On Reading for Examinations by Arthur Quiller-Couch

Yet, and when this has been granted, the crucial question abides and I must not shirk it -- "you say that the highest literature deals with What Is rather than with What Knows. It is all very fine to assure us that testing our knowledge about Literature and around Literature, and on this side or that side of Literature, is healthy for us in some oblique way: but can you examiners examine, or can you not, on Literature in what you call its own and proper category of What Is?"

So I hear the question -- the question which beats and has beaten, over and over again, good men trying to construct Schools of English in our universities.