第62章

"One medical professor received the pioneer with a concise severity, and declined to hear her plead her cause, and one received her almost brutally. He said, 'No respectable woman would apply to him to study medicine.' Now, respectable women were studying it all over Europe.""Well, but perhaps his soul lived in an island.""That is so. However, personal applicants must expect a rub or two; and most of the professors, in and out of medicine, treated her with kindness and courtesy.

"Still, she found even the friendly professors alarmed at the idea of a woman matriculating, and becoming _Civis Edinensis;_ so she made a moderate application to the Senate, viz., for leave to attend medical lectures. This request was indorsed by a majority of the medical professors, and granted. But on the appeal of a few medical professors against it, the Senate suspended its resolution, on the ground that there was only one applicant.

"This got wind, and other ladies came into the field directly, your humble servant among them. Then the Senate felt bound to recommend the University Court to admit such female students to matriculate as could pass the preliminary examination; this is in history, logic, languages, and other branches; and we prepared for it in good faith. It was a happy time: after a good day's work, I used to go up the Calton Hill, or Arthur's Seat, and view the sea, and the Piraens, and the violet hills, and the romantic undulations of the city itself, and my heart glowed with love of knowledge, and with honorable ambition. I ran over the names of worthy women who had adorned medicine at sundry times and in divers places, and resolved to deserve as great a name as any in history.

Refreshed by my walk--I generally walked eight miles, and practiced gymnastics to keep my muscles hard--I used to return to my little lodgings; and they too were sweet to me, for I was learning a new science--logic.""That was a nut to crack."

"I have met few easier or sweeter. One non-observer had told me it was a sham science, and mere pedantry; another, that it pretended to show men a way to truth without observing. I found, on the contrary, that it was a very pretty little science, which does not affect to discover phenomena, but simply to guard men against rash generalization, and false deductions from true data; it taught me the untrained world is brimful of fallacies and verbal equivoques that ought not to puzzle a child, but, whenever they creep into an argument, do actually confound the learned and the simple alike, and all for want of a month's logic.

"Yes, I was happy on the hill, and happy by the hearth; and so things went on till the preliminary examination came. It was not severe; we ladies all passed with credit, though many of the male aspirants failed.""How do you account for that?" asked Vizard.

"With my eyes. I _observe_ that the average male is very superior in intellect to the average female; and I _observe_ that the picked female is immeasurably more superior to the average male, than the average male is to the average female.""Is it so simple as that?"

"Ay; why not? What! are you one of those who believe that Truth is obscure-- hides herself--and lies in a well? I tell you, _sir,_ Truth lies in no well. The place Truth lies in is--_the middle of the turnpike road._ But one old fogy puts on his green spectacles to look for her, and another his red, and another his blue; and so they all miss her, because she is a colorless diamond. Those spectacles are preconceived notions, _'a priori_ reasoning, cant, prejudice, the depth of Mr. Shallow's inner consciousness, etc., etc. Then comes the observer, opens the eyes that God has given him, tramples on all colored spectacles, and finds Truth as surely as the spectacled theorists miss her. Say that the intellect of the average male is to the average female as ten to six, it is to the intellect of the picked female as ten to a hundred and fifty, or even less. Now, the intellect of the male Edinburgh student was much above that of the average male, but still it fell far below that of the picked female. All the examinations at Edinburgh showed this to all God's unspectacled creatures that used their eyes."These remarks hit Vizard hard. They accorded with his own good sense and method of arguing; but perhaps my more careful readers may have already observed this. He nodded hearty approval for once, and she went on:

"We had now a right to matriculate and enter on our medical course. But, to our dismay, the right was suspended. The proofs of our general proficiency, which we hoped would reconcile the professors to us as students of medicine, alarmed people, and raised us unscrupulous enemies in some who were justly respected, and others who had influence, though they hardly deserved it.

"A general council of the university was called to reconsider the pledge the Senate had given us, and overawe the university court by the weight of academic opinion. The court itself was fluctuating, and ready to turn either way. A large number of male students co-operated against us with a petition. They, too, were a little vexed at our respectable figure in the preliminary examination.