When a human being stops thinking, that human being's life
practically ends.
All over the country you may see thousands and hundreds of
thousands of calm, settled, placid-faced, middle-aged women.
They admire themselves and they are admired generally. They
ought to be pitied.
They think now on all subjects just as they thought ten or
twenty or thirty years ago.
They view with horror things which they know nothing about. They
reject opinions which they don't understand; they have unlimited
faith in matters of which they know absolutely nothing. ----
Every one pities a man whose existence and enjoyments are limited
to the physical, sentimental side of life.
We all feel that a man of fifty, unless hard conditions and want
have ground interest and vitality out of him, ought to be at his
best. He ought to be active, alert, OPEN TO NEW IDEAS.
His mind is his one asset, and he should be constantly adding to
his knowledge, to his observation, and therefore he should be
constantly changing his mental point of view.
Many women suffer undoubtedly from the sentimental, physical and
intellectual reaction caused by the cessation of the
responsibility of maternity.
Such passionate affection, devotion and self-sacrifice are
lavished upon the children that when they grow up nothing more
seems worth while except to set them a good example.
Many other things are worth while: And as improving civilization
frees women more and more from the endless cares of the petty
household and the worries of poverty, the field for their mental
development will steadily expand.
When woman shall have accomplished her greatest material duty,
that of fully populating the earth, big families will no longer
be known, not more than two years of any woman's life will be
devoted to the worries of infancy, and then woman will have to do
her share of the world's thinking and its original intellectual
work. ----
For her own sake and for the sake of those about her, every
woman, whatever her age, should realize that there is no old age
for the brain well cared for.
Many men and women view with sentimental reverence the picture of
a middle-aged lady, old before her time, sitting in her
rocking-chair, knitting placidly, without one original thought in
a month.
This sentimental idea is a false one.
The type of woman to be admired is Mrs. Julia Ward Howe,
eighty-four years old, filling Carnegie Hall with her wonderful
voice, thrilling with admiration all of those who listened to
her, reciting with the greatest mental power her splendid battle
hymn, "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord."
THERE is a woman who enjoys her life. It is safe to say that
the eighty-fourth year of her existence is as happy as any year
that preceded it.
She is an old woman, and to most women that means sorrow and
dulness. But she is happy, admired and useful, BECAUSE SHE
THINKS.
There are in the United States hundreds of thousands of splendid
brains going to waste among our women, because they do not
realize the duty of using, to the last, all the intellectual
power within them.