Is education something one can “get” in an institution? We are seeking to discover what an educated person is like,--as Plato would say, to “find” the educated man. Whether the learning process takes place in an institution or out of it is from this point of view a matter of small interest. I should like to picture the liberally educated individual as a mellow amateur, competent and well-informed, but with all natural and human, wholly at ease with his knowledge and master of his technique; one whose thinking is play and whose mind does not squeak as it runs along. But there frequently appears in educational circles a professionalism that is rather formidable and terrifying. I do not mean the specialized knowledge requisite for the so-called learned professions. One may be highly trained professionally, and like William James and Mr. Justice Holmes, retain the spirit of the amateur always. By professionalism I mean a certain artificiality of manner, bookishness, over-strictness in regard to petty rules, a disposition to identify education with the display of just that knowledge which the educated are conventionally supposed to possess. Many people think of education as something “high-brow,” a fastidiousness which belongs to the élite. There are those who give the impression that education is a thing of books and schools and formalities; and that there is a recognized fraternity of the finished products of the system. As proof that one belongs to this fraternity there are degrees and credits which show that the candidate has passed certain examinations and has done a required amount of reading. We have seen that people may seek education because they hope it will give them a certain prestige. I once heard a man say, “I’d give ten thousand dollars if I only knew Greek.” I wondered why Greek had such value in his eyes. I learned that he had been in the company of two elderly men, one a clergyman and the other a physician. He was humiliated because of his ignorance when the two fell to discussing some Greek text reminiscent of college days. It never occurred to him that he could secure a few text books and acquire this coveted knowledge in his spare time whenever he chose to do so. People persist in thinking that education comes to a man by virtue of his attendance at some place where it may be “got.” We frequently hear someone say, “I _had_ so many years of Latin,” or “I _took_ mathematics,” or “I did not _get_ much history.” Formal education, which is book knowledge acquired in a school,--this possession which men measure and grade and standardize,--may or may not be an aid to general culture. The thing I mean by liberal education is too elusive for the man with the yard stick.