“Just so,” said Mein Herr. “That’s the way it begins. Well, _we_ were at that stage some eighty years ago—or was it ninety? Our favourite teacher got more obscure every year; and every year we admired him more—just as _your_ Art-fanciers call _mist_ the fairest feature in a landscape, and admire a view with frantic delight when they can see nothing! Now I’ll tell you how it ended. It was Moral Philosophy that our idol lectured on. Well, his pupils couldn’t make head or tail of it, but they got it all by heart; and, when Examination-time came, they wrote it down; and the Examiners said ‘Beautiful! What depth!’” “But what good was it to the young men _afterwards_?” “Why, don’t you see?” replied Mein Herr. “_They_ became teachers in their turn, and _they_ said all these things over again; and _their_ pupils wrote it all down; and the Examiners accepted it; and nobody had the ghost of an idea what it all meant!” “And how did it end?” “It ended this way. We woke up one fine day, and found there was no one in the place that knew _anything_ about Moral Philosophy. So we abolished it, teachers, classes, examiners, and all. And if any one wanted to learn anything about it, he had to make it out for himself; and after another twenty years or so there were several men that really knew something about it! Now tell me another thing. How long do you teach a youth before you examine him, in your Universities?” I told him, three or four years. “Just so, just what _we_ did!” he exclaimed. “We taught ’em a bit, and, just as they were beginning to take it in, we took it all out again! We pumped our wells dry before they were a quarter full—we stripped our orchards while the apples were still in blossom—we applied the severe logic of arithmetic to our chickens, while peacefully slumbering in their shells! Doubtless it’s the early bird that picks up the worm—but if the bird gets up so outrageously early that the worm is still deep underground, what _then_ is its chance of a breakfast?” Not much, I admitted. “Now see how that works!” he went on eagerly. “If you want to pump your wells so soon—and I suppose you tell me that is what you _must_ do?” “We must,” I said. “In an over-crowded country like this, nothing but Competitive Examinations——” Mein Herr threw up his hands wildly. “What, _again_?” he cried. “I thought it was dead, fifty years ago! Oh this Upas tree of Competitive Examinations! Beneath whose deadly shade all the original genius, all the exhaustive research, all the untiring life-long diligence by which our fore-fathers have so advanced human knowledge, must slowly but surely wither away, and give place to a system of Cookery, in which the human mind is a sausage, and all we ask is, how much indigestible stuff can be crammed into it!”