It has often been remarked that, in America, women have now both leisure and independence to pursue the arts and to satisfy their desire for what is called “culture,” and that in this respect they have taken the place frequently occupied by men. The most characteristic element in this situation is, however, that in the pursuit of intellectual or artistic advancement, woman joins a club! These clubs are of very great use to the individuals who belong to them and to the communities in which they flourish when they undertake--as they frequently do--the betterment of social conditions. Any one familiar with what they have accomplished in this respect must pay them a real tribute. But in their pursuit of “culture” they have been less successful, and for the reasons already outlined here. They pursue too many subjects, and they dissipate their energies. But above all, they seem unconscious of the fundamental principle of education which is that one really educates one’s self. For education, after all, consists in the gradual enlargement of one’s own perceptions through coming in contact with greater minds, and its processes are secret and intensely personal. As you read “The Idiot,” for example, you connect Mishkin with Lohengrin, Parsifal, the Arthurian legends, or even with Christ. The extraordinary account of his thoughts as he falls in the epileptic fit, and his use of the words, “And there was no more time,” bring up a whole fascinating sequence of psychological speculations. The character of Nastasya calls to your memory scores of other characters from Kundry down to Sonia, and, as you read, the whole warp and woof of life, shot through and through with its drab and scarlet, flashes before you. Now, these contacts are as nothing if some one else makes them. The spark must strike in your own imagination. You yourself must feel the current of this magnetism which reaches from the earth to the stars and makes all things akin. A good book should be a provocation to the reader. A club for “culture” is a collection of human beings each hoping for vicarious salvation through the other. Women’s clubs not only waste energy in their pursuit of knowledge, but they debilitate the intellectual strength of the individual woman. Nothing could be worse for the mind than the peaceful acceptance of the point of view of another without resistance and without the test of your own thoughts and your own personality. Smatterings of knowledge are almost useless. Nothing is yours until you make it so.