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 arc 

 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 



