Note 44 — INTRODUCTION.

That the mind of the female sex is capable of compassing great and extraordinary attainments, even in the most arduous branches of science, is attested by many instances; and it cannot be doubted that these would be more numerous, were women oftener attentive to philosophical pursuits. Those who have been just named serve to shew, that astronomy has been cultivated with success, by them. And Dr. Reid tells us (in his Essays on the intellectual and active Powers of Man,) that both the celebrated Christiana, Queen of Sweden, and the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Frederick, King of Bohemia, and aunt of George I., were adepts in the philosophy of Descartes. The latter of these princesses, though very young when Descartes wrote his Principia, was declared by that philosopher to be the only person he knew, who perfectly understood not only all his philosophical writings, but the most abstruse of his mathematical works.