The name is absent

Middle Ages and Renaissance 229
banquet was held at his expense ; after which they might get
up a torchlight procession, or dance with wenches in the
street. At Oxford and Cambridge “determinations” early
lost their hilarious character, and were conducted in common
by all the B.A. candidates. The young men had to be on hand
every weekday in Lent, in the university church, to dispute
both formally and informally with sophister friends, or with
any bachelor or master of the university who might drop
in to “ride” them a bit. Harvard seniors in the seventeenth
century had to follow the same practice, which gradually de-
veloped into an oral “quiz” by the Overseers of the College,
and into the written final examinations that we all dread.

Originally there were two degrees in every faculty: the
baccalaureate or apprentice degree, and the master’s or
doctorate. “Master” and “doctor” originally meant the
same thing—teacher. But queer things have happened to
degrees in the course of centuries. In the continental univer-
sities, the three years between the B.A. and the M.A. became
the most important in the Arts course, when Philosophy was
studied. In the fifteenth or sixteenth century, the German
universities began to call their Faculties of Arts and Sciences,
the Faculties of Philosophy; and the second degree in that
faculty, Phil.M. or Phil.D. So our coveted Ph.D. is nothing
but a medieval M.A. writ large. At the same time the re-
quirements for the B.A. became progressively so easy that
they might be fulfilled at entrance. Today, the baccalauréat
or “bachot” in France is a degree taken at graduation from
the lycée, which corresponds roughly to the American junior
college. At Oxford and Cambridge, on the contrary, the
tendency was to squeeze most of the Arts and Philosophies
into the B.A. course, and then let the student study any sub-
ject he liked, or none, until the statutory three years were up,
when the M.A. was conferred if he performed a few stated

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