654 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Who then holds the key ? The one obstacle to the influx of the 

 right sort of men for these courses is the reluctance of the colleges 

 to take any student into residence who is not working at courses 

 which " count," as the B.A. degree, with its Final Schools and 

 Class Lists, " counts," in the inter-collegiate scramble. Accom- 

 modation for students in Oxford is after all not unlimited ; the 

 colleges and their third- and fourth-year men who " live out " 

 take up nearly all that is available and of the unattached 

 students a large majority are also reading for the B.A. If the 

 colleges persist in giving the present preference to men who 

 wish to take the B.A. course and consequently must pass 

 Responsions, they are stultifying the action of the university 

 when it established Research Degrees and Diploma courses 

 alongside of it. Have they forgotten that even the oldest 

 existing B.A. courses are an innovation barely a century old 

 and that all except the Classical and the Mathematical Schools 

 were created within living memory ? Still more, have they 

 forgotten that New College was ancient already when the first 

 Oxford " Grecians " were harried for knowing Greek at all by the 

 students of Tudor times ; that Corpus, a Renaissance college 

 itself, had for a while no " Grecian " on its staff but farmed out 

 exceptional students to be taught Greek outside, as it would 

 farm out Sanskrit now ; and that a President of Corpus could 

 be urged by his friend Linacre to learn just a little Greek for 

 himself, with the assurance that it was really quite easy and the 

 literature not dull ? If the colleges have forgotten these things, 

 it is time they were reminded that we live in a new Renaissance. 

 If they remember but will not act, I fear we must class them 

 after all with the undergraduate friend of the Master of Uni- 

 versity. " I approve," he said, " of compulsory Greek because 

 it brings the right sort of man to Oxford." 1 There is a large 

 body of opinion outside the university which regards the 

 maintenance of compulsory Greek as a social bar. Is it possible 

 that, for all their protestations, Oxford colleges are influenced 

 by the fear that candidates for Diplomas and Research Degrees 

 are not " the right sort of man " ? 



Is it however really the business of universities — even of 

 residential universities — so to use their " power of the keys " 

 as to " bang, bolt and bar the door " against aspirants to learning ? 

 Ant disce ant discede is as fair an offer for universities to make 



1 Times, January 20, 191 1. 



