Then Mr Maston, you pretend that a woman has never been able to make mathematical or experimental-science progress?"
"To my extreme regret, I am obliged to, Mrs. Scorbitt," answered J.T. Maston.
"That there have been some very remarkable women in mathematics, especially in Russia, I fully and willingly agree with you. But, with her cerebral conformation, she cannot become an Archimedes, much less a Newton."
"Oh, Mr. Maston, allow me to protest in the name of my sex."
"A sex, Mrs. Scorbitt, much too charming to give itself up to the higher studies."
"Well then, according to your opinion, no woman seeing an apple fall could have discovered the law of universal gravitation, so that it would have made her the most illustrious scientific person of the seventeenth century?"
"In seeing an apple fall, Mrs. Scorbitt, a woman would have but the single idea-to eat it-for example, our mother Eve."
"Pshaw, I see very well that you deny us all aptitude for high speculations."
"All aptitude? No, Mrs. Scorbitt, and in the meanwhile I would like to prove to you that since there are inhabitants on earth, and consequently women, there has not one feminine brain been found yet to which we owe any discoveries like those of Aristotle, Euclid, Kepler, Laplace, etc."
"Is this a reason? And does the past always prove the future?"
"Well, a person who has done nothing in a thousand years, without a doubt, never will do anything."
"I see now that I have to take our part, Mr. Maston, and that we are not worth much." ...
