Darwinism and Other Essays. 



the competitive system is directly responsible, It 

 transforms the means into the end. It makes the 

 student think more of winning the prize than of 

 mastering the subject in hand according to his 

 own intellectual needs. And that there is all the 

 difference in the world between mastering a sub- 

 ject and making a brilliant show with it at an 

 examination every scholar well knows. Professor 

 Seeley has graphically described the results of 

 the system at Cambridge. The object of the tri- 

 pos examinations being to distinguish accurately 

 the merit of the students, it follows that those sub- 

 jects in which attainments can be tested with pre- 

 cision take precedence of subjects in which they 

 cannot. These latter subjects, " however impor- 

 tant they may be, gradually cease to be valued, or 

 taught, or learned, while the former come into re- 

 pute, and acquire an artificial value. This cannot 

 take place without an extraordinary perversion of 

 views both in the taught and the teachers. They 

 learn to weigh the sciences in a perfectly new 

 scale, and one which gives perfectly new results. 

 They reject as worthless for educational purposes 

 the greatest questions which can occupy the hu- 

 man mind, and attach unbounded importance to 

 some of the least." Philosophy, for instance, is 

 rejected, while the useless details of grammar and 



