Woman in Science Part 32

It was Galvani's wife who first directed his attention to the convulsions of a frog's leg when placed near an electrical machine. This induced him to make those celebrated investigations which led to the foundation of a new science which has ever since been identified with his name.

It was Mrs. Marcet's works on science--especially her _Conversations on Chemistry_--that inspired Faraday with a love of science and blazed for him that road in chemical and physical experimentation which led to such marvelous results. He was always proud to call her his first teacher, and never hesitated to attribute to her that taste for scientific research for which he became so preeminent. And it was his devoted wife who was not only a helpmate but a soulmate as well for nearly half a century, that had very much to do with the splendid development of the germ which had been placed in his youthful mind by Mrs. Marcet.

The same may likewise be a.s.serted of the wives of two distinguished geologists--Charles Lyell and Xavier Hommaire de h.e.l.l. Mrs. Lyell was intimately a.s.sociated with her husband in all his scientific undertakings, and her ready intellect contributed immensely toward securing for him that enviable position which he attained of being the premier geologist of his century. Mme. Hommaire de h.e.l.l deserves special mention in the history of geology for the invaluable a.s.sistance which she gave her husband in the scientific exploration of the basin of the Caspian Sea. Not only did she share his labors and perils in this then wild part of the world, and collaborate with him in the preparation of the report for which the French government conferred on him the Cross of the Legion of Honor, but she also wrote unaided the two descriptive volumes of their great work, _Steppes de la Mer Caspienne_. Her part of this great undertaking received the special commendation of M.

Villemain, who was the minister of public instruction, and had she not belonged to the disenfranchized s.e.x, she, too, would have been decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

All the world has heard of the daring explorations of Baker and Livingstone in the Dark Continent, but how few are aware of the important part taken in their great enterprises by their devoted and heroic wives? Sir Samuel Baker immortalized himself by discovering Lake Albert Nyanza, one of the main sources of the Nile, but in attaining this goal, which other explorers had in vain essayed to reach, he was not alone. The companion of his triumph, as of his trials and hardships, was Lady Baker, a woman who, although delicately reared, was as brave in presence of danger as she was resourceful in trials and difficulties.

More than once her husband owed his life to her intrepidity and presence of mind, when confronted by the treacherous savages of equatorial Africa; and, if he achieved success where others failed, it was in no slight measure due to her tact, her energy and perseverance in what seemed at times a forlorn hope. "She had learned Arabic with him in a year of necessary but wearisome delay; her mind traveled with his mind as her feet had followed his footsteps." And, when after preliminary toils without number, after braving dangers from climate, disease and ruthless savages, they finally stood on the sh.o.r.e of that unknown sea which was then first beheld by English eyes, she could, in contemplating their achievements of which Albert Nyanza was the crowning glory, exclaim with exaltation and truth, "_Quorum pars magna fui._"

When Livingstone lost, in the unexplored valley of the Zambesi, the faithful wife who had been his inspiring companion in his wanderings in darkest Africa, he lost completely that enthusiasm for deeds of high emprise that before had been one of his leading characteristics. Writing to his distinguished friend, Sir Roderick Murchison, he mournfully declares: "I must confess this heavy stroke quite takes the heart out of me. Everything that has happened only made me more determined to overcome all difficulties; but after this sad stroke I feel crushed and void of strength.... I shall do my duty still, but it is with a darkened horizon that I again set about it."

The noted English naturalist, Frank Buckland, in speaking of the aid afforded by his gifted mother to her distinguished husband, Dr.

Buckland, writes as follows: "During the long period that Dr. Buckland was engaged in writing the book which I now have the honor of editing, my mother sat up night after night, for weeks and months consecutively, writing to my father's dictation; and this often until the sun's rays, shining through the shutters at early morn, warned the husband to cease from thinking and the wife to rest her weary hand.

"Not only with the pen did she render material a.s.sistance, but her natural talent in the use of her pencil enabled her to give accurate ill.u.s.trations and finished drawings, many of which are perpetuated in Dr. Buckland's works. She was also particularly clever and neat in mending broken fossils. There are many specimens in the Oxford Museum, now exhibiting their natural forms and beauty, which were restored by her perseverance to shape from a ma.s.s of broken and almost comminuted fragments. It was her occupation also to label the specimens, which she did in a particularly neat way; and there is hardly a fossil or a bone in the Oxford Museum which has not her handwriting upon it.

"Notwithstanding her devotion to her husband's pursuits, she did not neglect the education of her children, but occupied her mornings in superintending their instruction in sound and useful knowledge. The sterling value of her labors they now, in after life, fully appreciate, and feel most thankful that they were blessed with so good a mother."[247]

What has been said of the influence and cooperation of the women already named may, with equal truth, be affirmed of numberless others of recent as well as of earlier date. It is particularly true of the wife of the naturalist h.e.l.ler and of the great astronomer, Kepler. It is true of the wife of the ill.u.s.trious mathematician, the Marquis de l'Hopital. She not only shared her husband's talent for mathematics, but was of special a.s.sistance to him in preparing for the press his important _a.n.a.lyse des Infiniment Pet.i.ts_. It is true of the wife of Asaph Hall, the ill.u.s.trious discoverer of the satellites of Mars. Often he was on the point of abandoning the quest of these diminutive moons--which no one had ever seen but which his calculations led him to believe really existed--but he was encouraged by Mrs. Hall to continue his observations, with the result that his labors and vigils were at last rewarded by the startling discovery of Deimos and Phobos.

And there is Mme. Pasteur, who, in her way, was quite as important a factor in the scientific career of her immortal husband as were the women just mentioned in the lives of their husbands, to whose triumphs they so materially contributed.

One of the great Frenchman's biographers has truly declared that "it is impossible rightly to appreciate Pasteur's life without some understanding of the immense a.s.sistance which he received in his home.

Whether in discussing forms of crystals, watching over experiments, shielding her husband from all the daily fret of life, or busy at the customary evening task of writing to his dictation, Madame Pasteur was at once his most devoted a.s.sistant and incomparable companion. His surroundings at home were entirely subordinated to his scientific life, and his family shared with him both his trials and his triumphs. At the time when Pasteur was engrossed with the study of anthrax, and, after many difficulties and disappointments, had at length succeeded in preparing a vaccine against it, he at once hurried from the laboratory to communicate his great discovery first to his wife and daughter."[248]

It was particularly during his long and arduous researches on the disease of silkworms that Pasteur found his wife's aid of incalculable value. For Mme. Pasteur and her daughter then const.i.tuted themselves veritable silkworm rearers. They collected mulberry leaves, sorted larvae, and were unremitting in their labors during the continuance of this memorable investigation. And not only in the silk-producing districts of Southern France were they thus occupied, but also in a special laboratory in ecole Normale, after their return to Paris.

And, when in the midst of these researches, on the successful outcome of which hinged one of the greatest sources of national wealth, the indefatigable savant was stricken with paralysis and his life was for a while despaired of, it was again his devoted helpmate that afforded him solace in suffering and exercised a supervision over those experiments which the great man was still conducting almost in the presence of death.

That Pasteur's life was prolonged for a quarter of a century after the terrible attack of hemiplegia in 1868, that he was able to unravel the deep mysteries of microbian life, that he was able to make discoveries whose economical value to France was, in the estimation of Professor Huxley, more than sufficient to liquidate the immense indemnity of five billion francs exacted from his country by Germany at the termination of the Franco-Prussian war, that he was able, especially during these fruitful twenty-five years, to render his "scientific life like a luminous trail in the great night of the infinitely little in those ultimate abysses of being where life is born," was, in great measure, due to the unceasing care, the untiring vigilance and the sympathetic collaboration of one of the most devoted of wives and most n.o.ble and whole-souled of women.

What has been said of the influence and helpfulness of Mme. Pasteur can be a.s.serted with even greater truth of Elizabeth Aga.s.siz and of Caroline Herschel. For these two women, apart from the a.s.sistance they gave to a loved husband and an idolized brother, in the labors that made them so famous, both achieved distinction for their contributions to the sciences which they individually cultivated with such splendid results.

And had they elected to devote all their time to scientific research, instead of giving the greater part of it to those to whom they were so devotedly attached, who can tell how much more brilliant would have been their achievements and how much greater would have been the fame they would have won for themselves. Both of them were dowered in an eminent degree with taste and talent for science, and had they chosen to make it the sole object of their life work, there can be no doubt that their personal contributions to natural history and astronomy would have been far greater than they were. As it was, they were so overshadowed by those for whom they labored with such unselfishness and loyalty that the real value of their work is too often forgotten when there is question of the scientific triumphs of Louis Aga.s.siz and Sir William Herschel.

But they willed it so. They gladly effaced themselves that those whom they loved with such a deep and abiding love might shine the more brightly in the firmament of science. They preferred to spend and be spent in strengthening the great workers and leaders with whose lives their own were so thoroughly identified--"Inspiring them with courage, keeping faith in their own ideas alive, in days of darkness

'When all the world seems adverse to desert.'"

Both of these n.o.ble women had the same quality in common--absolute devotion and unswerving faith in those to whose success and happiness they had dedicated their lives. They sought nothing for themselves, they thought nothing of themselves. They both had, to borrow the idea of another, an intense power of sympathy, a generous love of giving themselves to the service of others, which enabled them to transfuse the force of their own personality into the objects to which they dedicated their powers.

In the preface of the joint work of Mr. and Mrs. Aga.s.siz ent.i.tled _A Journey in Brazil_, that delightful volume which throws such a flood of light on the fauna and flora of the Amazon valley, occur the following significant words regarding the share each had in producing the book: "Our separate contributions have become so closely interwoven that we should hardly know how to disconnect them." So was it with all their undertakings. There was the same common interest, the same unity of purpose, the same unselfish devotion to the cause of science during those long years of toil which were so prolific in results of supreme importance. Reading between the lines in _A Journey in Brazil_, and in _Louis Aga.s.siz, His Life and Correspondence_, written by Mrs. Aga.s.siz, we can easily fancy that the great naturalist owed as much, if not more, to his wife's never-failing sympathy and inspiration as to her active cooperation in his work, and we are ready to apply to her the words of Longfellow when he sings:

"And whenever the way seemed long, Or his heart began to fail, She would sing a more wonderful song Or tell a more wonderful tale."

As to Caroline Herschel as a helper and sustainer of her ill.u.s.trious brother, too much cannot be said. "In the days when he gave up a lucrative career that he might devote himself to astronomy, it was owing to her thrift and care that he was not hara.s.sed by the rankling vexations of money matters. She had been his helper and a.s.sistant when he was a leading musician; she became his helper and a.s.sistant when he gave himself up to astronomy. By sheer force of will and devoted affection she learned enough of mathematics and of methods of calculation, which to those unlearned seem mysteries, to be able to commit to writing his researches. She became his a.s.sistant in the workshop; she helped him to grind and polish his mirrors; she stood beside his telescope in the nights of midwinter, to write down his observations when the very ink was frozen in the bottle. She kept him alive by her care; thinking nothing of herself, she lived for him. She loved him and believed in him, and helped him with all her heart and with all her strength. She might have become a distinguished woman on her own account, for with the seven-foot Newtonian sweeper given her by her brother she discovered eight comets first and last. But the pleasure of seeking and finding for herself was scarcely tested. She 'minded the heavens' for her brother; she worked for him, not for herself, and the unconscious self-denial with which she gave up 'her own pleasure in the use of her sweeper' is not the least beautiful picture in her life."[249]

While recounting the achievements of women who directly or indirectly contributed to our knowledge of the earth and what it contains we cannot forget what the world owes to the gracious and glorious Isabella of Castile. For it is to her probably as much as to Columbus that a new continent was discovered at the close of the fifteenth century. For, while the doctors of Salamanca--most of whom were what Galileo called "paper philosophers," men who fancied that a correct knowledge of the physical universe was to be obtained by a collation of ancient texts--were denouncing the great navigator as an idle dreamer, and quoting the ill-founded notions of Pliny and Aristotle to prove the impossibility of his carrying out his project, Isabella was quietly revolving in her own mind the reasons which Columbus had adduced in favor of his great enterprise. Having satisfied herself that his views were sufficiently probable to justify action, she was prepared to make any sacrifices to have his plans executed. The result of her decision is but another ill.u.s.tration of the value of woman's quick intuition, as against the slow reasoning processes of philosophers and men of science.

Again, while considering what women have accomplished for the advancement of science by inspiration and collaboration, we must not lose sight of what they have done by suggestion. For, as John Stuart Mill well observes: "It no doubt often happens that a person who has not widely and accurately studied the thoughts of others on a subject has by natural sagacity a happy intuition which he can suggest but cannot prove, which yet, when matured, may be an important addition to knowledge: but, even then, no justice can be done to it until some other person, who does possess the previous acquirements, takes it in hand, tests it, gives it a scientific or practical form, and fits it into its place among the existing truths of philosophy or science. Is it supposed that such felicitous thoughts do not occur to women? They occur by hundreds to every woman of intellect; but they are mostly lost for want of a husband or friend who has the other knowledge which can enable him to estimate them properly and bring them before the world; and, even when they are brought before it, they usually appear as his ideas, not their real author's. Who can tell how many of the original thoughts put forth by male writers belong to a woman by suggestion, to themselves only by verifying and working out? If I may judge by my own case, a very large proportion indeed."[250]

Nor should we forget those active and energetic women--and their number is much greater than is ordinarily supposed--whose husbands, although often endowed with genius of the highest order, were indolent by temperament and disorderly and unmethodical by nature. Such men would, in the majority of cases, have run to seed had not their genius been given special force and impulse by their vigorous and methodical helpmates. Sir William Hamilton, the most learned philosopher of the Scottish school, is a striking instance in point; for it was due almost entirely to the stimulation he received from his ever active wife that he was always kept keyed up to his fullest working capacity as a philosopher and became recognized the world over as one of the commanding intellects of his age.

"Lady Hamilton," writes Professor Veitch in his _Memoir of Sir William Hamilton,_ "had a power of keeping her husband up to what he had to do.

She contended wisely against a sort of energetic indolence which characterized him, and which, while he was always laboring, made him apt to put aside the task actually before him, sometimes diverted by subjects of inquiry suggested in the course of study on the matter in hand, sometimes discouraged by the difficulty of reducing to order the immense ma.s.s of materials he had acc.u.mulated in connection with it.

Then her resolution and cheerful disposition sustained and refreshed him, and never more so than when, during the last twelve years of his life, his bodily strength was broken and his spirit, though languid, yet ceased not from mental toil. The truth is that Sir William's marriage, his comparatively limited circ.u.mstances, and the character of his wife supplied to a nature that would have been contented to spend its mighty energies in work that brought no reward but in the doing of it, and that might never have been made publicly known or available, the practical force and impulse which enabled him to accomplish what he actually did in literature and philosophy. It was this influence, without doubt, which saved him from utter absorption in his world of rare, n.o.ble and elevated but ever-increasingly unattainable ideas. But for it the serene sea of abstract thought might have held him becalmed for life; and, in the absence of all utterance of definite knowledge of his conclusions, the world might have been left to an ignorant and mysterious wonder about the unprofitable scholar."[251]

What has been so far said, important as it is, does not tell the whole story of woman's influence on men of science, and consequently on the progress of science. We should not have an adequate conception of women as inspirers and collaborators if we did not advert to certain faculties which they usually possess in a more eminent degree than the most of men. It is a well-known fact that in many of the affairs of life women are more practical, have more tact, and possess keener and quicker perceptions than men. They are, too, more ideal, more romantic and more enthusiastic.

Men of science in their investigations usually proceed by the slow and laborious process of collecting facts and collating phenomena, either by observation or experiment, or both, and, from the observed facts and phenomena, they formulate a law which explains and correlates them. This is known as induction, a method which proceeds from facts to ideas.

Women, on the contrary, are rather disposed to proceed from ideas to facts; to explain phenomena from ideas which already exist in the mind, without having recourse to the slow process of induction. This is the deductive method, and is the very reverse of that employed by the average man of science. It would, however, be a mistake to maintain that the inductive method is always employed, for such is not the case. More than a half a century ago the historian, Buckle, in a notable lecture delivered in the Royal Inst.i.tution of Great Britain, directed attention to the fact that some of the greatest scientific discoveries had been made by the deductive method.

One of these was Newton's epoch-making discovery of universal gravitation. While sitting in a garden he saw an apple fall, and this simple fact caused him to advance from idea to idea, and to be carried, by what Tyndall loved to call "the scientific use of the imagination,"

into the distant realms of s.p.a.ce. And, heedless of the operations of nature, neither observing nor experimenting, the great philosopher, by pure _a priori_ reasoning, "completed the most sublime and majestic speculation that it ever entered into the heart of man to conceive." "It was," as Buckle well observes, "the triumph of an idea. It was the audacity of genius." It was also the triumph of the deductive method in the solution of a problem that one not a genius could have worked out only by the long and toilsome process of induction.

Similarly, the great law of metamorphosis in plants, "according to which the stamens, pistils, corollas, bracts, petals and so forth, of every plant, are simply modified leaves," was discovered not by an inductive investigator, but by a poet. "Guided by his brilliant imagination, his pa.s.sion for beauty and his exquisite conception of form which supplied him with ideas," Germany's greatest poet, Goethe, by reasoning deductively, was able to generalize a law which lesser minds could never have arrived at except through the application of the inductive method.

So also was it in the science of crystallography. Its foundations were laid, not by a mineralogist nor a mathematician, as one would suppose, but by one of strong imagination and marked poetic temperament. Like Goethe, Hauy was led by his ideas of beauty and symmetry to work deductively on the problem before him. Descending from ideas to facts, he finally succeeded, after a long series of subsequent labors, in reading "the riddle which had baffled his able but unimaginative predecessors."

It is the possession of this deductive faculty, so characteristic of men of genius--their ability to reach conclusions directly, as great mathematicians perceive inferences which those less gifted reach only after pages of elaborate calculations--which enable women, "not indeed to make scientific discoveries, but to exercise the most momentous and salutary influence over the method by which scientific discoveries are made." For, as Buckle points out, men of science are too inclined to employ the inductive method to the exclusion of the deductive.[252] They have become slaves to the tyranny of facts, and, as such, are incompetent to further the progress of science as they would by using both methods instead of one. And their slavery would be still more complete and ignominious were it not for the great though unconscious service to science rendered by women who have kept alive the deductive habit of thought. "Their turn of thought, their habits of mind, their conversation, their influence, insensibly extending over the whole surface of society and frequently penetrating its intimate structure, have, more than all other things put together, tended to raise us up into an ideal world, lift us from the dust in which we are too p.r.o.ne to grovel, and develop in us those germs of imagination which even the most sluggish and apathetic understandings in some degree possess."

From the foregoing observations it is manifest that the best results to science are secured when men and women work together--men supplying the slow, logical reasoning power, women the vivid, far-reaching imagination; men generalizing from facts, women from ideas; men working chiefly by induction, women princ.i.p.ally by deduction. For thus collaborating, each with his or her predominant faculties, the two combined possess in a measure the elements which go to make up a man or woman of genius and which enable them to achieve far more for the advancement of science than would otherwise be possible.

No one has ever given more eloquent expression to this truth than John Stuart Mill, who was as keen as an observer as he was profound as a thinker. Writing on the subject under discussion, he does not hesitate to say: "Hardly anything can be of greater value to a man of theory and speculation who employs himself, not in collecting materials of knowledge by observation, but in working them up by processes of thought into comprehensive truths of science and laws of conduct, than to carry on his speculations in the companionship and under the criticism of a really superior woman. There is nothing comparable to it for keeping his thoughts within the limits of real things and the actual facts of nature. A woman seldom runs wild after an abstraction.... Women's thoughts are thus as useful in giving reality to those of thinking men as men's thoughts in giving width and largeness to those of women. In depth, as distinguished from breadth, I greatly doubt if even now women, compared with men, are at any disadvantage."[253]

We have already learned, from his own avowal, how much Mill was beholden to his wife for her active cooperation in the production of those works of his which have exerted so profound an influence on many phases of modern thought. A more striking ill.u.s.tration of the value of woman's a.s.sistance, but in the domain of biology, is found in the biography of the late Professor Huxley. By those who know this distinguished man of science--so remarkable for his intellectual vigor--only from his writings, the impression would be gleaned that he was one of the most independent of thinkers, and that his utterances on all subjects were absolutely personal and entirely unmodified by suggestion or criticism from any quarter.

How far this view is from being correct is found in the statement by his son that his father "invariably submitted his writings to the criticism of his wife before they were seen by any other eye. To her judgment was due the toning down of many a pa.s.sage which erred by excess of vigor, and the clearing up of phrases which would be obscure to the public. In fact, if any essay met with her approval, he felt sure it would not fail of its effect when published."[254] She was not only his "help and stay for forty years; in his struggles ready to counsel, in adversity to comfort," but, over and above this, she was "the critic whose judgment he valued above almost any, and whose praise he cared most to win"--the other self who made his life work possible.[255]

An intelligent, sympathetic pair of this kind--and this, as we have seen, is but one of a mult.i.tude which illuminates and beautifies the history of science--are competent to achieve wonders. They are like "the two-celled heart beating with one full stroke"--

"Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss Of science, and the secrets of the mind."

The woman is then truly, as De Lamennais in Scriptural phrases has it, "Man's companion, man's a.s.sistant, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh," and, in her sublime and endearing character so complete in every relation of life, she fully answers to the beautiful characterization which Adam, in _Paradise Lost_, gives of his beloved Eve:

"So absolute she seems, And in herself complete, so well to know Her own, that what she wills to do or say Seems wisest, virtuosest, discreetest, best.

Authority and reason on her wait,

* * * and, to consummate all, Greatness of mind and n.o.bleness their seat Build in her loveliest, and create an awe About her, as a guard angelic plac'd."

FOOTNOTES:

[233] Sis oppido meminens quod olim Martia Hortensio, Terentia Tullio, Calpurnia Plinio, Pudentilla Apuleio, Rusticana Symmacho legentibus meditantibusque candelas and candelabra tenuerunt. Lib. II, Epist. 10.