Such a free confederation of independent men, in which teachers as well as taught were brought together by no other interest than that of love of science; some by the desire of discovering the treasure of mental culture which antiquity had bequeathed, others endeavouring to kindle in a new generation the ideal enthusiasm which had animated their lives. Such was the origin of Universities, based, in the conception, and in the plan of their organisation, upon the most perfect freedom. But we must not think here of freedom of teaching in the modern sense. The majority was usually very intolerant of divergent opinions. Not unfrequently the adherents of the minority were compelled to quit the University in a body. This was not restricted to those cases in which the Church intermeddled, and where political or metaphysical propositions were in question. Even the medical faculties--that of Paris, the most celebrated of all at the head--allowed no divergence from that which they regarded as the teaching of Hippocrates. Anyone who used the medicines of the Arabians or who believed in the circulation of the blood was expelled. The change, in the Universities, to their present constitution, was caused mainly by the fact that the State granted to them material help, but required, on the other hand, the right of co-operating in their management. The course of this development was different in different European countries, partly owing to divergent political conditions and partly to that of national character. Until lately, it might have been said that the least change has taken place in the old English Universities, Oxford and Cambridge. Their great endowments, the political feeling of the English for the retention of existing rights, had excluded almost all change, even in directions in which such change was urgently required. Until of late both Universities had in great measure retained their character as schools for the clergy, formerly of the Roman and now of the Anglican Church, whose instruction laymen might also share in so far as it could serve the general education of the mind; they were subjected to such a control and mode of life, as was formerly considered to be good for young priests. They lived, as they still live, in colleges, under the superintendence of a number of older graduate members (Fellows) of the College; in other respects in the style and habits of the well-to-do classes in England. The range and the method of the instruction is a more highly developed gymnasial instruction; though in its limitation to what is afterwards required in the examination, and in the minute study of the contents of prescribed text-books, it is more like the Repetitoria which are here and there held in our Universities. The acquirements of the students are controlled by searching examinations for academical degrees, in which very special knowledge is required, though only for limited regions. By such examinations the academical degrees are acquired.