The primary school and the university are the alpha and omega of
education. Whether institutions intermediate between these (so-called
secondary schools) should exist, appears to me to be a question of
practical convenience. If such schools are established, the important
thing is that they should be true intermediaries between the primary
school and the university, keeping on the wide track of general
culture, and not sacrificing one branch of knowledge for another.

Such appear to me to be the broad outlines of the relations which the
university, regarded as a place of education, ought to bear to the
school, but a number of points of detail require some consideration,
however briefly and imperfectly I can deal with them. In the first
place, there is the important question of the limitations which should
be fixed to the entrance into the university; or, what qualifications
should be required of those who propose to take advantage of the higher
training offered by the university. On the one hand, it is obviously
desirable that the time and opportunities of the university should not
be wasted in conferring such elementary instruction as can be obtained
elsewhere; while, on the other hand, it is no less desirable that the
higher instruction of the university should be made accessible to every
one who can take advantage of it, although he may not have been able to
go through any very extended course of education. My own feeling is
distinctly against any absolute and defined preliminary examination,
the passing of which shall be an essential condition of admission to
the university. I would admit to the university any one who could be
reasonably expected to profit by the instruction offered to him; and I
should be inclined, on the whole, to test the fitness of the student,
not by examination before he enters the university, but at the end of
his first term of study. If, on examination in the branches of