In comparison with Plato, Aristotle appears prosaic, worldly, and lacking in charm and humor. Much that he says appears to us platitudinous, for the same reason that the woman found Shakespeare’s dramas full of familiar quotations. We forget how subversive of convention and dogma it is to found the good life in the life of reason. Aristotle has passed by mythology and tradition and the sanctions of religion and has achieved a purely secular guide to conduct. He has made freedom and happiness the goal of virtue and education, and has done this without descending to utilitarianism. He has made right reason the standard of life and has at the same time given to the standard an æsthetic valuation. He has linked education with conduct, and suggested a moral training which gives human nature credit for some degree of intelligence. Aristotle is no longer “the Philosopher.” Education in the modern world is necessarily set to tasks very different from those of ancient Greece. But the good life is still the goal, and Aristotle’s good man has remained one of the ideals of liberal education. CHAPTER XII HUMANISM: ERASMUS AND MONTAIGNE Each man’s education is a unique achievement. There are as many kinds of education as there are kinds of men. In every educated mind there is a mixture of temperament and learning, a selection and emphasis, an elusive quality like that which haunts a work of art. We may recognize this elusive something but we cannot define it or describe it. Such words as wisdom, virtue, independence of judgment, freedom, cannot give us the meaning of education. We must know the educated man. If you read and understand Erasmus of Rotterdam, you will see what education is better than if you read all the books written about theories of education. A liberally educated person is like Erasmus.