FUTURE OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE 409 



the men who must perforce remain specialists, if they elect 

 to do so. For nothing gives falser views of nature as a 

 whole, nothing more unfits the mind for a proper appre- 

 hension of higher and more important truths, nothing 

 more incapacitates one for the enjoyment of the master- 

 pieces of literature or the sweeter amenities of life, than 

 the narrow occupation of a specialist who sees nothing 

 in the universe but electrons, microbes and protozoa. 



But just at the critical moment, when men of science 

 would rather discover a process than a law, when they are 

 so preoccupied with the infinitely little that they lose sight 

 of the cosmos as a whole ; when their attention is so riveted 

 on particular phenomena that they will no longer have 

 aptitude for rising from effects to causes ; when they cease 

 to have any interest in general ideas and stray away from 

 the guidance of the true philosophic spirit; when, like 

 Plato's cave men, they have so long groped in darkness 

 that their powers of vision are impaired, then it is that 

 woman, "The herald of a brighter race/' comes to the 

 rescue and holds up to their astonished gaze the picture of 

 an ideal world whose existence they had almost forgotten. 

 For women, as a rule, love science for its own sake, and, 

 unlike the specialists in question, they are, in its pursuit, 

 rarely actuated by any selfish or mercenary interests, or 

 by the hope of financial reward. Precise and never-ending 

 observations with the microscope and spectroscope, which 

 at best give them but a superficial knowledge of certain 

 details of science, while it leaves them in ignorance of the 

 greater and better part of it, do not appeal to them. They 

 prefer general ideas to particular facts, and love to roam 

 over the whole realm of science rather than confine them- 

 selves to one of its isolated corners. 



"Women," writes M. Etienne Lamy, the distinguished 

 French Academician, "group themselves at the center 

 of human knowledge, whereas men disperse themselves 



