WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 105 



she can protect herself perfectly well. He will not see in 

 her any longer a creature of sweet emotions and pure 

 aspirations, coupled with a complete ignorance of the 

 world, because she already knows all that she wants to 

 know. . . . 



" Perhaps the greatest change is that woman now does 

 thoroughly what before she only did as an amateur." 1 



Yes, the world is beginning at last to realize the truth 

 of the proposition which the learned Maria Gastana Agnesi 

 so eloquently defended nearly two centuries ago to wit, 

 that nature has endowed the female mind with a capacity 

 for all knowledge, and that, in depriving women of an 

 opportunity of acquiring knowledge, men work against the 

 best interests of the public weal. 2 



We are at the long last near that millennium which Emer- 

 son had in mind when, in 1822, he predicted "a time when 

 higher institutions for the education of young women 

 would be as needful as colleges for young men" that mil- 

 lennium for which women have hoped and striven ever 

 since Sappho sang and Aspasia inspired the brightest, the 

 noblest minds of Greece. 



1 The Queen's Eeign, Chap. V, London, 1897. 



2 Proposition third, of her Propositiones Philosophicce, Milan, 

 1738, reads as follows: 



"Optime etiam de universa Philosophia infirmiorem sexum meru- 

 isse nullus infirmabitur ; nam prater septuaginta fere eruditissimas, 

 Mulieres, quas recenset Menagius, complures alias quovis tempore 

 floruisse novimus, quaB in philosophieis disciplinis maximam ingenii 

 laudem sunt assecutae. Ad omnem igitur doctrinam, eruditionemque 

 etiam muliebres animos Natura comparavit: quare paulo injuriosius 

 cum feminis agunt qui eis bonarum artium cultu omnino interdicunt, 

 eo vel maxime, quod haec illarum studia privatis, publicisque rebus 

 non modo haud noxia f utura sint verum etiam perutilia. ' ' 



This admirable work, with its one hundred and ninety-one propo- 

 sitions, is commended to those who may have any doubt regarding the 

 learning or capacity of the Italian women who have been referred to 

 in the preceding pages. 



