A LIBERAL EDUCATION 133 



the state which allowed its members, to grow up with- 

 out 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 untold ages, every 

 man and woman of us being 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 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 in strength. And one who plays ill is 

 checkmated without haste,, but without remorse. 2 



edge, is to be fairly understood. If culture is the 'criticism of 

 life,' it is fallacious if deprived of knowledge of the most im- 

 portant factor which has transformed the medieval into the mod- 

 ern spirit." Life and Letters, 1:320. It is perhaps unnecessary 

 to add that Arnold would no more have excluded knowledge of 

 either the results or the methods of modern science from a liberal 

 education than Huxley would have excluded knowledge of litera- 

 ture and languages. 



2 This idea is impressively stated in the preface to Evolution 

 and Ethics, Collected Essays, IX:viii-ix. "The motive of the 

 drama of human life is the necessity, laid upon every man who 

 comes into the world, of discovering the mean between self-' 

 assertion and self-restraint suited to his character and his cir- 

 cumstances. And the eternally tragic aspect of the drama lies 

 in this: that the problem set before us is one the elements of 

 which can be but imperfectly known, and of which even an ap- 

 proximately right solution rarely presents itself, until that stern 

 critic, aged experience, has been furnished with ample justification 

 for venting his sarcastic humour upon the irreparable blunders 

 we have already made." 



