wallet and exhibit for knowledge, than for _being_ something,
and that something recognisable for a man of unmistakable
intellectual breeding, whose trained judgment we can trust to
choose the better and reject the worse.'

The reasons which have led our older Universities to deflect
their functions (whether for good or ill) so far from their first
purpose are complicated if not many. Once admit young men in
large numbers, and youth (I call any Dean or Tutor to witness)
must be compromised with; will construe the laws of its seniors
in its own way, now and then breaking them; and will inevitably
end, by getting something of its own way.. The growth of
gymnastic, the insensible gravitation of the elderly towards
Fenner's--there to snatch a fearful joy and explain that the walk
was good for them; the Union and other debating societies;
College rivalries; the festivities of May Week; the invasion of
women students: all these may have helped. But I must dwell
discreetly on one compelling and obvious cause--the increased and
increasing unwieldiness of Knowledge. And that is the main
trouble, as I guess.

VII

Let us look it fair in the face: because it is the main practical
difficulty with which I propose that, in succeeding lectures, we
grapple. Against Knowledge I have, as the light cynic observed of
a certain lady's past, only one serious objection--that there is
so much of it. There is indeed so much of it that if with the
best will in the world you devoted yourself to it as a mere
scholar, you could not possibly digest its accumulated and still