92 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



Sydney Smith spoke of those under the old regime as 

 " women of brilliant talents who violated all the common 

 duties of life and gave very pleasant little suppers." It 

 was certainly true of many of them even of some of the 

 most distinguished such, for instance, as Mme. d'Epinay, 

 Mme. du Deffand, Ninon de Lenclos and Mme. Tencin, the 

 mother of D'Alembert. There was little in their manner 

 of life to distinguish them from the hetcerce of ancient 

 Athens, and it was probably owing to this fact, as well as 

 their wit and brilliancy, that many of them attained such 

 preeminence as social leaders. The statesmen, philoso- 

 phers, men of science and letters of France, like those of 

 Greece more than two thousand years before, wanted dis- 

 traction and amusement. That the mistresses of the salons 

 should be women of learning was of little moment. The all 

 important thing for their habitues was that they should 

 be good entertainers that they should be witty, tactful 

 and sympathetic and, if ignorant, that they should be 

 brilliantly ignorant, and, at the same time, enchantingly 

 frank and nai've. 



Strange as it may appear there was as much hostility 

 to learned women at the close of the eighteenth century as 

 there was in the time of Louis XIV. And the remarkable 

 fact is that the strongest opponents of women's education 

 were found among the most prominent writers and schol- 

 ars of the day men who, like their predecessors of old, 

 based their opposition on the assumed mental inferiority 

 of woman. Thus, to Rousseau, woman was at best but ' ' an 

 imperfect man, " and, in many respects, little more than 

 "a grown-up child. " Search after abstract and specula- 

 tive truths, principles and axioms in science, " everything 

 that tends to generalize ideas is outside of her compe- 

 tence. " That means that women are to be excluded from 

 the study of mathematics and the physical sciences, because 

 they are incapable of generalization, abstraction, and the 

 mental concentration that these subjects demand. Even 



