LIBERAL EDUCATION. 15 



shall have to give a negative answer, just so long as we do not look 

 upon all these as the truly disciplinary studies, and the elements of 

 all these as the true elementary studies, the very school-studies fitted, 

 above all others, for maturing the youthful mind, and filling it with 

 true wisdom. So long as we insist upon approaching them through 

 the operose and roundabout method of dead-language studies, school- 

 days will flee away, and the object will not be accomplished. The 

 great vice of our education, as has been well said, is its indirectness. 



Combining the ideas which I have thus presented — 1. That the 

 study of foreign languages as languages, whether dead or living, holds 

 a place in our present education-philosophy quite out of proportion to 

 its real value and importance, and that it is the discipline of philoso- 

 phy which we are indirectly aiming at, behind and through the disci- 

 pline of language ; 2. That it is through one tongue and not many 

 that that discipline can best be imparted, inasmuch as that is the only 

 one that can or will ever, by the majority of men, be really mastered ; 

 and, 3. That now, for the first time, there is the possibility, through 

 the progress of modern linguistic science, of a scientific and systematic 

 study of the mother-tongue — I arrive at the conclusion that we are 

 presently to have, as a substitute for the exclusive or almost exclusive 

 use of classical languages and literatures, as the main disciplinary ele- 

 ment in liberal education, a systematic study of the English language 

 and a recognition of its literature as primary, not secondary. And 

 surely it is a strange phenomenon, if it be true, as a foreign scholar 

 has recently maintained, 1 that the sovereignty of the world is hereafter 

 to belong to the English language ; and if it be true, as I think may 

 well be maintained, that with this conquering language we possess the 

 world's foremost literature, it is a strange phenomenon that we think 

 them so little worthy of systematic study, give them a place so sub- 

 ordinate as instruments of our own liberal culture, that to-day we must 

 go to the Germans for a good English grammar ; to the French for 

 the best, if a very defective, history of our literature. To my mind, 

 no more striking illustration could be given of our want of a true edu- 

 cation-philosophy. 



How has it happened that we still lack such a philosophy ? The 

 answer to that question brings me to my next point, and the third new 

 ingredient in the liberal education of the future, the element contributed 

 by republicanism. I have said that the science of education was still 

 in its infancy ; I believe that it is only as a part of republican institu- 

 tions that it can reach maturity. For the only true liberal education 

 is the education of man as man ; the only truly liberal system is that 

 which can be applied to a whole nation, and such a system is only 

 possible as a part of republican institutions. And, when we consider 

 how short a time we have been living under them, and how crude and 

 imperfect they still are, it is not strange that they have not yet pro- 



1 De Candolle. 



