Uses of a Liberal Education

-5- they remember and how often they have used the physics and chemistry, the political or economic theory, the astronomy or zoology, the knowledge of Beowulf or Paradise Lost that they picked up in college, the answer will be strangely hesitant. But what is to be said on the other side? Unfortunately the argument in defense of liberal studies is harder to state. But I will try to put it in the following steps. To begin with, I will ask you to examine with me what usefulness really means. When we have got clear about this, I will argue that the studies in question are enormously useful in three ways. First, they are useful directly because they satisfy some of the deepest wants in our nature. Secondly, they are useful indirectly through enabling us to borrow the best insights and standards of others. Thirdly, if taken seriously, they may permeate with their in- fluence all our thought and feeling and action. You are insisting that a liberal education prove its usefulness: just what do you mean by usefulness? You say that a thing is useful when it contributes to success, but how do you measure success? Is it success, for example, to make a great deal of money? That is certainly not the whole story, for money is not an end in itself; it too is prized because it is useful, that is, because it is a means to something beyond. Money in itself has no value. If you were on an island, cut finally off from civilization, and your pockets were bulging with bills of large denominations, what would the money be worth? A little, perhaps; it would save you the trouble of gathering leaves if you wanted to build a fire; but that would be about all. Money is literally not worth keeping; its only value is that we can get rid of it in exchange for other things. Well, what are these other things? A better house, perhaps, a better car