COMMENTS ON THE '^ SACRIFICE OF EDUCATIONr 535 



from unknown causes, moving in unknown orbits and about un- 

 known centers ; also, with equal confidence, that, not far away, 

 inebriety and its evils will be understood, treated, and prevented, 

 as positively as any other disease. 



COMMENTS cm THE "SACRIFICE OF EDUCATION." 



Peof. F. max MtJLLEE. 



CONSIDERING that nearly forty years ago I did my best to 

 prove the necessity of examinations for admission to the civil 

 service, it will be believed that I did not sign the foregoing pro- 

 test with a light heart. Before the Indian civil service had been 

 thrown open, and before Sir Charles Trevelyan had carried his 

 reform of the civil service in England, I was allowed by the 

 then editor of the " Times " to publish several letters signed " La 

 Carriere Ouverte," in which I said all that could be said against 

 appointments by patronage and in favor of examinations. 



Nor should I wish to withdraw now any of the arguments 

 which I then advanced. I hold as strongly as ever that appoint- 

 ment by patronage is too much for human nature. But I believe 

 the time has come to examine the examinations, to improve them, 

 and to reduce, if possible, the evil which, in addition to much 

 real good, they have produced. The present system of perpetual 

 examination, in spite of all the good which it has done, stands 

 self -condemned, so far as our public schools and universities are 

 concerned, by two facts which can not be contested ; viz., (1) the 

 number of men who, after having spent six years at a public 

 school, fail to pass the matriculation examination in college, or 

 the little-go examination in the university ; (2) the number of 

 men who, after having taken a degree at Oxford or Cambridge, 

 can not pass the civil-service examinations without spending a 

 year or two with a crammer. These facts speak for themselves. 

 I wish, indeed, that I had time to go fully into the subject, but I 

 have not at present, and I must be satisfied with giving my 

 general impressions, and saying what is uppermost in my mind. 



From what I have seen at Oxford and elsewhere, all real joy 

 in study seems to me to have been destroyed by the examinations 

 as now conducted. Young men imagine that all their work has 

 but one object — to enable them to pass the examinations. Every 

 book they have to read, even to the number of pages, is pre- 

 scribed. No choice is allowed ; no time is left to look either 

 right or left. What is the result ? The required number of 

 pages is got up under compulsion, therefore grudgingly, and 

 after the examination is over what has been got up is got rid of 



