Much more to the purpose is it to ask if we possess any clue
of our own which may guide us among these entanglements. And by way of
a beginning, let us ask ourselves--What is education? Above all things,
what is our ideal of a thoroughly liberal education?--of that education
which, if we could begin life again, we would give ourselves--of that
education which, if we could mould the fates to our own will, we would
give our children? Well, I know not what may be your conceptions upon
this matter, but I will tell you mine, and I hope I shall find that our
views are not very discrepant.
Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every one
of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game
of chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary
duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have
a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and
getting out of check? Do you not think that we should look with a
disapprobation amounting to scorn, upon the father who allowed his son,
or the state which allowed its members, to grow up without knowing a
pawn from a knight?
Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the fortune,
and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who
are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules
of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess.
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