President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard College succumbed to those pressures during the later part of the nineteenth century. Eliot declared that we no longer know what constitutes a liberal arts education and accordingly ended its long history of training men in our traditions of liberty. Hugh faced similar pressures in his day but ably defended the Seven Liberal Arts as the foundation for all specialized training and Christian growth. His defense is based on his notion of philosophy and its role in bringing a man to maturity. For Hugh, philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom.
Philosophy is essentially Christian philosophy.
Hugh concedes that pagan philosophers were preeminent in their writings and influence and that they sought Wisdom, but not believing in Christ, they did not know the way. The ancient philosophers developing some of the arts, especially the Trivium and the Quadrivium, were but laborers upon an inferior truth, while Christians alone possessed Wisdom, the second person of the trinitarian Godhead. Only Christians could point the way, while profitably using the efforts of the ancients in this enterprise. But his immortal mind, illuminated by wisdom, beholds its own principle and recognizes how unfitting it is for it to seek anything outside itself when what is in itself can be enough for it. Philosophy then is not the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake, but it is the pursuit of Jesus Christ who is Wisdom itself.