Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/37

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THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
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foundation to a genuine university education. If there is any such amount and number of studies, then we cannot successfully develop the American university without settling this basis of requirement upon which the development must rest. The settlement of this question will not take place, in fact and life, through the dictum of any one man—not even though that man be learned in the theory of education or in a position favorable for forcing his convictions upon others. The settlement of this question will come only in time (and perhaps in a long time), as a growing consensus of the opinions of those most competent in such matters. The opinion which I have to express shall be modestly expressed; at most, it is only one man's opinion, except so far as it is in accord with the consensus of opinion already formed on the part of the most competent authorities.

A "liberal education" seems to me to include, of necessity, a goodly amount of four great branches of human knowledge and discipline; these are: language, including literature; mathematics and natural science; the science of man as an individual spirit who feels and thinks and acts in relation to the world of nature and of his fellows, and to God; and the development of the human race in history. All education preparatory to the university should require these studies to have been already pursued liberally; but the edu-