Amelia Gere Mason

“ We know also that the average intelligence of all classes of women, as well as of men, was never so high as now. But the intrinsic force of the human intellect is not measured by averages. A thousand satellites do not make a sun, though they may shine for ages by the light of one. Then, whatever our achievements may be — and I do not underrate them — it would reflect rather seriously on the feminine mind to suppose that it could lie practically dormant all these centuries, even under the heavy disabilities which were imposed upon it. ”

“ To be sure, the day comes when it matters more to talk and be talked about than it does to know. The rank weeds of mediocrity spring up in profusion and overshadow the flowers. The ideals droop and the brilliant age ends. ”

“ But the past we have, with its achievements and its lessons. We find that women, with all their restrictions and in spite of denunciations from men which seem incredible, have long ago touched their highest mark in poetry, in wisdom, in administration, in learning, and in social power. In the great ages of the flowering of the human intellect, a rare few have always stood on the heights, beacon-stars which sent out their rays to distant centuries. As the world has advanced they have increased in number more than in altitude ”

“ But even in this aspiring, much-knowing, self-gratulatory, woman-honoring twentieth century, whenever we are told that the feminine intellect is inherently weak and has never created anything worthy of immortality, we point with pride to Sappho, the one woman poet of the world whose claim to the first rank has never been disputed. ”

“ Did women lose in morals when they gained in intelligence, as men so often delight to tell us? Quite the reverse, if I have read history aright. In seasons of moral decadence it is the women of serious education who have been among the first to lift their voices against the sins of the period in which they lived. If they were often swept along by the current which they had no power to stem, it was because of their helplessness, not of their knowledge. They were not faultless but human, and subject at all periods to the same conditions that were fatal to men, who claimed supremacy in strength. ”

“ It is as idle to ask whether they are, on the whole, equal or inferior to men, as to ask whether an artist is equal to a general, an inventor to a philosopher, or a poet to a man of science. There are certain things that will always be done better by men ; there are other things of equal value to the happiness and well-being of the race, and worthy of equal honor, that will always be done better by women ”

“ But it has many a time given her the power and the impulse to rear a world-famed monument to the one, and to give the best work and thought of a self-sacrificing life for the glory of the other. It is not simply heredity, but the atmosphere and companionship of the first years, that make or mar a destiny. ”

“ It is not as the poor copy of a man that she will ever come into her rightful kingdom. Duty or necessity may lead one into strange and hard paths, but the crown of glory is not for those who fling away their birthright to join in the strident chorus of the eager crowd that kneels before the glittering altars of the money-gods, or to follow the procession that throngs the dusty highways and, lifting its eyes no more to the mountain-tops, sings its own apotheosis in the market-place. ”

“ The fact that women have always been in subjection and on the whole very much oppressed and trampled upon, especially in the early ages, makes it all the more remarkable that they have left so many striking examples, not only of the highest wisdom and intelligence, but of the highest executive power, ever since Deborah sat as a judge in Israel, Miriam sang immortal songs of heroic deeds, and Semiramis conquered Asia. ”

“ A cultivated intellect is not a guaranty of virtue, but it has never yet made a woman forget her love and allegiance to a strong and noble man, or turn a cold ear to the artless prattle of a child, though vanity and weakness and folly have done so very often. ”

“ As a result of this we are told with great earnestness that the nineteenth century belonged to her by virtue of conquest, and that she is entering upon a new era of power and intelligence which is to usher in the millennium.
On the other hand, we are assured with equal persistency that the divine order of things is being upset: that women are spoiled by over-education; that the time-honored privileges of men are ruthlessly invaded and their mental vigor endangered ; that morals are suffering ; that all the good old ideals are in process of destruction ”

“ It was woman, too, who married thought to life, presided at the birth of society, and diffused the seeds of the new knowledge. She took philosophy out of the obscurity of ponderous tomes, and made men reduce it to clear terms with the logical processes left out, so that the unlettered might read. ”

“ But I have touched only a single phase of modern life. There are too many fresh and difficult problems to be disposed of in an essay. Then we can hardly hear the message of the age for the din of the voices. ”

“ It is true enough that the old ideals are disappearing. What we do not know yet is whether, apart from the intelligence which gives all life a fresh impulse and meaning, the new ones forced upon us by the march of events are better. ”

“ Men have prophesied strange revolutions in human affairs because of them, and sometimes have sent them back to the chimney-corner and silence, as one of our own chivalrous writers says they will do again if this irrepressible being who presumes to have opinions makes things too uncomfortable for them. ”

“ But the world has gone on marrying and giving in marriage, and growing in the main, let us hope, happier and better, while the social condition of women has steadily improved, with an occasional reaction, in spite of the fears of the timid and the sneers of the cynical. It may be safely said that there was not much in the lives of the women of two or three thousand years ago which we should care to repeat. Their field was, as a rule, narrow and restricted, their privileges were few, their burdens and sorrows were many. ”

“ But let us not confound intelligent women with pedants and pretenders, or great women with small ones on a pedestal of any sort, self-erected or other. All this I trust will be made clear by illustration in these pages, together with the fact that the intellects of at least a few women have been very much awake in all the golden ages of the world, and exercised on many of the same problems that confront them to-day. The question of equality has been discussed in every period. ”

“ If we are disposed to plume ourselves overmuch on our intellectual glories, it may serve as a lesson in humility to recall the wonderful women of the Renaissance, who filled chairs of philosophy and law in the universities, sustained public theses, spoke in Latin before learned societies, wrote pure Greek and studied Hebrew, preached in cathedrals were sent on special embassies and consulted on grave affairs of State by popes and kings. ”

“ Other women have been as clever as we are, and as strong, if not individually stronger ; many have been as good, a few perhaps have been more wicked than most of us ; and the majority have had a great deal more to complain of. ”

“ It was the social gifts of women added to a flexible intelligence that raised conversation to a fine art. A Duchess Leonora, an Isabella d'Este, a Duchess Elisabetta, call about them the wit, learning, talent, and genius of an age, and in this atmosphere poets, artists, and men of letters find an audience and an inspiration. Each gives of his best, which is fostered and turned into new channels. Standards are raised by the association .of various forms of excellence, and society reaches a higher altitude of living and thinking. ”

“ If men held the palm of supremacy in rea- son and abstract thought, women illuminated them by sentiment and imagination, so touching the world to living issues. The swift, facile, intuitive intellects of women complemented the slower and more logical minds of men, and it is this union that creates life in all its larger, more enduring forms. ”

“ The final proof of ability lies in its tangible result, and it is a waste of words to speculate on unknown quantities, or to say that under certain conditions women might have attained specific heights which they have not attained. ”

“ No doubt our own deserts are great, and we do well to burn a fair amount of incense to them ; but possibly the smoke of it is so dense that we fail to see all the fine things that have been done before us. ”

“ With all our latter-day prestige and the chivalry of mod- ern men, it would be difficult to imagine Leo XIII or the German Emperor consulting a woman on serious questions of policy, or even listening to one unless she were a queen with power that must be reckoned with. ”

“ It does not signify whether women have or have not done this, that, or the other thing as well as men — whether they have or have not been conspicuous for creative genius, or scientific genius, or any other special form of genius. ”