Really ‘Oxford’ means two things—it is the name of a place, and it represents an idea. Bonaparte said of himself that he was ‘not a man but an event’, and yet he was both. The word ‘Napoleon’ represents to us a man and an idea. The difficulty is to differentiate, to say how far the concrete and the abstract may be separated, and how far each is necessary to the proper understanding of the other. The technical purpose for which these chapters are intended suggests that this attempt to outline certain salient features of Oxford custom and practice shall be limited to the concrete, avoiding as far as possible the ideal side, especially where bordering on the lines of controversy.
Oxford. Unique character.
Oxford is unique among Universities. Only Cambridge approximates to it in character and in system. No other English or Continental University is like these two. It is from its manner of life and from its environment that Oxford has acquired and maintained its individuality. The University has a history which by tradition antedates the Conquest; it has grown with England; its rights, its charters, its laws have undergone the vicissitudes of centuries and have developed in the same process of evolution with the charters and laws and Constitution of England. The Colleges have been intimately associated with the great events, constitutional, political, religious, and social, which have made English history; and the University has fought for and won its rights side by side with other English institutions.
National position.
As it exists to-day the University is ‘sovereign’ within its own borders, subject to the National Government only in regard to those greater obligations, such as an individual State in the United States owes to the National Government.
Oxford and Cambridge are not National or State Universities in the sense in which that term is applied to many Continental and American Universities. The English Government makes no appropriation for their support. And yet they are—and they only—in character the great national Universities of England.
The University a federation.
Visitors from abroad come to Oxford, are shown about through College after College, and after many expressions of surprise and delight exclaim, ‘Yes, yes; excellent, excellent, but where is the University?’ They are looking for the ‘main building’, the ‘administration building’, something concrete which they may call the University—and they do not find it.
The University is a federation—an academic United States, made up of twenty-two ‘societies’—the Colleges—each of which has its separate corporate existence.
Revenues.