SIX MAJOR PROPHETS
tion; I infer for the same reason that jockeys are fed on gin.
It is curious to see how widely educators differ as to the fundamental principles of their business. The British system is built upon competitions, prizes, and examinations. The American state universities in the days of their pristine purity—I mean by that of course, when I was a student—regarded competition as vicious, prizes as demoralizing, and examinations as an evil to be eliminated if possible. But it ill becomes a pragmatist to condemn a system that works so well as the British, whatever theoretical objections may occur.
Much as Schiller detested making verses in a dead language, he did it so well that he got a Major Exhibition. This gave him three hundred and fifty dollars for five years as well as four hundred and fifty dollars in Exhibitions from Rugby. But it also meant that he had sold himself to run in harness for another four years at Balliol and was obliged to master a philosophy which he already felt to be a fraud. T. H. Green had died just before Schiller came up and had been sainted for the greater glory of Balliol, and it seemed to the tutors good pedagogy to set their pupils to begin the study of philosophy with Green's "Prolegomena to Ethics." Most of the
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