SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OP ABERDEEN. 163 



examining students viva vow. I say to myself, " How much better 

 than this could you have done at the end of your second anatomy 

 session ? " and the answer frequently adds a few more marks to the 

 candidate's store. Here, I think, I may step aside for a moment to 

 point out that, however severe or however lenient the examiner may 

 be, the candidates themselves, in the long run, set their own standard. 

 Whenever the average of their knowledge is high the standard goes 

 up automatically, and when it is low the standard goes down. It is 

 easy enough to say that this should not be ; theoretically each examin- 

 ing body should have its own standard which should not be varied 

 one fraction though all the candidates pass or all are rejected, but, 

 practically, though one particular examination may be stiffened up or 

 eased down, the pass marks soon come to mean about the average of 

 what the students have to offer. 



The logical sequence of this fact is that students of a University 

 might combine to lower the standard of their examination by prevent- 

 ing any one presenting himself in a brilliant condition, and something 

 of this sort has, I believe, been tried in other than academic circles, 

 but, if it could be effected, the result would be that the low standard 

 of the men would become known quickly and the value of that par- 

 ticular degree duly discounted. 



Although the candidates unconsciously set their own standard as 

 far as their pass marks are concerned, neither they nor their teachers 

 can effectively control the scope of the examination, and consequently, 

 as I have already pointed out, they cannot control the teaching. 



This is the examiner's privilege, and it is one which, on the 

 whole, is exercised with the greatest caution, because, with one or 

 two survivals of bad old days, every examiner is also a present 

 teacher of the subject in which he examines, and he knows that the 

 measure which he metes to other men's students may be measured 

 out again to his own elsewhere and at a future time. I do not say or 

 think that this is the only reason which makes for conservatism, but 

 in his fear lest he should do an injustice to any candidate, he tries to 

 cover as large an area of the ground as possible, and in this way 



