134 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS 



should enable an average boy of fifteen or sixteen to read 

 and write his own language with ease and accuracy, and 

 with a sense of literary excellence derived from the study 

 of our classic writers: to have a general acquaintance with 

 the history of his own country and with the great laws of 

 social existence; to have acquired the rudiments of the 

 physical and psychological sciences, and a fair knowledge 

 of elementary arithmetic and geometry. He should have 

 obtained an acquaintance with logic rather by example 

 than by precept; while the acquirement of the elements of 

 music and drawing should have been pleasure rather than 

 work. 



It may sound strange to many ears if I venture to main- 

 tain that proposition that a young person, educated thus 

 far, has had a liberal, though perhaps not a full, education. 

 But it seems to me that such training as that to which I have 

 referred may be termed liberal, in both the senses in which 

 that word is employed, with perfect accuracy. In the 

 first place, it is liberal in breadth. It extends over the whole 

 ground of things to be known and of faculties to be trained, 

 and it gives equal importance to the two great sides of 

 human activity — art and science. In the second place, it 

 is liberal in the sense of being an education fitted for free 

 men; for men to whom every career is open, and from whom 

 their country may demand that they should be fitted to 

 perform the duties of any career. I cannot too strongly 

 impress upon you the fact that, with such a primary edu- 

 cation as this, and with no more than is to be obtained by 

 building strictly upon its lines, a man of ability may become 

 a great writer or speaker, a statesman, a lawyer, a man of 

 science, painter, sculptor, architect, or musician. That 

 even development of all a man's faculties, which is what 

 properly constitutes culture, may be effected by such an 



