84, WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



In Saint- Cyr, the best girls' school in the kingdom, there 

 was not a word about the first principles of philosophy, nor 

 about the physical and natural sciences recommended by 

 Fenelon. The elements just referred to, combined with a 

 goodly amount of esprit bien de I' esprit were considered 

 quite sufficient to prepare the future wives of the nobility 

 for all the duties they would be called upon to perform. 



Mme. de Maintenon had probably been unconsciously in- 

 fluenced by what she had seen at the court of her liege 

 lord, where the greater part of the women were extremely 

 ignorant. Even Mme. de Montespan, the king's favorite, 

 and for years the leading figure at the court, was no excep- 

 tion. So ignorant was she that she was not even able to 

 spell the simplest and most common words. 1 



elaborate course mapped out by Lionardo d'Arezzo in a letter ad- 

 dressed to the illustrious lady, Baptista Malatesta. In the broad 

 programme of education for women recommended by this eminent 

 man of letters, "poet, orator, historian, and the rest, all must be 

 studied, each must contribute a share. Our learning thus becomes 

 full, ready, varied, elegant, available for action or for discourse on 

 all subjects." 



Lionardo f s curriculum of studies for women was quite as com- 

 prehensive as that required for men, ' ' with perhaps a little less stress 

 upon rhetoric and more upon religion. There was no assumption that 

 a lower standard of attainment is inevitably a consequence of smaller 

 capacity. ' ' 



Nor was this thorough study of letters by the women of Italy 

 "unfavorably regarded by social opinion"; neither did it introduce 

 "a new standard of womanly activity. Women, indeed, at this epoch, 

 seem to have preserved their moral and intellectual balance under 

 the stress of the new enthusiasm better than men. The learned 

 ladies were, in actual life, good wives and mothers, domestic and 

 virtuous women of strong judgment and not seldom of marked 

 capacity in affairs." Cf. Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist 

 Educators, pp. 122, 132, 197, by W. H. Woodward, Cambridge, 1905. 



iThus, in a letter of hers to Mme. de Lauzun occurs a sentence 

 like the following: "11 lia sy lontant que je n'ay antandu parler 

 de vous. ' ' The duchess of Monpensier, daughter of Gaston d 'Orleans, 

 in a letter to her father exhibits a similar ignorance of her own Ian- 



