A lady who conducted a subscription class of society women in their own beautiful parlors, testified that their mental inertia was lamentable, and that the only two in her class of fifty, who really seemed to have any capacity for keen thought, were women who worked for a living. They had to make their minds nimble and bright in order to keep themselves afloat.
In Professor Drummond's remarkable book, "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," there is a striking illustration of the deteriorating effect of disuse upon organs, in the highly organized crab, which, when it finds a rich feeding-ground, attaches itself to some convenient rock, loses one by one its feelers and tentacles and soon becomes a simple sac, fit only to suck up nourishment.
Many of the absurd opinions and nearly all of the sins of the so-called "society" people can be laid to idleness. The mind, seldom used to its capacity, becomes dull and unable to reason, and the moral nature loses its strength of conviction. Nothing is worse for our country than the increase of our idle classes. Its salvation is the slogan that every man and woman should work and earn at least a living.
Our "leisure women" are realizing their plight, and most of them are entering actively into our great philanthropic and civic organizations. The war has given them a splendid opportunity and it is a good sign for our nation that so many of them have seized it. The idle woman, whom George Meredith calls, "that baggage which has so hindered the march of civilization," is coming to realize her responsibility as a citizen of a great democratic nation. The leisure man among us is so rare that he is an almost negligible quantity, for which we may well be thankful. If we can get the child of America started well in the ways of industry, the man is safe; for one who has experienced the transporting pleasure of achievement, can scarcely help wanting more of it.
"The phrase, 'economy of effort,' so dear to Froebel's followers, had little meaning for Dr. William James," says Agnes Repplier. "He asserts that effort is oxygen to the lungs of youth, and that a noble, generous rivalry is the spur of action and the impelling force of civilization."