LIBERAL AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION 383 



appreciation of the significance of his acts. It is therefore the liberal 

 ideal that a man must seek himself to be the first judge of his own acts, 

 as to whether in the last analysis they are right or wrong. The con- 

 ception that a man may do whatever he is paid to do, provided his acts 

 do not come under the effective censure of the state, is no more liberal 

 than it is lovely. It seems to be the neglect of the liberal ideal that 

 has brought us face to face with our present condition in which talented 

 and trained men are swifter to do evil than the will of the people is 

 found ready to check the evil through laws. 



The first element, therefore, of the liberal as distinguished from the 

 technical function of education, at the present time, is that men trained 

 for any art should know and fully recognize what things in life are of 

 greatest worth, and should acquire the habit of acting according to that 

 conception ; especially in their own fields or art. While history, litera- 

 ture and philosophy seem to be the subject-matter through which such 

 education may be given, it is obvious that their association with tech- 

 nical pursuits would need to be made much closer than is usual, if the 

 aspect of liberalism which I have described is to be realized. 



A second respect in which, I think, the liberal in education needs 

 sharply to be contrasted with the technical drift in modern education, 

 may be styled " appreciation." In some occupations, it is true, there 

 is a strictly technical necessity that a man must grasp the scientific, 

 social and esthetic significance of his task, if he is to do his work well ; 

 but in countless other lines of technical achievement, from the work of 

 a factory hand to that of a railway president, it is idle to assert that a 

 proper appreciation of these aspects of his work is essential to his 

 technical success. And, indeed, it is essential that a man's apprecia- 

 tion of the meaning of his work should be cherished quite indepen- 

 dently of any possibility of use and reward; though of course if the 

 reward come, all the better. Freedom and the adequate realization of 

 personality require that a man's work " have meaning to himself." 

 Let him see within his work, in Dewey's words, " all that there is in it 

 of large and human significance," and he will not be the slave of to- 

 morrow's promised smiles. 



There is no " job " that does not present innumerable phases of 

 interest, and problems for investigation to the mind trained in physics 

 and chemistry, none that is not linked in a hundred ways with all the 

 problems and needs of the social organism, and with the history of 

 man's effort and advance, his folly and despair. There is no task, I sup- 

 pose, in which the eye and ear trained to appreciation may not detect 

 features of beauty and romance and mystery. And to the philosophic 

 mind the very monotony of the toil is linked with the tireless move- 

 ment of ocean and planet, while the spirit that endures it is felt to be 

 kin and near to the will and temper of heroes in all ages. 



