bring the answer to my application
for admission to the lectures at the University."

"I do, but it has been rejected decidedly, Frulein Hartwich."

Ernestine's arms dropped at her sides. "Rejected! Was it known, when
they rejected it, that the prize essay was mine?"

"It was."

Ernestine stood for one moment as if stunned. At last she began slowly
and dejectedly, "Ah, I understand it all! the gentlemen took the author
of that treatise for a man, and awarded it the prize, but my
application was refused because I am so unfortunate as to be a woman.
It is only natural, why should a woman be permitted to vie with the
lords of creation?"

"Your disappointment makes you unjust," said Johannes. "Your essay
received the prize because it accomplished what it aimed at. The
application of the woman was rejected because in the University no
woman can accomplish what should be her aim."

"How can you prove that?" asked Ernestine with bitterness.

"Because she has deserted the sphere which nature has assigned her, and
cannot fulfil the requirements of the one that she has selected for
herself."

"You, then, are one of my opponents?"

"I am, Frulein Hartwich."

"Oh, I am sorry!"

"Why? Of what consequence can the opinion of a stranger be to you?"

Ernestine looked down. "The impression that you make upon me, sir, is
such that it pains me to find that you are one of those narrow-minded
persons who deny to women the possession of any but the humblest
ability."

"You are mistaken, I think them, and especially your self, possessed of
very great ability."

Ernestine looked at him with surprise. "But how can this ability avail
us, if we are not allowed to enlarge the bounds of the sphere within
which we are so unkindly confined at present?"

"That sphere does not seem to me contracted. I think it so noble, so
elevated, that the loftiest talent may well content itself within it,
if it be rightly understood."

"But if a woman, if I--forgive my presumption,--am especially endowed
beyond other women, should I not, with the power, possess also the
privilege of transcending the usual bounds?"

"You would then possess the privilege of ennobling your sex, of showing
it what it could accomplish within its own sphere,--you would possess
the power to be first among women, but not to become a man."

Ernestine looked down sadly. "Have you read my essay?"

"Yes."

"Do you think it deserved the prize?"

"Yes."

"And yet you would deny me the right to accomplish tasks usually
assigned to men."

"You have accomplished one such. How far your kind uncle may have
assisted you in your labor we will not ask."

Again Ernestine's eyes drooped.

Johannes continued: "Probably you yourself are not aware of the answer
to such a question,--at all events, the victory over the other
competitors for the prize was slight, and by no means difficult. But do
you imagine, Frulein Hartwich, because the instinct of your genius has
answered this one question, that you can lord it over the boundless
domain of science? Have you the least suspicion of the magnitude of
what you propose?"

"I believe I have learned enough to know what there is for me to
learn."

"Do not deceive yourself with regard to your aim. You wish to learn
that you may teach,--not as every schoolmaster teaches, to tell what
has been told you before,--you wish to educe new truths from what you
learn,--in other words, you wish to produce, to create!"

"And you deny me the requisite ability?"

"Not at all," replied Johannes; "but I grant only one domain for the
creative faculty of woman,--the domain of art,--because, in works of
art, the heart shares in the labour of the understanding; because, in
the creation of beauty, a profound inner consciousness and soaring
fancy can replace masculine acuteness of thought--and these belong
especially to the gifted woman. But science presents tasks for the
thinking power. I deny to woman not the ability to grasp the grand
results of science, but the mental endurance, the technical facility,
to arrive at them unassisted."

Ernestine clasped her hands in entreaty. "Do not destroy the hope and
aim of my life!"

Johannes bent towards her and said gently, "My dear Frulein Hartwich,
may your life have other aims than this that you can never attain!"

"Never attain!" cried Ernestine, sitting proudly erect "I can see
nothing to justify those words. If I were only well and strong, if my
body were only a more, obedient tool of my mind, I would show what a
woman can do! I would show that we are not merely domestic animals,
endowed with some degree of reason, as a certain class of men designate
us, but free, independent, equal beings! If you only knew how my whole
soul revolts at our social oppression, our intellectual slavery! Oh,
believe, believe, sir, that I am not actuated by vain ambition, but I
am wrung with anguish for those wretched souls who, like myself, have
chafed so painfully in the fetters of commonplace conventionalities,
or, like those born blind, have dreamed in their darkness of the
light that floods the world with joy and freedom, but from which they
are excluded! I long to break the yoke under which my whole sex
languishes, to avenge their wrongs. For this I will give my money
and my blood!--for this I resign all claims to the happiness of
woman!--yes, for this I would sacrifice life itself!"

Johannes sat listening to her with his arms folded. He now began
quietly: "I understand and admire you,--but you exaggerate. The social
position of woman is determined by her capacity and her desires. Women
like yourself are rare exceptions; your sex, as a general rule, is at
so low a stage of development that they neither can claim nor desire
any higher position."

"And whose fault is this?" Ernestine interrupted him eagerly.
"Yours,--you masters of the world. If we are intellectually your
inferiors, why not educate us more thoroughly? Why not elevate us to a
higher degree of intelligence? It is for your strong hands to form us
as you will. And nowhere in Christian lands is the position of woman
more depressing than in this country. Look at Russia, the land that so
long retained serfdom and the knout,--even there the number of learned
women is perceptibly increasing, and the Russian high schools do not
reject female pupils. Look at France, at England,--women are everywhere
employed and the sphere of their capabilities enlarged, and the sex is
held in higher estimation. Unfortunately, I cannot deny that the mass
of German women are either mere household drudges, with never a thought
beyond the material interests of the kitchen and nursery, or glittering
dolls, with no idea of anything but the adornment of their persons.
They understand little or nothing of politics, of the interests of
their native land, of science, or of poetry; they go to art for
amusement, not for instruction and refreshment. Such mothers can never
implant the seeds of patriotism in the breasts of their sons, or
educate the minds of their daughters; such wives can never share the
thoughts and aims of their husbands. Who is to blame? Those men alone
who would exclude woman from their world, and, denying her all claim to
intellectual ability, banish her to the kitchen, or force her to
indemnify herself for exclusion from their spiritual life by rendering
herself necessary to their material existence!"

Johannes made no reply. It was enjoyment enough for him to look at her
and hear her. He wished her, before attempting to reply to her, to
finish all that she had to say.

Ernestine continued: "All this constitutes the ignominy of my sex,--an
ignominy that must be overcome, or its revenge will be terrible; for
luxury and self-indulgence have been the ruin of those nations who
rendered no homage to the spiritual nature of woman. We must force this
reverence from you, at any risk, before it is too late. Smile, if you
will, at my presumption in arrogating the place of a feminine Arnold
von Winkelried, breaking a path for our spiritual freedom through the
lances of contempt and prejudice. I know what lies before me. No
commonplace woman feels any pride in her sex; when one of her sisters
achieves distinction, she is only all the more galled by the
consciousness of her own inferiority, and takes her revenge, if
she knows no better, with the wretched weapons of conventional
prejudices,--casting the odium of indelicacy upon the woman who dares
to be free; and men contemptuously close their doors upon her. My lot
must be to struggle and suffer. Still, I do not hesitate. If I can
effect nothing here, I will seek other lands, where woman striving
after better things is treated with humanity and true chivalry."

"Where humanity and chivalry assist woman to lay aside the very crown
of her being,--her womanhood!" Johannes now interrupted her; "for how
can you preserve it, if in anatomical studies you harden yourself to
everything that shocks a compassionate woman, if you are forced into
contact with things at which all maidenly delicacy must revolt? I have
not interrupted you hitherto, because I wished thoroughly to understand
you, and because your sacred zeal touched and delighted me. With much
that is crude and exaggerated, there is truth, and beauty, in what you
have just said. But, believe me, the physical frame of a woman is as
little suited as her intellect to certain scientific pursuits. I
directed you to the broad domain of the beautiful,--of art,--but you
would not listen to me--there you would have to share your fame among
too many. Your ambition craves something entirely new and unheard-of.
But, Frulein Hartwich, this ambition will be your ruin! If you long to
create, create forms for your ideas that will speak for themselves,
clothe them in poetic language, or give them local habitation and a
name in art--you can complete such work, and your soul can find rest in
it from its labours. A poetical idea can be fully embodied in a work of
art; but a scientific hypothesis is inexhaustible, because, however
clearly proved and demonstrated, it brings new problems in its train.
Only a man's rude strength can endure such a restless pursuit that
knows no pause; the woman's delicate nature must succumb even because
her mind is so alive that she labours with all the ardent desire, the
breathless interest, of the devotee of science. And if she succeeds, at
the sacrifice of her life, in contributing some addition to the
universal stock of knowledge, she has done only what would have
cost a man far less pains. The result of her work is wrung from her
death-agony, and the world, with a shrug of its shoulders, says, 'It is
about all that a woman could do!' Is praise thus qualified not
purchased too dearly at the cost of health and life?"

Ernestine had listened with intense eagerness. Her dark eyes were
riveted upon the speaker. As he ceased, she folded her hands in her lap
and said, "What injustice you do me if you think that desire for the
world's applause is the moving spring of my actions! Yes, I do long for
recognition; that I have confessed to you. But I might have obtained it
more easily if I had chosen other branches of science, and my uncle
allowed me to choose. I selected, from inclination, natural philosophy,
and, in especial, physiology. I cared little for history, because I
care little for mankind. Moral philosophy seems to me too dogmatical,
so does religion. Nature alone is always filled with new, genuine life.
'There I know,' as Johannes Mller says, 'whom I serve and what I
have.' Physiology has opened a new world for me,--or, better still, has
re-created the old world, for I truly see only when I understand what I
am looking at;--every sunbeam glancing in a dewdrop, every wave of
sound borne to my ear from afar, awakens new and vivid images in my
mind. What enjoyment is comparable to that which science offers us! She
makes the real a miracle,--and shows us the miraculous as reality. And
shall I resign this ennobling possession because I am a woman? And can
this inspiring search for life bring me death? Oh, no! I cannot, I will
not believe it!"

Johannes held out his hand to her. "You are a rarely-gifted woman, and
comprehend the nature of science. But, supposing that you possessed the
rare power--both of body and mind--to accomplish the task which you
propose to yourself, you must do it at the cost of your vocation as a
woman. For no woman can fulfil both these offices. As a scholar, you
must live exclusively for your studies; the duties of wife and mother
would distract you too much to admit of your accomplishing your
purposes, for they require an entire lifetime