658 PROCEtDINGS OF SECTION J. 



Other men. For my own l^avt, I rather like the idea of a learned, 

 dreamy profet^sor, whose thoughts are so often in the higher 

 regions that they cannot readily be brought to bear upon the 

 lowlier and more practical work of life ; and it is a distinct loss to 

 Australia that no place is at present found for learned leisure and 

 for the endowment of original research. The force of circum- 

 stances requires that the professors should be working teacherss, 

 and it would he wholesome for them that they should be kept well 

 up to the collar by outside stimulus. I say this because I think 

 that all men, except in the rarest, instances, require it. The ex- 

 perience of other men may be different from my own ; my own 

 observation, as well as my own feelings, warrants me in saying that 

 comparatively few men love work for its own sake. In this way a 

 great guide would be given to the governing bodies of the univer- 

 sities ; these, as we all know, are not exclusively nor necessarily 

 composed of gentlemen who are skilled to gauge the actual work 

 done by the teaching staff of the university. They have to trust, 

 and they are justified in trusting, to the unimpeachable integrity of 

 their professors, but, nevertheless, it would be a decided advantage 

 to them to be able to convince others of a fact well known to 

 themselves by the corroborative testimony cif external and therefore 

 completely unbiassed examiners. Much also may be said in favor of 

 the adoption of such a scheme on the side of the professors. I 

 have already hinted at the drudgery of examinations ; it may not 

 be possible to relieve them altogether of this arduous and distaste- 

 ful task and leave them to their proper work of teaching, but we may 

 make it as small as possible. Then, too, how perj^lexed a professor 

 must often feel when examining the papers sent in by his own 

 class. He cannot help having certain opinions, favorable or other- 

 wise, concerning individual members of his class ; he cannot Avell 

 be expected to be without prepossessions, and if, as may sometimes 

 happen, some outsider, some non-collegiate student, of whom he 

 knows nothing, is examined at the same time, and with the same 

 papers as those of his own class, he will be a sanguine man who 

 imagines that he has acted with equal justice to all. 



It may be that the importance whi«h they deserve has not been 

 accredited to these Australian degrees; still that they are important 

 none of us will question. They form the portals of admission in 

 some cases of high and responsible civil engagements, while of their 

 value to students of law and medicine it is unnecessary to say any- 

 thing. We shall best preserve the value set upon our degrees, and 

 indeed help very greatly to increase it, by using every method we 

 can to keep the standard at a fair and equable level. This standard 

 should, I venture to think, be the same for alf. The degree in any 

 given school should rei^resent all over Australia equal attainments. 

 Intercolonial courtesy and, I may add, intercolonial necessities 

 seem to require that there should be the fullest reciprocity 

 between the universities of Australia. It is right and proper that 



