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EXAMINATIONS AND PRECOCITY 227
mark very highly anything like original work. Now,
supposing this discernment is not a fault, and that a candidate
aetat twenty-two bas shown an original mind, and
so eomes out top of the list in an examination for some
important profession : to whom and to what has credit
been given ? To the fallacious and ludicrously overestimated
quality of precocity.• Why should we, in the
teeth of most cogent evidence, go on believing that, though
with plants and animals early precocity always means
an arrested development later; with human beings it
never does 'l The worst of it is, that the better the
examination questions are-according to our present
notions-the more they are open to this indictment.
Dates of kings and battles, lists of capes and mountains,
genders of nouns by the dozen, may have been fatuous,
but they did not suggest to the schoolboys that they must
say something that bad never been said before ; and no
one was encouraged to believe that the examiner's verdicts
were invariably to be trusted as a final and
illuminating estimate of a human being. But the modem
system claims to be so trusted, and the modern youth
concedes his trust, especially if his ambition is for the
moment gratified.
We have all known many young first·class men whose
post-academic career bas been one long disillusionment as
to their powers of kicking the world before them. This
need not be and ought not to be. These and other considerations
suggest something like the plan adopted by
Lord Cromer in Egypt in selecting men for Civil Service.
The paper work should go for something, but only when
supplemented by interviews and confidential information
from any trustworthy quarter. Of course all appoint-
• Herein - may perhape IIDd 1111 uplanation of a aiDguJar remark made
by an AI'IDJ' oolouel, a very ellloien• aoldier, about 1896. Someone
hoarded tho .......,.k that the oubaltema who hod been eeloctod for oom·
mioaiona from tho Unlvenitieo were IUperior to theoe Vainod u s...d·
bunt. " They may be 1 but I ohall toke good care not one of t.hem gel>l
Into my regiment." "Why not t" " Why I don't ;you- theoe fellowll
haw idMa ol their ......_ ..