ly I can deal with them. In the first
place, there is the important question of the limitations which should
be fixed to the entrance into the university; or, what qualifications
should be required of those who propose to take advantage of the higher
training offered by the university. On the one hand, it is obviously
desirable that the time and opportunities of the university should not
be wasted in conferring such elementary instruction as can be obtained
elsewhere; while, on the other hand, it is no less desirable that the
higher instruction of the university should be made accessible to every
one who can take advantage of it, although he may not have been able to
go through any very extended course of education. My own feeling is
distinctly against any absolute and defined preliminary examination, the
passing of which shall be an essential condition of admission to the
university. I would admit to the university any one who could be
reasonably expected to profit by the instruction offered to him; and I
should be inclined, on the whole, to test the fitness of the student,
not by examination before he enters the university, but at the end of
his first term of study. If, on examination in the branches of knowledge
to which he has devoted himself, he show himself deficient in industry
or in capacity, it will be best for the university and best for himself,
to prevent him from pursuing a vocation for which he is obviously unfit.
And I hardly know of any other method than this by which his fitness or
unfitness can be safely ascertained, though no doubt a good deal may be
done, not by formal cut and dried examination, but by judicious
questioning, at the outset of his career.

Another very important and difficult practical question is, whether a
definite course of study shall be laid down for those who enter the
university; whether a curriculum shall be prescribed; or whether the
student shall be allowed to range at will among the subjects which are
open to him. And this question is inseparably connected with another,
namely, the conferring of degrees. It is obviously impossible that any
student should pass through the whole of the series of courses of
instruction offered by a university. If a degree is to be conferred as a
mark of proficiency in knowledge, it must be given on the ground that
the candidate is proficient in a certain fraction of those studies; and
then will arise the necessity of insuring an equivalency of d