484 



SCmNGE. 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 274. 



ness in South Africa ; and the liberally 

 educated English have yet (February 14, 

 1900) to herald their first victory over the 

 despised Boers, after four months of disas- 

 trous grappling. They will in time be vic- 

 torious, but not by the application of what 

 they have been taught through genteel tra- 

 ditions. 



The educational sj'stem of a country 

 should be adjusted to the needs of the ma- 

 jority of its people, and not be controlled 

 by the nobility, whether this term be ap- 

 plied to the aristocracy of inherited rank, 

 as in England, or of wealth, as in America. 

 As soon as the question of educational 

 values Arises, therefore, we must ask our- 

 selves, with candor and with utter disre- 

 gard of genteel traditions, what kinds of 

 knowledge are best fitted to develop mental, 

 moral, and material power in our young 

 men, recognizing the conditions of civiliza- 

 tion as they exist to-day in the most pros- 

 perous parts of America. We are not to 

 decry liberal culture ; but we are abund- 

 antly justified in criticising the traditional 

 limitations which have restricted the name 

 of liberal culture quite arbitrarily to a cer- 

 tain group of studies. What is the ground 

 upon which these studies have been called 

 liberal ? It is that they are now, and have 

 long been, genteel ; that they do not aim 

 to help their votaries to make money ; 

 that their object is to produce such intel- 

 lectual and social polish as money can not 

 buy ; that the stored-up capital which they 

 represent must not yield interest in money, 

 but only in culture ; it must be totally in- 

 dependent of all commercial values. 



This ideal was almost completely fulfilled 

 during the many centuries of its dominance 

 up to the nineteenth century. But com- 

 merce is stronger than an ideal. Is literary 

 culture to-day without its pecuniary re- 

 wards ? Is fine art practiced purely for the 

 purpose of expressing the beautiful? So 

 far as activity is expended for the cultiva- 



tion of the true, the beautiful, and the 

 good, the culture is liberal. So soon as the 

 results of such activity cease to be given 

 freely to the world, and become devoted to 

 the acquisition of money, the name liberal 

 ceases to be applicable. There are hun- 

 dreds of men and women whose interests in 

 college were concentrated upon literature, 

 classics and history, and who apply the re- 

 sults of the mental discipline thus acquired, 

 and the knowledge thus stored up, directly 

 to the money -making business of writing 

 novels. There are thousands more who are 

 well paid for contributing to the newspapers 

 such fiction as is euphemistically called 

 news. All of it is called literary work, and 

 the writers receive the credit of dwelling in 

 an atmosphere of liberal culture. Fortunes 

 have been made by judicious response to 

 the popular demand for light literature, and 

 the liberal culture disseminated is directly 

 proportional to the liberal payment laid 

 down in silver and gold. On the other 

 hand there is an increasing number of young 

 men who annually come forth from Ameri- 

 can universities, and yet more from German 

 universities, whose time has been devoted 

 to studies that by contrast are called scien- 

 tific. They spend time and labor in the 

 pursuit of science for its own sake. The 

 results of their investigations are published 

 in journals for which the general public has 

 no use ; and they receive no compensation 

 for such contributions except the satisfac- 

 tion of making themselves and their work 

 known to the so-called scientific world. 

 Their inquiries relate to subjects which have 

 no commercial importance, and their object 

 is without pay to enlarge the boundaries of 

 human knowledge. Their stimulus is the 

 pleasure of discovery, of investigation, of 

 successful intellectual activity. The recog- 

 nition they receive is such as money cannot 

 possibly buy. 



Nor have these scientific investigators 

 been confined to the present century. New- 



