The object of what we commonly call education—that education in which man intervenes and which I shall distinguish as artificial education—is to make good these defects in nature’s methods; to prepare the child to receive nature’s education, neither incapably nor ignorantly, nor with wilful disobedience. In short, all artificial education ought to be an anticipation of natural education. And a liberal education is an artificial education—which has trained a man to appreciate and to seize upon the rewards which nature scatters with as free a hand as her penalties.
That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order.
Such a one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education; for he is, as completely as a man can be, in harmony with nature. He will make the best of her, and she of him.