1883.] On Technical Education . 161 
a like system must produce the like ingenious results to a 
nation to whatever grade of education it is applied. The 
late eminent French chemist Ste. -Claire Deville said — “ The 
success of Germany is due to the liberal organisation of the 
German Universities. It is Science that has vanquished 
us.” Renan, whose opinion I have given with regard to the 
effects of examinations and competitions in China, that they 
had produced a general and incurable senility, said — In 
France we have already gone far in the same direction, and 
that is not one of the least causes of our abasement.” The 
French provincial universities were destroyed by the great 
Revolution. Napoleon I. reconstituted the University of 
Paris in 1808, by making it the single university for France. 
“ He did this,” to employ Dr. Playfair’s expressive words, 
“ with the power of a military despot, and with the profes- 
sional instincts of a drill-sergeant . The University now became 
the Department of State Instruction, and included every 
kind of education — primary, secondary, and collegiate; while 
Germany was multiplying its universities and establishing 
among them a most salutary emulation.” 
It is admitted by all sound educationists that it is far more 
important in the training of the mind to adopt the best 
methods of teaching than what subjects are taught,— in 
other words, how we teach is far more important than what 
we teach ; but under such a system as that of payment by 
results the teacher cannot be an educationist ; he can only 
be a crammer, and this is confirmed by the multitude of 
books on the different sciences which have been published 
since this system was adopted by the State : the books to 
which I refer, or at all events the vast majority of them, 
are purely and simply cram books ; but the teacher finds 
that these are not always sufficiently attenuated to enable 
him to prepare with any success his pupils for the examina- 
tion : he therefore either writes out answers to the examina- 
tion papers that have been given for several years past on the 
subject he is teaching, and makes his pupils commit these 
answers to memory, and practises them by asking a certain 
number of the questions each time they meet and making 
them repeat from memory the answers, — or he selects the 
book on the subject which he considers to be the examiner’s 
pet one, and he guts it, and condenses the necessary informa- 
tion for the examination into a sheet of letter-paper, along 
with the illustrations of the apparatus required for the expe- 
riments ; he has this printed, and he supplies or makes each 
of his pupils buy a copy, and they have to commit the con- 
tents to memory. 
