136 



A LIBERAL EDUCATION 



Thus the question of compulsory education is settled 

 so far as Nature is concerned. Her bill on that question 

 was framed and passed long ago. But, like all com- 

 pulsory legislation, that of Nature is harsh and wasteful 

 in its operation. Ignorance is visited as sharply as wilful 

 disobedience incapacity meets with the same punish- 

 ment as crime. Nature's discipline is not even a word 

 and a blow, and the blow first ; but the blow without the 

 word. It is left to you to find out why your ears are 

 boxed. 



The object of what we commonly call education that 

 education in which man intervenes and which I shall 

 distinguish as artificial education is to make good these 

 Defects in Nature's methods; tpjprepare the child to re- 

 ceive Nature's education, neither incapably nor igno- 

 rantly, nor with wilful disobedience; and to understand 

 the preliminary symptoms of her displeasure, without 

 waiting for the box on the ear. In short, all artificial 

 education ought to be an anticipation of natural educa- 

 tion. And a liberal education is an artificial education, 

 which. has not only prepared a man to escape the great 

 evils of disobedience to natural laws, but has trained 

 him to appreciate and to seize upon the rewards, which 

 Nature scatters with as free a hand as her penalties. 

 / That man, I think, has had a liberal education, who 

 has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready 

 servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all 

 the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose 

 intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts 

 of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, 

 like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, 

 and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of 

 the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of 

 the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the 

 laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is 



