A second explanation of the prevailing inactivity in regard to household affairs arises from the fact that it is always assumed that these subjects concern only women. The husband of the family often excuses his absolute ignorance of the affairs of his own household by the lame apology, “I leave all these things to my wife and daughters.” It is certainly not the intention in such remarks to belittle the affairs of the household, yet that is the natural and inevitable result. A knowledge of household affairs has never been considered a part of a liberal education as is a knowledge of literature, science, and politics, but when it is so regarded by men as well as by women a great gain will have been made. Moreover, it must be said that the natural tastes of some men would lead them to take up housekeeping as an occupation, as the natural tastes of some women lead them into different kinds of business. Inactivity in the household will cease when the arbitrary pressure is removed that now tacitly compels many women to become housekeepers in violence to their natural tastes, and at the same time prevents any man whose abilities lie in this direction from giving them scope. The time must come when each person will take up the work in life for which he or she is best adapted, be it the care of a house for a man or business for a woman, when it will cease to be a matter of odium for the husband to direct the affairs of the house and for the wife to be the breadwinner. When the fact is everywhere recognized that both men and women have a vital concern in the affairs of the house, the relation between the different parts of the household will become an organic one, and its highest development reached. A third explanation of this inactivity in the household is the belief that all women have a natural taste for household affairs, which without cultivation grows into positive genius for carrying them on. But a young man with a genius for law or medicine is not only not expected, he is not permitted, to exercise his untrained genius in legal and medical cases. The greater the genius he gives promise of, the more careful, systematic, and prolonged is the training he receives. In a similar way the woman with a natural taste for housekeeping duties is the one who should have most training in them, while in no other way can an interest in such duties be created in women who have not an inborn love of them. These three common errors—that a knowledge of housekeeping affairs is a matter of inspiration, that men have no active interest in the management of a household, and that all women have a natural love for such affairs which supplies the place of training—are perhaps sufficient explanation of the present lack of all opportunity for the investigation of the household in a professional way.