Woman in Science Part 28

And yet, strange to relate, while Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson were electrifying the learned world by their achievements in the highest form of scholars.h.i.+p, the slow-moving University of Cambridge was gravely debating "whether it was a proper thing to confer degrees upon women,"

and preparing to answer the question in the negative. The fact that there were "representatives of the unenfranchised s.e.x at their gates who had gathered more laurels in the field of scholars.h.i.+p than most of those who belong to the privileged s.e.x" did not appeal to the university dons or prevent them from putting themselves on record as favoring a condition of things which, at this late age of the world, should be expected only among the women-enslaving followers of Mohammed.

The saying that "a prophet hath no honor in his own country" was fulfilled to the letter in the case of the two women who had shed such l.u.s.ter on the land of their birth. While foreign inst.i.tutions were vying with one another in showering honors on the two brilliant Englishwomen, with whose praises the whole world was resounding, the University of Cambridge was silent. The University of St. Andrews conferred on them the degree of LL.D., while conservative old Heidelberg, casting aside its age-old traditions, made haste to honor them with the degree of Doctor of Divinity. In addition to this, Halle made Mrs. Lewis a Doctor of Philosophy. One would have thought that sheer shame, if not patriotic spirit, would have compelled the university in whose shadows the two women had their home, and in which Mrs. Lewis' husband had held for years an official appointment, to show itself equally appreciative of superlative merit and equally ready to reward rare scholars.h.i.+p, regardless of the s.e.x of the beneficiaries. But no. The ill.u.s.trious archaeologists and Biblical scholars were women, and this fact alone was in the estimation of the Cambridge authorities enough to withhold from them that recognition which was so spontaneously accorded them by the great universities of the Continent.

Nor was this the only instance of the kind. While the celebrated twin sisters just referred to were so materially contributing to our knowledge of Biblical lore, another Englishwoman, Jane E. Harrison, who lived within hearing of the church bells of Cambridge, was lecturing to delighted audiences in Newnham College on the history, mythology and monuments of ancient Athens, and writing those learned works on the religion and antiquities of Greece which have given her so conspicuous a place among modern archaeologists.[226] But, as in the case of her distinguished neighbors, the discoverers of the _Codex Ludovicus_, the degrees she was honored with came not from Cambridge, with which, through her fellows.h.i.+p in Newnham, she was so closely connected.

And while this gifted lady was deserving so well of science and literature, the undergraduate students of Cambridge, following the cue given by the twenty-four hundred graduates who had just rejected the proposal to give honorary degrees to women who could pa.s.s the required examinations, were giving an exhibition of rowdyism which far surpa.s.sed that which, a few years before, had so disgraced the University of Edinburgh, when the same question of degrees for women was under consideration.

According to the report of an eye witness of the turbulent scene at Cambridge, "The undergraduate students appeared to be, as a body, viciously opposed to the proposal to give degrees to women, and became fairly riotous. They hooted those who supported the reform and fired crackers even in the Senate House and made the night lurid with bonfires and powder. They put up insulting effigies of girl students, and such mottoes as 'Get you to Girton, Beatrice. Get you to Newnham. Here is no place for maids!'"

Verily, when such scenes are possible in one of the world's great intellectual centers--a place where, above all others, women should receive due recognition for their contributions toward the progress of knowledge--one is constrained to declare that what we call civilization is still far from the ideal. And, when one witnesses the total indifference of inst.i.tutions like Cambridge and the French Academy to the splendid achievements of women like Mrs. Lewis, Mrs. Gibson and Mme.

Curie, one cannot but exclaim in words Apocalyptic: "How long, O Lord, holy and true," is this iniquitous discrimination against one-half of our race to endure? O Lord, how long?

FOOTNOTES:

[215] A. Michaelis, _A Century of Archaeological Discoveries_, p. 6, New York, 1908.

[216] _The Most Ill.u.s.trious Ladies of the Renaissance_, p. 152, by Christopher Hare, London, 1904.

[217] Michaelis, Op. cit., p. 20, Cf. also Fiorelli's _Pompeinarum Antiquitatum Historia_, Vol. I, Pars. III, Naples, 1860. Arditi characterized Queen Caroline's interest in the excavations as "_entusiasmo veramente ammirabile_."

[218] _Frauenarbeit in der Archaeologie in Deutsche Rundschau_, March, 1890, page 396.

[219] _Memoirs of the Life of Anna Jameson_, pp. 296-297, by her niece, Geraldine Macpherson, London, 1878.

[220] _Ilios, the City and Country of the Trojans_, pp. 657-658, by Dr.

Henry Schliemann, New York, 1881.

As an ill.u.s.tration of Mrs. Schliemann's devotion to the work which has rendered her, as well as her husband, immortal, a single pa.s.sage from the volume just quoted, p. 261, is pertinent. Referring to the sufferings and privations which they endured during their third year's work at Hissarlik, Dr. Schliemann writes as follows:

"My poor wife and myself, therefore, suffered very much since the icy north wind, which recalls Homer's frequent mention of the blasts of Boreas, blew with such violence through the c.h.i.n.ks of our house-walls, which were made of planks, that we were not even able to light our lamps in the evening, while the water which stood near the hearth froze into solid ma.s.ses. During the day we could, to some degree, bear the cold by working in the excavations; but, in the evenings, we had nothing to keep us warm except our enthusiasm for the great work of discovering Troy."

So high was Dr. Schliemann's opinion of his wife's ability as an archaeologist that he entrusted to her--as well as to their daughter, Andromache, and son, Agamemnon--the continuation of the work which death prevented him from completing.

[221] See Mme. Dieulafoy's graphic account of the expedition in a work which has been translated into English under the t.i.tle, _At Susa, the Ancient Capital of the Kings of Persia, Narrative of Travel Through Western Persia and Excavations Made at the Site of the Lost City of the Lilies, 1884-1886_, Philadelphia, 1890.

See also her other related work--crowned by the French Academy--ent.i.tled, _La Perse, La Chaldee et la Susiane_, Paris, 1887.

[222] Among the specimens secured were two of extraordinary beauty and interest. One of them is a beautiful enameled frieze of a lion and the other, likewise a work in enamel, represents a number of polychrome figures of the Immortals--the name given to the guards of the Great Kings of Persia. Both are truly magnificent specimens of ceramic art, and compare favorably with anything of the kind which antiquity has bequeathed to us. Commenting on the pictures of the Persian guards, Mme.

Dieulafoy writes: "Whatever their race may be, our Immortals appear fine in line, fine in form, fine in color and const.i.tute a ceramic work infinitely superior to the bas-reliefs, so justly celebrated, of Lucca della Robbia." Op. cit., p. 222.

[223] One pa.s.sage in this codex bears so strongly on a leading argument of this work that I cannot resist the temptation to give it with Mrs.

Lewis' own comment:

"The piece of my work," she writes, _In the Shadow of Sinai_, p. 98 et seq., "which has given me the greatest satisfaction, consists in the decipherment of two words in John IV, 27. They were well worth all our visits to Sinai, for they ill.u.s.trate an action of our Lord which seems to be recorded nowhere else, and which has some degree of inherent probability from what we know of His character. The pa.s.sage is 'His disciples came and wondered that with the women he was _standing and talking_'....

"Why was our Lord standing? He had been sitting on the wall when the disciples left Him; and, we know that He was tired. Moreover, sitting is the proper att.i.tude for an Easterner when engaged in teaching. And an ordinary Oriental would never rise of his own natural free will out of politeness to a woman. It may be that He rose in His enthusiasm for the great truths He was uttering; but, I like to think that His great heart, which embraced the lowest of humanity, lifted Him above the restrictions of His race and age, and made Him show that courtesy to our s.e.x, even in the person of a degraded specimen, which is considered among all really progressive peoples to be a mark of true and n.o.ble manhood. To shed even a faint light upon that wondrous story of His tabernacling amongst us is an inestimable privilege and worthy of all the trouble we can possibly take."

[224] Mrs. Gibson, unaccompanied by her sister, has since made two more visits to Mt. Sinai in order to complete the work so auspiciously begun.

[225] The following partial list of the works of these erudite twins on subjects connected with Scripture and Oriental literature gives some idea of their extraordinary attainments and of their prodigious activity in researches that are usually considered entirely foreign to the tastes and apt.i.tudes of women.

_Some Pages of the Four Gospels Retranscribed From the Sinaitic Palimpsest_, with a translation of the whole text by Agnes Smith Lewis.

_An Arabic Version of St. Paul's Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians and part of Ephesians._ Edited from a ninth century MS. by Margaret Dunlop Gibson.

_Apocrypha Sinaitica._ Containing the Anaphora Pilati in Syriac and Arabic: the Syriac transcribed by J. Rendel Harris, and the Arabic by Margaret Dunlop Gibson; also two recensions of the _Recognitions of Clement_, in Arabic, transcribed and translated by Margaret Dunlop Gibson.

_An Arabic Version of the Acts of the Apostles and the Seven Catholic Epistles_, from an eighth or ninth century MS., with a treatise on the Triune Nature of G.o.d and translation. Edited by Margaret Dunlop Gibson.

Apocrypha Arabica, Edited by Margaret D. Gibson, containing 1, _Kitab al Magall_ or the _Book of the Rolls_; 2, _The Story of the Aphikia Wife of Jesus Ben Sira_ (Carshuni); 3, _Cyprian and Justa_, in Arabic and Greek.

_Select Narratives of Holy Women_, from the Syro-Antiochene or Sinai Palimpsest, as written above the Old Syriac Gospels in A. D. 778.

Translation by Agnes Smith Lewis.

_Apocrypha Syriaca Sinaitica_, being the _Protevangelium Jacobi_ and _Transitus Mariae_, from a Palimpsest of the fifth or sixth century.

Edited by Agnes Smith Lewis.

_Forty-One Facsimiles of Dated Christian Arabic Ma.n.u.scripts_, with Text and English Translation, arranged by Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson, with introductory observations in Arabic calligraphy by the Rev. David S. Margoliouth.

_The Didascalia Apostolorum in Syriac_, edited from a Mesopotamian MS, with various readings and collations of other MS, by Margaret Dunlop Gibson.

_The Arabic Version of the Acta Apocrypha Apostolorum_, edited and translated by Agnes Smith Lewis, with fifth century fragments of the Acta Thomae, in Syriac.

_The Gospel of Isbodad in Syriac and English_, by Margaret D. Gibson.

_Acta Mythologica Apostolorum in Arabic_, with translation by Agnes Smith Lewis.

For an elaborate and sympathetic account of the labors and discoveries of Mrs. Lewis and her sister, the reader is referred to an article from the pen of the learned Professor V. Ryssel, in the _Schweizerische Theologische Zeitschrift_, XVI, Jahrgang, 1899.

[226] For an evidence of this learned lady's competency to deal with the most recondite stores of history and archaeology, the reader is referred to two of her later works, viz., _Primitive Athens as Described by Thucydides_, Cambridge, 1906, and _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_, Cambridge University Press, 1903.

CHAPTER X

WOMEN AS INVENTORS

"There have been very learned women as there have been women warriors, but there have never been women inventors."[227] Thus wrote Voltaire with that flippancy and c.o.c.ksureness which was so characteristic of the author of the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_--a man who was ever ready to give, offhand, a categorical answer to any question that came before him for discussion. His countryman, Proudhon, expressed the same opinion in other words when he wrote, _Les femmes n'ont rien invente, pas meme leur quenouille_--women have invented nothing, not even their distaff.

Had these two writers thoroughly sifted the evidence available, even in their day, for a proper consideration of this interesting subject, they would, both of them, have reached a very different conclusion from that which is expressed in the sentences just quoted. Had they consulted the records of antiquity, they would have learned that most of the earliest and most important inventions were attributed to women; and, had they studied the reports of explorers among the savage tribes of the modern world, they would have found that these early legends and traditions regarding the inventions of women were fully confirmed by what was being done in their own time. Man's first needs were food, shelter and clothing; and tradition in all parts of the world is unanimous in ascribing to woman the invention, in essentially their present forms, of all the arts most conducive to the preservation and well-being of our race.

In Egypt, as Diodorus Siculus informs us, the inventors of specially useful things were, as a reward of their deserts, enrolled among the G.o.ds, as were certain heroes among the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Foremost among these was Isis, who laid the foundation of agriculture by the introduction of the culture of wheat and other cereals. Before her time the Egyptians lived on roots and herbs. In lieu of these crude articles of food, Isis gave them bread and other more wholesome aliments. She invented the process of making linen and was the first to apply a sail to the propulsion of a boat. To her also was attributed the art of embalming, the discovery of many medicines and the beginnings of Egyptian literature.

Even more prominent was Pallas Athene, one of the greatest divinities of the Greeks. Virgil, in his _Georgics_, invokes her as