Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/75

Rh ashamed to think how very little real knowledge underlay the torrent of stuff which I was able to pour out on paper. In fact, that which examination, as ordinarily conducted, tests, is simply a man's power of work under stimulus, and his capacity for rapidly and clearly producing that which, for the time, he has got into his mind. Now, these faculties are by no means to be despised. They are of great value in practical life, and are the making of many an advocate, and of many a so-called statesman. But, in the pursuit of truth, scientific or other, they count for very little, unless they are supplemented by that long-continued, patient "intending of the mind" as Newton phrased it, which makes very little show in examinations. I imagine that an examiner, who knows his students personally, must not unfrequently have found himself in the position of finding A's paper better than B's, though his own judgment tells him, quite clearly, that B is the man who has the larger share of genuine capacity.

Again, there is a fallacy about examiners. It is commonly supposed that any one who knows a subject is competent to teach it; and no one seems to doubt that any one who knows a subject is competent to examine in it. I believe both these opinions to be serious mistakes; the latter, perhaps, the more serious of the two. In the first place, I do not believe that any one who is not, or has not been a teacher, is really qualified to examine advanced students. And, in the second place, examination is an art, and a difficult one, which has to be learned like all other arts.

Beginners always set too difficult questions—partly because they are afraid of being suspected of ignorance if they set easy ones, and partly from not understanding their business. Suppose that you want to test the relative physical strength of a score of young men. You do not put a hundred-weight down before them, and tell each to swing it round. If you do, half of them won't be able to lift it at all, and only one or two will be able to perform the task. You must give them half a hundred-weight, and see how they manœuvre that, if you want to form any estimate of the muscular strength efof [sic] each. So, a practised examiner will seek for information respecting the mental vigor and training of candidates from the way in which they deal with questions easy enough to let reason, memory, and method, have free play.

No doubt, a great deal is to done by the careful selection of examiners, and by the copious introduction of practical work, to remove the evils inseparable from examination; but, under the best of circumstances, I believe that examination will remain but an imperfect test of knowledge, and a still more imperfect test of capacity, while it tells next to nothing about a man's power as an investigator.

There is much to be said in favor of restricting the highest degrees, in each faculty, to those who have shown evidence of such original power, by prosecuting a research under the eye of the professor in whose province it lies; or, at any rate, under conditions which shall