_What Does, What Knows, What Is_--there is no mistaking what Browning means, nor in what degrees of hierarchy he places this, that, and the other.... Does it not strike you how curiously men to-day, with their minds perverted by hate, are inverting that order?--all the highest value set on _What Does--What Knows_ suddenly seen to be of importance, but only as important in feeding the guns, perfecting explosives, collaring trade--all in the service of _What Does,_ of 'Get on or Get Out,' of 'Efficiency'; no one stopping to think that 'Efficiency' is--must be--a relative term! Efficient for what?--for _What Does, What Knows_ or perchance, after all, for _What Is_? No! banish the humanities and throw everybody into practical science: not into that study of natural science, which can never conflict with the 'humanities' since it seeks discovery for the pure sake of truth, or charitably to alleviate man's lot-- Sweetly, rather, to ease, loose and bind As need requires, this frail fallen humankind ... --but to invent what will be commercially serviceable in besting your neighbour, or in gassing him, or in slaughtering him neatly and wholesale. But still the whisper (not ridiculous in its day) will assert itself, that _What Is_ comes first, holding and upheld by God; still through the market clamour for a 'Business Government' will persist the voice of Plato murmuring that, after all, the best form of government is government by good men: and the voice of some small man faintly protesting 'But I don't want to be governed by business men; because I know them and, without asking much of life, I have a hankering to die with a shirt on my back.' VI But let us postpone _What Is_ for a moment, and deal with _What Does_ and _What Knows._ They too, of course, have had their oppositions, and the very meaning of a University such as Cambridge--its _fons,_ its _origo,_ its [Greek: to ti en einai]-- was to assert _What Knows_ against _What Does_ in a medieval world pranced over by men-at-arms, Normans, English, Burgundians, Scots. Ancillary to Theology, which then had a meaning vastly different from its meaning to-day, the University tended as portress of the gate of knowledge--of such knowledge as the Church required, encouraged, or permitted--and kept the flag of intellectual life, as I may put it, flying above that gate and over the passing throngs of 'doers' and mailed-fisters. The University was a Seat of Learning: the Colleges, as they sprang up, were Houses of Learning.