LIBERAL AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION 383 
appreciation of the significance of his acts. It is therefore the liberal 
ideal that a man must seek himself to be the first judge of his own acts, 
as to whether in the last analysis they are right or wrong. The con- 
ception that a man may do whatever he is paid to do, provided his acts 
do not come under the effective censure of the state, is no more liberal 
than it is lovely. It seems to be the neglect of the liberal ideal that 
has brought us face to face with our present condition in which talented 
and trained men are swifter to do evil than the will of the people is 
found ready to check the evil through laws. 
The first element, therefore, of the liberal as distinguished from the 
technical function of education, at the present time, is that men trained 
for any art should know and fully recognize what things in life are of 
greatest worth, and should acquire the habit of acting according to that 
conception ; especially in their own fields or art. While history, litera- 
ture and philosophy seem to be the subject-matter through which such 
education may be given, it is obvious that their association with tech- 
nical pursuits would need to be made much closer than is usual, if the 
aspect of liberalism which I have described is to be realized. 
A second respect in which, I think, the liberal in education needs 
sharply to be contrasted with the technical drift in modern education, 
may be styled “appreciation.” In some occupations, it is true, there 
is a strictly technical necessity that a man must grasp the scientific, 
social and esthetic significance of his task, if he is to do his work well; 
but in countless other lines of technical achievement, from the work of 
a factory hand to that of a railway president, it is idle to assert that a 
proper appreciation of these aspects of his work is essential to his 
technical success. And, indeed, it is essential that a man’s apprecia- 
tion of the meaning of his work should be cherished quite indepen- 
dently of any possibility of use and reward; though of course if the 
reward come, all the better. Freedom and the adequate realization of 
personality require that a man’s work “have meaning to himself.” 
Let him see within his work, in Dewey’s words, “ all that there is in it 
of large and human significance,’ and he will not be the slave of to- 
morrow’s promised smiles. 
There is no “job” that does not present innumerable phases of 
interest, and problems for investigation to the mind trained in physics 
and chemistry, none that is not linked in a hundred ways with all the 
problems and needs of the social organism, and with the history of 
man’s effort and advance, his folly and despair. There is no task, I sup- 
pose, in which the eye and ear trained to appreciation may not detect 
features of beauty and romance and mystery. And to the philosophic 
mind the very monotony of the toil is linked with the tireless move- 
ment of ocean and planet, while the spirit that endures it is felt to be 
kin and near to the will and temper of heroes in all ages. 
