4go Analyses of Boohs. [August, 
Commissioners individually and racially destructive.* Actual 
experience — the hard logic of facts — shows how inferior we are 
in the quantity of first-rate intellectual work produced to the 
nation which discards emulation from its system of education, 
and which is in consequence of its thoroughness leaving us more 
and more behind, not merely in scientific research, but in the 
industrial arts. Who, then, are the infatuated individuals who 
still hug this delusion, compelling our schools and colleges, often 
against the better judgment of their principals, to proscribe all 
original thought ? The answer is not far to seek. The mischief 
is due to politicians ever ready to sacrifice such a trifling matter 
as the intellectual life of the nation to the exigencies of party. 
To those who see a little farther and more clearly than a certain 
peer who recently defended competitive examination in public, 
the intellectual and physical degradation of a great part of our 
most promising young men seems far too heavy a price to pay 
for the suppression of “ influence.” To call examination a test 
of merit is ridiculous indeed, if we call to mind the cases placed 
on record within the last few years, of two men taking high 
honours respectively in chemistry and biology, though the che- 
mist had never cleaned out a test-tube, and the biologist never 
looked through a microscope or determined a vegetable or animal 
species ! But as this evil system is defended by men who, for 
our sins, are invested with power and influence, the work of 
Prof. Galloway is most opportune. 
The author’s objeCt is, as he admits, not perfectly explained by 
the title which he has given his book. He begins with the faCt, 
now generally admitted, that in higher education — whether of an 
abstract or of an industrial character — we are inferior to certain 
of our neighbours, especially Germany. It is not generally 
known in this country that for annual fees of about ^15 a young 
man can obtain — e.g ., at the Polytechnic School of Aix-la- 
Chapelle — a technical training quite as good as that given in the 
Royal School of Mines, and more varied in its nature, according 
as the student seeks to qualify himself for the duties of a tech- 
nological chemist, a mining, civil, or mechanical engineer, &c. 
It cannot fail to be known to all that Germans are continually 
flocking over to this country, and, in virtue of their superior 
education, supplanting the natives in almost every sphere where 
technical skill is required. Prof. Galloway asks, What is the 
reason for this inferiority ? He shows that the defeCI does not 
lie, as is often said, in the mere want of funds. At the same 
time it may, perhaps, be thought that some of the money now 
expended in forcing elementary education upon those who do not 
want it might have been better applied in supplying higher edu- 
cation to those who are craving for it. 
Neither are our shortcomings due, as the author shows on good 
* See Journal of Science, 1881, p. 440. 
