“There are two methods of education. One is the laboratory or experiment station method. When problems arise, they are sent there where the methods of exact science are applied, and the answer returned. The process is of no consequence, the answer alone is desired. This is the method of authority. Those who drink at that well thirst again.

“Life is not an exact science. In ethics, civics, economics, and politics all the facts are not known. For dealing with these questions, we need college of the liberal arts to which men go to learn the process for discovering truth. These institutions are established to teach men to think, to create within them a well of water everlasting. This is the justification of that democracy which is the foundation of our Republic.

“The paramount duty of those who are college bred is to apply the process for determining the truth to the problems of the present time. They ought to understand and comprehend the meaning of current events and recent history and so understanding help to interpret it wisely for the public benefit. There never was greater need than at the present time.

“The world has just experienced the six most eventful years in human history. Whole continents have broken with the past. Dynasties have ended. Empires have fallen. This has come not from the preconceived plan of man. That plan was for the aggrandisement of power, for earthly glory, for a place in the sun, for military supremacy. It came as the irresistible shock of war in which the artificial in human relationship was cast aside and the real prevailed. If despotism has not yet been banished from its rule over people at least it no longer wears a crown, it is no longer glorified anywhere but denied everywhere, and wherever practiced now masquerades under popular sovereignty. The ideal of the founders of this University [the University of Vermont] is beginning to grip the earth in its entirety.

“In this change that has marked all peoples America had not remained unchanged. Politically we appear to be the same. Our political institutions, resting on the firm foundation of the people, have not been shaken. They have been assailed, will be assailed both by the unthinking and the vicious. Against all such assaults this University stands as a firm defence. It was established that the inhabitants of this State might be free. But how be free, how come into the greatest liberty? Not by casting aside all restraint, but by the observance of all law, not by lack of self-control, but by an intense discipline, and finally never by ignorance but ever by a larger knowledge of the truth. There may be an involuntary servitude but never an involuntary liberty. It is ever purchased with a great price. It is not given or bestowed, it is acquired. The American people in their sovereignty must forever remember that to set free a King requires the ransom of a King.”

— Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge, June 28, 1920, Burlington, Vermont

May this 248th anniversary of Independence call from each of us a reflection on what authentic liberty is and what it costs to keep it. A Happy Fourth to all lovers of liberty everywhere!