n its day)
will assert itself, that _What Is_ comes first, holding and
upheld by God; still through the market clamour for a 'Business
Government' will persist the voice of Plato murmuring that, after
all, the best form of government is government by good men: and
the voice of some small man faintly protesting 'But I don't want
to be governed by business men; because I know them and, without
asking much of life, I have a hankering to die with a shirt on my
back.'

VI

But let us postpone _What Is_ for a moment, and deal with _What
Does_ and _What Knows._ They too, of course, have had their
oppositions, and the very meaning of a University such as
Cambridge--its _fons,_ its _origo,_ its [Greek: to ti en einai]--
was to assert _What Knows_ against _What Does_ in a medieval
world pranced over by men-at-arms, Normans, English, Burgundians,
Scots. Ancillary to Theology, which then had a meaning vastly
different from its meaning to-day, the University tended as
portress of the gate of knowledge--of such knowledge as the
Church required, encouraged, or permitted--and kept the flag of
intellectual life, as I may put it, flying above that gate and
over the passing throngs of 'doers' and mailed-fisters. The
University was a Seat of Learning: the Colleges, as they sprang
up, were Houses of Learning.

But note this, which in their origin and still in the frame of
their constitution differentiates Oxford and Cambridge from all
their ancient sisters and rivals. These two (and no third, I
believe, in Europe) were corporations of Teachers, existing for
Teachers, governed by Teachers. In a Scottish University the
students by vote choose their Rector: but here or at Oxford no
undergraduate, no Bachelor, counts at all in the government, both
remaining alike _in statu pupillari_ until qualified as Masters--
_Magistri._ Mark the word, and mark also the title of one who
obtained what in those days would be the highest of degrees (but
yet gave him no voting strength above a Master). He was a
Professor-'Sanctae Theologiae Professor.' To this day every
country clergyman who comes up to Cambridge to record his
_non-placet,_ does so by virtue of his capacity to teach what he
learned here--in theory, that is. Scholars were included in
College foundations on a sort of pupil-teacher-supply system:
living in rooms with the lordly masters, and valeting them for
the privilege of 'reading with' them. We keep to this day the
pleasant old form of