72 THE UNIVERSITY AND WOMEN’S WORK 
between one piece of steel and another when the difference in 
the proportion of carbon is only a tenth of one per cent. 
Whatever we do we must not belittle these things ; they are 
vastly important, and it is the theorist’s tendency to overlook 
them that so exasperates those who know their real value. 
All the same, do not let us be deterred from enlisting all the 
intellectual aid we can secure in furthering all good human 
pursuits, however much they may seem to depend for suc- — 
cess on experience or talent. An educational institution is 
intended to economize experience and to develop talent. It - 
is a repository where accumulated experience is organized and 
distributed as knowledge, and where the means of acquiring 
experience in the most intelligent and effective way should 
be imparted. The statement I have quoted, that a well- 
educated woman will know what she wants to learn about the 
household and how to learn it, and that the time for learning 
it will be when she really needs it, seems to be a negation of | 
all educational enterprise, Is there, or is there not, a body 
of special knowledge lying near the work of a woman who has 
to administer a home? Is the position of such a person at all 
comparable with that of an agriculturist or an engineer? If 
it is, then the province of knowledge in question is surely. 
worth cultivating. I have not a moment’s hesitation in 
answering these questions in the affirmative. There is un- 
doubtedly a vast body of special knowledge lying in the closest 
relationship to the administration of ahome. This knowledge 
is of a very varied kind. It may relate to the humbler house- 
hold arts such as those of the kitchen or laundry; it may 
concern the more distinguished subjects of hygiene or econ- 
omics; or it may range into the still sublimer regions of 
psychology and ethics. 
The short syllabus of the new courses which are being 
established in the Women’s Department of King’s College 
discloses, I think, an ample field of special knowledge which it 
