Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/387

Rh For, as the development of the sciences has led to the elaboration and multiplication of the arts, and to consequent specialization in each field of art, even the gifted man finds himself forced to abandon the scientific and humanistic aspirations which have been identified with a liberal education, in order that he may attain some small success in a selected realm of practical art and achievement. Without for the present assuming that such specialization does indeed mean dwarfing and distorting of personality, we clearly have to recognize that it introduces a new factor into the situation, which at least tends to turn technical education from liberalizing paths, or seems to do so.

Another influence seems more obviously and directly to turn technical education from liberal ideals, viz., the fact that most arts now demand for their prosecution great sums of money. For this and for other reasons, no doubt, all arts have come to be looked on as in the first place parts of "business," and are followed and studied chiefly from the business point of view, in which the first consideration is to do that for which people will pay, and to make a profit. "Business" itself may be called an art; perhaps the art of money-making. But, while of other arts it often is true that they require of the efficient artist that he be very much of a man, no one claims, I believe, that the art of money-making "functions" very successfully in the enlargement and ennobling of personality. And, however much we may urge the student and worker in any field of art, other than that of money-making, to find within his work his reward, and to place the excellence of his art above all considerations of gain, we must admit that that view of technical pursuits is taken by but few men, save for "those brief moments when men are at their best."

Granting then the liberalizing potentiality of any technical education we may fairly inquire whether, in the presence of these two factors, extreme specialization, and the exaltation of money-making, the liberal tendency in and function of education is not greatly neglected and harassed. But in such an inquiry I would avoid the view-point of those who stand primarily as defenders of an ancient order of things, of an excellence the vision of which has bestowed upon them, but which is rarely granted to those who attain intellectual maturity under present conditions. The conception of a liberal education, that it stands for freedom, for the spontaneous realization in each individual of what in the fullest and truest sense he is, such a conception summons us to the unbiased study of the individuals born into the world as it now is, in order that we may afresh determine with their aid, for ourselves and for them, what means to adopt in order that the best in each of them may come to light. Yet, in thus adapting the liberal ideal and aspiration to present conditions, we of course reject neither the classic nor the scientific springs of culture.