ABSTRACT
Liberal education will then consist in studying with the proper care the great books which the greatest minds have left behind—a study in which the more experienced pupils assist the less experienced pupils, including the beginners. Liberal education is literate education of a certain kind: some sort of education in letters or through letters. Liberal education is the counterpoison to mass culture, to the corroding effects of mass culture, to its inherent tendency to produce nothing but "specialists without spirit or vision and voluptuaries without heart". Someone might say that the notion of liberal education is merely political, that it dogmatically assumes the goodness of modern democracy. Education to perfect gentle man ship, to human excellence, liberal education consists in reminding oneself of human excellence, of human greatness. Liberal education, which consists in the constant intercourse with the greatest minds, is training in the highest form of modesty, not to say of humility.
