Ernestine looked gravely from one to the other. "I am quite ready to explain it to you. I should not, indeed, have ventured to do so if you had not asked me, for it would have seemed to me insulting to suppose that you could need any such explanation." "That shot told," Moritz remarked comically. "We are foes, gentlemen, and I am bent upon victory," said Ernestine. "I think the facility of acquisition shown by Dorothea Rodde is certainly as significant a fact in natural history as any example of extraordinary instinct in animals, for which zoologists search so untiringly. Or is the natural history of women less interesting than that of the ape?" "We are not used to compare or to speak of women thus," Möllner interposed. "Then, if you really accord us an equality with men in the scale of creation, Dorothea's eminent talent must certainly be of scientific interest, because it must assist in the investigation of the relative weight of the masculine and feminine brain,--a point not yet solved, the social importance of which is not recognized, or it would not be treated with such frivolous indifference. I, gentlemen, am convinced that the great contest for the emancipation of woman can be settled only through physiology, since that alone can prove whether the material conditions of the thinking mechanism are equal in men and women; and, if they are, who would deny a woman the right to assert her independence of man, even in the world of the intellect?" "But we have not yet reached this point," said Johannes. "This equality has not yet been proved." "Nor has the contrary," said Ernestine. "Therefore it seems to me that it would be well worth while for physiology to come to the aid of history, and test the material brain of famous women." "And what end would that serve?" "Can you ask that question seriously? Would not the result of such investigations, if it were favourable to women, strike a blow at our present social arrangements in the relations of the sexes? And would not the rendering such an aid to true social harmony be a triumph for physiology, of which it might well be proud?" "It would be all very well," said Moritz, "if the whole question were worth the trouble." "Of course it is not worth it for you, but it is for us. What do men care about the position of woman,--her capacity or her incapacity? If your wives fill their position,--that is, if they are your obedient servants, have sufficient capacity for cooking, and can bring up your children,--all is as it should be, as far as you are concerned, and the most important problem of mankind, in the social system, is solved to your satisfaction."