LIBERAL EDUCATION IN LAW, MEDICINE, AND THEOLOGY. 115 
hit; 
n an 
ught 
yS we 
€, to 
nits 
edge 
hich 
Sys- 
arate 
rant 
more 
assent 
reful 
sub- 
rac- 
nan 
not 
sical 
He 
will 
1g of 
pure 
Jical 
will 
dent 
rund 
,nese 
d, 18 
and 
nust 
and 
sut a 
a all 
wing 
any 
the 
the 
arial 
sical 
» the 
urst- 
1t no 
irst-rate lawyer can be made by merely technical training, no lawyer of 
mastery and real resource. General principles learned memoriter ave as 
1seless for mastery as precedents learned memoriter. No man shall com- 
mand them who does not know whence they came, and what like occa- 
sions must be made to yield new principles alike to bar and bench. Such 
s the practitioner who is armed cap-a-pie, to be feared by every opponent 
'n the mere matter of winning cases. How shall a man who knows noth- 
ing of history, of economics, or of political science ever know more than 
'he technical rules of the law, which must for him be rules dead, inflexi- 
ble, final ? 
All this is plain enough, at least to every liberally educated man, and 
to every one who considers first of all the good of the community and the 
advancement of the professions. But immediate self-interest, haste to 
get at the pecuniary rewards of his profession, to make a supporting busi- 
ness of it, will make the individual indifferent to these larger considera- 
tions. He is willing to leave the higher reaches of his calling to those 
who have time to seek them. The physician is content to be a successful 
»mpiric, and learn useful practical lessons from his daily experience. The 
minister is satisfied if he please his congregation by agreeable sermons 
and still more agreeable pastoral visits. The lawyer does not aspire to be 
more than an expert in a technical business. As many will go without a 
«liberal education ” as the community will permit to do so. Public 
opinion does not act imperatively in the matter, because not all of the 
public, at any rate here in the United States, has made up its mind that a 
general training need precede professional training. Some communities 
sven seem inclined to boast of their ¢‘ born” preachers, and their lawyers 
who have gained admission to the bar after only six weeks’ study. There 
is among us a somewhat general skepticism as to the efficacy of college 
nstruction, and a very widely diffused belief in the sufficiency of natural 
endowments. And, of course, no one will claim that the colleges give a 
man all, or even any considerable part, of what he should have by way of 
squipment for one of the learned professions. All that we can say is that 
the colleges can give him the point of view, the outlook and the habit of 
mind, of the scholar; that, without an ¢ antecedent liberal education,” 
not one man in a thousand will have the studies he ought to undertake so 
much as suggested to him. His little world will be flat, not round, shut 
1 by an encompassing sea, bounded by the near horizon. A professional 
man ought to have a liberal education, if only to make him aware of his 
(imitations, careful not to blunder into fields of which he knows that he 
is ignorant. 
The practical side of this question is certainly a very serious one in this 
country. That there should be an almost absolute freedom of occupa- 
tion is a belief very intimately and tenaciously connected with the demo- 
cratic theory of government, and our legislators are very slow to lay many