384 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
The habit of thus associating the richness of history, romance and 
science with one’s daily work is found in some men, and is a source in 
them not only of technical efficiency, but of strength and joy. How 
little is such genuine liberalism fostered by the aristocratic conception 
of culture as a means of occupying leisure, or by our actual practise of 
dissociating the study of history, literature and philosophy from the 
common tasks of to-day! Perhaps the remedy lies partly in the intro- 
duction of industrial training into our schools, perhaps in the more 
common employment of teachers who have worked in shop and factory 
and office. 
The third way in which under present conditions the liberal in edu- 
cation stands opposed to the technical, is in the recognition of individ- 
uality, the right of each individual to “yield,” in Emerson’s words, 
“that peculiar fruit which he was created to bear.” In place of each 
man adjusting himself to his environment, which, technically speaking, 
means the present or anticipated demands of the buyer, Emerson in- 
vites the individual to “ plant himself indomitably upon his instincts 
and there abide,” for the huge world will come round to him. How- 
ever exaggerated the language, the conception is fundamentally the 
liberal conception, viz., that the end of all our activities is nothing but 
the bringing to flower and fruit the highest perfection of which each 
man is capable. Whereas the technical view at present is to look on the 
individual as part of the machinery by which the “world’s work” is 
done, that is, service is rendered for which people can be got to pay, the 
liberal view is to insist that the world’s work is the cultivation of the 
garden of human life, and the best service a man can render is to offer 
the world the finest fruits of his own personality. Liberalism bids the 
man take counsel of his own spirit rather than of the market, and 
prophesies that in maintaining his stand in the face of the world he 
will gain a deeper insight of the essential harmony between himself and 
it, while lifting life to a higher scale of intensity and idealism. 
By thus starting from the simplest possible conception of liberal 
education, as education for freedom, for the realization of personality, 
we escape from a narrow tradition, and from a false antithesis to in- 
dustrial ardor and efficiency, and are left free to judge for ourselves 
wherein under present conditions true personality consists, to note 
without prejudice what evils the technical emphasis in education actu- 
ally tends to nourish, and to devise under constantly changing condi- 
tions new ways for the protection and furthering of the liberal ideal. 
Clearly the defense of the liberal in education is not merely a matter 
of insisting on certain courses of study traditionally styled liberal; but, 
if I have correctly analyzed the situation, it is to cherish certain ideals 
and to train in certain habits, viz., in the evaluation of one’s conduct 
in terms of its effect upon character, in the appreciation of the interest 
