FUTURE OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE 415 



the most learned and most cultured of nations are still 

 evils to be guarded against, and that one of the means 

 over and above moral rule and revealed truth of safe- 

 guarding their own interests and preserving the sanctity 

 of the home is to make themselves by knowledge and cul- 

 ture the intellectual equals of their consorts. 



They realize also that if they are to attain the highest 

 measure of success as wives and mothers, a broad and 

 thorough education a knowledge of science, as well as fa- 

 miliarity with art and literature and the teachings of re- 

 ligion is essential to them for their children's sake. It is 

 said that 



"The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world," 



but how much truer is it that * ' The domestic hearth is the 

 first of schools, and the best of lecture-rooms; for here the 

 heart will cooperate with the mind, the affections with the 

 reasoning power/' It is only when the mothers of this, 

 the woman's century, shall dispute with men the primacy 

 of erudition when they shall prove their mastery of those 

 newer sciences by which our age sets such great store 

 when they shall possess 



"Seraphic intellect and force 



To seize and throw the doubts of man"; 



that their grown-up sons will have the same confidence in 

 their intelligence as they now have in their hearts. Then 

 only will mothers be properly equipped for developing 

 the character of their children; for inspiring them with a 

 love of the true, the beautiful and the good; for stimu- 

 lating their talents and aiding them to attain to all the 

 sublimities of knowledge ; for assisting them in doubt and 

 despondency and firing them with an ambition to strive 

 for supreme excellence in all that makes for the nobility 

 of manhood and the glory of womanhood; for making 



