SOUTH SEA BUBBLES IN SCIENCE. 407 



a test. It would seem as if the present choice of study by women 

 students tended to intensify vagueness of thought rather than to 

 correct it, to keep them in ignorance of business habits rather than 

 to educate them in the balance of judgment on economic questions. 



Women are born speculators, and are peculiarly prone to invest 

 money and heart in bubbles. Being the power behind the throne, 

 they can carry men into action, and it seems to me that especial 

 attention should be paid in women's colleges to the studies that 

 cultivate accurate thought and business methods. A certain amount 

 of the study of scientific methods and a study of common law might 

 take the place of the study of philosophy, psychology, and biology, 

 certainly in the first years of a woman's college course, for psychol- 

 ogy and biology are studies which demand long scientific training 

 and maturity of thought. Recently I heard the following conver- 

 sation at a bank in Cambridge. The cashier was speaking with a 



young lady : " Miss , your friend has overdrawn her account 



three hundred dollars, and you say she has left Cambridge." " Yes, 

 the trouble with Jane is she is too much educated." A long resi- 

 dence in a university town makes one wary of educational theories, 

 but the proneness of women to invest in women's banks and bogus 

 trust companies certainly seems to need a corrective in a new col- 

 lege curriculum. Men can indulge in delusions and can recover 

 mental balance, and perhaps their fortunes; but women are apt to 

 become bankrupt permanently. Their experience in business delu- 

 sions is similar to that in affairs of the heart. "Washington Irving 

 says of this feminine attribute: 



" She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks 

 her whole soul in the traffic of affection, and if shipwrecked her case 

 is hopeless, for it is a bankruptcy of the heart." 



More mathematics and science, and less philosophy and psychol- 

 ogy, might correct that vagueness of thought which leads both men 

 and women into delusion. 



IS^ow for our other remedies. Shall we have an academy which 

 shall issue storm warnings of scientific bubbles? I fear that the 

 influence of academies is waning, and that the conviction that there 

 are as many good men outside of the academy as inside would 

 militate against their dicta. We could have courts of scientific 

 appeal, with judges appointed by the State to sit on scientific ques- 

 tions of perplexity, and to sift expert opinions. Such a constitu- 

 tion of scientific courts might be a good thing in several ways — a 

 saving health to the public. The college professor would certainly 

 be greatly relieved of endeavors of promoters to use the name and 

 reputation of the professor's university, and incidentally the little 

 his own name might add. This remedial solution is not in sight. 



