Western Heritage: A Reader

From the Preface:

Many twenty-first-century students may be tempted to ask about the utility of an immersion in documents penned by men long dead and gone. The answer remains disarmingly simple. The highest things, the most noble ideals—the well-ordered soul, the furnished and disciplined mind—are valuable for their own sakes, not just for the alleged practicality they may have for getting a job or earning a dollar. In a world where so many see education as mere job training, too few tend to purposes for which we work and live. Too few see education as preparation for living worthy and virtuous lives in which flourishing can be measured in nonmaterial ways. Consequently, too many colleges and universities have become places for focusing on means, and not upon ends—and, as such, places where the confused and bewildered of the next generation acquire techniques and tools, but graduate having gained neither direction nor order to their souls. Such students become clever but not wise. They can make a dollar but have not the wisdom to spend it well. A liberal arts education is an education in those things that are worth studying for their own sake, because they are beautiful, good, and true, because they help make us wise and prepare us to live well. The Western Heritage is part of a liberal education. While the practical utility of the documents in this book may elude immediate detection, the inheritance they offer is beyond price.

MARK A. KALTHOFF
Chairman
Department of History
HILLSDALE COLLEGE
Hillsdale, Michigan