33o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



tion is directed toward efficiency in some art. (Here the term art is 

 used in its original and broadest sense, to include any method of action 

 that is recognized and adopted as the means appropriate to achieve some 

 definite, specific purpose.) We may then conclude that an education is 

 liberal in so far as it makes for manhood and personality, technical in 

 so far as it makes for efficiency in some art. And we proceed to con- 

 sider why it is that at the present time we find the liberal opposed to 

 and contrasted with the technical trend of education. 



In ancient Athens the aim set before each citizen was, fundamen- 

 tally, to be a good citizen; and in mastering that art he realized also 

 personality and manhood. Here the technical and the liberal in educa- 

 tion seemed in perfect accord. And it was so in the Eome of Cicero 

 and Quintilian, when the education of the orator was looked on as the 

 fullest development of personality. And, in primitive and medieval 

 Christianity, the fullest realization of the soul in that life-long educa- 

 tion which should bring salvation in the knowledge and love of God was 

 the very education which should fit the man also for the one supreme 

 art, the extension of God's kingdom here upon earth. So too the 

 knight, the warrior of the medieval system, could not distinguish the 

 education which should make him a perfect knight, from that which 

 .should make him a perfect man. 



During the renaissance there appeared and flourished a type of 

 education which had in view the cultured gentleman, rather than the 

 perfection of any art to which he might or might not apply his powers. 

 13ut even here the liberal was not contrasted with the technical, though 

 in later times there developed from this renaissance ideal the still per- 

 sistent concept of a " gentleman " who might best attain culture when 

 aloof from the general life of toil. But what is most noteworthy in the 

 renaissance, whether we consider its birth in the free Italian cities, its 

 culmination in Luther and Bacon, or its close in Milton, is not un- 

 worthily summed up in the ideal of education which Milton himself 

 thus expressed : " I call therefore a complete and generous education 

 that which fits a man to perform, justly, skillfully and magnanimously, 

 all the offices both private and public of peace and war." Still then it 

 was thought that a man might attain efficiency in every art and therein 

 find his perfect freedom and full realization. 



The sense of opposition between the liberal and the technical in 

 education is not to be found in Huxley or in Spencer, who best express 

 to us the scientific in contrast with the humanistic vision of liberal 

 education. Indeed, both these men were criticized, even in their own 

 day, for failure to see that to be " in harmony with nature " or to strive 

 after a comprehensive knowledge of the various fields of science is not 

 the best preparation for most occupations, and is indeed hardly possible 

 in view of the necessity for the thorough acquaintance with some limited 

 field of science and knowledge which modern conditions seem to demand. 



