of _Dandino-mania_. Dandin says with
great determination "I mean to go and judge." The professor of a certain
age means to go and examine. He no longer loves to profess, he loves to
be always examining. This is very natural. Professing, he is judged;
examining, he judges. The one is always much pleasanter than the other.
For a professor, to sweat in harness, to feel oneself being examined,
that is, criticised, discussed, held up to judgment, and chaffed by an
audience of students and amateurs, ceases at a certain age to be
altogether pleasant; on the other hand to examine, to sit on the throne
with all the majesty of a judge, to have only to criticise and not to
produce, to intervene only when the victim stumbles, and to let him
know that he has made a slip, to hold the student for the whole year
under the salutary terror of an approaching examination, to remind him
that he may need help and must by no means displease his professor--all
this is very agreeable and makes up for many of the worries of the
teaching profession. The examination mania proceeds partly from the
terror of being oneself examined, and partly from the pleasure of
examining others.

All this is true, but there is more than this. The precocious
development of early talent and originality is the thing which strangely
terrifies these examination-maniacs. They have a horror of the man who
teaches himself. They have a horror of any one who ventures to think for
himself and to enquire for himself at twenty-five years of age. They
want, like an old hen, to mother the young mind as long as possible.
They will not let it find its own feet, till very late, and till, as the
scoffer might well say, its limbs are absolutely atrophied. I do not say
that they are wrong. The man who has taught himself is apt to be a vain,
conceited fellow who takes pleasure in thinking for himself, and has
an absolute delight in despising the thoughts of others. It is, however,
no less the fact, that it is among these self-taught men that we find
those vigorous spirits who venture boldly beyond the domain of human
science and extend its frontier. The question then is which is best, to
favour all these troublesome self-taught people in the hope of finding
some good ones among them, or by crossing and worrying them to run the
risk of destroying the good as well as the bad. I am myself strongly in
favour of the first of these alternatives. It is better to let all go
their own way, eve