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A MODERN LIBERAL EDUCATION
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what they are, and something of how the soul of man has in thought and feeling responded to them, is of itself no small part of a liberal culture. And here I speak, not from theory alone, but from experience with several thousand pupils. I affirm without hesitation, on the basis of this experience, that it does make the mind more liberal, more serious, gentle, interesting, cultured, and vigorous, to have some face-to-face acquaintance with the principal problems of philosophy. As a cure of souls afflicted with those shallow and coarse views of life, and of its most profound, most mysterious realities, which dominate the age and the land, there is nothing superior to this which I could recommend. It is true pastoral and soul-saving work to induct youth, who are in process of the higher education, into the calm and reasonable consideration of these problems.

These, then, as it seems to me, are still the essentials of a truly liberal education,—now, as they have always been to some extent ever since the conception and practice corresponding to the phrase a "liberal education" emerged in the life of the race. An appeal to the history of education would show that the more ancient authorities, as well as the reformers of education on the hither edge of the Middle Ages, and the most trustworthy writers on pedagogics in modern times, are in substantial agreement. The chief differences of opin-