--must be regarded as definite
and conscious protests against the dividing and isolating--the
anti-civic--forces of the periods of their institution. They represent
historically the development of communities for common interest and
protection in the great and holy cause of the pursuit of learning, and
above all things their story is the story of the growth of European
unity and citizenship.
The feudal and ecclesiastical order of the old mediaeval world were
both alike threatened by the power that had so strangely sprung up
in the midst of them. Feudalism rested on local isolation, on the
severance of kingdom from kingdom and barony from barony, on the
distinction of blood and race, on the supremacy of material or
brute force, on an allegiance determined by accidents of place and
social position. The University, on the other hand, was a protest
against this isolation of man from man. The smallest school was
European and not local[3].
The spirit which is characteristic of a university in its best
aspects, linked with the spirit which is inherent in the ranks of
working people, has on more occasions than one set on foot movements
for the education of the people. One of the most notable instances of
this unity found expression at the Oxford Co-operative Congress of
1882, when Arnold Toynbee urged co-operators to undertake the
education of the citizen.
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