2o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



is an adaptation of the one already proposed to account for her smaller 

 physical strength. It is gravely asserted that mental activity in art or 

 science has been systematically repressed among women, and that in 

 consequence their cerebral development has been injuriously interfered 

 with. To this contention it would be a sufficient reply were we to 

 simplv point to the fact already mentioned, that the relative inferi- 

 ority in the size of the brain of women, instead of diminishing as their 

 social status has improved, has, on the contrary, been increasing. We 

 may hence fairly argue that it exists not in virtue of any artificial inter- 

 ference, but of a law of Nature. We can, however, adduce other con- 

 siderations. In the pursuit of the fine arts, woman, instead of being 

 checked and hindered, whether by law or by social conventions, has 

 been encouraged. An acquaintance with music has been literally 

 forced upon every girl of the upper and middle classes. Yet, leaving 

 composers out of the question, how many of the million female per- 

 formers on the piano-forte, now to be found in Europe and America, 

 can take rank with Liszt and Thalberg ? In the highest development 

 of literature, poetry, sex has been no obstacle to the recognition of 

 merit. Yet neither Sappho in the past nor Mrs. Hemans and Mrs. 

 Browning in our own day can be placed even in the same class with 

 the leading poets of Greece, England, and Germany. 



Women have certainly till of late met with few direct facilities for 

 the pursuit of science. But, in England at least, neither have men. 

 Our great scientific discoverers, tintil quite recent days, have been sub- 

 stantially self-taught, and even if in their youth they enjoyed a university 

 education their subsequent researches, though ^:>os^ Jioc (after this), have 

 assuredly not been propter hoc (on account of this). Scientific books 

 and apparatus have been as accessible to one sex as to the other ; and 

 these have generally been the only opportunities that our discoverers 

 have had at their command. How to use such appliances they had to 

 discover for themselves. We deny, therefore, that the exclusion of 

 young women from universities, in ichic/i modern sciences were not 

 taught, can have hindered them from entering upon a scientific career. 

 Equally do we deny that public opinion forbade for them study and 

 research. Had Miss Herschel been a man, her astronomical discoveries 

 could not have been more highly or more deservedly appreciated. Not 

 a dog barked at her for preferring determining the orbits of comets to 

 ordinary feminine avocations. In like manner, if any woman had pos- 

 sessed the necessary faculties and turn of mind, there was nothing in 

 the way of public prejudices or established customs to prevent her 

 from having anticipated Dalton in discovering the laws of definite 

 chemical combination. Nor, if thus discovered, would the "atomic 

 theory " have met with a less favorable reception. We then entirely 

 deny the existence of any supposed conspiracy to repress scientific tal- 

 ent in the female sex, and we hold that the three arguments adduced to 

 explain its comparative rarity among women are utterly inconclusive. 



