accidental, rather than intrinsic. In knowing, in the life of theory,
reason finds its own full manifestation; knowing for the sake of knowing
irrespective of any application is alone independent, or self-sufficing.
Hence only the education that makes for power to know as an end in
itself, without reference to the practice of even civic duties, is
truly liberal or free. 2. The Present Situation. If the Aristotelian
conception represented just Aristotle's personal view, it would be a
more or less interesting historical curiosity. It could be dismissed
as an illustration of the lack of sympathy or the amount of academic
pedantry which may coexist with extraordinary intellectual gifts.
But Aristotle simply described without confusion and without that
insincerity always attendant upon mental confusion, the life that was
before him. That the actual social situation has greatly changed since
his day there is no need to say. But in spite of these changes, in spite
of the abolition of legal serfdom, and the spread of democracy, with
the extension of science and of general education (in books, newspapers,
travel, and general intercourse as well as in schools), there remains
enough of a cleavage of society into a learned and an unlearned class,
a leisure and a laboring class, to make his point of view a most
enlightening one from which to criticize the separation between culture
and utility in present education. Behind the intellectual and abstract
distinction as it figures in pedagogical discussion, there looms a
social distinction between those whose pursuits involve a minimum of
self-directive thought and aesthetic appreciation, and those who are
concerned more directly with things of the intelligence and with the
control of the activities of others.

Aristotle was certainly permanently right when he said that "any
occupation or art or study deserves to be called mechanical if it
renders the body or soul or intellect of free persons unfit for the
exercise and practice of excellence." The force of the statement is
almost infinitely increased when we hold, as we nominally do at present,
that all persons, instead of a comparatively few, are free. For when the
mass of men and all women were regarded as unfree by the very nature
of their bodies and minds, there was neither intellectual confusion nor
moral hypocrisy in giving them only the training which fitted them
for mechanical skill, irrespective of its ulterior effect upon their