Sometimes we are tempted to condemn the study of the classics as unpractical, and to turn instead to the modern languages and to the physical sciences.  Now, it is, of course, a fair question to ask what should and what should not be regarded as forming part of a liberal education, and I shall make no effort to decide the question here.  But it should be borne well in mind that one cannot decide it by determining what studies are practical in the sense of the word under discussion.

If we keep strictly to this sense, the modern languages are to the majority of Americans of little more practical value than are the Latin and Greek.  We scarcely need them except when we travel abroad, and when we do that we find that the concierge and the waiter use English with surprising fluency.  As for the sciences, those who expect to earn a living through a knowledge of them, seek, as a rule, that knowledge in a technical or professional school, and the rest of us can enjoy the fruit of their labors without sharing them.  It is a popular fallacy that because certain studies have a practical value to the world at large, they must necessarily have a practical value to every one, and can be recommended to the individual on that account.  It is worth while to sit down quietly and ask oneself how many of the bits of information acquired during the course of a liberal education are directly used in the carrying on of a given business or in the practice of a given profession.

Nevertheless, we all believe that liberal education is a good thing for the individual and for the race.  One must not too much restrict the meaning of the word “practical.”  A civilized state composed of men who know nothing save what has a direct bearing upon their especial work in life is an absurdity; it cannot exist.  There must be a good deal of general enlightenment and there must be a considerable number of individuals who have enjoyed a high measure of enlightenment.

This becomes clear if we consider the part played in the life of the state by the humblest tradesman.  If he is to be successful, he must be able to read, write, and keep his accounts, and make, let us say, shoes.  But when we have said this, we have summed him up as a workman, but not as a man, and he is also a man.  He may marry, and make a good or a bad husband, and a good or a bad father.  He stands in relations to his neighborhood, to the school, and to the church; and he is not without his influence.  He may be temperate or intemperate, frugal or extravagant, law-abiding or the reverse.  He has his share, and no small share, in the government of his city and of his state.  His influence is indeed far-reaching, and that it may be an influence for good, he is in need of all the intellectual and moral enlightenment that we can give him.  It is of the utmost practical utility to the state that he should know a vast number of things which have no direct bearing upon the making and mending of shoes.