William Ewart Gladstone

“ So far, then, it would appear that the energies of Oxford have more largely taken effect than those of Cambridge in the world of action, as it is distinguished from the world of thought.
But we have been dealing with the ecclesiastical sphere alone. I incline to believe that in the province of lay life, once narrower but now wider by much, and ever widening more and more, we might arrive at the same comparative result. But the process of inquiry is far more arduous; and the relation between the lay life of the country and the Universities is far more difficult to trace. ”

“ I note then, in the first place, as marking the normal relation, in a Christian land, between the University and the Church, this distinctness of colour, this competition, and this yet more prevailing cooperation.
The particular terms of the relation could not, indeed, permanently continue without change. The seas had been little traversed, the surface of the earth but partially explored: the field of human experience had to be immeasurably widened and diversified, the relation between man and man to be fundamentally altered in respect of knowledge, of subjection, and of intercourse. ”

“ But Cambridge did not attain the fulness of her stature until a much later date.
It is Paris which among the Mediaeval Universities, say, from the twelfth until the fourteenth century, towers above all the rest as the mart of teaching and of learning, but especially of theological learning. She drew men, as other great markets draw, along the converging lines gradually formed by mental as well as by material traffic. Paris had that potior principalitas, which, in the earliest Christian ages, so largely brought about a confluence of ecclesiastical causes towards Rome. ”

“ Not only the great central Church power as against local forces, but sovereign and subject, seculars and regulars, schools of philosophy, careers of education, the municipal and the academic forces, continually rocked the cradles of these great institutions; and the fact of so much growth amidst so much contention shows with how vigorous a life the body politic was endowed. But the one great standing competition was that of the ecclesiastical element with the lay. ”

“ Wealth, too, with all its subtle influences, was to be increased, and probably has yet to be increased beyond all older conception and belief. Though divine knowledge might also in various ways advance and be enlarged, it was hardly possible that progress in this region could present any analogous magnitude of scale, or of results. On the whole, it could not but be that the world-power should gain largely in force upon the Church-power: and of the world-power, in its least grovelling and most upward aspects, the University was the proper representative upon the field of human culture. ”

“ It is that, until the close of the last century, Oxford had made hardly an appreciable contribution, so far as I am aware, to the noble catalogue of English Poets. During the nineteenth century, which is almost entirely excluded from the scope of this address, she has shown no such deficiency. She can claim, from Shelley onwards, many real poets, and some who have a title to greatness. This very fact gives point to the question why or how it is that there should have been for many generations almost a void in this department of her academic history. ”

“ Archbishop Peckham, an experienced mathematician, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham [20] , the celebrated nominalist, and lastly, the greatest probably of them all, Roger Bacon, perhaps the most striking British intellect of the middle ages; who spent many of his years in prison, and of whom some skilled students in philosophy and history have not shrunk, in our own time, from declaring that in originality and power he must be held to excel his illustrious namesake, the famous Francis, Lord Bacon [21] . ”

“ I appeal to those great and comprehensive words of Saint Paul, which may have been a prophecy not less than a precept, and which enjoin us [4] to lay hold on 'whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report.' It is here conveyed to us that in the Christian religion there lay, from the very first, the certain seed of all human culture. ”

“ Locke was favoured by the tide which runs in the affairs of men. However utilitarian may be the tendency imputed to the Baconian philosophy, the writings of Locke bore more sensibly than those of Bacon upon palpable interests, and current questions; and they were more eminently in accordance with the ruling, or rising, tendencies of his time. So his thoughts wrought upon the thought of man at large with an energy enhanced by the leverage thus given them. ”

“ Again, there are men who have played conspicuous and weighty parts, such as Cranmer: a prelate of vigorous and comprehensive talents, but one who, in a great post and period (and always excepting the last, and more than heroic scene) , seems in action mainly to represent minds other than his own. Again, there was Simeon, who was contented, through his long life, with the fallentis semita vitæ in a Fellowship at King's, yet who deserves a place, and a very honourable place, in the history of both Church and University. ”

“ I shall not, however, attempt to enter, even in the most general way, on the history or condition of Oxford or Cambridge during the nineteenth century. The enormous efforts which they have made for self-renovation and extension prove that, after so many ages, they still are young; and afford the brightest promise for their future. ”

“ We cannot indeed trace so well, as in the case of Paris, her preparation for full academic life by a long experience of teaching institutes less fully organised, and combined by no common link. Some presumption to this effect seems to arise from the rapidity with which the University, when formed, came to tread in the footmarks of her elder, yet scarcely elder, sister. Under King Stephen, and before the twelfth century had well run half its course, the connection of Oxford with the names of Vacarius and Pullus [14] appears to show that the place was then a more or less active seat of learning. ”

“ Ascham says that among the prevailing evils there was none more grave than the large admission of the sons of rich men, indifferent to solid and far-reaching study [29] : while Bucer recorded his opinion that the indolent fellows [30] who were growing old on the different collegiate foundations, were an incubus on the University. Such academic activity as still remained was in Cambridge rather than in Oxford, as is shown by the names of Ascham, Cheke, Thomas Smith, and the illustrious Cecil, who was for a short time a Lecturer in Greek. ”

“ The University, at its inception, was at least in its secondary aspect a guarantee against the unchecked predominance of the ecclesiastical order. The spiritual and the temporal or secular elements, so to call them, dwelt side by side through a long course of generations, in standing competition, even in occasional strife, but in strife which never even threatened to become estrangement. ”

“ Bologna [11] , however, earned its early fame only as the grand school of law: in which capacity it attracted students largely from beyond the Alps; while in the course of time other studies were gradually grouped around it without at first forming part of the University.
One, and only one, other University commenced its career in the twelfth century. It was then that Oxford became definitely entitled to the name, with an equipment in all the faculties. ”

“ The chief dangers before them are probably two: one that in research, considered as apart from their teaching office, they should relax and consequently dwindle; the other that, under pressure from without, they should lean, if ever so little, to that theory of education, which would have it to construct machines of so many horse-power, rather than to form character, and to rear into true excellence the marvellous creature we call man ”

“ Further, we learn that the power exercised by Locke, and familiarly known to have been extensive in France, went far beyond that of any other British writer, and indeed reached such a height in Germany also, and in America, as well as in England, that it can only be compared with the dominion of Aristotle over the Middle Age, or that of Kant over the German writers of the present century [35] . ”

“ The art of criticism, arbitrary and rash, yet indispensable and invaluable, had to emerge as almost a new creation of the human mind. The very foundations for the investigation of Nature, in her vast and varied realms, were yet to be laid, or laid anew. ”

“ Youthful and active companions have come into the field, to extend the range of culture, and to insure its adaptation to modern wants: perhaps also to forbid relapses into lethargy, and to provide a fresh access of material for the finishing hand to work on. To secure their position, as well as to attain their proper ends, the nation will ask from her ancient and still paramount Universities a constant increase of energetic exertion. Doubtless they may learn one from the other ”

“ And in the really important treatise of Zart, to which reference has already been made, we have a list of no fewer than forty-eight British writers, in connection with the influence they had exercised on German philosophy in its plastic stage: but among those forty-eight the name of Butler is not found. And yet where is the writer who has entered so profoundly, and with such measured strength, into the constitutive or governing laws applicable to moral conduct, that is to say for the whole rational life of man ”

“ The change in this place almost recalls what was said of Augustus, that he found Rome brick, and left it marble; or, if the inverted form be preferred, Laud found Oxford marble, and left it brick: for it is the amount of the transformation, and not its quality, that I seek to indicate. This change was not wrought by a man having as yet the Star Chamber and High Commission at his back, but seemingly by his force of character and will. He went out into the world. He obtained hold of the helm. He gave to the Anglican polity and worship what was in the main the impress of his own mind. ”

“ We may take, as specimens of the laity, Cromwell and Somerset; strong men, but men to whose strength little was contributed by religion. Within the ecclesiastical circles, the proof of this relative weakness is supplied by the single fact that to reform our service-books, and to instruct our candidates for holy orders, we were driven to invoke the aid of foreigners. Bucer, wisest of them all, filled the Divinity Chair at Cambridge, and when he died Musculus, another foreigner, was recommended for it; Peter Martyr was Regius Professor in Oxford ”

“ It can, then, hardly fail to offer the richest reward, as well as to advance the most commanding claim, to the service and devotion not of stunted or of crippled intellects, but of the very flower of our youth. ”

“ It was surely in accordance with all the laws of our nature that the new life, thus planted in its highest region by the Christian Faith, should in due time awaken its other agents from their lethargy. ”

“ Huber, to whom we owe gratitude for the first attempt at a living reproduction of our academic life, and whose research gravitated, throughout his work, by preference towards Oxford, puts the Universities of the last century upon their trial, and finds for them a sort of acquittal. ”

“ In general terms, and subject to partial qualification only, it may be affirmed that, amidst and around the vigorous Christian upgrowth, except in the region of military art, what we now denominate the lay mind seemed to sleep the sleep of death. ”

“ The first of these is Wiclif, whose singular destiny it was to produce in Bohemia results far wider, and far more potent, than in his own sphere and country. The second is a name which may still touch living memories. It is Newman: who principally, and in half a lifetime, set a mark upon the mind and inner spirit of the English Church, which it is likely to carry through many generations.
Of these seven men, Becket is antecedent to University History, and was educated at Merton on the Wandle, with which, however, the earliest of Oxford colleges had a traditional connection. ”

“ It is to Italy, richer as she was than any other country in the remains of the ancient civilisation, that we must accord the honour of having owned the earliest establishments to which the name of University has been accorded [10] . ”

“ Yet it may be contended that Cambridge cannot for this period produce a list of academic figures equal to those by which Oxford was honoured even in the midst of prevailing decay. The weighty names of Blackstone and of Sydenham show that some shadow at least of the oldest Faculties still rested on her. But to these we join Wesley and Johnson, Gibbon and Adam Smith, Berkeley [43] and Butler. Five of these six great men, it may probably be said with truth, have received, and are receiving still, their due. ”

“ This example was to be found in the ordered fabric of the Christian Church; which, amidst surrounding decay, the living among the dead, steadily developed its organisation, and constructed its theology. Not that the action of its machinery, in its detail, was always prompt, regular, and certain. Efficiency such as that, in the moral sphere, is not given to man. ”

“ Bologna follows in the twelfth century, and is joined with Paris by Denifle, partly on the ground of a priority enjoyed by both, Bologna perhaps having slightly the advantage, and partly because these exhibited the two forms of foundation which had most to do with supplying patterns for later establishments. ”