THE UNIVERSITY AND WOMEN’S WORK 71 
an intelligent woman whose mind has been trained, whose 
habits of observation have been called out, cannot learn very 
quickly if she desires. A really well-educated woman, it is 
said, will know what she wants to learn and how to learn it. 
‘The time for learning it is when she needs it. What she needs 
is a trained intelligence, a wide outlook, real interests in life.’ 
I am very familiar with arguments of this kind; they have 
confronted every attempt to create special studies. They do 
not impress me, but they are difficult to reply to because one 
can hardly do so without suggesting that the people who urge 
them are deficient precisely’ in the kind of knowledge they 
deprecate. I have been told again and again by men engaged 
in chemical industry that chemistry was of no use to them, 
and they have maintained this while their fortunes were being 
ruined for lack of what a knowledge of that very science 
would supply. 
I admit that it is very important for all of us who are— 
advocating special educational schemes not to forget how 
much the trained and flexible mind, the wide intellectual 
horizon, the aesthetic perception of the fitness of things, the 
sense of proportion, all secured it may be by the most remote 
studies, promote efficiency when mind confronts action. Let 
us remember also how much there is of a man’s and a woman’s 
best powers that comes from influences outside all formal 
educational systems. Men and women have talents and 
aptitudes of all kinds. These are developed in the school of 
“experience and may become really great powers which 
determine success. A good business man, a born housewife— 
these are well-recognized types, but who will’venture upon an 
analysis of their qualities? We must never underrate the 
value and power of native talent and of experience. I know 
a man whose great worldly success is attributed to his power 
of judging a piece of leather by its feel, and you will find some 
Sheffield workmen who can detect by eye the difference 
