360 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



that she had been expressly created and sent into the world 

 to inspire them with intelligence and creative power. 



M. Claviere declares that l ' There is hardly a philosopher 

 or a poet of the sixteenth century whose pages are not illu- 

 minated or gladdened by the smile of some high-born 

 lady." 1 



"What the brilliant Frenchman says of the influence of 

 woman on the poets and philosophers of a single century 

 could with equal truth be said of the poets and philoso- 

 phers of every century from Anacreon and Plato to the 

 present day. And, still more, it can be predicated of 

 woman's inspiration and influence in every department of 

 intellectual effort, in art and architecture, in music and 

 literature, in science in all its departments, whether deduc- 

 tive or inductive. 



It has been well said, "Were history to be rewritten, 

 with due regard to women 's share in it, many small causes, 

 heretofore disregarded, would be found fully to explain 

 great and unlooked-for results. . . . For it is not in out- 

 ward facts, nor great names, nor noisy deeds, nor genealo- 

 gies of crowned heads, nor in tragic loves, nor ambitious or 

 striking heroism, nor crime, that we find proofs of the con- 

 stant and secret working whereby woman most effectually 

 asserts herself. Certainly she has played her part in the 

 outward and visible history of the world, but in that his- 

 tory which is told and written, which is buried in archives 

 and revivified in books, woman's part is always small when 

 set beside that of her companion, man. She contributes 

 but little, and at this she may surely rejoice, to the tales 

 of battles and treaties of successions and alliances, of vio- 

 lence, fraud, suspicions and hatreds. But if the inward 

 history of human affairs could be described as fully as the 

 outward facts ; if the story of the family could be told to- 

 gether with the story of the nation; if human thoughts 

 could with certainty be divined from human deeds, then 



i The Women of the Renaissance, p. 394, New York, 1901. 



