Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
I Have often wished that someone would write a History of Oxford Honour Schools. But I want that work written for reasons which the title does not immediately suggest.
page 296 Note 1 It might be thought that the free, dialectical, character of philosophical studies was likely to vanish with the substitution of written for oral examination, but all the evidence goes to show that oral discussion and examination had been a pretty cut-and-dried affair. Rather the paradox is that the introduction of Plato into the curriculum gave the spirit of freedom, whereas the old oral examination had preserved only the letter.