d a liberal
Catholic is microscopic.

Hypatia clearly saw that knowledge is the distilled essence of our
intuitions, corroborated by experience. But belief is the impress made
upon our minds when we are under the spell of or in subjection to
another.

These things caused the poor girl many unhappy hours, which fact, in
itself, is proof of her greatness. Only superior people have a capacity
for doubting.

Probably not one person in a million ever gets away far enough from his
mind to take a look at it, and see the wheels go round. Opinions become
ossified and the man goes through life hypnotizing others, never
realizing for an instant that in youth he was hypnotized and that he has
never been able to cast off the hypnosis.

This is what our pious friends mean when they say, "Give me the child
until he is ten years old and you may have him afterward." That is, they
can take the child in his plastic age and make impressions on his mind
that are indelible. Reared in an orthodox Jewish family a child will
grow up a dogmatic Jew, and argue you on the Talmud six nights and days
together.

Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, the same. I once knew an Arapahoe
Indian who was taken to Massachusetts when four years old. He grew up
not only with New England prejudices, but with a New England accent, and
saved his pennies to give to missionaries that they might "convert" the
Red Men.

When the suspicion seized upon the soul of Hypatia that her mind was but
a wax impression taken from her father's, she began to make plans to get
away from him. Her efforts at explanations were futile, but when placed
upon the general ground that she wished to travel, see the world and
meet people of learning and worth, her father acquiesced and she started
away on her journeyings. He wanted to go, too, but this was the one
thing she did not desire, and he never knew nor could know why.

She spent several months at Athens, where her youth, beauty and learning
won her entry into the houses of the most eminent. It was the same at
Rome and in various other cities of Italy. Money may give you access to
good society, but talent is always an open sesame. She traveled like a
princess and was received as one, yet she had no title nor claim to
nobility nor station. Beauty of itself is not a credential--rather it is
an object of suspicion, unless it goes with intellect.

Hypatia gave lectures on mathematics; and there was a fallacy abroad
then as there is