ii.] UNIVERSITIES: ACTUAL AND IDEAL. 61 



qualified to examine advanced students. And in the 

 second place, Examination is an Art, and a difficult 

 one, which has to be learned like all other arts. 



Beginners always set too difficult questions partly 

 because they are afraid of being suspected of ignorance 

 if they set easy ones, and partly from not understand- 

 ing their business. Suppose that you want to test 

 the relative physical strength of a score of young men. 

 You do not put a hundredweight down before them, 

 and tell each to swing it round. If you do, half of 

 them won't be able to lift it at all, and only one or 

 two will be able to perform the task. You must give 

 them half a hundredweight, and see how they man- 

 oeuvre that, if you want to form any estimate of the 

 muscular strength of each. So, a practised Examiner 

 will seek for information respecting the mental vigour 

 and training of candidates from the way in which 

 they deal with questions easy enough to let reason, 

 memory, and method have free play. 



No doubt, a great deal is to be done by the careful 

 selection of Examiners, and by the copious introduc- 

 tion of practical work, to remove the evils inseparable 

 from examination; but, under the best of circum- 

 stances, I believe that examination will remain but 

 an imperfect test of knowledge, and a still more im- 

 perfect test of capacity, while it tells next to nothing 

 about a man's power as an investigator. 



There is much to be said in favour of restricting 

 the highest degrees in each Faculty, to those who 

 have shown evidence of such original power, by pro- 

 secuting a research under the eye of the Professor in 



