his native land at the call of the University of Oxford.

Professor Sylvester's residence at the Johns Hopkins University constitutes an episode quite unique in the history of mathematics and of education. Up to the time when he came to America, the study of the higher pure mathematics may be said with almost literal truth to have been non-existent in our country. He came, a man who had almost filled out what is usually spoken of as the allotted span of life, and at once inspired zeal and activity in a field which had been left almost uncultivated among us. The earliest outward effect of his ardor was the foundation of the American Journal of Mathematics, the first mathematical journal of any importance ever published in America, and almost the first journal devoted to any scientific specialty. It may truly be looked upon as the father of that army of scientific journals which have since overspread the country and testified to the growth of the higher learning among us. The prestige of his name and the fertility of his work could not do otherwise than excite emulation in other American centers of learning. While there doubtless would, in any case, have been progress in this direction, it must be set down as preeminently the result of Sylvester's presence in Baltimore that mathematical science in America has received the remarkable impetus which the last twenty years have shown. American names are no longer absent from the record of mathematical progress. We have not yet produced one of the heroes of mathematics; but there are now among us a dozen universities in each of which something, be it much

or little, is being added to that splendid monument of human thought which bears the record of conquests made by so many of the intellectual giants of the race.

Among these giants Sylvester has without question the right to be reckoned. In the history of mathematics, his place will not be with the very greatest; but his work, brilliant and memorable as it was, affords no true measure of his intellectual greatness. Those who came within the sphere of his personality could not but feel that, through the force of circumstances combined with the peculiarities of his poetic temperament, his performance, splendid as it was, had not adequately reflected his magnificent powers. Those of us who were connected with him cherish his memory as that of a sympathetic friend and a generous critic. And in this University, as long as it shall exist, he will be remembered as the man whose genius illuminated its early years, and whose devotion and ardor furnished the most inspiring of all the elements which went to make those years so memorable and so fruitful.

THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS OF WOMAN *

The North American Review for September contains a spirited discussion by Mrs. G. G. Buckler of several aspects of the woman question. Of these it is the object of the present paper to consider one only that which Mrs. Buckler presents in the form of the inquiry, Has woman ever produced, or is she likely to produce, anything first-rate in the higher branches of literature, science, or art?

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After a rapid survey of the field Mrs. Buckler answers the first half of this question with a decided negative; on the second half, in the only formal statement she makes concerning it, she holds to a position of judicial doubt. Women have never yet attained,” she says, “the highest rank in science, literature, or art. Whether they ever will do so is, of course, a mere matter of opinion and here it is well carefully to discriminate facts from theories." And she proceeds to reject with something approaching contempt the a priori arguments which have been advanced to show that women are of necessity precluded from high intellectual achieve

ments.

Did this passage represent the whole drift of the article, the present writer would have no quarrel with it. It is true that woman has never yet attained the highest rank in science, literature, or art. It is also true that the question whether she ever will or not is a mere matter of opinion or rather of

* From the North American Review for January, 1898.

purely speculative conjecture. But the formal disclaimer thus made of any decision as to the possibilities of the future is not in agreement with the judgments expressed with emphasis at various points in the article. No reader can lay it down without the feeling that the author holds the facts of history to be conclusive as to the limitations of woman's intellectual powers. Thus, after speaking of women mathematicians, Mrs. Buckler says: "Yet, taken all in all, these few individual instances of female achievement in science serve only to prove the rule that women as discoverers are inferior to men." So far as literature is concerned she is even more explicit when she says: "Probably woman's kind in literature will always be found to be the humbler species, the lyric and especially the hymn, letter-writing and domestic novels." But what is more to the purpose is the general drift of the whole article, which is clearly and emphatically to the effect that, in literature at least, women have had ample opportunity to show their powers, and that the result of the test has been a demonstration of hopeless inferiority; and that a similar test, not quite so conclusive, yet practically sufficient, has established the same result in the other two great departments of intellectual activity.

That the facts of history are not only not conclusive, but cannot properly be regarded as establishing even a presumption concerning the limitations of the intellectual powers of woman, it is the object of the present paper to show. Strange as the assertion. may at first blush appear, it is nevertheless true that the presumption that women are incapable of

the highest intellectual achievement may far more. reasonably be based upon mere ordinary impressions than upon anything which historical experience has thus far been able to furnish. If a man feels it in his bones that no woman could possibly write a poem as great as "Paradise Lost" or evolve a body of mathematical doctrine like that of the "Disquisitiones Arithmetica," his state of mind is the result of a vast array of experiences, for the most part absorbed unconsciously, but not the less valuable on that account. A conviction arrived at in this way it is difficult to dislodge or weaken. But when the position is taken, as it has been taken by so many previous writers, as well as by Mrs. Buckler, that women have historically demonstrated their incapacity for such triumphs by not yet having achieved them, it is not difficult to show that the argument is thoroughly unsound.

The first and most vital defect in all these discussions is their total neglect of the question of numbers. "No woman has attained the highest · rank in science, literature, or art"-granted. But in all the ages of the world there have been but a handful of men who have attained this rank; and only an utterly insignificant fraction of the female sex can be regarded as having been in any sense in the running for these high honors. Among the writers who hold Mrs. Buckler's view, one never finds the slightest attempt to take into account the relation of these numbers. With all but an insignificant fraction of the sex ruled out, would not women have contributed more than their quota if they had furnished even one name to the list of immortals?