103 
MORRISON: ADDRESS. 
sake of the work ; but he is the exception. The older sub- 
jects — languages, philosophy, mathematics — have got hold 
of the old seats of learning and of their endowments. Hence 
the tone which prevails not only among the scholars, but 
which is sedulously inculcated by their masters and tutors, 
is that study should be pursued for some material end. The 
boy is taught to work in order to get a prize, or when some- 
what older, a scholarship ; the undergraduate is urged to 
endeavour to take high honours, because that may lead to a 
fellowship, to the headmastership of a school, to success in 
professional or political life. It is seldom indeed that he is 
urged to work as a means to his own intellectual and moral 
progress, or to the enlargement of the sphere of human 
knowledge. Hence the manifold evils of the system of com- 
petitive examinations, so well calculated to destroy mental 
originality and power by driving along certain beaten tracks 
all minds without regard to their special aptitudes and 
capacities ; hence the development of cramming to the 
exclusion of the education of the faculties. The system can 
be judged by its fruits. In our English universities and in 
our training colleges for teachers of elementary schools, we 
find the results of the modem system. Is it not notorious 
that no great book comes from the resident members of the 
universities? Can the English certificated teachers, all 
picked men, point to one illustrious name, such as adorn the 
rolls of the Scotch parish schoolmasters ? They have been 
trained to spend their strength in learning just enough of a 
number of subjects to secure a certain class, or some similar 
tangible end, and, that end attained, the tools with which 
they have worked are thrown aside in sheer weariness, not 
to be taken up again but in a dilettante spirit ; they become 
idlers through life, or if engaged in some definite work, mere 
machines, showing capacity only in turning out more or less 
faithful copies of themselves among their pupils, sometimes 
