292 Sects and Science. [July, 



Should we like all England to have one examining board, 

 all Scotland to have one, all Ireland to have one ? Why 

 not all the nation to have one ? If we knew the truth in 

 perfection, we should decide that all the world ought to 

 have one, in sections, according to convenience of manage- 

 ment. But we have not attained to perfect; certainty in 

 many things, and we object to have the sons of England 

 educated as if we had. We must have a choice. If a man 

 is narrow in his views, or if he desires that one young man 

 shall have a professional education for teaching a sect, he 

 sends him — let us say — to the Methodist College, or the 

 Unitarian Hall, or the exclusively religious teaching of the 

 Anglican Church, or the exclusively scientific teaching of 

 the London University; but if we wish him to learn the 

 struggles of humanity for knowledge, and the width and 

 breadth of the attainment, we send him to a variety of 

 classes, such as may be found at some of the older Uni- 

 versities, which are keeping up, or attempting to keep up, 

 with modern times, and without bigotry are allowing the 

 establishment of as many professorships as money can be 

 found to maintain. 



Yet there are men that would make the whole education 

 of the country sectarian, that would destroy Oxford and 

 Cambridge, as distinct units, and make one examining 

 board decide the education of all the country. We have 

 heard of a bed of Procrustes, but this is the most severe yet 

 known to us ; we have heard of inquisitions and faith- 

 makers, and bigots, but none of them have ever set them- 

 selves up more decidedly above all their fellow-men than 

 such a plan would exalt the proposed powerful organi- 

 sation. Freedom of thought would, as a matter of 

 course, be curbed. We should have only one educated 

 sect, only one direction given to the general bearings of 

 the mind, although the studies would be various. These 

 great bearings decide that which we call character 

 in individuals, so difficult to explain but so decided in 

 its effects. These inexorable examiners, who are pre- 

 cluded from judging of any but intellectual feats and feats 

 of the memory, would decide the mode of teaching and the 

 things to be taught, and the still less exorable council 

 would appoint the men to examine. The unhappy school 

 teachers over all the country would be obliged to teach up 

 to one standard, instead of, as now, having a choice ; and 

 instead of that variety of thought out of which new com- 

 binations are formed, one universal sameness would 

 dominate in schools also, which would be as void of light 



