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18
Hereditary Genius
appear alphabetically arranged. All I am concerned with here are the
results; and these are most appropriate to my argument. The youths start on
their three years' race as fairly as possible. They are then stimulated to run
by the most powerful inducements, namely, those of competition, of honour,
and of future wealth (for a good fellowship is wealth); and at the end of the
three years they are examined most rigorously according to a system that
they all understand and are equally well prepared for. The examination lasts
five and a half hours a day for eight days. All the answers are carefully
marked by the examiners, who add up the marks at the end and range the
candidates in strict order of merit. The fairness and thoroughness of
Cambridge examinations have never had a breath of suspicion cast upon
them.
Unfortunately for my purposes, the marks are not published. They are not
even assigned on a uniform system, since each examiner is permitted to
employ his own scale of marks; but whatever scale he uses, the results as
to proportional merit are the same. I am indebted to a Cambridge examiner
for a copy of his marks in respect to two examinations, in which the scales
of marks were so alike as to make it easy, by a slight proportional
adjustment, to compare the two together. This was, to a certain degree, a
confidential communication, so that it would be improper for me to publish
anything that would identify the years to which these marks refer. I simply
give them as groups of figures, sufficient to show the enormous differences
of merit. The lowest man in the list of honours gains less than 300 marks;
the lowest wrangler gains about 1,500 marks; and the senior wrangler, in
one of the lists now before me, gained more than 7,500 marks.
Consequently, the lowest wrangler has more than five times the merit of the
lowest junior optime, and less than one-fifth the merit of the senior
wrangler.
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