78 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



militated strongly against the publication of any article that might be 

 signed with a woman's name. But science not the false science which 

 answered Miss Hardaker's invocation, not the science which would con- 

 fine the negro to slavery because of his small brain and small mental 

 achievement true science says that, if woman's power is to be judged 

 by her work, she must be given a fair field for its display. To clear 

 the race-course for the man, and to block woman's road at a certain 

 point, because we feel intuitively that she can go no further, is by 

 no means consistent with modern scientific methods. If the line of 

 woman's power is marked, let her discover the fact, as Bacon thought 

 all scientific truth should be discovered by experiment. The discov- 

 ery will not long be delayed ; the law of the survival of the fittest will 

 not be abrogated. But, if it should be found that the mental steam- 

 ship of the female can, after all, store enough fuel to cross the ocean 

 of reasoning, it would give woman the inestimable benefit of correct- 

 ing the possible errors into which a professed enemy of her sex has 

 fallen. It would demonstrate that, like Mr. Darwin's pea-hen, women 

 have remained inferior to their mates, not because of natural defect, 

 but by reason of external circumstances. A just trial is the whole de- 

 mand of the reform philosophy. 



In the Royal Society, many years ago, it is said Charles II asked 

 an explanation of the fact that a fish in water had no weight ; that 

 water plus a fish was no heavier than water without a fish. The wise 

 gentlemen of the Royal Society (presumably males of large bulk) were 

 much agitated over the problem, and gave many scientific reasons for 

 the remarkable phenomenon. It was a wiser man (though not of so 

 scientific a turn of mind) who, instead of giving his reasons why the 

 fish had no weight in its own element, tried the experiment and found, 

 to the surprise of the scientific gentlemen, that a practical test was of 

 more value than any quantity of learned but ill-founded speculation. 

 Perhaps it will not be out of place, by way of parallel to Miss Harda- 

 ker's triumphant demonstration of " the reason why," to cite the testi- 

 mony of a prominent instructor, whose evidence tends to show that 

 her scientific impossibility may be affected by some elements which 

 she has not considered. " So far as my observation and experience 

 go, " says President Magill, of Swarthmore College (a gentleman who 

 for ten years has been the instructor of about three hundred students 

 of both sexes), "there is absolutely no difference in the average intel- 

 lectual capacity of the sexes, under the same training and external in- 

 fluences. The valedictorians of our classes have been almost equally 

 divided between the sexes, with a slight and accidental preponderance 

 in favor of the young women." 



