Page:Thirty years' progress in female education.djvu/16

12 option;— to give fairly equal encouragement to a considerable number of studies, and to allow a limited choice to be made amongst them. But this is partly a confession of being baffled; and there is at the same time a conviction by no means declining in strength, that certain subjects ought to have precedence as elements of universal education, amongst which the old classics and mathematics ought to be well represented. The excellence of Latin and Greek, and of arithmetic and geometry and algebra, as instruments of culture and discipline, was probably never more intelligently recognised than now.

As to the system of Examinations, of which prizes form a natural part, there are few who would profess to regard it with unmixed satisfaction. But its immense development, keeping pace with the most earnest desire of improvement, is enough of itself to show that it meets some needs which are deeply and universally felt. Every one who has sought to spread education over some new surface, or to direct it into some new channel, has almost without exception had recourse to competitive examination as a practical means of attaining his end. It has been found to be a necessary instrument; and there is a danger lest the machinery of education should thrust out the better parts of education itself. Who indeed can open his mind to the old and high conceptions of knowledge as precious and to be desired for its own sake, and not experience a recoil from the perpetual advertising of costly prizes and the unresting succession and conflict of examinations which our new system involves? There is no wonder if the world is somewhat weary of it. It is well that it should be. Examinations and prizes are not of a nature to awaken or to satisfy the higher needs of the human soul. If the pursuit of knowledge is really to flourish, the nobler ambition must be kindled, the joy in learning and apprehending, the passionate love of order and unity, must be quickened and fed. Contemplation, what Mr. Matthew Arnold calls the playing of thought about an object, must be encouraged, instead of being hustled and ordered to move on. The sense of fellowship must be upheld against the competitive instinct with which one struggles to get before another. We need, in short, to keep up a perpetual protest and resistance against some of the influences of a system of Examinations.