"The assumption of priests' orders was indeed made, in most instances, an indispensable condition for a permanent tenure of a Fellowship, but it too often only served as a pretext under which all obligation to studious research was ignored, while the Fellowship itself again too often enabled the holder to evade with equal success the responsibilities of parish work. Down to a comparatively recent date, it has accordingly been the accepted theory with respect to nearly all College Fellowships that they are designed to assist clergymen to prepare for active pastoral work, and not to aid the cause of learned or scientific research. Occasionally, it is true, the bestowal of a lay fellowship has fallen upon fruitful ground. The Plumian Professorship fostered the bright promise of a Cotes: the Lucasian sustained the splendid achievements of Newton. But for the most part those labours to which Cambridge can point with greatest pride and in whose fame she can rightly claim to share--the untiring scientific investigations which have established on a new and truer basis the classification of organic existence or the succession of extinct forms--or the long patience and profound calculations which have wrested from the abysmal depths of space the secrets of stupendous agencies and undreamed of laws--or the scholarship which has restored, with a skill and a success that have moved the envy of united Germany, some of the most elaborate creations of the Latin muse--have been the achievements of men who have yielded indeed to the traditional theory a formal assent but have treated it with a virtual disregard."[91]