“I have met few easier or sweeter. One non-observer had told me it was a sham science, and mere pedantry; another, that it pretended to show men a way to truth without observing. I found, on the contrary, that it was a very pretty little science, which does not affect to discover phenomena, but simply to guard men against rash generalization, and false deductions from true data; it taught me the untrained world is brimful of fallacies and verbal equivoques that ought not to puzzle a child, but, whenever they creep into an argument, do actually confound the learned and the simple alike, and all for want of a month's logic.
“Yes, I was happy on the hill, and happy by the hearth; and so things went on till the preliminary examination came. It was not severe; we ladies all passed with credit, though many of the male aspirants failed.”
“How do you account for that?” asked Vizard.
“With my eyes. I observe that the average male is very superior in intellect to the average female; and I observe that the picked female is immeasurably more superior to the average male, than the average male is to the average female.”
“Is it so simple as that?”
“Ay; why not? What! are you one of those who believe that Truth is obscure—hides herself—and lies in a well? I tell you, sir, Truth lies in no well. The place Truth lies in is—the middle of the turnpike road. But one old fogy puts on his green spectacles to look for her, and another his red, and another his blue; and so they all miss her, because she is a colorless diamond. Those spectacles are preconceived notions, 'a priori reasoning, cant, prejudice, the depth of Mr. Shallow's inner consciousness, etc., etc. Then comes the observer, opens the eyes that God has given him, tramples on all colored spectacles, and finds Truth as surely as the spectacled theorists miss her. Say that the intellect of the average male is to the average female as ten to six, it is to the intellect of the picked female as ten to a hundred and fifty, or even less. Now, the intellect of the male Edinburgh student was much above that of the average male, but still it fell far below that of the picked female. All the examinations at Edinburgh showed this to all God's unspectacled creatures that used their eyes.”
These remarks hit Vizard hard. They accorded with his own good sense and method of arguing; but perhaps my more careful readers may have already observed this. He nodded hearty approval for once, and she went on:
“We had now a right to matriculate and enter on our medical course. But, to our dismay, the right was suspended. The proofs of our general proficiency, which we hoped would reconcile the professors to us as students of medicine, alarmed people, and raised us unscrupulous enemies in some who were justly respected, and others who had influence, though they hardly deserved it.
“A general council of the university was called to reconsider the pledge the Senate had given us, and overawe the university court by the weight of academic opinion. The court itself was fluctuating, and ready to turn either way. A large number of male students co-operated against us with a petition. They, too, were a little vexed at our respectable figure in the preliminary examination.
“The assembly met and the union orator got up; he was a preacher of the Gospel, and carried the weight of that office. Christianity, as well as science, seemed to rise against us in his person. He made a long and eloquent speech, based on the intelligent surmises and popular prejudices that were diffused in a hundred leading articles, and in letters to the editor by men and women, to whom history was a dead letter in modern controversies; for the Press battled this matter for two years, and furnished each party with an artillery of reasons, pro and con.