96 A LIBERAL EDUCATION; IV 



Commons. You will have to take your shaie /n 

 making laws which may prove a blessing or a 

 curse to millions of men. But you shall not hear 

 one word respecting the political organisation of 

 your country ; the meaning of the controversy 

 between free-traders and protectionists shall never 

 have been mentioned to you ; you shall not so 

 much as know that there are such things as 

 economical laws. 



" The mental power which will be of most im- 

 portance in your daily life will be the power of 

 seeing things as they are without regard to 

 authority ; and of drawing accurate general con- 

 clusions from particular facts. But at school and 

 at college you shall know of no source of truth but 

 authority; nor exercise your reasoning faculty upon 

 anything but deduction from -that which is laid 

 down by authority. 



" You will have to weary your soul with work, 

 and many a time eat your bread in sorrow and 

 in bitterness, and you shall not have learned to 

 take refuge in the great source of pleasure 

 without alloy, the serene resting-place for worn 

 human nature, the world of art." 



Said I not rightly that we are a wonderful 

 people ? I am quite prepared to allow, that 

 education entirely devoted to these omitted sub- 

 jects might not be a completely liberal education. 

 But is an education which ignores them all a 

 liberal education ? Nay, is it too much to say 



