Page:An Academic Sketch.djvu/47

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
44
The Romanes Lecture 1892

more nobly, conveyed than in the motto of Oxford, Dominus illuminatio mea. May the day never come, when that ensign shall be changed, or when there shall be the smallest inkling of a desire to change it to its opposite, and to proclaim Dominus obscuratio mea, Dominus obtenebratio mea. May that root, and atmosphere, and light, which yield the best in leaf and flower and fruit, and which feed humanity up to its highest excellence for the performance of its great office in creation, be more and more, from age to age, the root, and the atmosphere, and the light, which shall sustain the life of Oxford in the generations yet to come!


Athens exhibits the action of schools which were voluntary and brilliant, with some degree of continuity or succession, but isolated, and in philosophy alone. Alexandria has much more of elaborate equipment and definite history, but presents a mechanism not merely aided but devised and ordered by the State, rather than an institution by an independent life dwelling within itself.