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PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 
the public will, in all probability, push it to extremes* until it becomes 
intolerable, and provokes the usual storm of reactionary violence. 
Such a storm brewed, came to a head, and burst in 1888. It was pre- 
mature, but I think precursive of a more violent outbreak. Does any 
one recall the title of that vigorous onfall? It was called “The Sacrifice 
of Education to Examination.” All that could be said against the 
examination system was then conscientiously and vigorously stated. 
The compilers and framers of the protest insisted that — “At the 
present time both teacher and pupil are morally depressed and in- 
capacitated by a system that deliberately sets itself to appeal to the 
lower side of human nature. Again and again brilliant young men, 
once full of early promise, go down from the universities as the great 
prize-winners, and do little or nothing in after years. They have lived 
their mental life before they are fivo-and-twenty. The victory of life 
has seemed to them gained, and knowledge exhausted, almost before 
the threshold of either has been crossed.” — Nineteenth Century , 
November, 1888. 
I have already laid stress on the fact that examination from being 
a very useful ally has become the mistress of education. The question 
then arises — Is examination a beneficent monarch or a despot? 
Having now said as much in favour of the system as may reasonably 
be maintained, yet I think, on the whole, the influence of the present 
vast development of the system is mischievous. 
“ Its influence,” says Sir George Young, “ over the highest 
culture is questionable. The institution at Cambridge of the Mathe- 
matical Tripos, it has often been remarked, synchronised with the loss 
to England of her mathematical pre-eminence. The most valuable 
advance of England in this century has been in natural science, 
a region over which until yesterday the examiner held no sway. 
Classical scholarship has indeed flourished, but classical learning has 
declined. Literature has owed little to the typical examinee ; research 
still less. The study of law has withered out of our universities, 
choked by the competition of studies that would pay.”+ 
This is a serious indictment, and it was left unchallenged. The 
popularity of higher education, if it has not declined, has not 
increased. Twenty years ago examinations were already under 
suspicion, but the Fail Mall Gazette had not yet hit upon its 
notorious device of publishing in comparative tables the “successes” 
of the English schools in order, as it professed, that the British parent 
might judge where to put his hopeful, with a view to smart payments 
and quick returns. A few good English schools had the pluck to keep 
clear of the Fall Mall and its wiles, but for two or three years the 
statistics duly appeared. This proceeding was perhaps the most 
pointed comment on the ruinous tendency of the examination system. 
Whatever views a man may entertain of his old school or university, 
* It is singular that in Socialist books, or in books purporting to set out the views 
of Socialists, and in works of fiction wherein the conditions of the future of our race 
are pictured, severe competitive examinations play their part. I have noticed this 
frequently, but quote the following: — “ Les ecoles, et les ateliers sont ouverts, I’enfant 
choisit librement son metier, que les aptitudes defcerminent. Des annees deja se sonb 
^coulees et la selection s’est faite, grace a des examens severes. II ne sufiit plus de 
pouvoir payer l’instruction, il fait en profiter.” — Sifjmnond, in “L’Argent” (E. Zola), 
p. 440. 
f Internat. Conference on Education, iii., p. 249. 
