and gave rise, as in New England
and covenanting Scotland, to an intolerable spiritual tyranny. In
Catholic countries the believer is subjected in the Confessional to a
periodical oral examination, in which he passes in review the outward
aspect of his inward and spiritual life, detailing for the benefit of
his confessor his sins of ceremonial omission or laxity, and such
lapses from moral rectitude as admit of being formulated in words and
accurately valued in terms of expiatory penance. Even in the Anglican
Church, which has too great a regard for the Englishman's traditional
love of personal freedom to be unduly inquisitorial, the clergyman is
apt to measure the spiritual health and progress of his parishioners
by the frequency with which they attend church and "Celebration,"
while the Bishop measures the spiritual health and progress of each
parish by the number of its communicants and the frequency with which
they communicate, statistics under both heads being (I am told)
regularly forwarded to him from all parts of his diocese.

It was inevitable, then, the relation between that sooner or later
the education of the young should come under the control of a
system of formal religion and education being what it was and is,
examination, and that it should be as much easier to apply the system
to education than to religion as it is easier to test knowledge (in
the conventional sense of the word) than conduct. It is to the vulgar
confusion between knowledge and information that we owe the formal
examination, as it is now conducted in most Western countries. In a
society which mistakes the externals for the essentials of life, it
is but natural that the teacher, with the full consent of the parents
of his pupils, should regard the imparting of knowledge as the end
and aim of his professional life, and that the parents should demand
some guarantee that knowledge has been successfully imparted to their
children. If by knowledge were meant a correct attitude of mind, the
teacher would realise that the idea of testing it in any way which
would satisfy the average parent was chimerical; and his clients, if
they continued to ask for a guarantee of successful teaching, would
require something widely different from that which has hitherto
contented them. But when information is regarded as the equivalent of
knowledge, the testing of the teacher's work becomes a simple matter,
for it is quite easy to frame an examination which wi