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 essentials of a modern liberal education? What studies must be pursued in order to secure, as far as possible, the truly free and cultured mind in accordance with the actual conditions of modern life?" I find no insuperable difficulty in making up a fairly defensible opinion. For amid many and conflicting changes, all is by no means changed. History still lies back of us with its great lessons there, although we must undoubtedly take pains in reading them into clear and convincing formulas. The primary and essential facts and laws of man's environment—what we call nature, in which human nature has its setting, and in which human life develops with a certain reciprocity of influences—also remain the same as ever. And the soul of man, that which is to be educated,—the real being whose culture to the point of highest freedom and perfection it is hoped by all changes in processes the better to attain,—the soul of man is not essentially different in this boastful nineteenth century from the soul of man in the so-called "Dark Ages," or when Plato and Aristotle undertook its informing, purifying, and elevating.

From history, from nature without, and from the nature of the mind, I think we may confidently derive a body of rational conclusions as to what are the essentials of the most modern liberal education, or of all truly liberal education. And now,