ABSTRACT
Nothing is more striking in recent discussions of liberal education than the widespread and seemingly spontaneous use of liberating as a synonym for liberal. The concrete significance of the foregoing generalities in locating the present problem of the liberal arts college is found in outstanding historic considerations. The theory that certain subjects are liberal because of something forever fixed in their own nature was formulated prior to the rise of scientific method. It is not possible to grasp and state the present dilemma of the liberal arts college, and of the function it should undertake in our society, except as they are placed and seen in the context of irreversible historic movements. Nothing can be sillier than attributing the problems of the contemporary liberal college in America to the activities of a number of misguided educationalists, instead of to the impact of social forces which have continually gained in force.
