PRE-REQUISITES OF CANDIDATES. 909 



and if we pass the allotted time it is too late for that work to be 

 done. If you are idle here at school, it may for a short time make 

 little difference, perhaps no perceptible difference at all. But you 

 know perfectly well that that is not so always. After a time it 

 becomes too late to recover what you have not chosen to take when 

 it was within your reach. There are things which can be learnt 

 when you are not twelve which can never be learnt so well after- 

 wards; there are still more which must be learnt before you are 

 seventeen or eighteen, or you can never really learn them at all. 

 You may afterwards wish very much that you had not missed the 

 chance ; but your wishes will not give you back the power that is 

 gone ; you are too late. And the same holds good long after. Each 

 time of life, as it comes, marks off the foundations of certain studies 

 as done with ; if you have not laid them by that time you never 

 can. And precisely the same thing is true of other things besides 

 studies '^/ 



So much for the good to be expected and attained by the observ- 

 ance of a regular curriculum. It admits of no question. What does, 

 I think, admit of question, and what is, I think, capable of improve- 

 ment, is the method for securing such observance. The method at 

 present in vogue for this end is known as the ' signing up ' of cer- 

 tificates of attendance at lectures. Now such a certificate can only 

 really depose to the fact that a student was present at the delivery 

 of particular sets of discourses or demonstrations ; it cannot depose 

 to his having profited by them. What the public wish to be 

 assured of is the latter matter, and its results in the shape of the 

 possession by him of a certain amount of attainments and dexterity. 

 But this can only be done by an examination held by one set of 

 authorities or another ; and the very first and the very last principle 

 of any and every examination which deserves the name is the prin- 

 ciple of English law — De non exisfentibus et de non apparentihus 

 eadem est ratio. Nothing, in the words of the examination statutes 

 of my own University, should influence the result of the examina- 

 tion except what forms part of or directly results from the ex- 

 amination itself I do not question the good to be had from 

 attending lectures ; I am well assured that good lectures, not over 

 numerous, bless both him who gives and him who takes. The giver 

 is benefited by having to put his knowledge into a compact tbrm, 

 ^ Temple, 'Sermons,' Ser. II., Serm. xl. p. 308. 1871. 



