From the outset, therefore, it is as well for everybody to bear this in mind in regard to spinsterhood in general, namely, that since the spinsters of any country represent a body of human beings who are not leading natural lives, and whose fundamental instincts are able to find no normal expression or satisfaction, it follows, on _a priori_ grounds alone, apart from any question of evidence, which we may ultimately find for or against, that the influence of this body of spinsters on the life of the nation to which they belong, must be abnormal, and therefore contrary to the normal needs and the natural development of that nation. Moreover, since the abnormal, when it is not supernormal, tends constantly to gravitate into the morbid, it is not inconsistent with this principle, but rather a necessary conclusion from it, to say that the presence of a body of unadapted spinsters in any nation must exercise a morbid influence upon the life of that nation. The attitude of the average thinker to this conclusion is, as a rule, to shrug his shoulders and to exclaim: “What would you do with them, poor things? They must live!” Certainly. And it is precisely because they must live that they cannot help exercising a baneful influence on the life of the community. The fact that modern society can offer no satisfactory solution of the surplus-woman question does not justify us in overlooking the evils which are the outcome of surplus women in our midst. The fact that we can devise no adaptation for them, does not relieve us of the duty of investigating the nature of the evils to which their non-adaptedness gives rise. To concentrate upon the economic aspect of the question, and to say as many do, that provided these surplus women can support themselves, the problem of their lives, and the difficulty of their evil influence upon their nation, is entirely solved, is simply to draw a red herring across the path of our inquiry. For self-support is not even the consummation of the life of _man_. How then could it be the consummation of the life of _woman_, in whom a very much more elaborate equipment than man’s for a definite calling, demands a far more complicated range of bodily activities than any to which an occupation providing merely self-support can possibly lead? Self-support is never more than a means to an end. The needs of a full and complete life, therefore, cannot be met by self-support and the industry by which it is achieved.