WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 101 



women are now admitted to all departments, pass the same 

 examinations as the men and receive the same academic 

 degrees. Germany, whose institutions for the higher edu- 

 cation of men have so long been justly famous, was ex- 

 ceedingly slow to open its universities to women, and then 

 only after the most stubborn opposition of those who still 

 maintained that the studies of women should be limited to 

 the three R's and their occupations confined to the four 

 K's. But even in this conservative country the cause of 

 woman has at length triumphed, and she now enjoys edu- 

 cational advantages that a few decades ago were deemed 

 forever impossible. 



And so it is in every civilized country. Woman's long 

 struggle for complete intellectual freedom is almost ended, 

 and certain victory is already in sight. In spite of the 

 sarcasm and ridicule of satirists and comic poets, in spite 

 of the antipathy of philosophers and the antagonism of 

 legislators who persisted in treating women as inferior 

 beings, they are finally in view of the goal toward which 

 they have through so many long ages been bending their 

 best efforts. Moreover, so effective and so concentrated 

 has been their work during recent years that they have 

 accomplished more toward securing complete intellectual 

 enfranchisement than during the previous thirty centuries. 



From the former home of the Vikings to the romantic 

 land of the Cid, from the capital of Holy Russia to the 

 fair metropolis of the Golden Gate, women are now wel- 

 comed to the very institutions from which but a few years 

 ago they were so systematically excluded. They attend 

 the same courses as men, pass the same examinations and 

 receive the same degrees and honors. Their sex is no 

 longer a bar to positions and employment that only a 



ished world saw re-enacted scenes scarcely less disgraceful than those 

 which characterized the riotous demonstrations which, seventeen years 

 before, had greeted seven young women at the portals of the Uni- 

 versity of Edinburgh. 



