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and authorized them to pass their examinations for the degrees, both of master and bachelor of arts. The legal faculty soon followed this example. A Roumanian, Mlle. Belsesco, and a Frenchwoman, Mlle. Chauvin, were awarded doctors' degrees, and, in 1888, despite the opposition both of students and professors, female medical students received permission to walk the hospitals of Paris. The same thing has happened almost everywhere. In Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland, Russia and Italy, as well as in the United States, women have full permission to practise medicine.

Hitherto, however, the majority of the German universities have either kept their doors fast closed, or have opened only a sliding panel, by way of signifying that the women were received on sufferance, not as a matter of right. A woman cannot attend the course at the University of Berlin without first satisfying both the minister of public instruction and the acting professor about her motives; and the grace is awarded by preference to foreigners; moreover, they are not permitted either to matriculate or to take degrees. At Jena matters are still worse. The four boards which govern the university refuse to admit women to the lecture-rooms, even as mere auditors, but turn them pitilessly out. Germany still resists; but there are certain signs that she will not resist much longer; that she is beginning to waver. Women will have proved yet once again, that when they will, they will; and that what they will is the will of God.

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aggerated; but the incident induced a journalist by the name of M. Artaur Kirchoff to make inquiries among more than a hundred professors, chosen from those best known, on the question of the admissibility of women to university courses. Their answers, in writing, have been collected and published; and the volume1 deserves attention.

We perceive, at the outset, from a cursory examination of the collection, that the pure obstructionists, resolved not to yield the women an inch, and to refuse their requests without ceremony, are extremely rare. I can find but a few who categorically decline all compromise. At their head stands a venerable professor of philology in the University of Göttingen, M. Ferdinand Wüstenfeld, who expresses hin self as follows: "I shall soon have completed my eightieth year, and I am forced, in writing you, to employ an amanuensis. Suffice it to say, that I am absolutely opposed to the admission of women to academic studies or to any profession whatever which demands a learned education." It is permissible at eighty, to have but little liking for novelties, and the ladies will know how to pardon this surly philologian, the unequivocal sentence which he does not take pains to justify. They will owe a deeper grudge to a professor of law at Berlin, M. Gierke, who sums up the matter thus: "We live in serious times. The German people has something better to do, than to make rash experiments in female education. The one thing that concerns us is that our men should be men. It is always a sign of decadence when we are reduced to demanding of the women a virility in which the men are lacking." It is thus that M. Gierke contrives at one stroke, to put up the backs both of his countrymen and country women!

But if the sworn enemies of what they call in Germany the "academic

1 Die akademische Frau : Gutschten hervor

ragender Oniversitäts-professoren über die Befähigung deh Frau zum wisserschaftlichen Studium und Berute: Berlin, 1897. Hugo Steinitz Verlag.

woman" are not numerous, truth compels us to own that she has but few warm and enthusiastic partisans. A certain number endeavor to persuade themselves that her admission will prove advantageous to scientific studies; that the ardor of her zeal will stimulate sluggish brains, and awaken a noble emulation among the bearded youth; that nothing, in short, will make a boy-student work, like the sight of a girl-student working. A larger number seem to fear that the girl will prove a dangerous rival to the boy, if she is ugly; and a deplorable distraction if she is fair. They consider that a pretty girl's face is the book of all others which attracts the most, and instructs the least.

Upon the whole, the mood of most of the professors consulted by M. Kirchoff may be described as one of resignation. They admit that there are streams which never run backwards, and that the man who does not desire to be drowned had better follow the direction of the current. Some put a good face upon it; others submit sadly and with a visible effort. One feels that they are gulping an unpalatable draught. "After all," they say with a profound sigh, "if women will study, who can hinder them? They are bent upon disturbing our peace, and stripping us of a privilege which we held very dear. Beati possidentes. But let us endeavor to be just, and not forget that we are judges in our own cause. We persist in believing that the true vocation of the German woman, and her natural function is to marry, have many children, and bring them up somehow. But the objection is urged that there are more women in our country than men; that there are, in fact, at least a million Allemandes for whom, though never so well disposed to marry, there are no husbands to be had. We do not undertake to supply this deficiency. Let us at least help them, or make a show of helping them to get their own living. After all, those who attempt to earn their bread, in the liberal or scientific professions will always be an exception.

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Would it affect the destinies of the German Empire, even if we did have a few female doctors? It is hard to have to yield to an unreasonable caprice; but we live in an age when folly has to be reckoned with; and since it has pleased woman to change the idea she formerly entertained of herself, let us flatter her new fad. She will get over it possibly, sooner than she imagines." Thus, the resigned; not throwing the door wide open, but simply leaving it ajar. It is all the women want. They do not care for being received enthusiasm. It is enough that they are received. Once inside, they will undertake to arrange the house to suit themselves, and do its honors in their own way.

with

It must gratify woman to observe that her declared enemies, no less than her friends, almost all admit, in theory, the intellectual equality of the sexes; and if they wish to shut her out of the universities, it is not because they consider her incapable of winning her spurs there. There are some, however, who make reservations, and those who make the largest number are the professors of history. They claim that of all branches of study, woman has the smallest natural disposition for historical research. M. Jacob Caro reproaches her with having, along with a tendency to minute detail, a passion for chimeras; with failing wholly to grasp the enduring and fatal element in human affairs; and with jumping at the conclusion that social maladies

may be

cured by artificial means. "To abandon history to women," he cries out, smiting his breast, "would be to proclaim a perpetual revolution." M. Busolt, professor at Kiel, is less tragic. He contents himself with remarking that the essential qualifications of a historian are, "severity of method, exactitude in research, the discernment of hidden causes, accuracy of judgment, general ideas, comprehensive views; all of which gifts have been denied to women." Perhaps he goes just a little too far. I remember once asking Louis Blanc from what

is

one book he had derived most inspiration in preparing his history of the French Revolution. "There is but one book," he answered, "the 'Considerations' of Mme. de Staël. Read that, and you may dispense with all the rest." But genius has no sex. It is a curious fact that among all the professors consulted, it is the mathematicians who have paid the finest tribute to the female intellect. Never say again that women have an instinctive antipathy to abstractions. M. Felix Klein will tell you that their aptitude for the most abstract of all sciences, the higher mathematics, positively remarkable, and that six ladies, two Americans, one Englishwoman and three Russians, have attended his lectures during the last semester, and done him great honor. M. Weyer enumerates twenty-one women who have distinguished themselves in mathematics, from Ptolémaïs of Cyrene, and the renowned Hypatia, down to Sophie Germain, who corresponded for a long time with Gauss, without his ever suspecting that she was a young girl; to Mary Somerville with her studies in celestial mechanics, and the justly celebrated Sophia Koralevski, who filled the chair of mathematics at Stockholm, and whose essay on the problem of the rotation of a solid body round a fixed point, crowned by our Academie des Sciences in 1888, by the award of the Bordin prize, increased for the occasion from three thousand to five thousand francs.

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"She had," says M. Weyer, "a powerful imagination, which she employed in making her discoveries. She employed it also in dreams about the fourth dimension. It was perhaps the part of her science where romance came in. She employed it oftener yet, in the self-tormenting effort to vince herself that scientific discoveries bring small joy to the discoverer, and that true happiness consists in being young and in being beloved. She used to maintain that there must be something good about the devil, and that without him there could be no har

our

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mony either in the universe or in souls. Whenever she was able to divert her mind from speculation on the theory of elliptical functions, or curves defined by differential equations, would brood sadly enough over that other problem, "Why am I not loved?" M. Weyer does not tell this anecdote for the purpose of disgusting women with the infinitesimal calculus. He is one of the very few German professors who wish well to souls tormented of the devil. He admits indeed that the Sophia Koralevskis are rare; but protests that a great many young girls have a taste and a gift for abstruse reasoning. He once gave some lessons in nautical astronomy to the captain of a merchant vessel who requested that his daughter might be present, on the ground that she understood these things so quickly and easily that she could always explain to him what he had failed to grasp.

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The enemies of the "academic woman" are not concerned to deny her aptitudes, and some of them would kindly allow her to take her degrees. But what then? they say. open to her all the careers to which these degrees give access? Alas, those careers are already so crowded! How many graduates and doctors do no more than miserably vegetate, and die without ever having obtained the lucrative employment of their desire! The "middle-class proletariat" is one of the ulcers of our time. Its numbers will be indefinitely increased by the admission of women to the learned professions. We are already pining away. The women will take the bread out of our mouths. And then, are they actually fit for business, or for any and all professions? Let them practise medicine if they will. There may be services which are best rendered by women-doctors. But shelawyers! No doubt they have adroit minds, and a genius for chicanery; but then they are so passionate, and passion spoils all. Although Mlle. Chauvin maintained her thesis in the most brilliant manner, she was, in the interests of order, very wisely forbidden to

plead. At one time in ancient Rome, the Roman women did plead, but one of them forfeited her privilege by the insults she uttered, whereupon the pretor condemned them all to silence. Is it possible to fancy a woman on the bench, administering justice? A professor of law in the University of Strasburg undertakes to show that she would occupy herself less with the case and the provisions of the code than with the agreeable or disagreeable qualities of the accused, and that her conscience would always be amenable to an advocate with a fine face and figure.

those

The woman's-rights professors are not daunted by such objections. Of course the liberal professions are encumbered; and the middle-class proletariat is an Egyptian plague; and the competition of women will aggravate the mischief. But injustice is a bad remedy; and the new competition will have excellent effects if only it discourages the incapable; if the lawyer without a case and the doctor without a patient, are led to renounce their ambitions, and resign themselves to seeking a livelihood in one of small trades which excite no jealousy, and can always be relied upon to support a certain number of lives. What harm would it do society, if a sluggard or a booby were to resign his public functions to an intelligent and industrious woman? The desirable thing, of course, is for the game to be quite fair. Let the state which favors nobody, and has never been suspected of gallantry, maintain a strict neutrality between the sexes, taking care the two combatants have the same conditions of wind and sun; and then, let the best win, whether in short hair, or in long! Let us distrust our prejudices, and the alarm excited by novel objects. M. Karl Frenzel points out that we have long suffered women to act and to sing, to paint and to write. We are getting used to their appear ance on socialistic platforms; we shall presently accept the woman-pleader and the woman preacher. "Hold out against it if you will! But surely Hy

that

patia knew more of the divine essence than did Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, who had her stoned and torn in pieces by his monks!"

M. Wüstenfeld, the venerable octogenarian of Göttingen, is one of those forcible souls who do not mince matters. The enemies of the "academic woman" seldom care to imitate his brutal frankness. There are artful beings among them who consider discretion the better part of valor, and who prefer to attain their end by stratagem. "Make no mistake!" they say to the sisterhood. "It is we who are your true friends! It is in your own interest-ever dear and sacred to usthat we conjure you to abate your pretensions and not force the doors of the universities! You are playing a desperate game. We admire, more than any one,

your aptitude for science. What you lack is preparation,-preliminary study! Now this sort of thing is acquired in gymnasiums. And gymnasiums will never become bi-sexual establishments. It is contrary to our manners. We must establish feminine gymnasiums,-which you will have to enter at twelve or fourteen years of age. Will you be able to tell, at that age, whether you have a decided genius for study? The majority will become disheartened and renounce the course, and these will be the happier. The rest will permanently impair their health. The malady of the age is anæmia, consumption,-that fatal weakness of the nerves,-by which all the educated and governing classes are SO deeply tainted. When chlorosis is married to consumption what will the offspring be,-and what ever will become of our poor Germany?"

"And not only," they go on, will the bodily health of woman be destroyed by this fatal régime,-her soul also will lose its essential qualities. "Have a care, young ladies," is the warning of a private tutor in the university of Berlin. Living as they live now, women are altogether superior to us, and in spite of a seeming dependence, they are the rulers. We poor men,

condemned to begin so far back the preparation for our profession, we get specialized at an early date,-whether we will or no. We are not men; we are sections of men. It is you, who, by virtue of your openness of mind and your universal sympathies, represent the integral human creature. You are fitted to comprehend all,-feel all,-gather the flower of everything. You are the charm and the consolation of our ennui. If you had the misfortune to resemble us, how dreary life would be! How empty! How grey!"

Another Berlin professor, M. Karl Stumpf, sets the same tune to differ ent words. "Reflect a moment," he says, "if we grant your prayer, it will doubtless become as easy for you as for us, to obtain fine appointments and fat places. But remember that pale cheeks, irritable nerves, and spectacled eyes, exercise but a feeble empire over the male sex. Remember, too, that a doctor's cap and the profoundest erudition can never make up for the loss of that freshness of thought and feeling, that instinctively just conception of life and of the world, that fine discernment of real and fictitious values; in a word, all those natural gifts which go to make up a woman's indefinable charm. You cannot drive two nails into the same hole; and if it is impossible, strictly speaking, to be both as wise as a serpent and as harmless as a dove, it is equally SO to possess two distinct orders of wisdom. Believe me, yours is the better kind; as truly as the least of your perceptions is worth more than all our reasoning from abstract principles." ... "Have it your own way then!" exclaims M. Steinthal in his turn, "Give us Raphaels, Mozarts, Leibnitzes! They will be but a poor substitute for the human race, which will disappear along with the true woman! The precious gifts now in your possession are a heritage that has been slowly accumulating during millions of years. Once lost, it will never be regained. We may some day see a Goethe in petticoats, but never

again a mother of Goethe, and I, for one, shall be inconsolable."

of

There behold.

The "womanists" make answer, course, to these gloomy prophets, that the woes they announce will never come to pass; that their terrors are imaginary; that young girls will not become anæmic in their gymnasiums; that study will not blanch their cheeks and impoverish their blood; that women are, as a matter of fact, more enduring than men; more patient of pain and labor and fatigue. Where is the man who could bear the life of a washerwoman or a nursery-governess? On the contrary their health will be confirmed by exercise, gymnastics, and sport. And who says they will lose their attractiveness? are fools who are hideous to There are doctoresses who are full of fascination. There are charming women at the present time and there are disagreeable women; and there always will be, whether they learn Greek and comparative anatomy or no. And after all, what is the use of arguing? You are undertaking to protect their happiness against their own imprudent desires; they want to be happy in their own way. They are not content with the lot you have assigned them; and a society where the women are discontented, is a house toppling to its fall. Make it your business to satisfy them, or they will go over to the revolutionary camp and a revolution which has enlisted the women can never be controlled.

To sum up: If the hundred and twenty professors consulted by M. Kirchoff were to meet in congress, and the question were to be decided by the majority of votes, the women should undoubtedly win their case. But let them make no mistake! The tale of their convinced and ardent partisans would very soon be told. The prevailing spirit of the assembly would be one of resignation to an experiment which must be made. Either it will succeed, and the unanimous cry of the professors will be "God help us!" or it will fail, and they will experience a mild gratification which they will do their

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