peak French
and German and read Latin and Greek, it is well. If she know conics and
curves it is well; if she be able to integrate the vanishing function of
a quivering infinitesimal, it is well; if from a disintegrating track
which hardening cosmic mud has fixed and fastened on the present, she be
able to build a majestic, long extinct mammal, it is well. All these
things are marks of learning, but not necessarily of intelligence. A
person may know them all and hundreds of things besides, and yet be the
veriest fool. My ideal, I should prefer to have a good education in
science and letters, but she must have a sound mind. She must have a
mind above petty prejudice and giant bigotry. She must see something in
life beyond a ball or a ribbon. She must have wit and judgment. She must
have the higher wisdom which can see the fitness of things and grasp the
logic of events. It will be seen readily, therefore, that my ideal is
wise rather than learned. But she is not devoid of culture. Without
culture a broad liberality is impossible. But what is culture? True
culture is that knowledge of men and affairs which places every problem
in sociology and politics in its true light. It is that drill and
exercise which place all the faculties at their best and make one
capable of dealing with the real labors of life. Such a culture is not
incompatible with a broad knowledge of books, with a deep insight into
art, with a clear outlook over the field of letters. Indeed it includes
all these and is still something more than they are.

My ideal then, so regally endowed, is the equal of any man--even if he
be the "ideal man" of the American Chemical Society.

My ideal stands before me endowed with all the majesty of this long
ancestral line. Proud is she in the consciousness of her own equality.
Her haughty eye looks out upon this teeming sphere and acknowledges only
as her peer the "ideal man," and no one as her superior. Stand forth, O
perfect maiden, sentient with the brain of Pallas, radiant with the
beauty of Venus, quivering with the eager vivacity of Diana! Make, if
possible, thy home on earth. At thy coming the world will rise in an
enthusiasm of delight and crown thee queen. [Long and enthusiastic
applause.]

WOODROW WILSON

OUR ANCESTRAL RESPONSIBILITIES

[Speech of Woodrow Wilson at the seventeenth annual dinner of the
New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, December 21, 1896.
Stewart L. Woodfor