332 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



It seems to me that evidence of an actual opposition between the 

 liberal and the technical in education is found in three distinct evils 

 which pervade the activities of society; and in each case it seems to me 

 that the remedy for the evil lies only in adhering to and establishing 

 the ideal of liberal education. 



It is regarded as the business of the technically trained man to give 

 people what they want, if they will pay for it. He is not expected to 

 judge, or to be capable of judging, whether what is thus done makes 

 for the development of human nature and personality. A shipbuilder 

 is not expected to judge whether the object for which he builds the 

 ship — war, it may be, or contemptible luxury — is a worthy object; the 

 skilled advertising agent is not blamed if he collects money for the 

 publication of a magazine much worse than useless, but permitted by 

 law; the bridge-designer is not expected to see that his designs are 

 executed under conditions that make for the safety and welfare of the 

 workmen; the automobile manufacturer is not censured for the con- 

 struction of machines ill adapted to run according to law, but excel- 

 lently suited to break the law and to put other people to discomfort 

 and in danger; the newspaper editor is not blamed for the destruction 

 of acres of noble spruce trees sacrificed to the production of a " comic " 

 supplement. 



Even though we ask of the preacher and the teacher, of the physician 

 and the scientist — yes, of the lawyer and the politician — that they have 

 regard to the welfare of men in their several lines of art, and though 

 such technical training as all these men may receive is not without 

 reference to this liberal aspect of the professions they are to follow, yet 

 we have to recognize that none of these professions is free from the 

 general principle that people should get what they are willing to pay 

 for, and not much else. And it must be confessed that in every line 

 •of technical education, with the partial exception of the training for 

 teaching and the ministry, what little insistence there is upon the 

 importance of the liberal conception of life and art, is not accompanied 

 by thorough instruction in determining what ideals of manhood and 

 personality are worthy and well founded. On the study of what things 

 are of real worth much has been written (outside the literature of " rev- 

 •elation") which compares in solidity and scope of treatment with the 

 best that the mathematician and the physicist have achieved in their 

 fields of science. But the study of these teachings is at present largely 

 neglected, and seldom systematic or continuous. 



From the liberal standpoint the highest development of a man's 

 personality involves the sense of a thoroughgoing responsibility for 

 what he does, and the determination to decide for himself, so far as 

 possible, whether what he does is, in its results upon human welfare, 

 worthy of himself. No man surely is called free who acts without 



