1876.] Encouragement of Scientific Research. 473 
of any value, is seldom dreamed of. More exclusive than an 
oligarchy of birth, more sordid than an oligarchy of wealth, 
we assume that the only subjects worth learning are those 
in which we examine, and that the worth even of those con- 
sists in their being made to ‘ pay.’ Professor Max Muller 
offered in vain term after term, to read the Rig-Veda with 
any one of the 2400 members of the University of Oxford ; 
none would go to him, since a third hand acquaintance with 
a few words and forms from that oldest specimen of Aryan 
literature is sufficient for the schools. The same professor, 
one of the most fascinating of lecturers, when lecturing on 
the fascinating subject of comparative mythology, which he 
has made completely his own, could collect but a miserable 
fragment of an audience around him, and even of this the 
larger part consisted of college tutors who intended to retail 
to their own pupils some of the crumbs which had fallen into 
their note-books. It is almost impossible to find a majority 
of fellows in any college willing to give away a single fellow- 
ship for a special subject “ not recognised in the schools,” 
even when the candidate does not object to be examined ; 
and after this “ idle fellowships ” are defended on the ground 
that they encourage study and give an opportunity for 
learned leisure. But the study and learning that are meant 
are the study and learning that grow up out of the questions 
and answers in an examination room. The specialist who 
pleads in behalf of another kind of learning is considered a 
fanatic out of harmony with the spirit of our English 
universities and unappreciative of their merits. “ We don’t 
want original researchers,” I have not unfrequently heard it 
said, “ but good all-round men ” — that is to say, “the best 
specimens of the crammer who have a smattering of many 
things, but know nothing well.” Did ever system pronounce 
more emphatically its own condemnation ? Surely the 
humblest “ original researcher,” the man who discovers only 
one fadt unknown before, is of more value to the world than 
all the “ good all-round men ” who have ever lived, or ever 
will live, till competitive examination is hunted back in 
contempt and loathing to its native China ! “ Examination 
is a bad test,” flippantly exclaims a daily paper, “ but can 
you suggest a better?” “Can you,” it might be replied, 
“ suggest or conceive of a worse ?” But if the reader will 
have patience to follow us, we will suggest an infinitely 
better test. 
But the system we are condemning ruins not the student 
but the teacher also. One of the writers in the work which 
has given rise to the present paper is struck with a remark- 
