The Education of the Humanist Liberal Education

Man is an ideal forming animal, wrote historian w g. De bergh. He was stirred at every stage of his development by aspirations which transcend the level of his actual attainment. This man, at once independent and civilized, became the model of the humanist liberal education. Its rational, humanizing ideal traces its roots back to the rocky soil of attica and the straight ways of rome. It's in the light of such ideals determining our conception of human progress that we distinguish civilization from barbarism - or at least we used to.