John Wise, SJ, "Liberal Education: Three Facts of History Concerning the Liberal Arts" (1948)

[8] There are three facts which stand out from history, when one investigates the nature of the liberal arts. The first striking fact is that science is an historical and essential component, and a basic part of the liberal arts. To speak about a college of arts and sciences is the same thing as to speak about a college of the liberal arts. To speak about a liberal education is the same as to speak about education in the arts and sciences. Thus the humanities, humane studies, are only part of a liberal arts education; the other part consists in the quantitative studies, mathematics and the natural sciences.

That this contention is historically true is easily seen from the time of the Greeks when Aristotle wrote not only on poetry and rhetoric, and spoke definitively on laws of grammar and logic, but was also the father in many lines of nature study and of the study of the human body, nature's wonder. He pondered the physical world and universe, the soul and its thought and will, human society and ethical conduct, and the Supreme Being. Even Plato, more literary and idealistic than Aristotle, was not only a humanist but also a mathematician, as were many of his followers. The balance of the trivium and quadrivium, exemplifying moderation in all things, was often remarkable in Greece. In Rome, however, the balance fell off, and if Romanitas had science, it might not have perished; but with a Greek genius for the real observation of nature, cataloguing of fact, and venture on hypothesis, it would have ceased to be Romanitas. Its own genius was rule and law. This is bequeathed to the newborn Church.

The lack of science, therefore, in the early Middle Ages and before the Renaissance of the twelfth century, was not Christian but Roman. Christian vitality was as ready to assimilate Greek science fed to it by the Arabs as it was to make its own the Roman sense of order. This Renaissance of the twelfth century, its inherited and even creative science has been revealed with sufficient fullness by the work of Charles Homer Haskins, Lynn Thorndike, and Christopher Dawson. The sources of modern science are medieval as well as Greek, St. Thomas in particular contributing to empirical method by the place he assigns in knowledge to sense observation and material being. The more immediate genesis of modern science, which is not dealt with here, receives nevertheless the best commentary of its value and rapidity from the actual stage of scientific progress dazzling the eyes of the living.

Modern science is the modern subject of the quadrivium. Scientific knowledge depends less on history than does literature and philosophy. Boyle's law, that the volume of gas varies inversely with the pressure, does not need the personalized expression of Shakespeare's "coil of mortal care" to make it a law or to make it intelligible. 

Contrary to the "Great Books" system at St. John's, mathematics and science need not emphasize historical genesis, but can specialize in modern syntheses and experiment with to-day's apparatus. Laboratory work and mathematical problems make for accurate observation, orderly procedure, careful classification, and justified conclusion. These are benefits from the study of the sciences besides the knowledge of nature and vocational and professional preparation. Without the quadrivium, the liberal arts abandon their historical inclusion of both the arts and sciences; they become less qualitative when they cease to be quantitative, because they know less about God and man when they forget nature.

If it is understood that the quadrivium as well as the trivium is historically essential to the liberal arts, and that therefore the modern scientist can advocate a liberal education, and that a liberally educated man can and should advance the natural sciences, a second historical fact concerning the liberal arts can be noted. This fact concerns the difficult point of the relationship of mental training and character training. It can be said without hesitation that mental training is the immediate end of a liberal education. A liberal education aims primarily, as Cardinal Newman would teach us, at mental training, which means the ready ability of a vigorous mind as well as a balanced fund of knowledge. In other words, mental training does not merely mean a keen intellect but also 

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There must be something rottenly wrong with education itself. So many people have wonderful children and all the grown-up people are such duds. Chesterton

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The only dominating influence in the school and the college must be that of truth. Maritain

a content of truth, with a good grasp of essential reality, God, man and nature. The liberal arts include, therefore, science and nature study, and also the study of man in the humanities, literature and philosophy. That basic and liberal theology must underlie education in the trivium and the quadrivium goes without saying, for God is the creator of both man and nature, and the ultimate causality and finality of man and nature must be investigated. Now such an investigation is essentially theology.

But even with such an understanding of mental training as including both content, and the ability to use such content, the relationship to will training and character training is not yet fully clear. Seneca tells us that the liberal arts do not give virtue, but prepare the mind to receive virtue. They give good ideals and broad experience, as is evidenced in history and literature. But besides these good ideals, which the will is still free to resist, character training, the formation of good moral habits and the aid of divine grace must be considered.

The question of the relationship of a liberal education to character training, to the good of the whole man, his final destiny, is most profoundly treated in Cardinal Newman's essay on The Idea of a University. "Knowledge is an end in itself," but it is not man's end. Knowledge must be an instrument of virtue. The higher education goes, the closer must be the Church, because the benefits of a liberal education are the most excellent in the line of human achievement and yet are the most capable of perversion. To a liberal education must be added a moral education. That is why the Church founded universities. The great mother universities of the West are Christian and the idea of a university is Christian.

When once it is realized that the high attainment of liberal culture is the greatest in the line of human endeavor, it can readily be seen that it is important to realize the relationship of such mental culture to sanctity. Mental culture can exist with or without sanctity, as in St. Basil or in Julian the Apostate, who went to the same school, or in the many litterateurs and savants, whom Newman notes are more inclined to indifference in religion than to the practice of religion. This is because they make knowledge not only an immediate end in itself as fulfilling the needs of the intellect, but also an ultimate end in itself as fulfilling the needs of the whole man; whereas the whole man must not only know God but love Him. The relationship of liberal culture to sanctity is the most important point discussed by Newman in his Idea of a University and he most clearly shows that knowledge must be intended for the good of the whole man and that faith fulfills knowledge and does not frustrate it, and that sanctity must make knowledge real, and turn it into wisdom.

A third fact of history concerning the liberal arts is that the basically human idea of self activity is thoroughly Christian and is not a new discovery, as we might be led by some writers to believe. In confirmation of this statement, it will be helpful, perhaps, just to quote three passages from representatives of Christianity, bridging centuries of time. As for St. Augustine:

We are led to learning in two ways: by reason and by authority. Authority is first in time, reason is first in importance. For it is one thing to proceed in doing, and another to esteem in desire. And thus, though authority seems more healthful for the unlearned many, reason excels in the cultured . . . And those who are content with authority alone, and expend their efforts on good morals and holy desires, condemning the liberal arts or not being up to them, I do not see how they can be really happy among mortal men, though I believe with unshakable faith that they will be free and happy to the greatest extent in the next life, who have lived best here.

St. Augustine develops to almost embarassing [sic] length his explanation of what he means by the exercise of the mental abilities, "to exercise the soul and for the student to sharpen the keenness of his mental vision" by the self-activity of his own reason.

St. Thomas Aquinas compares the teaching and learning process to the work of a physician:

Just as a person may be cured in a twofold manner through the operation of nature alone or through nature with the aid of medicine, so there is a twofold manner of acquiring knowledge, the one when the natural reason of itself comes to a knowledge of the unknown, which is called discovery, the other when someone extrinsically gives aid to the natural reason, which is called instruction.

 Discovery is the higher process, since it requires more native genius, but instruction excels in that the teacher has the knowledge as a whole and explicitly, and "can lead to knowledge more quickly and easily than anyone can be led by himself," whereas the pupil "knows the principles of knowledge only in generality." The verbal and oral symbols of books and of teaching are, moreover, closer to the mind, as having already come from thought and reasoning, whereas the student's own labor would be endless without the work of other men. 

Knowledge is therefore inductive, psychological and maieutic, as well as deductive, logical and authoritative. In either case it must be applied and digested. The benefits of both types of knowledge would be endangered by over-emphasis on either. What the student discovers for himself will last longer because of a greater association of phantasms and experience. Even when the teacher has to take the lead, since the student cannot do all, the presentation should be clear, vivid and associated with the student's own work.

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A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. I shall not fret about the loam if somewhere in it a seed lies buried. The seed will drain the loam and the wheat will blaze. [Antoine de] St. Exupery

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It must never be forgotten that the subject of Christian education is man whole and entire, soul united to body in unity of nature, with all his faculties natural and supernatural . . . man, therefore, fallen from his original estate, but redeemed by Christ and restored to the supernatural condition of adopted son of God. Pius XI

In the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum, self-activity, as stated by a late Father General, is essential to the spirit and method of Jesuit teaching. This statement of Father Martin in 1893 only repeats the "exercise one's self," daily practice of speaking and writing, and the development of the talents, so often mentioned in the Ratio. This self-activity applies not only to knowledge, but also to virtue, for one must "learn along with letters the habits worthy of Christians."

It is interesting to approach the study of the liberal arts from a historical angle. The collective thinking of great men can be wrong, but it is not often wrong. When they tell us that the study of God, man and nature must be used for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, they speak true. They lead us to the most notably human activities, namely, those exercised and manifested in liberal culture.

Science is part of liberal culture, and grows with it. Character can be aided by liberal culture, when such culture is acquired by men of good will. But liberal culture is such a valuable weapon that one needs to be closer to God to use it right. Then his mental power exercises itself for the good of the human race, and the atomic age can dawn for human good.

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Source: John E. Wise, SJ, "Liberal Education: Three Facts of History Concerning the Liberal Arts," Georgetown University Alumni Magazine 1, no. 3 (Spring 1948): 8–10.