding as well as of affection by giving dignity and importance to the female character. The education of women favors public morals; it provides for every season of life as well as for the brightest and the best; and leaves a woman when she is stricken by the hand of time, not as she now is, destitute of everything and neglected by all, but with the full power and the splendid attractions of knowledge,—diffusing the elegant pleasures of polite literature, and receiving the just homage of learned and accomplished men."
As to the oft repeated commonplace of noodledom that higher education puts an end to domestic economy and deteriorates the noblest qualities of womanhood, the same clear-headed writer asks: "Can anything ... be more perfectly absurd than to suppose that the care and perpetual solicitude which a mother feels for her children, depends upon her ignorance of Greek or mathematics; and that she would desert an infant for a quadratic equation—that Cimmerian ignorance can aid parental affection, or the circle of the arts and sciences produce its destruction—that the moment you suffer women to eat of the tree of knowledge the rest of the family will very soon be reduced to the same kind of aërial and unsatisfactory diet?"
Still more insistent on the necessity of the broadest and deepest education for woman—education in science as well as in art and literature—is the Most Rev. Archbishop, J. L. Spalding, who by his writing and lectures has done so much for the cause of the higher education of both men and women. In an eloquent and pregnant discourse, pronounced in the Church of the Gesù in Rome, in March, 1900, he told his vast audience—composed of the élite of the Eternal City—that:
"If we are to have a race of enlightened, noble, and brave men, we must give to woman the best education it is possible for her to receive. She has the same right as man to become all that she may be, to know whatever may be known, to do whatever is fair and just and good. In souls there is no sex. If we leave half the race in ignorance, how shall we hope to lift the other half into the light of truth and love? Let woman's mental power increase, let her influence grow, and more and more she will stand by the side of man as a helper in all his struggles to make the will of God prevail. From the time the Virgin Mother held the Infant Saviour in her arms, to this hour, woman has been the great lover of Christ and the unweary helper of His little ones; and the more we strengthen and illumine her, the more we add to her sublime faith and devotion the power of knowledge and culture, the more efficaciously shall she work to purify life, to make justice, temperance, chastity, and love prevail. She is more unselfish, more capable of enthusiasm for spiritual ends, she has more sympathy with what is beautiful, noble, and godlike than man; and the more her knowledge increases, the more shall she become a heavenly force to help spread God's kingdom on earth."