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8 mere walking Lexicon,—an explainer of hard words. But the Colleges will gain in other respects,—they will be enabled to specialise their staff, and if they cannot compete with the Presidency College in giving their students so wide a selection in their curriculum, they will be the better able to hold their own point of quality, to the great advantage both of teachers and pupils.

The text-book system which has been necessitated by the variety of the course hitherto laid down, offers we believe one of the greatest obstacles to any sound education. No man can understand a subject fully by reading, however carefully, any given book—unless he brings to the task a considerable amount of thought and knowledge elsewhere gained. The text-books selected, are in many cases most rudimentary, and it is rare indeed that their subject matter can be so assimilated, as to constitute useful knowledge, unless the student compare and collate their statements with those of other writers, or with the views held by those who have paid special attention to the subject treated of. It is the mental activity which a course of given study induces in the student, far more than the mere mastery of the subject matter, that constitutes what is valuable in education. Much error of conception, much crudity of reasoning, are engendered at the outset of every course of study, and it is the process by which this is eliminated and corrected, that trains the mind and fortifies it against credulity, prejudice, and overhasty conclusion. Any one acquainted with the native intellect will scarcely fail to have observed how strong is its tendency to rely on and appeal to authority. It never attempts, proprio motu, to seek for fundamental principles or concrete facts by which to test the dictum of any acknowledged authority ; rarely even does it allow its own experience to correct or question a venerated dogma: at the utmost it pits one authority against another and remains blankly without preference, or accepts that which comes recommended as the weightier by the common consent of public opinion. It is here that professorial teaching, if philosophical and undogmatic, is of most value : not merely to explain and comment upon the matter of the study, but to urge the student to think for himself ; and to inoculate him with that habit of independent research and self-questioning which is the best corrective of hastiness and dogmatism.

In entering our protest against the text-book system, that is, against the practice of indicating one or a portion of one selected work as that which a candidate for the University degree must commit to memory and on a knowledge of the matter of which he will be examined, we by no means advocate the extreme step of leaving the elections of books of instruction to the students,