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⁴ These phrases are Clifford Geertz’s, from his book The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (London, 1975), 311. He writes further: “Between the stream of events that make up political life and the web of belief that comprises a culture it is difficult to find a middle term. On the one hand, everything looks like a clutter of schemes and surprises; on the other, like a vast geometry of settled judgments” (311). This essay seeks to find the middle term of which Geertz wrote.

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¹⁹ Rosebery and Reid, quoted in Why I Am a Liberal: Definitions and Personal Confessions of Faith by the Best Minds of the Liberal Party, comp. and ed. Andrew Reid (London, [1890]), 14, 114.

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²⁸ Keynes was describing the conference of nineteen countries at Lausanne, which considered the future of war debts and reparations, in his Finlay Lecture at University College, Dublin, 19 April 1933; see “National Self-Sufficiency,” in The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, vol. 21, Activities, 1921–1939: World Crises and Politics in Britain and America, ed. Donald Moggridge (London, 1982), 203–88, quotes at 244–45.

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³² [John Mitchell Kemble], “British and Foreign Universities: Cambridge,” British and Foreign Review 5 (July 1837): 168–209, quotes at 206–7, 209.

³³ Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900): educated at Rugby and at Trinity College, Cambridge (thirty-third wrangler and senior classic); fellow of Trinity (1859–69); Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy (1883–1900).

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³⁹ Francis Macdonald Cornford (1874–1943): educated at St. Paul's and at Trinity College, Cambridge (BA, 1897; first class in parts 1 and 2 of the classical tripos; MA, 1900); fellow of Trinity (1899); lecturer in classics (1904); Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy, Cambridge (1931–39); FBA (1937); perhaps best remembered as a shrewd and ironic analyst of academic politics.

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⁵³ (Sir) George Otto Trevelyan, baronet (1838–1928): educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge (BA, 1861; second classic); MP; cabinet minister; FBA (1904); OM (Order of Merit, 1911).

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⁶⁰ Lytton Strachey to John Maynard Keynes, 11 March 1906, King's College, Cambridge, Keynes Papers.

⁶¹ Lytton Strachey to John Maynard Keynes, 11 October 1907, New York Public Library, Berg Collection.

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