M. A. R. Tuker

“ Newton and Darwin are two of the greatest names in the history of the physical and physiological sciences—they stand out as creators of epochs in the march of human knowledge: on Newton’s statue in Trinity chapel are inscribed the words qui genus humanum ingenio superavit—of whom else could they be spoken?—Darwin has revolutionised our thoughts in spheres far removed from those directly affected by his great hypothesis. ”

“ She has nurtured all the great scientists, and all the great poets. The discoveries of world-wide importance have been the work of Cambridge men—such were the three which revolutionised the science of the world, the laws of the circulation of the blood, of gravitation, of evolution. From Bacon the founder of experimental philosophy to Darwin and Kelvin, every great name is a Cambridge name, if we except indeed the few who like Wallace, Humphry Davy, Faraday, and the elder Herschell owe nothing to a university. ”

“ Through the centuries, long before Oxford was a town{10} at all, [14] the sounds we hear are the thud of the Ely barge as it strikes the bank of deserted Grantchester, and Sexberga’s messengers borrow from the neighbourhood of the future university the sepulture for the founder of Ely—the gift of a civilisation still older than hers. [15] Or, three hundred and fifty years later, the chant of the Ely monks is wafted out upon the water as Canute bids his men rest a moment on their oars to listen
Merrily sang the monks of Ely when Canute the king rowed by. ”

“ It need not by any means be competition which urges the university to undertake the ‘modern subjects’; it may be, and it is, the persuasion that its rôle does not end with creating a career, that a university possesses advantages extrinsic to the degree taken, or even the work done at it. The truth perhaps is that the present conditions of life afford an object to universities as far-reaching as has ever been allotted to them since their foundation. ”

“ The Englishman favours reason but is no Hobbist, he must have his God behind the machine; he likes the supremacy of reason with a nebulous Plato behind it—not the real Plato, but a Plato to hurl as a weapon in the face of the materialist, without understanding too much about it. The ‘Cambridge mind’ hit on a middle term, a resting place for speculation and for faith, which suits the Englishman in the long run better than either Laud or Hobbes. In Cudworth we have that mind typified—that union of toleration with half lights which triumphs in England. ”

“ The universitas, the corporation of scholars, must and did precede any college foundation: at the same time we cannot distinguish the development of either of our universities from the rise of these foundations, whose history has, ever since, been the history of the academic society. Each college is independent and autonomous, and though the aggregate of colleges does not constitute the university, each collegiate foundation forms part and parcel of it in virtue of its union with the incorporated society of Chancellor Masters and Scholars which formed at first and still forms “the university.” ”

“ It is expected that a university should set a limit to the assumption that every good and perfect thing is at the beck and call of the mere plutocrat, and should confer its honours and seat in its rectorial chairs only those persons who present academic qualifications. When one sees with what punctilious assiduity every mark and brand of tradesman and tradesmen’s interests receives recognition nowadays, one turns with anxiety to the Cambridge list of honorary degree men. ”

“ School and college have long bestowed this advantage on men, which is reinforced by the support men are accustomed to give to each other; but all this is lacking for the woman who goes forth into the world to fend for herself. University life might however do much to supply the want, and it is to be hoped that women will form a tradition on the point, as men have done. The constitution of the college at least preserves some part of its first Principal’s idea, old students have from the first had a share in the government and a place on the Council. ”

“ When we say that neither the elementary nor the advanced studies of a university exist simply with a view to providing the members of the community with a profession or the means of making their living, we say what is a little less obvious, and trench on ground which is hotly debated. Thousands upon thousands, it may be urged, have always gone to a university to learn a profession, and thousands who have not had this end in view have yet gone up there with no intention of acquiring learning. ”

“ School and university—Stourbridge fair—the university in the xiii century—Foundation of endowed scholars—hostels.
Both our universities doubtless count a school life of eight centuries at least: but a school life, the activity of teachers and scholars, is not the same thing as a university life. We have already said that Oxford owed its history to the constant communication between it and London, to its accessibility from the capital which made it the frequent resort not only of our kings but, what is more to our purpose, of scholars European and English. ”

“ Let us look at the university as it was in the middle of the xiv century, and let it be the year 1353. It is 250 years since Henry I. began to reign; 150 before Erasmus lived here, and 550 before our own time. It is the eve of that great change in the mental and moral venue of humanity which ushered in the modern world. The Oxford friar Occam, and with him scholasticism, had died four years before, Petrarch was mourning Laura, and Chaucer was walking the streets of Cambridge the man who was to be our link with the early Italian renascence and to clasp hands across the century with Erasmus. ”