110 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



quite different from what they were in the time of Chris- 

 tine de Pisan quite different from what they were half 

 a century ago. Our forebears, in their endless disputa- 

 tions regarding woman's mental inferiority, based their 

 arguments on a priori deductions, or on metaphysical con- 

 siderations which proved nothing and which were often 

 irrelevant, if not absurd. 



Thus the Aristotelians, accepting as true the doctrine of 

 the four elements as well as the superimposed doctrine of 

 the four elemental qualities, sought to explain the proper- 

 ties of all compound bodies by these primal qualities. In 

 this way they explained the various virtues of drugs and 

 medicines. And by the same process of reasoning they 

 explained the assumed difference between male and female 

 brains. They assumed, to begin with, that there was a 

 difference between the intellectual capacities of men and 

 women. They then assumed that this difference in capacity 

 was due to the difference in character and texture of the 

 female as compared with those of the male brain. They 

 next further assumed that the doctrines of the four ele- 

 ments and of the four elemental qualities were established 

 beyond question, and then assumed again that the reason 

 of woman's inferior capacity was due to the fact that her 

 brain was moister and softer, and, therefore, more impres- 

 sionable than that of man. No wonder that the old Span- 

 ish Benedictine, Benito Jeronimo Feijoo, in his chivalrous 

 Defensa de la Mujer, lost all patience with such fantastic 

 theorizers and wrote: "Did I write ... to display my 

 wit, I could easily, by deducting a chain of consequences 

 from received principles, shew that man's understanding, 

 weighed in the balance with female capacity, would be 

 found so light as to kick the beam." 1 



Abandoning the Aristotelian method of envisaging the 

 question under discussion, our modern philosophers have 



iAn Essay on the Learning, Genius and Abilities of the Fair 

 Sex, Proving Them Not Inferior to Man, p. 142, London, 1774. 



