In this essay, Strauss contends that liberal education is education in culture or toward culture, and that within the mass society of a democracy, liberal education is the mechanism of founding an aristocracy--of ascending to democracy as originally meant. He explains that liberal education consists of listening to conversations among the greatest minds, and not exclusively the greatest minds of the West. By becoming aware of the dignity of the mind, one realizes the true ground of the dignity of man and therewith the goodness of the world, which is the home of man because it is the home of the human mind.