Recent Discussions Concerning Liberal Education [pp. 585-616]

1867.] Li6eral E~ucation. 611
authors. The second is, not to be prolix. In a single paragraph Thucydides can give a clear and vivid representation of
a battle, such as a reader who has once taken it into his mind
can seldom forget." In the pressure of modern life, men who
have anything to say, tend to prolixity, because they have not
time enough to elaborate to the utmost brevity. "But they
would do far worse than they do, if there had never been
IT' aster-pieces, or if they had never known them. Early
familiarity with the perfect, makes our most imperfect production far less bad than it otherwise would be. To have a high
standard of excellence often makes the whole difference of
rendering our work good when it would otherwise be mediocre."
The present position of the ancient classics in liberal education being thus vindicated, it remains that we look briefly at
some of its other essential ingredients. Next to the languages,
Latin and Greek, the Mathematics have had the pree~minence
among the branches of study conceded to lie at the foundation
of a thorough liberal education, a place from which they will
not easily or quickly be dislodged. They have an educational
power for which there is no substitute. First, as they afford
the calculus for the solution of problems involving number and
quantity, which are indispensable in several leading departments of Physical Science, and essential to a due understanding of those sciences. This is an instrument, a tool, which
every educated man should possess. But it is not so much for
information as for discipline, that this study has value for the
majority of students. It does a service for the reasoning
powers which cannot otherwise be done. It not only trains
the power of attention, close and continuous, to abstract and
complex chains of thought, a power in which lies half the
superiority of educated men; it accustoms the mind to reach
certain truth by reasoning aright from right premises; it shows
that this can be done and how it may be done; that it requires
complete certainty and rigidly exact statement of the premises;
the making sure of each succeeding step, in its order onward to
the conclnsion, which is thus indissolubly concatenated with the
premises. It shows how vast bodies of truth can thus be
established, and accustoms the student to the process of
establishing them. It then trains him to make use of these