LIBERAL AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION 381 



For, as the development of the sciences has led to the elaboration 

 and multiplication of the arts, and to consequent specialization in each 

 field of art, even the gifted man finds himself forced to abandon the 

 scientific and humanistic aspirations which have been identified with a 

 liberal education, in order that he may attain some small success in a 

 selected realm of practical art and achievement. "Without for the pres- 

 ent assuming that such specialization does indeed mean dwarfing and 

 distorting of personality, we clearly have to recognize that it introduces 

 a new factor into the situation, which at least tends to turn technical 

 education from liberalizing paths, or seems to do so. 



Another influence seems more obviously and directly to turn tech- 

 nical education from liberal ideals, viz., the fact that most arts now 

 demand for their prosecution great sums of money. For this and for 

 other reasons, no doubt, all arts have come to be looked on as in the 

 first place parts of " business," and are followed and studied chiefly 

 from the business point of view, in which the first consideration is to 

 do that for which people will pay, and to make a profit. " Business " 

 itself may be called an art; perhaps the art of money -making. But, 

 while of other arts it often is true that they require of the efficient artist 

 that he be very much of a man, no one claims, I believe, that the art of 

 money-making " functions " very successfully in the enlargement and 

 ennobling of personality. And, however much we may urge the student 

 and worker in any field of art, other than that of money-making, to find 

 within his work his reward, and to place the excellence of his art above 

 all considerations of gain, we must admit that that view of technical 

 pursuits is taken by but few men, save for " those brief moments when 

 men are at their best." 



Granting then the liberalizing potentiality of any technical educa- 

 tion we may fairly inquire whether, in the presence of these two factors, 

 extreme specialization, and the exaltation of money-making, the liberal 

 tendency in and function of education is not greatly neglected and har- 

 assed. But in such an inquiry I would avoid the view-point of those 

 who stand primarily as defenders of an ancient order of things, of an 

 excellence the vision of which has bestowed upon them, but which is 

 rarely granted to those who attain intellectual maturity under present 

 conditions. The conception of a liberal education, that it stands for 

 freedom, for the spontaneous realization in each individual of what in 

 the fullest and truest sense he is, such a conception summons us to the 

 unbiased study of the individuals born into the world as it now is, in 

 order that we may afresh determine with their aid, for ourselves and 

 for them, what means to adopt in order that the best in each of them 

 may come to light. Yet, in thus adapting the liberal ideal and aspira- 

 tion to present conditions, we of course reject neither the classic nor the 

 scientific springs of culture. 



