rove these, and what I shall have to say will be addressed
only to those who can accept them without proof. But I am convinced that
illustrations will occur at once to everyone. Who has not seen the man or
woman, the boy or girl who, apparently stupid, indifferent and able to
talk only in monosyllables, is suddenly shocked into interest and
volubility by the mere chance mention of some subject of
conversation--birds, or religion, or Egyptian antiquities, or dolls, or
skating, or Henry the Eighth? There are millions of these electric buttons
for galvanising dumb clay into mental and spiritual life, and no one of
them is likely to act upon more than a very few in a given company--the
theory of chances is against it. That is why no possible programme could
be made that would fit more than a very small portion of a given club. We
have seen that many club-programmes are made with an irreducible minimum
of intelligence; but even a programme committee with superhuman intellect
and angelic goodwill could never compass the solution of such a problem as
this. Nor will it suffice to abandon the general programme and endeavour
to select for each speaker the subject that he would like best to study
and expound. No one knows what these subjects are but the owners of the
hearts that love them.

We have seen how the scientific and technical societies manage the matter
and how well they succeed. They appoint a committee whose duty it is to
receive contributions and to select the worthiest among those presented.
The matter then takes care of itself. These people are all interested in
something. They are finding out things by experimentation or thought; by
induction or deduction. It is the duty and the high pleasure of each to
tell his fellows of his discoveries. It is in this way that the individual
gives of his best to the race--the triumph of the social instinct over
selfishness. As this sort of intellectual profit-sharing becomes more and
more common, the reign of the social instinct will extend and strengthen.
To do one's part toward such an end ought to be a pleasure, and this is
one reason why this course is commended here to the women's clubs.

Everyone, I repeat, is deeply interested in something. I am not talking of
idiots; there are no such in women's clubs. I have been telling some odd
stories of clubwomen, in which they are represented as doing and saying
idiotic things. These stories are all true, and if one should take the