A Liberal Education 57 



have been made acquainted, in dogmatic fashion, with 

 the broad laws of morality, he has had no training in 

 the application of those laws to the difficult problems which 

 result from the complex conditions of modern civilization. 

 Would it not be very hard to expect any one to solve 5 

 a problem in conic sections who had merely been taught 

 the axioms and definitions of mathematical science? 



A workman has to bear hard labor, and perhaps priva- 

 tion, while he sees others rolling in wealth, and feeding 

 their dogs with what would keep his children from starva- 10 

 tion. Would it not be well to have helped that man to 

 calm the natural promptings of discontent by showing 

 him, in his youth, the necessary connection of the moral 

 law which prohibits stealing with the stability of society 

 by proving to him, once for all, that it is better for his 15 

 own people, better for himself, better for future genera- 

 tions, that he should starve than steal? If you have no 

 foundation of knowledge, or habit of thought, to work 

 upon, what chance have you of persuading a hungry 

 man that a capitalist is not a thief " with a circum- 20 

 bendibus"? And if he honestly believes that, of what 

 avail is it to quote the commandment against stealing, 

 when he proposes to make the capitalist disgorge? 



Again, the child learns absolutely nothing of the history 

 or the political organization of his own country. His 25 

 general impression is, that everything ol much importance 

 happened a very long while ago; and that the Queen 

 and the gentlefolks govern the country much after the 

 fashion of King David and the elders and nobles of 

 Israel his sole models. Will you give a man with this 30 

 much information a vote? In easy times he sells it for a 

 pot of beer. Why should he not? It is of about as 

 much use to him as a chignon, and he knows as much 

 what to do with it, for any other purpose. In bad times, 



