, and stroke by stroke,
and the conventional teaching of History and Geography, in which the
pupil finds salvation in saying what he is told to say, name by name,
and date by date. The relation between the two great branches of
education, the education of Man by God, and the education of the
child by the man, is one, not of analogy merely, but also of cause
and effect. It is because the Jew thought to "save his soul alive" by
obeying, blindly and unintelligently, a multitude of vexatious rules,
that the teacher of to-day thinks to educate his pupils in Drawing by
telling them in the fullest detail (either in his own person or by
means of a diagram) what lines and strokes they are to make. And it
is because the Christian has thought to "save his soul alive" by
reciting with parrot-like accuracy the formulae of his creeds and
catechisms, that the teacher of to-day thinks to educate his pupils
in History and Geography by making them repeat from memory a series
of definitions, dates, events, names of persons, names of places,
articles of commerce, and the like. I do not say that the modern
teacher consciously imitates his models; but I say that he and they
have been inspired by the same conception of life, and that the
influence of that conception has been, in part at least, transmitted
by them to him.

* * * * *

That education in the West should ultimately be controlled by a
system of formal examination, may be said to have been predestined by
the general trend of religious thought and belief. Wherever literal
obedience is regarded as the first, if not the last, condition of
salvation, the tendency to measure worth and progress by the outward
results that are produced will inevitably spring up and assert
itself. In this tendency we have the whole examination system in
embryo. When Israel, with characteristic thoroughness, had embodied
in Pharisaism the logical inferences from his religious conceptions,
a merciless examination system came into being, in which every
one was at once examiner and examinee, and in which the whole of
human life was dragged out (as far as that was possible) into the
fierce light of public criticism, and placed under vigilant and
unintermittent supervision. When Pharisaism was revived, with many
modifications but with no essential change of character, under the
name of Puritanism, the tendency to arraign human life at the bar of
public opinion reasserted itself,