Nay, I sometimes fear lest even our increased activity in practical work may not have the effect of calling off our attention from those deep underlying causes which must be dealt with if we are not to engage in the hopeless task of trying to fill a cistern the tap of which has been left running.

This absorption in the effect and inattention to the cause is to a certain degree bred in us by the very nature of the duties that devolve upon us as women.

John Stuart Mill has compared the life of a woman to an "interrupted sentence." The mere fact that our lives are so interrupted by incessant home calls, and that we are necessarily so concerned in the details of life, is apt to make us wanting in grasp of underlying principles.

Perhaps it is the fact of my having been associated all the early years of my life with eminent scientific men that has formed in me a habit of mind always to regard effects in relation to causes, so that merely to cure evil results without striking at the evil cause seems to me, to use a Johnsonian simile, "like stopping up a hole or two of a sieve with the hope of making it hold water." It is, therefore, on these deeper aspects that more especially bear upon the lives and training of our own sons that I want to write, placing before you some facts which you must know if you are to be their guardians, and venturing to make some suggestions which, as the result of much collective wisdom and prayer, I think may prove helpful to you in that which lies nearest your heart.

Only, if some of the facts are such as may prove both painful and disagreeable to you, do not therefore reject them in your ignorance as false.