5 H THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



life. But it is not fair to impose these sacrifices upon boys who are, as 

 apprentices, learning the principles underlying their trade, and who 

 are paid only small wages on the understanding that their masters teach 

 these principles. In 1889 I introduced a bill into the Kensington 

 Parliament compelling employers to provide such instruction during 

 the working hours. Eeforms of all kinds proceed with exasperating 

 slowness, but already many employers are carrying out this idea. 



In some things we reformers have made way. It is now recognized 

 almost everywhere that examinations ought to be conducted mainly by 

 the teachers of a student. I have often put the matter in this way: 

 Huxley used to teach about forty students in biology; we can not 

 imagine better teaching. But if those students had only wanted to 

 pass the examination of London University, it is quite certain that they 

 would have done very much better by attending the class of a cheap 

 crammer. A university consisting of two, three, or more federated 

 colleges is very little better than a mere outside examining body, and 

 this is what London University has always been. I am glad that a change 

 towards something better is now about to take place. A number of 

 separate universities would be better, but in two years or less, probably, 

 the colleges of London will conduct their own intermediate and degree 

 examinations. One result will be that when a man gets his degree he 

 will not shut up his books forever. 



I would, however, point out that Old London University, which was 

 a mere examining body, served an exceedingly important purpose. This 

 statement may seem curious coming from a person who has always 

 railed at London University as a mere examining board. I still say that 

 it was never a university at all in the past. But a man reading hard by 

 himself, perhaps far away from a college, could have a severe test applied 

 to his acquirements which encouraged him in his studies when he had 

 no other encouragement, and the test was very rightly a severe test. 

 To do away with its outside examinations altogether, as I believe is 

 the intention of the authorities, will be exceedingly harmful. It would 

 be impertinent in me to make a suggestion as to the distinction which 

 might be made between a degree conferred by his own professors upon 

 a man who has attended regularly a college of repute, and a degree con- 

 ferred by a mere examining body upon an outside student. For the 

 first, the examination test may be easy. The Oxford and Cambridge 

 pass degree examinations are quite easy, and rightly so, for the real 

 qualification is that an undergraduate shall have lived for three years 

 in the intellectual and cultured life of an Oxford or Cambridge college. 

 In the other case the mere examination is the only test, and it is rightly 

 very severe. The two kinds of degree differ altogether in quality. In a 

 new country of great distances I can imagine many good secondary schools 

 to be established having neither sufficient funds nor sufficient pupils to 

 be qualified as universities. Yet it may be of enormous importance that 



