The art of the present day is not architecture, painting, or literature.  It is the art of remaining young.  It is the art of life.  It is a science.  The fairer, the stronger, the better sex—­shall I call its members our equals or our superiors?—­have always realised this.  Indeed, they have employed ingenious mechanical contrivances for arresting the march of time or that physical decay of which we are all victims.  Sometimes they may be said to have indulged in an over-wrought technique, which may be the reason why we are told that every woman is at heart a decadent.  Otto Weininger certainly thought so.  I have always regretted that the male sex was precluded by prejudice from following their example.  I regret somewhat acutely the desuetude of the periwig.

So we can take an example from women—­they are so often our theme, let them be our examples in a symbolical sense.  If we choose, we too can remain young intellectually, sensitive to new impressions, new impulses and new revelations, whether of science or art.  The Greeks of the fifth century, and even of the age of St. Paul, preserved their youth by cultivating the superb gift of curiosity, delightful anxiety about the present and future.  William Morris once described the Whigs as careless of the past, ignorant of the present, and fearful of the future.  Whatever your politics are, do not be like the Whigs as described by William Morris.  Cultivate a feminine curiosity.  I used to be told the old story of Blue Beard as a warning against that particular failing.  I see in it a much profounder moral.  It is the emancipation of woman; and asserts her right, if not to vote, at least to be curious.  Her curiosity rid the world of a monster, and in her curiosity we see the nucleus of the new drama.  That little blood-stained key unlocked for us the cupboard where the family skeleton had been left too long in the cold; it was time that he joined the festive board, or, at least, appeared on the boards:  and now, I am glad to say, he has done so; and he is called new-fangled.  Do not let us call things ‘new-fangled.’  New-fangled medicine probably saves fifty per cent. of the population from premature death.  Do not speak of the ‘crudity of youth.’  Youth is sometimes crude.  It is better than being rude.  It is an error to mock at the single virtue a possible offender may possess.  I observe that men of science remain younger intellectually, and even physically, than artists or men of letters.  I believe it is because to them science is always full of surprises and fresh impressions.  They know there is practically no end to their knowledge; and that in the study of science there is no decay, whatever they may detect in the crust of the earth or on the face of heaven.  They are never satisfied with the past.  They look to youth and its enthusiasms for realising their own dreams and developing their own hypotheses.  And as there are great men of science to-day, so, too, there are great men of letters,