and get our clothes and shoes made and mended, and are the victims of these details, and once in a fortnight we arrive, perhaps, at a rational moment." The period of liberal education should be the greatest of such rational moments, the lucid interval, when we look all about, spy out the promised land, and are for once free.

It follows that this period of liberal study may well be a period of desultory attention, of a sort of spiritual idling and irresponsibility, when according to the standards of efficiency, time is wasted. To look back upon one's college days from the standpoint of an established position in the world, and say: "My college studies have not helped me to succeed," is to betray an utterly wrong notion as to the essential purpose of college education. It was their essential purpose not to prepare one to succeed in the practise of law, for example, but to help one to decide wisely and freely whether to aspire to such success. Consulting the time-table does not help you to catch your train, but it does play an important part in your deciding what train to catch. Among other things, it shows you what trains there are to catch, and the destinations to which they are likely to carry you.

It is clear that one cannot judge the value of

a liberal education by the standards of success or efficiency. It is quite essential to its value that one should hold such standards in abeyance. It requires an attitude quite different from that which is required by the actual contest of life, as different as the attitude of the general who plans a campaign is different from his attitude when he executes it. Once the forward movement is on, what is required is courage, persistence, skill, patience, and single-minded devotion to the matter in hand. These are the virtues of action. But other virtues are required in the time of deliberation and counsel, such virtues as imagination, breadth of view, and statesmanship. To profit most by liberal study or to acquire that which is peculiarly valuable in it, one needs freedom and elasticity of mind, the proverbial "generosity of youth," openness of mind, quickness of response, a toleration of the most ancient heresies, and an eager interest in the most radical novelties; so that for once, albeit for only a fleeting moment, all things shall have presented themselves and had their chance of acceptance or rejection.

There are few branches of knowledge that may not be liberal studies if only they be taken in this spirit. What I have said does not argue

for a narrowing of the curriculum to the study of the ancient languages. On the contrary, as William James has said, "we must shake the old double reefs out of the canvas into the wind and sunshine, and let in every modern subject, sure that any subject will prove humanistic, if its setting be kept only wide enough." For a liberal education means, primarily, a retrospect of the past, an assimilation of the civilization of one's age, and a wide acquaintance with the possibilities of life, in order that choice of vocation may be wise and free.

XI

THE USELESS VIRTUES

F all the good advice that has ever been given

IF

were to be brought together and compared, it would probably be discovered that every piece could be matched with a contrary piece given by somebody else. The world's practical wisdom does not form a consistent system. No one man could possibly believe all of it at the same time. For example, there is equally good authority for believing that woman is the tyrant of man, and for believing that she is his puppet. Victor Hugo tells us that "men are women's playthings; woman is the devil's"; while another Frenchman, Michelet, tells us that "nearly every folly committed by woman is born of the stupidity or evil influence of man." But it may be argued that in this case it is the very paradox itself which is proverbial. Take the less familiar example of self-consciousness. There are the moralists whose primary maxim is the Delphic

oracle, "Know thyself." "We should every night call ourselves to an account," says Seneca. "What infirmity have I mastered to-day? What passion opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift." This is accounted wise, and carries conviction to conscience. But so does the contrary preaching of Carlyle, with his tirade against the "unhealthy state of self-sentience, self-survey, precursor and prognostic of still worse health."

It is painful to contemplate the volume of discordant advice that is poured from pulpits, platforms and editorial columns into the ears of that hapless reprobate, the plain man. It is perhaps fortunate that so little of it is followed, for it is always one-sided. It is characteristic of most advice and exhortation that it is only a part of the truth. It is an exaggeration of that particular half-truth which the exhorter thinks is timely, and which he believes is going to be offset by contrary influences. It is a push against some existing overtendency, an attempt to stem some tide that is running too high, in the hope of securing that balance and moderation in which right conduct always consists.

This is my apology for appearing with an ex