894 REPORT—1885. 
of examiners. Yet it has been a failure as an instrument for promoting the higher 
education—foredoomed to be so, because, as I have said, you must sow before you 
can reap. At the present time, with great wisdom, the managers of that institu- 
tion have set about the task of really fitting it out for the great end that it pro- 
fesses to pursue. If they succeed in so doing, they will confer upon the higher 
education one of the greatest benefits it has yet received. They have an oppor- 
tunity before them of dethroning the iron tyrant Examination which is truly 
enviable. This movement is only one of the signs of the times. Among the 
younger generation I find few or none that have any belief in the ‘ learn when you 
can and we will examine you’ theory; and small wonder, for they have tasted 
the bitterness of its fruit. Laissez faire asa method in the higher education no 
longer holds its place, except in the minds of inexperienced elderly people, who 
cling, not unnaturally, to the views and fashions which were young when they 
were SO. 
All the same, the task of reformation is not an easy one. Examinations have 
a strong hold upon us, for various reasons, some good, some bad, but all powerful. 
In the first place, they came in as an outlet from the system of patronage, which, 
with many obvious advantages, some of which are now sorely missed, had become 
unsuited to our social conditions. There is a certain advantage in examinations 
from the organiser’s point of view, which any one who, like myself, has to deal 
with large quantities of pretty raw material will readily understand. Again, 
there is an orderly bustle about the system that pleases the business-loving eye of 
the Briton. Yearly the printed sheets go forth in every corner of the land. The 
candidates meet and, in the solemn silence of the examination hall, the inspector, 
the local magnate, or the professor, sits, while for two or three busy hours the pens 
go scratching over the paper. A feeling of thankfulness comes over the important 
actor in this well-ordered scene, that the younger generation have such advantages 
that their fathers never knew. It is only when the answers are dissected in the 
examiner’s study that the rottenness is revealed underlying the fair outward skin. 
But then the examiner must go by his standards; he must consider what is done 
elsewhere, and what is to be reasonably expected. Accordingly he takes his 
report and quickly writes so many per cent. passed. Then the chorus of reporting 
examiners lift up their voices in wonderful concordance ; and all, perhaps even the 
examiners, are comforted. There is something attractive about the whole thing 
that I can only compare to the pleasure with which one listens to the hum of a 
busy factory or to the roaring of the forge and ringing of the anvil. But what 
avails the hum of the factory if the product be shoddy, and what the roar of the 
forge and the ring of the anvil if the metal we work be base ? 
Tn conclusion, let us consider for a moment what might be done for the risen 
generation, who are too old to go formally to school, and yet not too old to learn. 
In their education such bodies as the British Association might be very helpful. 
Indeed, in the past, the British Association has been very helpful in many ways. 
It can point to an admirable series of reports on the progress of science, for which 
every one who, like myself, has used them, is very grateful. It is much to be 
desired that these reports should be continued, and extended to many branches of 
science which they have not yet covered. 
The Association has at present, I believe, a committee of inquiry into science- 
teaching generally. This is typical of a kind of activity which the Association 
might very profitably extend. This Association, with its long list of members 
bristling with the names of experts in every science, not drawn from any clique or 
particular centre, but indiscriminately from the whole land, might take upon itself 
to look into the question of scientific text-books and treatises. Even if it did 
not set up a censorship of the scientific press, which might be an experiment of 
doubtful wisdom, although some kind of interference seems really wanted now 
and then, it might set itself to the highly useful work of filling the gaps in 
our scientific literature. There is nothing from which the English student suffers 
so much as the want of good scientific manuals, The fact is that the expense of 
getting up such books in this country is so great, and the demand for them, though 
steady, yet so limited, that it will not pay publishers to issue them, let alone 
