The highest mark of distinction which a college or university can bestow upon a person whom it desires to honor is an honorary degree. At its Commencement, three days later, Harvard did not confer an honorary degree on Madame Curie. Would it have conferred one on Sir Isaac Newton? Is scholarship, then, the ideal of a college or university? Or is it scholarship which happens to be attained by a sex? But humanity is neither male nor female: it is both. And both possess all human faculties _plus_ the specialized qualities of the sex of the individual. The nonrecognition of this basic fact impedes the progress of the race. And the subjection of either sex to the other impedes both. Hence, an appeal for justice to women, such as is embodied in this life of Marie E. Zakrzewska, is equally an appeal for justice to men. The man who would hold woman in subjection is himself held in subjection. For “The woman’s cause is man’s: they rise or sink Together, dwarf’d or godlike, bond or free: For she that out of Lethe scales with man The shining steps of Nature, shares with man His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal, Stays all the fair young planet in her hands-- If she be small, slight-natured, miserable, How shall men grow?” NOTES [1] This statement and related ones throughout the autobiographical chapters are the only references to her family history made in this connection by Dr. Zakrzewska. A “Memoir of Dr. Marie Elizabeth Zakrzewska, issued by the New England Hospital for Women and Children, Boston, 1903,” quotes her as writing to a friend, “I am in reality as family-proud as any aristocrat can possibly be, but I prefer to be remembered only as a woman who was willing to work for the elevation of Woman.” This Memoir further says: The Polish family of Zakrzewski of which her father and grandfather were in the line of direct descendants, is one of the most ancient in Europe and traces its history back to 911. It is named among the most powerful aristocratic “republican families of agitators” of Poland, and fell with Poland’s downfall. The princely family property--which consisted according to some accounts of ninety-nine villages--was confiscated, the main portion falling into Russia’s hands in 1793. At that time Marie’s grandfather saved his life by flight beyond the border, having seen his father fall on the field of battle and his mother and other members of the family perish in the flames of their castle.