EDITOR'S TABLE. 



841 



<xTlt0V^s %Rblt. 



A MOBEBN LIBEBAL EDV CATION. 



SUCH is the title of an exceeding- 

 ly interesting, well-considered, 

 and, in our opinion, weighty article 

 contributed bv Prof. Ladd, of Yale, to 

 a late number of our excellent con- 

 temporary the Educational Eeview. 

 The writer well remarks at the outset 

 that the word "liberal" applied to 

 education must imply some sort of dif- 

 ferentiation. That differentiation, he 

 sbows, is not quantitative but quali- 

 tative. A " liberal education " does 

 not mean a liberal supply of educa- 

 tion; it means a liberalizing educa- 

 tion, or, as he defines it, " that which 

 makes the f i-ee mind, which furnishes 

 the liberalizing culture of the trained 

 gentleman." Prof. Ladd is quite 

 aware that such a definition may 

 strike "not a few as invidious, but be 

 is not disposed upon that account to 

 alter the terms in which it is ex- 

 pressed. 



We think he is right. There is 

 an education which is imparted and 

 accepted with a main, if not exclu- 

 sive, view to its practical utility to 

 the individual in enabling him to 

 receive a bettei' share than he other- 

 wise might of the goods which so- 

 ciety has to divide. And there is an 

 education which aims at expanding 

 his mental and moral powers, and 

 fitting him to profit by the best that 

 has been or is being thought and 

 imagined and expressed in the world. 

 The first, while imparting a measure 

 of efiiciency for everyday purposes, 

 not infrequently instills an absolute 

 distaste and repulsion for all higher 

 uses of the intellect. The second 

 develops both capacity and desire 

 for intellectual and a?sthetic pleas- 

 ures, raises the mind above vulgar 

 prejudices, and places the whole 



VOL, XLVIII. 61 



life of the individual on a higher 

 level. The education that produces 

 the latter effect even partially is so 

 far a liberal education; and if the 

 word "gentleman" is to have a real 

 as opposed to a purely conventional 

 significance, we may apply it with 

 much propriety to one whose mind 

 has undergone this liberalizing influ- 

 ence, and whose tastes and sympa- 

 thies have thus been arrayed on the 

 side of whatever helps to elevate and 

 refine society. We fail to see that, 

 in the true sense, there is anything 

 antidemocratic in this; but if any 

 think otherwise they are, of course, 

 entitled to their opinion. Meantime, 

 we feel sure that the higher education 

 which we have thus imperfectly de- 

 scribed, but which Prof. Ladd maps 

 out for us in a vei-y satisfactory and 

 instructive manner, is a matter of 

 vast importance for the progress of 

 national culture and the right direc- 

 tion of our national life. 



" A truly liberal education," Prof. 

 Ladd observes, '' includes as essential 

 to it the prolonged and scholastic 

 pursuit of three subjects or groups 

 of subjects. These three are lan- 

 guage and literature, mathematics 

 and natviral science, and the soul of 

 man, including the products of his 

 reflective thinking. Any culture," 

 he continues, " which is markedly 

 defective on any one of these three 

 sides comes, so far, short of being 

 liberal; of being, that is to say, the 

 kind of culture which sets the mind 

 most truly free, and which is most 

 woi'thy of the cultivated gentleman 

 in the nobler meaning of the lat- 

 ter word." It is an extremely wide 

 scheme of education that is here laid 

 out; and we may say of it, as is said 

 of the strait gate and narrow way, 



