448 
NATURE 
[ Sept. 10, 1885 
less gifted with this particular kind of superficial sharpness. But, 
in the end, came all to the same : we were prepared for problem- 
working in exactly the same way as for bookwork. We were 
directed to work through old problem papers, and study the style 
and peculiarities of the day and of the examiner. The day and 
the examiner had, in truth, much to do with it, and fashion 
reigned in problems as in everything else. The only difference 
I could ever see between problems and bookwork was the 
greater predominance of the inspiriting element of luck in the 
former. This advantage was more than compensated for by the 
peculiarly disjointed and, from a truly scientific point of view, 
worthless nature of the training which was employed to cultivate 
this species of mental athletics. The result, so far as problems 
worked in examinations go, is, after all, very miserable, as the 
reiterated complaints of examiners show ; the effect on the 
examinee is a well-known enervation of mind, an almost incur- 
able superficiality, which might be called Problematic Paralysis 
—a disease which unfits a man to follow an argument extending 
beyond the length of a printed octavo page. Another lament- 
able feature of the matter is that an enormous amount of 
valuable time is yearly wasted in this country in the production 
of these scientific trifles. Against the occasional working and 
propounding of problems as an aid to the comprehension of a 
subject, and to the starting of a new idea, no one objects, and it 
has always been noted as a praiseworthy feature of English 
methods, but the abuse to which it has run is most pernicious. 
All men practically engaged in teaching who have learned 
enough, in spite of the defects of their own early training, to 
enable them to take a broad view of the matter, are agreed as to 
the canker which turns everything that is good in our educa- 
tional practice to evil. It is the absurd prominence of written 
competitive examinations that works all this mischief. The end 
of all education nowadays is to fit the pupil to be examined ; the 
end of every examination not to be an educational instrument, 
but to be an examination which a creditable number of men, 
however badly taught, shall pass. We reap, but we omit to 
sow. Consequently our examinations, to be what is called fair 
—that is, beyond criticism in the newspapers—must contain 
nothing that is not to be found in the most miserable text-book 
that any one can cite bearing on the subject. One of my 
students, for example, who was plucked in his M. A. examination, 
and justly so if ever man was, by the unanimous verdict of three 
examiners, wrote me an indignant letter because he believed, or 
was assured, that the paper set by the examiners could not have 
been answered out of Todhunter’s Elementary Algebra. I have 
nothing to say, of course, against that or any other text-book, 
but who put it into the poor young man’s head that the burden 
lay with me to prove that the examination in question ought to 
contain nothing but what is to be found in Todhunter’s Elemen- 
tary Algebra? The course of this kind of reasoning is plain 
enough, and is often developed in the newspapers with that 
charming simplicity which is peculiar to honest people who are, 
at the same time, very ignorant and very unthinking. First, it 
follows that lectures should contain nothing but what is to be 
found in every text-book ; secondly, lectures are therefore useless, 
since it is all in the text-book ; thirdly, the examination should 
allude to nothing that is not in the text-books, because that 
would be unfair ; fourthly, which is the coach or crammer’s de- 
duction, there should be nothing in the text-book that is not 
likely to be set inthe examination. The problem for the writer 
of a text-book has come now, in fact, to be this—to write a 
book so neatly trimmed and compacted that no coach, on 
looking through it, can mark a single passage which the candi- 
date for a minimum pass can safely omit. Some of these text- 
books I have seen, where the scientific matter has been, like the 
lady’s waist in the nursery song, compressed “so gent and sma’,” 
that the thickness of it barely, if at all, surpasses what is devoted 
to the publisher’s advertisements. We shall return, I verily 
believe, to the Compendium of Martianus Capella. The result 
of all this is that science, in the hands of specialists, soars higher 
and higher into the light of day, while educators and the 
educated are left more and more to wander in primeval 
darkness. 
When our system sets such mean ends before the teacher, and 
encourages such unworthy conceptions of education, is it to be 
wondered at that the cry arises that pupils degenerate beneath 
even the contemptible standards of our examinations? These 
can hardly be made low enough to suit the popular taste. It is no 
merit of the system we pursue, but due simply to the better educated 
among our teachers—men, many of them, who work for little 
reward and less praise—that we have not come to a worse pass 
already. Some even of the much-abused crammers have concep- 
tions of a teacher’s duty far higher than the system-mongers of 
the day, whom it is their special business to outwit ; and it is but 
fair to allow to such of these also as deserve it part of the credit 
of stemming the torrent of degeneration. We place our masters 
in positions such that their very bread depends upon their doing 
what many of them know and will acknowledge to be wrong. 
Their excuse is, ‘‘We do so and so because of the examina- 
tion. 
The cure for all this evil is simply to give effect to a higher 
ideal of education in general, and of scientific education in par- 
ticular. Science cannot live among the people, and scientific 
education cannot be more than a wordy rehearsal of dead text- 
books, unless we have living contact with the working minds of 
living men. It takes the hand of God to make a great mind, 
but contact with a great mind will make a little mind greater. 
The most valuable instruction in any art or science is to sit at the 
feet of a master, and the next best to have contact with another 
who has himself been so instructed. No agency that I have ever 
seen at work can compare for efficiency with an intelligent teacher, 
who has thoroughly made his subject his own. It is by providing 
such, and not by sowing the dragon’s teeth of examinations, that 
we can hope to raise up an intelligent generation of scientifically 
educated men, who shall help our race to keep its place in the 
struggle of nations. In the future we must look more to men 
and to ideas, and trust less to mere systems. Systems have had 
their trial. In particular, systems of examination have been tested 
and found wanting in nearly every civilised country on the face 
of the earth. Backward as we are here, we are stirring. The 
University of London, after rendering a great service to the 
country by forcing the older universities to give up the absurd 
practice of restricting their advantages to persons professing a 
particular shade of religious belief, has for many years pursued 
its career as a mere examining body. It has done so with rare 
advantages in the way of Government aid, efficient organisation, 
and an unsurpassed staff 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 institution have set about the task of really fitting it out for 
the great end that it professes 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 opportunity 
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 bitter- 
ness of its fruit. Zazssex faire asa method in the higher edu- 
cation no longer holds its place, except in the minds of inexpe- 
rienced 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. Ex- 
aminations 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 attrac- 
tive 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 
