This book, then, contends that education is a spiritual revaluation of human life. Its task is to _reorient_ the individual, to enable him to take a richer and more significant view of his experiences, to place him above and not within the system of his beliefs and ideals. If education is not liberalizing, it is not education in the sense of the title of the book. I use the term “liberal” not in the political sense, as if it meant half measures, but in its original sense meaning by a liberal education the kind of education which sets the mind free from the servitude of the crowd and from vulgar self-interests. In this sense, education is simply philosophy at work. It is the search for the “good life.” Education is itself a way of living. I have written the book not from the standpoint of the professional educator for whom education is frequently--if it be adult education--an enterprise designed for the uplift of other people, but from the standpoint of one who is concerned that his own education shall not stop in middle-life. No one is fit to be a teacher in whose own mental process education has ceased to go on. One is a student first and only incidentally a teacher. The best teacher is the seeker after truth amongst his students. Probably the most successful educator cannot tell what is the secret of his success in teaching. That which is important about the philosophy of education is not method but that background of knowledge which enables its possessor to judge what is worth knowing and doing. EVERETT DEAN MARTIN. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE PREFACE vii I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. LIBERAL EDUCATION VERSUS ANIMAL TRAINING 23 III. LIBERAL EDUCATION VERSUS PROPAGANDA 45 IV. LIBERAL EDUCATION VERSUS BOOK LEARNING 66 V. THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF DOUBT 84 VI. A MAN IS KNOWN BY THE DILEMMAS HE KEEPS 107 VII. THE FREE SPIRIT 127 VIII. THE APPRECIATION OF HUMAN WORTH 146 IX. EDUCATION AND WORK 160 X. EDUCATION AND MORALS 180 XI. THE CLASSICAL TRADITION: PLATO AND ARISTOTLE 197 XII. HUMANISM: ERASMUS AND MONTAIGNE 220 XIII. SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION: HUXLEY 252 XIV. THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 286 XV. POSTSCRIPT--ADULT EDUCATION IN AMERICA 308 THE MEANING OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The evidence is unmistakable that there is an important change in the attitude of the public toward education. There is an increasingly general demand for it in some form or other. Everywhere and in all classes of society the interest in acquiring better knowledge is apparent.