ABSTRACT
The principles of Christian morality were the virtually unquestioned assumptions of most nineteenth-century college leaders. Moral philosophy, a course usually taught by the president of the college to all seniors, revealed most fundamentally the cohesive outlook of the "Christian college," which was seen as the outlook essential to good citizenship in a self-governing polity. The idea of liberal education as informing a "general calling" has a special meaning in the public life of a liberal democratic society. Perhaps the best way to grasp the essence of liberal education and its connection with civic education is to think of it not so much as a certain substance or content but as possessing three characteristics: it must be profound, it must be integrated, and it must be radical. Freedom—"negative" freedom from oppression as well as "positive" freedom to fulfill potential—is of course the ideal of liberal education, and we should have no hesitation in making it the touchstone of our public education.
