A LIBERAL EDUCATION 33 



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 at 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 5 

 gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and getting 

 out a check ? Do you not think that we should look with a 

 disapprobation amounting to scorn, upon the father who al- 

 lowed his son, or the state which allowed its members, to grow 

 up without knowing a pawn from a knight ? 10 



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 15 

 been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us be- 

 ing one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The 

 chess board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the 

 universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of 

 Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We 2 o 

 know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also 

 we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, 

 or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man 

 who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of . 

 overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight 25 

 in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated without 

 haste, but without remorse. 



My metaphor will remind some of you of the famous pic- 

 ture in which Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at chess 

 with man for his soul. Substitute for the mocking fiend in 30 

 that picture, a calm, strong angel who is playing for love, as 

 we say, and would rather lose than win and I should ac- 

 cept it as an image of human life. 



Well, what I mean by Education, is learning the rules of 



