The classical tradition has its origin, as we saw, in the efforts of Greek philosophers to teach free men the essentials of the good life. It has by no means remained true to its ideal, but each rediscovery of its meaning has had a liberalizing effect. The modern sense of the worth of the individual--which is only recently on the decline--and the humanist philosophy of education alike show the influence of the Renaissance. The eighteenth century, stilted and formal as it was, could with some justification call itself the age of the Enlightenment. It was the age of Voltaire, the age of great educational advance. It was also the age from which we derive most of our pronouncements about liberty and the rights of man. I would almost go so far as to say that when education is not liberalizing, it is not really education but is a highly systematized species of propaganda. This liberalizing quality is so essential to education, and is so clearly a way of the spiritual life, that its presence determines the genuineness of any movement or philosophy that may bear the name Liberalism. The term “free spirit” has been so frequently abused, that I hesitate to use it. It suggests Rousseau’s Emile, educated to obey only the benign laws of nature and his own impulses. “He follows no formula, yields neither to authority nor to example, and neither acts nor speaks save as it seems best to him.” One thinks of such phrases as Max Stirner’s “Ego and His Own,” or Whitman’s “Spontaneous Me,” or “The Beautiful Soul” of nineteenth century Romanticism. One is reminded of the young woman from Nebraska who came to live in Greenwich Village, New York City, and said her soul felt as if it had taken off its shoes and stockings. The cult of spiritual freedom had quite a vogue in New York a few years ago. I believe it originated in the Latin Quarter of Paris. The devotee of it displayed his free spirit by wearing a flowing tie and corduroy trousers, by his obvious disdain of barbershops and laundries, by his talk which was mostly about sex, socialism and the new art, and by his general air of lassitude and disillusionment.