382 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



Nor should we forget those active and energetic women 

 and their number is much greater than is ordinarily sup- 

 posed whose husbands, although often endowed with 

 genius of the highest order, were indolent by temperament 

 and disorderly and unmethodical by nature. Such men 

 would, in the majority of cases, have run to seed had not 

 their genius been given special force and impulse by their 

 vigorous and methodical helpmates. Sir William Hamil- 

 ton, the most learned philosopher of the Scottish school, is 

 a striking instance in point ; for it was due almost entirely 

 to the stimulation he received from his ever active wife 

 that he was always kept keyed up to his fullest working 

 capacity as a philosopher and became recognized the world 

 over as one of the commanding intellects of his age. 



"Lady Hamilton," writes Professor Veitch in his Mem- 

 oir of Sir William Hamilton, ' i had a power of keeping her 

 husband up to what he had to do. She contended wisely 

 against a sort of energetic indolence which characterized 

 him, and which, while he was always laboring, made him 

 apt to put aside the task actually before him, sometimes 

 diverted by subjects of inquiry suggested in the course of 

 study on the matter in hand, sometimes discouraged by the 

 difficulty of reducing to order the immense mass of ma- 



I dedicate this volume. Like all that I have written for many 

 years, it belongs as much to her as to me; but the work as it stands 

 has had, in a very insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage 

 of her revision, some of the most important portions having been 

 reserved for a more careful re-examination, which they are now never 

 destined to receive. Were I but capable of interpreting to the world 

 one-half the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in 

 her grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it than 

 is ever likely to arise from anything I can write, unprompted and 

 unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom. * ' 



The chivalrous sentiments expressed in this generous tribute by 

 one of the deepest thinkers of his time, to the memory of his noble 

 and gifted life-companion, extravagant as they may seem, are but 

 echoes of similar sentiments often voiced before by the world's great- 

 est leaders of thought and science. 



