THE UNIVERSITY AND WOMEN'S WORK 67 



how sharp the distinction once was between these professions 

 and other callings in life, and how little there was in the 

 practical arts that exacted anything in the way of formal 

 education beyond that general training of the intelligence, 

 which improves the mental powers without in any way 

 specializing knowledge. Special training for the practical arts, 

 so long as they were nothing but crafts, lay only in practising 

 them under a good master ; apprenticeship was the real 

 preparatory school. An extended school or college education 

 did not seem to be very much to the point. It seemed to 

 involve the risk of detaching a man from the currents of active 

 life and making him into a kind of superior person endowed 

 with a large fund of unnegotiable paper knowledge. It 

 involved, also, a sacrifice of those early years of practical 

 training which some people consider indispensable for the 

 inculcation of good craftsmanship. 



It is surely to be deplored that the educational institutions 

 and systems of this country have been so much designed for 

 the interest of one set of callings, and that they have been so 

 slowly adapted to changing needs. 



It is not uncommon to find people talking of universities as 

 pre-eminently places for general education. No doubt they 

 are so in a broad sense, that is to say, so far as general 

 culture of the mind, the training of character, the development 

 of individuality, and the acquisition of the graces are concerned. 

 But surely it is also the case that the older universities were 

 and still are, to a very large degree, schools of specialized 

 professional knowledge. Oxford and Cambridge have been 

 training schools for ministers of religion, for lawyers, doctors, 

 schoolmasters, statesmen, men of letters, and men of science, 

 and this fact has had the most important consequences. The 

 preparatory education suitable for these special studies became 

 stereotyped as the one and only kind of preparatory education 

 for mankind in general, and it was established, in various 



