402 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



has to live, the marvelous forces among which he has to act, the 

 humanity of which he forms part, and thus of preparing a life of 

 mental activity and happiness for himself, and of enlightened use- 

 fulness to others ; but this influence is almost entirely set aside by 

 the prize system. Only too often the greater part of the knowl- 

 edge acquired for an examination, and the life which the student 

 has presently to lead, are to him as matters separated by a great 

 gulf, almost without connection with each other. We can not 

 help asking why we should thus throw away the noblest and most 

 enduring inducements that we possess, and put in their place 

 motives which, except for the desperate effort of the moment, 

 must be poor and imfruitful. We can find no good grounds for 

 believing that the simple love of knowledge for its own sake, which 

 at different periods of the world has acted so powerfully upon 

 young and ardent minds, has in itself lost any of the old sacred 

 fire ; nor can we for a moment admit that the boys and young- 

 men of higher aspirations, who would be ready to follow Knowl- 

 edge in a high and worthy spirit, should be sacrificed by an 

 ignobly conceived system to the inferior-minded — if there are 

 such — who can only be tempted to follow her because she means a 

 sum of money, the public triumph of a successful class, or the 

 gaining of a place. For those who can only be induced to work 

 for such motives, let their friends provide in some special fashion 

 such rewards and stimulants as they may find necessary ; but for 

 the higher type of boys and young men (and we believe they will 

 gradually prove to be far the larger number, when we have once 

 shaken ourselves free from the corrupting influences of the present 

 system) let the effort be to offer the only true kind of teaching — 

 the teaching of those who are in love with their subjects, and 

 would, if allowed, devote themselves to calling out the same feel- 

 ing in their pupils. At the present moment both teacher and 

 pupil are morally depressed and incapacitated by a system that 

 deliberately sets itself to appeal to the lower side of human nature. 

 Again and again brilliant young men, once full of early promise, 

 go down from the universities as the great prize-winners, and do 

 little or nothing in the after-years. They have lived their mental 

 life before they are five-and-twenty. The victory of life has 

 seemed to them gained, and knowledge exhausted, almost before 

 the threshold of either has been crossed. 



It can not be too often insisted on that examination is a good 

 educational servant, but a bad master. It is a useful instrument 

 in the hand of a teacher to test his own work, and to know hovv^ 

 far his pupils have followed and profited by his teaching. But it 

 necessarily exerts a fatal influence whenever it is made of such 

 importance that teachers simply conform to an external standard, 

 lose faith in themselves, sink into the position of their own text- 



