our so-called scientific schools, aim to give. This may be admitted without in the least depreciating the character of the training given by these schools, or the value of the results which many of them produce. But if we mean anything distinctive by the words, "a liberal education," it is something more than such an education as these schools furnish.
We may now come closer to the meaning of the phrase by laying emphasis upon the word "liberal." Of course this word once meant, in this connection, such an education as befits a free man or a gentleman. On this account there is still clinging to our usage something of pride on the one hand, and of jealousy and odium on the other hand. For are not all men now equally free; and where is now the class of gentlemen, unique and distinctively so-called? By a justifiable turn of meaning, however, a "liberal education" may be defined as that which makes the free mind, which furnishes the liberalizing culture of the trained gentleman. And here it must be remembered that all specialists' studies have their peculiar prejudices and peculiar temptations—almost irresistible—to particular forms of narrowness. A truly liberal education ought therefore to tend toward the setting of the mind free from all classes of scholastic prejudices. It ought to work in the direction of freedom from the philologue's narrowness, from the "scientist's" narrowness, from the circle of
