Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, October 18th 1887 (IA b30475958).pdf/19

 It is singular how much of this is still valuable, though written at a time when printed books were scarce, oral lectures the chief mode of teaching, and primers, text-books, compendia, with ail the artillery of cram, unknown. Indeed, a direct answer is given to the paradox which has of late obtained some vogue, and which has been fostered by examining machines miscalled universities, that lectures are useless, and that it is only necessary to ascertain that a student knows certain prescribed facts without asking how and where he learned them. Those of us who are teachers and examiners, and I am aware I am speaking before the most learned body of teachers and examiners in this kingdom, know the fallacy; it is a fallacy, moreover, chiefly in the higher branches of thought, where absolute certainty is unobtainable, and where tact, experience, and the exercise of a judicial function of the mind are necessary. It is a fallacy still more where acutely cultivated sense—the memory of the eye, of the ear, and of the touch—have to be added to these characters.

As an examiner myself to this College of over