THE EVOLUTION OF LIBERAL EDUCATION. 151 
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The remaining method is the historical, and, for the problem of liberal 
.ducation, the most promising. The idea of liberal education emerged 
arly in the history of Western culture, and we have a fairly continuous 
record of its outworking from its first manifestation to the present time. 
[t is reasonable to suppose that an idea which has been unfolding for 
aearly twenty-five centuries, and has been potent mn preserving and diffus- 
ing enlightenment and stimulating the love of truth through all that time, 
should afford us some light from its record both as to the ideal toward 
which its outworking tends and as to what are its constituent elements. 
IL 
The concept of liberal education originated among the Greeks, and gives 
sontinuity to the history of liberal education since their time. They were 
the first to coordinate what they called Synvoulios maideta, an “all 
round education.” By this they meant a training in selected studies of 
the most central character, so as to secure harmonious wholeness or 
‘ntegrity of intellectual culture. They sought a general gymnastic of the 
mind for the sake of the mind, and not for any extraneous utility. This 
view of the material and method of liberal education, however, was not 
the whole of their concept. If it were, then there might be several, per- 
saps many kinds of general culture. But with that instinct for ideal 
ity and perfection which appears in everything they touched, they 
determined what ingredients should enter into their method and material 
of instruction by determining the ideal end of liberal education. This 
wes what we inexactly name Virtue (ape), or, as they meant it, the 
highest manhood, or apery) nara yévos, the highest excellence of the 
individual according to his kind—that is, as a man. If it could be 
ascertained in what this highest excellence consisted, then the method 
ind material of instruction which would develop it would be the method 
and material of liberal education. Now, to their best thinkers the attain- 
ment of apers was inseparable from knowledge. ¢“ All men naturally 
desire knowledge,” is Aristotle’s opening sentence in his ¢ Metaphysics” 
and a commonplace of philosophy ever since. The desire for knowledge is 
constitutional, and on this the possibility of educating depends. But to 
se liberalizing, knowledge must lead to virtue. The ideal knowledge, 
shen, was that fine blending of theory and practice which served the 
individual both toward the understanding and the doing of the truth. It 
was copia, Wisdom, the guide of thought and the guide of life. And 
30 we can hardly wonder at their frequent identification of knowledge and 
virtue, and wisdom and virtue. The divorce of theoretical and practical, 
sither inside any sphere of knowledge or conduct, or between knowledge 
and conduct as wholes, would have seemed to them utterly irrational. 
The discipline of youth in knowledge until they attained the character 
of enlightened and virtuous men, sure to go on spontaneously in the dis-