Mental activity, provided there is no overstrain of the nerves, gives freshness and interest to life, and to be fresh and interested is to be young. It is because girls have been taught to use their brains, and women have been encouraged to keep them in repair, that this old stereotyped conception of the necessary failure of power after thirty-five years of age has become absurd. At what age the value of a woman’s increased experience is counterbalanced by diminished physical power I do not pretend to judge. Women differ, and their social opportunities differ. I merely transpose my text and say, “Do not let your intellect lazily decline upon generalisations, formalised rules, and laws of nature; but rather let it remain braced and keen to watch the world accurately and take every appearance on its own merits.” MRS. STETSON’S ECONOMIC IDEAL. _March, 1900._ The argument of Mrs. Stetson’s book, “Women and Economics,” may be briefly summed up as follows:-- (1) Man is the only animal species in which the female depends on the male for food. (2) The married woman’s living (_i.e._, food, clothing, ornaments, amusements, luxuries) bears no relation to her power to produce wealth, or to her services in the house, or to her motherhood. (3) The woman gets her living by getting a husband. The man gets his wife by getting a living. (4) Although marriage is a means of livelihood, it is not honest employment, where one can offer one’s labour without shame. To earn her living a woman must therefore make herself sexually attractive. (5) The result of this is that, while men have been developing humanity, women have been developing femininity, to the great moral detriment of both men and women. (6) The disastrous effects of this undue cultivation of sex differences can only be prevented by the wife being economically independent of her husband. (7) This economic independence should be secured by the wife earning her living by performing paid work for some person or body other than her husband. (8) The performance of maternal functions is not incompatible with the performance of such remunerative services outside the family. (9) The servant functions of preparing food and removing dirt are not necessarily domestic functions, and could be better performed by professional cooks outside the home, and professional cleaners visiting the home or taking the work from the home. (10) The nursemaid functions of minding small children can be better performed, with greater advantage to the children, in the crêche and kindergarten than in the domestic nursery. (11) The wife can therefore advantageously be relieved from the continuous supervision of the kitchen, the living rooms, and the nursery, as she has already been relieved of the burden of the family washing, dressmaking, tailoring, and manufacture of underclothing. (12) She will then be free to earn her own living outside the home.