In the third place my ideal woman has inherited the intellect of Pallas.  And this inheritance is necessary in order to secure for her a true possession of the gifts of Aphrodite.  For a woman can never be truly beautiful who does not possess intelligence.  It is a matter of the utmost indifference to me what studies my ideal has pursued.  She may be a panglot or she may scarcely know her vernacular.  If she speak 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