deeper social truths and sounder political principles which have been worked out by patient and powerful intellects who have prized and sought the truth above all other things, trusting implicitly that better knowledge will at length yield the desirable fruits of better practice. This has been the policy of "The Popular Science Monthly." We are interested in politics, but only in that regeneration of politics which will make its pursuit more honorable, its objects more noble, and its influence upon society less corrupting and debasing, and more elevating and beneficent. We have frequently published articles animated by this spirit and purpose; and have been led to the foregoing remarks by a desire to call attention to the instructive and valuable article which opens the present number. We commend this discussion of the important but neglected subject of political ethics to the careful perusal of all who are interested in the solution of the most pressing political problems of the time.
PRESIDENT ELIOT ON LIBERAL EDUCATION.
The address of the President of Harvard University, entitled "What is a Liberal Education?" delivered in February, before the members of the Johns Hopkins University, and published in full in "The Century" magazine for June, is a contribution to the subject so able, advanced, and independent that it deserves to be carefully read by all who are concerned in higher educational reforms. The article has great and peculiar value, because it has been produced under the pressure of grave responsibility, and presents views which have been subjected to every critical test preparatory to carrying them out in the eminent institution of which the author is the distinguished head. It is easy to talk at random, and indulge in exaggerated statements, but we have here the cautious and measured conclusions of a wise educational policy to be reduced to actual practice. But caution here does not mean timidity. There are a firmness of tone and a boldness of treatment in this paper which show that the author appreciates the urgency of the situation, and has perfect confidence in the strength of his case. This address is therefore to be commended to all the friends of educational improvement as having the force, weight, and seriousness of an authoritative document, and for this reason we are glad to observe its appearance in a magazine of wide circulation and large influence, and we hope it may soon be separately issued and extensively distributed for effective use in the quiet campaign of collegiate reform. It is a fitting sequel and supplement to the Harvard address of Mr. Adams last year, which proved so efficient in arousing public attention to the deficient working of our American colleges, but it is a broader and more philosophical discussion of the defects and requirements of the higher education at the present time, and grapples with the wide question of there organization of the university curriculum, and the necessity of making the so-called liberal education more thoroughly liberal than the traditional system that has come down to us from the past.
President Eliot opens his argument with the remark that the degree of Bachelor of Arts, which is the customary evidence of a liberal education, needs to be defined anew, with an enlargement of its signification; and he shows, first, that, so far from being a settled, permanent, and unchangeable ideal for all time, as the devotees of the classics are so fond of maintaining, it has already undergone change after change with the progress of learning, so that the studies essential to the bachelor's degree, both in their subject-matter and in their disciplinary influence, have been radically different in the centuries that have succeeded after it was instituted. Even mathematics,
