68 UNIYEESITIES : ACTUAL AND IDEAL. 



underlay the torrent of stuff which. I was able to pour 

 out on paper. In fact, that which examination, as or- 

 dinarily 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. ISTow, 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 "in- 

 tending 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 posi- 

 tion 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 ex- 

 amine in it. I believe both these opinions to be seri- 

 ous 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 

 qualified to examine advanced students. And in the 

 second place, Examination is an Art, and a difficult one, 

 which has to be learned like ah 1 other arts. 



