60 UNIVERSITIES : ACTUAL AND IDEAL. [LECT. 



to know; and outraged Science takes her revenge. 

 They do pass, and they don't know. I have passed 

 sundry examinations in my time, not without credit, 

 and I confess I am ashamed to think how very little 

 real knowledge underlay the torrent of stuff which I 

 was able to pour out on paper. In fact, that which 

 examination, as ordinarily conducted, tests, is simply 

 a man's power of work under stimulus, and his capacity 

 for rapidly and clearly producing that which, for the 

 time, he has got into his mind. Now, these faculties 

 are by no means to be despised. They are of great 

 value in practical life, and are the making of many an 

 advocate, and of many a so-called statesman. But in 

 the pursuit of truth, scientific or other, they count for 

 very little, unless they are supplemented by that long- 

 continued, patient "intending of the mind," as 

 Newton phrased it, which makes very little show in 

 Examinations. I imagine that an Examiner who 

 knows his students personally, must not unfrequently 

 have found himself in the position of finding A's paper 

 better than B's, though his own judgment tells him, 

 quite clearly, that B is the man who has the larger 

 share of genuine capacity. 



Again, there is a fallacy about Examiners. It is 

 commonly supposed that any one who knows a subject 

 is competent to teach it ; and no one seems to doubt 

 that any one who knows a subject is competent to 

 examine in it. I believe both these opinions to be 

 serious mistakes : the latter, perhaps, the more serious 

 of the two. In the first place, I do not believe that 

 any one who is not, or has not been, a teacher is really 



