Woman in Science Part 35

"Qu'il est a.s.sez ennuyeux, que je crois, D'avoir toute sa vie une bete avec soi."

A briefer and truer statement of the evils of unequal intellectual mating was never penned.[263] Men of intelligence are no longer, like Rousseau, satisfied with an ignorant domestic for a wife, and still less are they disposed with Schopenhauer to regard woman as an incurable Philistine, and as a mere intermediary between a child and a man. They have learned by sad experience that it is contrary both to justice and public policy to impose artificial restrictions on the acquisition of knowledge by women, or to close to the vigorous and capable representatives of their s.e.x careers which are open to the weakest and most incompetent men. History has taught them that the fall of Greece and Rome was owing to the failure of these nations to make due provision for the mental development of women.

And women know that it was because of the inability of the wives of the Athenians to enter into the thoughts of their highly educated husbands and to sympathize with their aims and appreciate their achievements that caused the men to leave them in their solitude and seek in the companionship of the hetaerae the intellectual atmosphere which was wanting in their own homes. They know, too, that the lack of knowledge in the wife and the absence of virtue in the hetaerae, which brought such disasters on the most learned and most cultured of nations are still evils to be guarded against, and that one of the means over and above moral rule and revealed truth of safe-guarding their own interests and preserving the sanct.i.ty of the home is to make themselves by knowledge and culture the intellectual equals of their consorts.

They realize also that if they are to attain the highest measure of success as wives and mothers, a broad and thorough education--a knowledge of science, as well as familiarity with art and literature and the teachings of religion--is essential to them for their children's sake. It is said that

"The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world,"

but how much truer is it that "The domestic hearth is the first of schools, and the best of lecture-rooms; for here the heart will cooperate with the mind, the affections with the reasoning power." It is only when the mothers of this, the woman's century, shall dispute with men the primacy of erudition--when they shall prove their mastery of those newer sciences by which our age sets such great store--when they shall possess

"Seraphic intellect and force To seize and throw the doubts of man";

that their grown-up sons will have the same confidence in their intelligence as they now have in their hearts. Then only will mothers be properly equipped for developing the character of their children; for inspiring them with a love of the true, the beautiful and the good; for stimulating their talents and aiding them to attain to all the sublimities of knowledge; for a.s.sisting them in doubt and despondency and firing them with an ambition to strive for supreme excellence in all that makes for the n.o.bility of manhood and the glory of womanhood; for making them, as Beatrice made Dante after he was renewed and purified in the waters of Eunoe, "fit to mount up to the stars."

"_Puro e disposto a salire alle stelle._"

The romantic idea of treating woman as a clinging vine, and thus eliminating half the energies of humanity, is rapidly disappearing and giving place to the idea that the strong are for the strong--the intellectually strong; that the evolution of the race will be complete only when men and women shall be a.s.sociated in perfect unity of purpose, and shall, in fullest sympathy, collaborate for the attainment of the highest and the best. Then, indeed, will man's helpmate become to him and to his children

"More rich than pearls of Ind or gold of Ophir, And in her s.e.x more wonderful and rare."

Then will men and women for the first time fully supplement each other in their aspirations and endeavors and realize somewhat of that oneness of heart and mind which was so beautifully adumbrated in Plato's androgyn. Then will the world witness the return of another Golden Age--the Golden Age of Science--the Golden Age of cultured, n.o.ble, perfect womanhood. Then to all who really think and love will be manifest the clearness and power of vision of England's great poet laureate when in matchless numbers he sings:

"The woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink Together, dwarfed or G.o.dlike, bond or free.

For woman is not undevelopt man But diverse: could we make her as the man, Sweet Love were slain; his dearest bond is this, Not like to like, but like in difference.

Yet in the long years liker must they grow; The man be more of woman, she of man; He gain in sweetness and in moral height, Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world; She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind; Till at the last she set herself to man, Like perfect music unto n.o.ble words; And as these twain, upon the skirts of Time, Sit side by side, full-summ'd in all their powers, Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, Self-rev'rent each, and reverencing each, Distinct in individualities, But like each other ev'n as those who love, Then comes the statelier Eden back to men; Then reign the world's great bridals chaste and calm; Then springs the crowning race of human-kind.

May these things be!"

FOOTNOTES:

[256] _Histoire des Sciences et des Savants_, p. 271, Geneve-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 Inst.i.tute:

"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 s.e.x 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 compet.i.tors. Science knows no nationality and should recognize no distinction of s.e.x, 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 Inedits du Comte Joseph de Maistre_, Tom. I, p. 194, Paris, 1851.

It was this same brusque and original writer who a.s.serted 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 Stael 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 a.s.serts that the education of women cannot be too consistent, too serious, and too solid--"_L'education des femmes ne saurait etre trop suivie, trop serieuse et trop forte._" _La Femme Studieuse_, p. 160, Paris, 1895.

[260] _The Subjection of Women_, p. 81, London, 1909.

[261] The late Mr. Gladstone a.s.serts 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 a.s.serted 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 amus.e.m.e.nt of the world; it increases the pleasures of society by multiplying the topics upon which the two s.e.xes 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, dest.i.tute 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 n.o.blest 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 aerial 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, p.r.o.nounced in the Church of the Gesu in Rome, in March, 1900, he told his vast audience--composed of the elite of the Eternal City--that:

"If we are to have a race of enlightened, n.o.ble, 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 s.e.x. 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 G.o.d 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, chast.i.ty, and love prevail. She is more unselfish, more capable of enthusiasm for spiritual ends, she has more sympathy with what is beautiful, n.o.ble, and G.o.dlike than man; and the more her knowledge increases, the more shall she become a heavenly force to help spread G.o.d's kingdom on earth."

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