382 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
. It seems to me that evidence of an actual opposition between the 
liberal and the technical in education is found in three distinct evils 
which pervade the activities of society; and in each case it seems to me 
that the remedy for the evil lies only in adhering to and establishing 
the ideal of liberal education. 
It is regarded as the business of the technically trained man to give 
people what they want, if they will pay for it. He is not expected to 
judge, or to be capable of judging, whether what is thus done makes 
for the development of human nature and personality. A shipbuilder 
is not expected to judge whether the object for which he builds the 
ship—war, it may be, or contemptible luxury—is a worthy object; the 
skilled advertising agent is not blamed if he collects money for the 
publication of a magazine much worse than useless, but permitted by 
law; the bridge-designer is not expected to see that his designs are 
executed under conditions that make for the safety and welfare of the 
workmen; the automobile manufacturer is not censured for the con- 
struction of machines ill adapted to run according to law, but excel- 
lently suited to break the law and to put other people to discomfort 
and in danger; the newspaper editor is not blamed for the destruction 
of acres of noble spruce trees sacrificed to the production of a “ comic” 
supplement. 
Even though we ask of the preacher and the teacher, of the physician 
and the scientist—yes, of the lawyer and the politician—that they have 
regard to the welfare of men in their several lines of art, and though 
such technical training as all these men may receive is not without 
reference to this liberal aspect of the professions they are to follow, yet 
we have to recognize that none of these professions is free from the 
general principle that people should get what they are willing to pay 
for, and not much else. And it must be confessed that in every line 
of technical education, with the partial exception of the training for 
teaching and the ministry, what little insistence there is upon the 
importance of the liberal conception of life and art, is not accompanied 
by thorough instruction in determining what ideals of manhood and 
personality are worthy and well founded. On the study of what things 
are of real worth much has been written (outside the literature of “ rev- 
elation”) which compares in solidity and scope of treatment with the 
best that the mathematician and the physicist have achieved in their 
fields of science. But the study of these teachings is at present largely 
neglected, and seldom systematic or continuous. 
From the liberal standpoint the highest development of a man’s 
personality involves the sense of a thoroughgoing responsibility for 
what he does, and the determination to decide for himself, so far as 
possible, whether what he does is, in its results upon human welfare, 
worthy of himself. No man surely is called free who acts without 
