A LIBERAL EDUCATION 39 



But it would be unprofitable to spend more time in 

 disentangling, or rather in showing up the knots in, 

 the ravelled skeins of our neighbours. Much more to 

 the purpose is it to ask if we possess any clue of our 

 own which may guide us among these entanglements. 

 And by way of a beginning, let us ask ourselves 

 What is education ? Above all things, what is our ideal 

 of a thoroughly liberal education ? of that education 

 which, if we could begin life again, we would give our- 

 selves of that education which, if we could mould the 

 fates to our own will, we would give our children ? 

 Well, I know not what may be your conceptions upon 

 this matter, but I will tell you mine, and I hope I 

 shall find that our views are not very discrepant. 



Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and 

 fortune of every one of us would, one day or other, 

 depend upon his winning or losing a game of chess. 

 Don't you think that we should all consider it to be 

 a primary duty to learn at least the names and the 

 moves of the pieces ; to have a notion of a gambit, and 

 a keen eye for all the means of giving and getting out 

 of check ? Do you not think that we should look with 

 a disapprobation amounting to scorn, upon the father 

 who allowed his son, or the state which allowed its 

 members, to grow up without knowing a pawn from 

 a knight ? 



Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the 

 life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, 

 and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, 

 do depend upon our knowing something of the rules 

 of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated 

 than chess. It is a game which has been played for un- 

 told ages, every man and woman of us being one of the 



