64 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



occasion demanded, the pen in self-defense. This is evi- 

 denced by numerous works which were written in response 

 to certain narrow-minded pamphleteers miseri pedanti, 

 pitiful pedants, who would have the activities of women 

 limited to the nursery or the kitchen. 1 



A striking characteristic of these learned women was 

 the entire absence of all priggism or pedantry. Whether 

 lecturing on law or philosophy, or discoursing in Latin be- 

 fore Popes and cardinals, or taking part in discussions on 

 art and literature with the eminent humanists of the day, 

 they ever retained that beautiful simplicity which gives 

 such a charm to true greatness of mind and is the best in- 

 dex of true scholarship and noble, symmetrical womanhood. 



Nor did the rare intellectual attainments of these daugh- 

 ters of Italy destroy that harmony of creation which, some 

 will have it, is sure to be jeopardized by giving women the 

 same educational advantages as men. So far was this from 

 being the case that there were never more loyal and help- 

 ful wives nor more devoted and stimulating mothers than 

 there were among those women who wrote verses in the lan- 

 guage of Sappho, or delivered public addresses in the 

 tongue of Cicero. Still less did their serious and long-pro- 

 tracted studies entail any of the dangers we hear so much 

 of nowadays. The large and healthy families of many of 

 them prove that intellectual work, even of the highest or- 

 der, is not incompatible with motherhood; and still less 

 that it, per se, conduces, as is so often asserted, to race- 



i Among these works may be mentioned 27 Merito delle Donne, by 

 Modesta Pozzo di Zorgi, Venice, 1600; La Nobilitd e VExcellenza 

 delle Donne, by Lucrezia Marinelli, Venice, 1601; De Ingenii Mulie- 

 bris ad Doctrinam et Meliores Litteras Aptitudine, by Anna van 

 Schurman, Leyden, 1641; Les Dames Illustres, by Jaquette Guillame, 

 Paris, 1665, and L'Egalite des Hommes et des Femmes, by Marie le 

 Jars de Gournay, Paris, 1622. The last named work was by the cele- 

 brated fille d' alliance adopted daughter of Montaigne. It is to her 

 that we owe the textut receptus of the Essais of the illustrious lit- 

 terateur, 



