Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/157

 Only as education enters into the sphere of the ethical, æsthetical, and religious life docs it become a real safeguard of either the aristocracy or the multitude of the citizens. But it is just the peculiar potency of the truly liberal education that it can lay so much emphasis upon what is not merely necessary to live as a smart and successful citizen, but is rather necessary in order to enter into and possess the larger, richer, and higher life of the soul.

There is one other consideration which it seems desirable to connect with this subject. Rightly or wrongly, temporarily or permanently, there exists a widespread lack of confidence in representative government. Here in this country, where the powers of the representative bodies, both in the state and in the nation, are more extensive and unlimited for good or for evil than anywhere else in the world, this distrust is perhaps most strong and most on the increase. The simple truth is that no class, neither the so-called laboring class nor the cultivated class, has any large amount of confidence left in the men who make laws for them all. Municipal, state, and national legislative bodies are almost universally distrusted, feared, and despised. This is a fact, whether it is a fact that admits of rational justification or not.

There are plain signs that some form of virtual aristocratic government is likely to be widely