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On The Art of Reading by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
page 14 of 272 (05%)
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--
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