the _agregation_. The examination, it is true,
is on a subject chosen by the candidate himself; so much it is only fair
to admit. The subject chosen, however, must be submitted to the
professors. Their advice and indeed assistance must be invited. The
result, if not the object, of this examination is to prevent the
candidate, during this perilous year of liberty, from developing
original ideas of his own and acting on them.

_One examination every year for ten years_--that is the ideal of the
modern professor for the future professors who are in course of being
trained. Between the second part of the bachelor's degree and the
licentiate, as there is there an interval of two years, they will
presently perceive that there ought to be an examination at the end of
the first year, and we shall have certificates of study in
intermediate, secondary, higher subjects. Between the _agregation_ and
the _doctorat_, there are four years, and naturally we shall want three
examinations just to see how the future professor is getting on with his
theses, to encumber him with assistance and to prevent him doing them
alone; first examination called the _Bibliography of the Theses for the
Doctorat_, second examination called the _Methodology of the Doctorat_,
third examination called the _Preparation for the Sustaining of the
Thesis_, and then the examination for the doctor's degree itself.

In this way the desired object is attained. Between the ages of
seventeen and twenty-seven or thirty the examinee will have had to
undergo sixteen examinations. He will never have worked alone. He will
always have worked, for periods of twelve months, on a syllabus, for an
examination, with a view of pleasing such and such professors, modelling
himself on their views, their conceptions, their general ideas, their
eccentricities, aided by them, influenced by them, never knowing, and
feeling he ought not to know, not wishing to know, and running a great
risk if he did know, and forming habits for his whole life so that he
may never know what he thinks himself, what he imagines himself, what he
seeks and would like to seek of his own motion, or what he ought himself
to try to be. He will take up all this after he is thirty.

Not a vestige of personality or original thought till the moment when it
is too late for it to appear, that is the maxim!

Whence comes this frenzy, this _examino mania_? When one comes to think
of it, it seems to be a simple case