ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 137 



the entrance into the university; or, what qualifications 

 should be required of those who propose to take advantage 

 of the higher training offered by the university. On the one 

 hand, it is obviously desirable that the time and opportu- 

 nities of the university should not be wasted in conferring 

 such elementary instruction as can be obtained elsewhere; 

 while, on the other hand, it is no less desirable that the higher 

 instruction of the university should be made accessible to 

 every one who can take advantage of it, although he may not 

 have been able to go through any very extended course of 

 education. My own feeling is distinctly against any abso- 

 lute and defined preliminary examination, the passing of 

 which shall be an essential condition of admission to the 

 university. I should admit to the university any one who 

 could be reasonably expected to profit by the instruction 

 offered to him; and I should be inclined, on the whole, to 

 test the fitness of the student, not by examination before he 

 enters the university, but at the end of his first term of study. 

 If, on examination in the branches of knowledge to which he 

 has devoted himself, he show himself deficient in industry 

 or in capacity, it will be best for the university and best for 

 himself, to prevent him from pursuing a vocation for which 

 he is obviously unfit. And I hardly know of any other 

 method than this by which his fitness or unfitness can be 

 safely ascertained, though no doubt a good deal may be 

 done, not by formal cut and dried examination, but by ju- 

 dicious questioning, at the outset of his career. 



Another very important and difficult practical question is, 

 whether a definite course of study shall be laid down for 

 those who enter the university; whether a curriculum shall be 

 prescribed; or whether the student shall be allowed to range 

 at will among the subjects which are open to him. And this 

 question is inseparably connected with another, namely, the 



