Aristotle and ancient educational ideals

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Edited by NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER

/AKISTOTLE'

ANCIENT EDUCATIONAL IDEALS

BY

THOMAS DAVIDSON

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRTBI^ER'S SONS

1892

r

COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.

-ho

y^r

PEEFACE

In undertaking to treat of Aristotle as the ex-
pounder of ancient educational ideas, I might, with
Kapp's Aristoteles' Staatspaedagogik before me, have
made my task an easy one. I might simply have
presented in an orderly way and with a little com-
mentary, what is to be found on the subject of educa-
tion in his various works — Politics, Ethics, EhetoriCj
Poetics, etc. I had two reasons, however, for not
adopting this course: (1) that this work had been
done, better than I could do it, in the treatise referred
to, and (2) that a mere restatement of what Aristotle
says on education would hardly have shown his rela-
tion to ancient pedagogy as a whole. I therefore
judged it better, by tracing briefly the whole history
of Greek education up to Aristotle and down from
Aristotle, to show the past which conditioned his theo-
ries and the future which was conditioned by them.
Only thus, it seemed to me, could his teachings be
seen in their proper light. And I have found that this
method has many advantages, of which I may mention
one. It has enabled me to show the close connection
that existed at all times between Greek education
and Greek social and political life, and to present the

vi PREFACE

one as the reflection of the other. And this is no
small advantage, since it is just from its relation to
the whole of life that Greek education derives its
chief interest for us. We can never, indeed, return
to the purely political education of the Greeks ; they
themselves had to abandon that, and, since then,

A boundless hope has passed across the earth —

a hope which gives our education a meaning and a
scope far wider than any that the State aims at ; but
in these days, when the State and the institution
which embodies that hope are contending for the
right to educate, it cannot but aid us in settling their
respective claims, to follow the process by which they
came to have distinct claims at all, and to see just
what these mean. This process, the method which I
have followed has, I hope, enabled me, in some degree,
to bring into clearness. This, at all events, has been
one of my chief aims.

In treating of the details of Greek educational prac-
tice, I have been guided by a desire to present only,
or mainly, those which contribute to make up the
complete picture. For this reason I have omitted
all reference to the training for the Olympic and
other games, this (so it seems to me) being no essen-
tial part of the system.

It would have been easy for me to give my book a
learned appearance, by checkering its pages with refer-
ences to ancient authors, or quotations, in the original,
from them ; but this has seemed to me both unnecessary
and unprofitable in a work intended for the general
public. I have, therefore, preferred to place at the

PREFACE vii

heads of the different chapters, in English mostly,
such quotations as seemed to express, in the most
striking way, the spirit of the different periods and
theories of Greek education. Taken together, I be-i
lieve these quotations will be found to present a fairly,
definite outline of the whole subject.

In conclusion, I would say that, though I have used
a few modern works, such as those of Kapp and Gras-
berger, I have done so almost solely for the sake of
finding references. In regard to every point I believe
I have turned to the original sources. If, therefore,
my conclusions on certain points differ from those of
writers of note who have preceded me, I can only say
that I have tried to do my best with the original
materials before me. I am far from flattering my-
self that I have reached the truth in every case, and
shall be very grateful for corrections, in whatever
spirit they may be offered; but I trust that I have
been able to present in their essential features, the
"ancient ideals of education."

THOMAS DAVIDSON.

"Glenmore,"

Keene, Essex Co., N.Y.

October, 1891.

CONTE]^TS
BOOK I.

INTRODUCTORY.
CHAPTER I.

PAOB

Chakactek and Ideal of Greek Education ... 3

CHAPTER II.
Branches of Greek Education . c , . 6

CHAPTER III.
Conditions of Education 9

CHAPTER IV.
Subjects of Education 12

CHAPTER V.
Education as Influenced by Time, Place, and Cir- ^

CUMSTANCES 15

ix

X CONTENTS

CHAPTER VL

PAOB

Epochs in Greek Education 26

BOOK II.

THE HELLENIC PERIOD (B.C. 776-338).

Part I.
THE ''OLD EDUCATION'' (b.c. 776-480).

CHAPTER I.
Education for Work and Leisure 33

CHAPTER II.

.^k>LIAN OR ThEBAN EDUCATION 38

CHAPTER in.
Dorian or Spartan Education 41 '

CHAPTER IV.
Pythagoras 52

CHAPTER V.

Ionian or Athenian Education 60

(1) Family Education 64

CONTENTS xi

PAGE

(2) School Education 67

(a) Musical (and Literary) Education . 72

(/3) Gymnastics, or Bodily Training . . 77

(7) Dancing 82

(3) College Education 85

(4) University Education 90

Part II.
THE ''NEW EDUCATION'' (b.c. 480-338).

CHAPTER I.
Individualism and Philosophy ..... 93

CHAPTER II.
Xenophon 114

CHAPTER m.
Plato 133

BOOK III.

ARISTOTLE (B.C. 384-322).

CHAPTER I.
His Life and Works . . . . '. 153

UNIVERSITY

xii CONTENTS

CHAPTER n.

PAGK

His Philosophy 1^1

CHAPTER HL
His Theory of the State 166

CHAPTER IV.
His Pedagogical State 172

CHAPTER V.
Education dueing the first Seven Years . . . 184

CHAPTER VL
Education from Seven to Twenty-one . . . 188

CHAPTER VII.
Education after Twenty-one 200

BOOK IV.

THE HELLENISTIC PEBIOD (B.C. 338-A.D. 313).

CHAPTER I.
From Ethnic to Cosmopolitan Life .... 205

CONTENTS xiii

CHAPTER II.

PAGE

QUINTILIAN AND ElIETORICAL EDUCATION. . , . 214

CHAPTER III.
Plotinus and Philosophic Education . ^ . . 225

CHAPTER IV.
Conclusion . 231

APPENDIX.
The Seven Liberal Arts 239

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . .249

INDEX 253

Book I
INTRODUCTORY

ARISTOTLE

TJKIVERSITY

him a life of which all the parts, internal and external,
stood to each other in just proportion. Such propor-
tion was threefold; Jirst, between the diffej-gjit .p^-rts
of the individual human being ; second, between the
individual and his fellows in a social whole ; third,
between the human, as such, and the overruling divine,
The realization of this threefold harmony in the ii^di'

3

ERRATA.

Page 19, line 5 from below, insert 102. -
53, " - 6 « « « 133. ^

181, « 14 « « for "and" read "or." -

250, "11 « «« « "Watsno" read "Watson.

("DrNIVERSITT;

ARISTOTLE

I

CHAPTER I
CHARACTER AND IDEAL OF GREEK EDUCATION

Nothing in excess ! — Solon.

No citizen has a right to consider himself as belonging to him-
self ; but all ought to regard themselves as belonging to the State,
inasmuch as each is a part of the State ; and care for the part natu-
rally looks to care for the whole. — Aristotle.

Greek life, in all its manifestations, was dominated
by a single idea, and that an sesthetiaone. This idea,
which worked sometimes consciously, sometimes un-
consciously, was Proportion. The Greek term for
this (Logos) not only came to designate the incarnate
Word of Eeligion, but has also supplied many modern
languages with a name for the Science of Manifested
Eeason — Logic. To the Greek, indeed. Reason always
meant ratio, proportion ; and a rational life meant to
him a life of which all the parts, internal and external,
stood to each other in just proportion. Such propor-;
tion was threefold ; Jirst, between the different .pjarts ,
of the individual human being ; second, between the
individual and his fellows in a social whole ; thirdy
between the human, as such, and the overruling divine,
The realization of this threefold harmony in the iijdi'

3

4 ARISTOTLE

vidual was called by the Greeks Worth ('A/3€t>/, us-
ually, but incorrectly, rendered Virtue). There has
come down to us, from the pen of Aristotle, in whom
all that was implicit in Hellenism became explicit,
a portion of a paean addressed to this ideal. It may
be fitly inserted here, in a literal translation.

To Worth.

O Worth ! stem taskmistress of human kind.

Life's noblest prize :

O Virgin ! for thy beauty's sake

It is an envied lot in Hellas even to die,

And suffer toils devouring, unassuaged —

So well dost thou direct the spirit

To fruit immortal, better than gold

And parents and soft-eyed sleep.

For thy cause Jove-born Hercules and Leda's sons

Much underwent, by deeds

Thy power proclaiming.

For love of thee Achilles and Ajax to Hades' halls went down.

For thy dear beauty's sake Atameus' nursling too widowed the
glances of the sun.

Therefore, as one renowned for deeds and deathless, him the
Muses shall exalt,

The daughters of Memory, exalting so the glory of Stranger-
guarding Jove, and the honor of friendship firm.

With regard to this ideal, four things are especially
noteworthy ; first, that it took an exhaustive survey of
man's nature and relations ; second, that it called for
strong, persistent, heroic effort ; third, that it tended to
sink the individual in the social whole and the univer-
sal order ; fourth, that its aim was, on the whole, a
static perfection. The first two were merits; the
second two, demerits. The first merit prevented the

CHARACTER OF GREEK EDUCATION 5

Greeks from pursuing one-sided systems of education ;
the second, from trying to turn education into a means
of amusement. Aristotle says distinctly, "Education
ought certainly not to be turned into a means of
amusement ; for young people are not playing when
they are learning, since all learning is accompanied
with pain." The first demerit was prejudicial to indi-
vidual liberty, and therefore obstructive of the highest
human development ; the second encouraged Utopian
dreams, which, being always of static conditions, un-
disturbed by the toils and throes essential to progress,
tend to produce impatience of that slow advance where-
by alone man arrives at enduring results. To this
tendency we owe such works as Plato's Republic and
Xenophon's Education of Cyrus.

CHAPTER II

BRAIs^CHES OF GREEK EDUCATION

With thee the aged car-borne Peleus sent me on the day whereon
from Phthia to Agamemnon he sent thee, a mere boy, not yet ac-
quainted with mutual war or councils, in which men rise to distinc-
tion — for this end he sent me forth to teach thee all these things,
to be a speaker of words and a doer of deeds. — {Phoinix in) Homer.

Abeve all and by every means we provide that our citizens shall
have good souls and strong bodies. — Lucian.

Life is the original school — life, domestic and-
social. All other schools merely exercise functions*
delegated by the family and by society, and it is not*
until the latter has reached such a state of complication*
as to necessitate a division of labor that special schools-
exist. Among the Homeric Greeks we find no men-
tion of schools, and the only person recorded as having
had a tutor is Achilles, who was sent away from home
so early in life as to be deprived of that education
which he would naturally have received from his
father. In what that education consisted, we learn
from the first quotation at the head of this chapter.
It consisted in such training as would make the pupil
"a speaker of words and a doer of deeds " — a man
eloquent and persuasive in council, and brave and res-
olute on the field of battle. For these ends he required,
as Lucian says, a good soul and a strong body.

These expressions mark the two great divisions into
which Greek education at all periods fell — Mental
0

BRANCHES OF GREEK EDUCATION 7

Education and Physical Education — as well as
their original aims, viz. goodness (that is, bravery)
of soul and strength of body. As time went on,
these aims underwent considerable changes, and con-
sequently the means for attaining them considerable
modifications and extensions. Physical education
aimed more and more at beauty and grace, instead of
strength, while mental education, in its effort to extend
itself to all the powers of the mind, divided itself into
literary and musical education.

As we have seen, the Greeks aimed at developing
all the powers of the human being in due proportion
and harmony. But, in course of time, they discovered
that the human creature comes into the world with
his powers, not only undeveloped, but already dis-
ordered and inharmonious ; that not only do the germs
of manhood require to be carefully watched and tended,
but also that the ground in which they are to grow
must be cleared from an overgrowth of choking weeds,
before education can be undertaken with any hope of
success. This clearing process was called by the later
Greeks Katharsis, or Purgation, and played an ever-
increasing part in their pedagogical systems. It was
supposed to do for man's emotional nature what
Medicine undertook to do for his body. The means
employed were mainly musi^ and the kindred arts,
which the ancients believed to exert what we should
now call a daemonic effect upon the soul, drawing off
the exciting causes of disturbing passion, and leaving
it in complete possession of itself. It would hardly
be too much to say that the power to exert this purga-
tive influence on the soul ^g-J^arded by the ancients

(XJNIVi::RSIT^)

8 ARISTOTLE

as the chief function and end of the Fine Arts. Such
was certainly Aristotle's opinion.

When purgation and the twofold education of body
and mind had produced their perfect work, the result
was what the Greeks called Kalokagathia (KaXoKayaOuL)
that is, Fair-and-Goodness. Either half of this ideal
was named dperrj (ai-eti), Worth or Excellence. We
are expressly told by Aristotle (Categories, chap,
viii.) that the adjective to dperT^ is o-TrovSato? (spou-
daios), a word which we usually render into English
by " earnest.'' And we do so with reason ; for to the
Greek, Excellence or Worth meant, above all, earnest-
ness, genuineness, truthfulness, thoroughness, absence
of frivolity.

CHAPTEK III

CONDITIONS OF EDUCATION

Some hold that men become good by nature, others by training,
others by instruction. The part that is due to nature obviously does
not depend upon us, but is imparted through certain divine causes
to the truly fortunate. — Aristotle.

It is not merely begetting that makes the father, but also the im-
parting of a noble education. — John Chrysostom.

There are two sorts of education, the one divine, the other human.
The divine is great and strong and easy ; the human small and weak
and beset with many dangers and delusions. Nevertheless, the latter
must be added to the former, if a right result is to be reached. —
Dion Chrysostom.

The same thing that we are wont to assert regarding the arts and

sciences, may be asserted regarding moral worth, viz. that the

production of a completely just character demands three conditions

C'^s— nature, reason, and habit. By "reason " I mean instruction, by

/j" habit," training. . . . Nature without instruction is blind; in-

/ I struction without nature, helpless ; exercise (training) without both,

1^ aimless. — Plutarch.

r.

L

To the realization of their ideal in any individual
the Greeks conceived three conditions to be necessary,
(1) a noble nature, (2) persistent exercise or training
in right action, (3) careful instruction. If any one
of these was lacking, the highest result could not be
attained.

(1) To be well or nobly born was regarded by the
Greeks as one of the l>e^tg;^fts^;5^]fie gods. Aristotle
defines noble birth as y ancient^^ealth and worth,'^
and this fairly enough expresses the Greek view

9

10 ARISTOTLE

generally. Naturally enough, therefore, the Greek
in marrying looked above all things to the chances of
a worthy offspring. Indeed, it may be fairly said
that the purpose of the Greek in marriage was, not
so much to secure a helpmeet for himself as to find a
worthy mother for his children. In Greece, as every-
where else in the ancient world, marriage was looked
upon solely as an arrangement for the procreation
and rearing of offspring. The romantic, pathological
love-element, which plays so important a part in
modern match-making, was almost entirely absent
among the Greeks. What love there was, assumed
either the noble form of enthusiastic friendship or
the base one of free lust. In spite of this, and of
the fact that woman was regarded as a means and not
as an end, the relations between Greek husbands and
wives were very often such as to render the family
a school of virtue for the children. They were noble,
sweet, and strong, — all the more so, it should seem,
that they were based, not upon a delusive sentimen-
tality, but upon reason and a sense of reciprocal duty.
(2) The value of exercise, practice, habituation,
seems to have been far better understood by the an-
cients than by the moderns. Whatever a man has to
do, be it speaking, swimming, playing, or fighting, he
can learn only by doing it ; this was a universally ac-
cepted maxim. The model'n habit of trying to teach
languages and virtues by rules, not preceded by exten-
sive practice, would have seemed to the ancients as
absurd as the notion that a man could learn to swim
before going into the water. Practice first ; theory
afterwards: do the deed, and ye shall know of the

CONDITIONS OF EDUCATION 11

doctrine — so said ancient Wisdom, to which the notion
that children should not be called upon to perform
any act, or submit to any restriction, without having
the grounds thereof explained to them, would have
seemed the complete inversion of all scientific method.
It was by insisting upon a certain practice in children
on the ground of simple authority, that the ancients
sought to inculcate the virtues of reverence for expe-
rience and worth, and respect for law.

(3) The work begun by nature, and continued by
habit or exercise, was completed and crowned by in-
struction. This had, according to the Greek, two func-
tions, (a) to make action free, by making it rational,
(6) to make possible an advance to original action.
Nature and habit left men thralls, governed by in-
stincts and prescriptions ; instruction, revelation of
the grounds of action, set them free. Such freedom,
based on insight, was to the thinkers of Greece the
realization of manhood, or rather, of the divine in
man. "The truth shall make you free'' — no one
understood this better than they. Hence, with all
their steady insistence upon practice in education,
they never regarded it as the ultimate end, or as any
end at all, except when guided by insight, the fruit
of instruction. A practicality leading to no widening
of the spiritual horizon, to no freeing insight, was to
them illiberal, slavish, paltry — " banausic," they said,
— degrading both to body and soul.

'4/

D 1

<y

CHAPTER IV

SUBJECTS FOR EDUCATION

It is right that Greeks should rule over barbarians, but not bar-
barians over Greeks ; for those are slaves, but these are free men. —
Euripides.

Barbarian and slave are by nature the same. — Aristotle.

Nature endeavors to make the bodies of freemen and slaves
different ; the latter strong for necessary use, the former erect and
useless for such operations, but useful for political life. ... It
is evident, then, that by nature some men are free, others slaves,
and that, in the case of the latter, slavery is both beneficial and
just. — Id.

Instruction, though it plainly has power to direct and stimulate
the generous among the young ... is as plainly powerless to turn
the mass of men to nobility and goodness (Kalokagathia). For it
is not in their nature to be guided by reverence, but by fear, nor to
abstain from low things because they are disgraceful, but (only)
because they entail punishment. — Id.

In thinking of Greek education as furnishing a
possible model for us moderns, there is one point
which it is important to bear in mind : Qreek educar^
tion was intended only for the few, for the wealthy,
and well-born. Upon all others, upon slaves, barba-
rians, the working and trading classes, and generally
upon all persons spending their lives in pursuit of
wealth or any private ends whatsoever, it would have
seemed to be thrown away. Even well-born women
were generally excluded from most of its benefits.
The subjects of education were the sons of full citi-
12

SUBJECTS FOR EDUCATION 13

zens, themselves preparing to be full citizens, and to
exercise all the functions of such. The duties of such
persons were completely summed up under two heads,
duties to^the family and duties to the State, or, as
the Greeks said, oeconomic and political duties. The
free citizen not only acknowledged no other duties
besides these, but he looked down ux3on persons who
sought occupation in any other sphere. (Economy and
Politics, however, were very comprehensive terms.
The former included the three relations of husband to
wife, father to children,- and master to slaves and
property; the latter, three public functions, legisla-
tive, administrative, and judiciary. All occupations
not included under these six heads the free citizen
left to slaves or resident foreigners. Money-making,
in the modern sense, he despised, and, if he devoted
himself to art or philosophy, he did so only for the
benefit of the State. If he improved the patrimony
which was the condition of his free citizenship, he did
so, not by chaffering or money-lending, but by judi-
cious management, and by kindly, but firm, treatment
of his slaves. If he performed any great artistic ser-
vice to the State — for example, if he wrote a tragedy
for a State religious festival (and plays were never
written for any other purpose) — the only reward he
looked forward to was a crown of olive or laurel and
the respect of his fellow-citizens.

The Greeks divided mankind, in all the relations
of life, into two distinct classes, a governing and a
governed, and considered the former alone as the sub-
ject of education; the latter being a mere instrument
in its hands. The governing class required education

14 ARISTOTLE

in order that it might govern itself and the other class,
in accordance with reason and justice; that other, re-
ceiving its guidance from the governing class, required
no education, or only such as would enable it to obey.
It followed that the duty of the governing class was
to govern; of the governed, to obey. Only in this
correlation of duties did each class find its usefulness
and satisfaction. Any attempt to disturb or invert
this correlation was a wilful running in the teeth of
the laws of nature, a rebellion against the divine order
of things.

As husband, father, master in the family, and as
legislator, officer, judge in the State, each member of
the governing class found his proper range of activi-
ties ; and he did wrong, degrading himself to the level
of the serving class, if he sought any other. This
view, in a more or less conscious form, pervades the
whole ancient world, conditioning all its notions and
theories of education; and Paul the Apostle only
echoed it when he said to wives : " Wives, be in sub-
jection to your own husbands as to the Lord''; to
children : " Children, obey your parents in the Lord :
for this is right " ; and to slaves : " Slaves, be obedient
unto them that according to the flesh are your masters
with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as
.unto Christ."

CHAPTER V

EDUCATION AS INFLUENCED BY TIME, PLACE, AND
CIRCUMSTANCES

The peculiar character of each form of government is what
establishes it at the beginning and what usually preserves it. . . .
Since the whole State has but one end, it is plainly necfessary that
there should be one education for all the citizens. — Aristotle.

Education among the Greeks, as among every other
progressive people, varied with times and circum-
stances. The education of the Homeric Greeks was
not that of the Athenians in the days of Aristotle, nor
the latter the same as the education of the contem-
porary Spartans or Thebans. Moreover, the educa-
tion actually imparted was not the same as that
demanded or recommended by philosophers and writers
on pedagogics. It is true that the aim was always
the same; Worth, Excellence, Fair-and-Goodness
(aptrrij KaXoKayaBia) ; but this was differently conceived
and differently striven after at different times and in'
different places.

Among the Homeric Greeks, as we have seen, edu-
cation, being purely practical, aiming only at making
its subject " a speaker of words and a doer of deeds, "
was acquired in the actual intercourse and struggles
of life. The simple conditions of their existence
demanded no other education and, consequently, no
special educational institutions. These conditions, as

16

16 AEISTOTLE

described by Homer, though by no means barbarous,
are primitive. Nomadism has long been left behind
and the later village-communities have been mostly
merged in walled towns, generally situated at some
distance from the shore, on or near a hill, whose sum-
mit forms a citadel for refuge in cases of danger.
Even in the most advanced of these towns, however,
the type of civilization is still largely ^patriarchal.
The government is in the hands of chiefs or kings
(^acrtX^es) claiming to be born and bred of Jove, as,
indeed, in a sense, they were, since they ruled quite as
much by right of personal worth, which more than
anything is due to the grace of God, as by hereditary
title. Worth in those days consisted in physical
strength, courage, beauty, judgment, and power to
address an assembly, and any king proving deficient
in these qualities would soon have found his position
insecure, or been compelled to fortify it by lawless
tyranny. The functions devolving upon the king were
mainly three, those of judge, military commander, and
priest. The first required judgment and ready speech ;
the second, strength and intelligent courage ; the third,
personal beauty and dignity. Though the kings were
allowed to exercise great power, this was not irre-
sponsible or arbitrary. On the contrary, it was com-
patible with great public freedom in speech and action.
Slavery existed only to a limited extent and in a mild
form. All free heads of families, however poor, had
a right to attend the popular assembly, which the king
consulted on all important matters, and at which the
freest discussion w^as allowed. When the kings exer-
cised judicial power, they did so in accordance with

INFLUENCES ON EDUCATION 17

certain themistes or laws, held to have originated with
Zeus, and not according to their own caprice. As
there was little commerce in those days, the inhabi-
tants of the ancient cities, when not engaged in warfare,
devoted themselves chiefly to agriculture, cattle-rais-
ing, and the useful arts. In these even the kings
thought it no shame to engage. We find Paris help-
ing to build his own palace, Odysseus constructing his
own bed, Lycaon cutting wood to make chariot-rails,
and so on. Similarly, we find Helen and other prin-
cesses spinning and weaving, while Nausicaa, the
daughter of the Phaeacian king, washes the clothes of
the family.

In such a primitive society, unacquainted with
letters, the higher education found but few aspirants.
The only persons of scientific pretensions mentioned
by Homer are the physicians (who are likewise sur-
geons) and the soothsayers. The former are highly
appreciated, and are always chiefs. The soothsayers
are the exponents of divine omens to the community,
and occupy a kind of official position, like the Hebrew
prophets. No artists, strictly speaking, are men-
tioned by Homer, except the bard, and he is much
honored, as historian, teacher, and inspirer. We
find, indeed, that Achilles and Paris are proficients
in music; but such cases seem exceptional. Of arti-
sans, several are mentioned — the worker in wood,
the worker in horn and ivory, the potter (who uses the
wheel), and so on. The existence of others is implied
— the weaver, the mason, the metal-worker, etc.

If there were no special schools in the heroic age,
life was so lived as to be an excellent school. Then,

18 ARISTOTLE

as at all other times, it was extremely social, far more
so than our modern life. This was due chiefly to three
causes, (1) the smallness of the states, which made it
possible for every citizen to know, and to feel his soli-
darity with, every other, (2) the absence of titles and
formalities, which had not yet been introduced from
the East, (3) the fact that the people, especially the
men, spent the greater part of the day in the open air,
— in the streets and agora, — and so were continually
rubbing against each ^.ther. This sociality had much
to do with the shaping of the Greek character, the
salient elements of which are thus enumerated by
Zeller, the historian of Greek philosophy : " A strong
sense of freedom, combined with a rare susceptibility
to proportion, form, and order, a keen relish for com-
panionship in life and action, a social tendency which
compelled the individual to combine with others, to
submit to the general will, to follow the traditions of
his family and his community."

Between the simple social condition described by
Homer and that for which Aristotle wrote, there in-
tervened a period of at least six hundred years.
During that time many great changes took place in
the social and political life of the Greeks, demanding
corresponding changes in education. These changes
were due to several causes, (1) the natural human
tendency toward freedom, (2) the influence of foreign
nations, (3) the development of commerce, (4) the
introduction of letters, (5) the rise of philosophy, (6)
the Persian Wars. Though all these are closely in-
terwoven with each other, there can be no harm in
treating them separately.

INFLUENCES ON EDUCATION 19

(1) The tendency toward freedom, so essentially
characteristic of human nature, was especially so of
the nature of the Greeks. Among them it rapidly
manifested itself in an ordered series of political
forms, beginning with patriarchalism, and ending
variously in the various states and races. There is,
indeed, hardly a single form of political life that was
not realized among the Greeks at some time pr place.
It was this that made it possible for Aristotle to write
a work on Politics which, in the words of a recent
political writer, " has remained for two thousand years
one of the purest sources of political wisdom."

The varied and changeful political life of the Greeks
was in itself a great education. It made them aware
of the principles, political and ethical, upon which
society rests, and rendered necessary a faculty of clear
and ready expression, which reacted most favorably
upon their intellectual and aesthetic faculties. It was
in the school of practical politics that the Greeks ac-
quired their rhetoric; and Aristotle, in his treatise on
Poetry, tells us that, while " the older poets made their
characters talk like statesmen, the later ones made
theirs talk like rhetoricians." Not only, indeed, did
political life react upon the drama, but, in developing
rhetoric, it drew attention to language and led to the
sciences of grammar and logic, both of which were
thus called into existence by real social needs (see

p./^4)-

(2) Greece, lying, as it did, between three conti-
nents, and in the thoroughfare of the ancient nations,
could hardly fail to be visited by many different races,
or, considering its beauty and commercial advantages,

20 ARISTOTLE

to be coveted by tbem. From tbis followed two con-
sequences, (a) tbat tbe Greeks were a very mixed race,
(6) tbat tbey were, from tbe first and at all times, in
manifold contact witb foreign peoples. Tbat tbey
were a mixed race, is attested alike by tbeir language,
tbeir mytbology, and tbeir legends. Tbat tbey were
in close and continual communication witb foreign
peoples, is rendered evident by tbeir alpbabet, tbeir
art, and tbe direct statements of tbeir bistorians.
Altbougb it is true tbat tbe Greeks, especially after
tbe Persian Wars, regarded tbemselves as a superior
and cbosen people, calling all otbers " barbarians," and
considering tbem as fit only to be slaves, it is not tbe
less true tbat bardly one of all tbe arts and sciences
wbicb tbey ultimately carried to a bigb degree of per-
fection bad its origin in Greece proper. All appear
first in tbe colonies settled among "barbarians," — in
Egypt, Asia Minor, Tbrace, Crete, Sicily, or Italy.
Arcbitecture, sculpture, painting, poetry — epic, lyric,
dramatic — music, bistory, politics, pbilosopby, were
all borrowed, transformed, and, witb tbe exception
perbaps of tragedy and painting, carried to a bigb
degree of excellence in tbe colonies, before tbey were
transplanted to tbe motber-country. It is beyond any
doubt tbat even tbe Homeric legends are of "bar-
barian" origin, tbougb from wbat people tbey were
borrowed is uncertain. It was tbe plasticity and ver-
satility of tbeir cbaracter, due in part to tbeir mixed
blood, tbat, by enabling tbem to appropriate and as-
similate tbe arts and sciences of tbeir neigbbors,
raised tbe Greeks to a new plane of civilization and
made tbem tbe initiators of a new epocb in bistory,

INFLUENCES ON EDUCATION 21

the epocli of life according to reason. Sir Henry-
Sumner Maine says, "Except the blind forces of
Nature, nothing moves in this world which is not
Greek in its origin."

(3) It was chiefly through commerce that the arts
and sciences borrowed by the colonial Greeks found
their way into Greece proper. That foreign art-objects
were introduced into it at an early period, is rendered
certain by the recent discoveries at Mycense, Spata,
and other places, as well as by statements in the Ho-
meric poems. That these were followed later by
artists, bringing with them foreign art-processes and
appliances, is equally certain. The earliest sculptors
whose names are known to us, Dipoenis and Scyllis,
were natives of Crete, settled in Sicyon; and the
earliest poetic guild of which we have any mention
is that of the Homeridae in the island of Chios. But,
besides introducing art and artists into Greece, com-
merce tended to educate the Greeks in other ways. It
made them acquainted with foreign manners and lux-
uries, and forced them to learn the arts of navigation,
ship-building and exchange, which again rendered
necessary an acquaintance With arithmetic and the art
of writing. And this leads us to

(4) The Introduction of Letters. This event, the
date of which is uncertain, not only exercised a most
furthering influence on the arts and sciences, but gave
rise to a new branch of education. Letters were prob-
ably first used for diplomatic and trade purposes, then
for inscriptions, and last of all for the perpetuation of
literary productions. So much of a change did they
effect in Greek education that even in the best times

('

tjniversitT

22 ARISTOTLE

the whole of the literary and scientific education was
called simply "letters" (ypafifjuiTa). As late as the
time of Plato letters seem to have been considered a
part of Music, and to have been taught by the same
teacher as the latter; but Aristotle already distin-
guishes the two. It is extremely probable that the
introduction of letters was the immediate cause of
the establishment of schools for youth; for we find
no mention of them prior to that event.

(5) The introduction of letters was closely fol-
lowed by the rise of Philosophy, or the reflective spirit.
Up to about the year 600 b.c, the Greeks, like the
rest of the world, lived by habit, tradition, and pre-
scription, handed on, with little or no criticism, from
generation to generation. Their ideal world was
shaped by the works of Homer and Hesiod. " Hesiod
is the teacher of most," says Heraclitus. About the
date named, however, society having advanced to a
condition of organization which made possible a leisure
class, there begins to appear a new spirit, destined to
revolutionize, not only Greece, but the whole world.
Armed with a what ? a which ? a why ? and a wherefore ?
it no longer blindly accepts the world of nature and
man, but calls upon it to give an account of itself.
Science, philosophy, and art are the result.

At first the new spirit turns to nature with a what 9 ;
but, gradually discovering that the answer to this
brings no complete explanation of the world, it pro-
pounds its other questions. It thus arrives at a con-
sciousness of four distinguishable elements in the
constitution of things, — four causes (airta, aiVtat), as
they were termed, — (1) matter, (2) form, (3) efficiency,

INFLUENCES ON EDUCATION 23

(4) end or aim. At tlie same time, and by the same
process, it is forced to a recognition of the presence
of reason (Xoyo?) and intelligence (vov?) in the world,
since form, efficiency, and aim all presuppose both. It
is thus compelled to turn from nature to man, and
man's mind, as the highest known expression of rea-
son and intelligence, and to devote itself to the con-
sideration of spirit, as alone promising any true
explanation of the world. The process is a slow and
difficult one, and the history of it is the history of
Greek science, philosophy, and art.

Before the rise of philosophy, the teacher of the
people had been the rhapsode, or public reciter; after
that event he gradually gives place to the sophist
(o-o<^to-T7;s, one who makes wise), or, as he later with
more modesty calls himself, the philosopher (<^tXoo-o<^os,
lover of wisdom). The history of Greece for centuries
is, on its inner side, a history of the struggle between
what the rhapsode represents and what the philoso-
pher represents, between popular tradition and com-
mon sense on the one hand, and individual opinion and
philosophy on the other. The transition from the
first to the second of these mental conditions was ac-
complished for the world, once for all, by the Greeks,
and the turning-point in the process is marked by

(6) The Persian Wars (b.c. 490-479). The vic-
tories gained in these at Marathon, Salamis, and
Platseae, victories the most brilliant that history re-
cords, exerted a most powerful influence upon the
thought and life of the Greeks. The consciousness of
having, with their small numbers, over and over again,
both by land and by sea, discomfited and crushed the

24 ARISTOTLE

countless hosts of an empire which for generations had
threatened their peace and liberty, made them at once
feel the superiority of their own characters and civil
institutions to those of the Persians, and draw a clear
line of demarcation between Greek and barbarian.
From this point on, they felt themselves to be a chosen
people, a nation destined by the gods to rule all others.
" The soul of Greece had conquered the bulk of Persia."
Persia was bulk and body; Greece was soul and spirit.
This conviction appears at once in all the departments
of Greek life. In the sphere of art we may instance
the Promeiheia of ^schylus and the Parthenon. In
the former, what does the conflict between Zeus and
Prometheus mean but the conflict between Greek
spirituality, intellect, and freedom, on the one hand,
and barbarian materiality, instinct, and thraldom or
necessity, on the other? And what is the latter but
a matchless paean in stone to Divine Wisdom, as the
conqueror of brute force? In the sphere of thought,
we find Parmenides, Anaxagoras and, above all, Soc-
rates (born ten years after the second Persian War),
turning consciously to the study of spirit. " To be and
to think are the same thing, " says the first of these :
"All things were confused; then Mind came and re-
duced them to order," says the second; "Know thy-
self " is the chosen motto of the third. In the political
sphere we find the Athenians trying to make the State
an instrument of intelligence and virtue, and insisting
upon education as a means thereto. Other and less
desirable results followed from the Persian Wars ; but
these can be better stated and estimated in another
connection.

INFLUENCES ON EDUCATION 25

Such were the chief causes that contributed to
transform the simple patriarchal State of the Homeric
Greeks, with its purely practical education at home
and in the field, into the free polity of the Greeks of
the days of Miltiades, Themistocles, and ^schylus,
with its complicated institutions and manifold educa-
tion. It has seemed better to enumerate these causes
than to try to trace the steps of the transformation
itself. Indeed this would have been a hopeless task,
owing to the lack of historical data.

CHAPTER VI

EPOCHS IN GREEK EDUCATION

I

When they (our ancestors) began to enjoy leisure for thought, as
the result of easy circumstances, and to cherish more exalted ideas
with respect to worth, and especially when, in the period before and
after the Persian Wars, they came to entertain a high opinion of
themselves, on account of their achievements, they pursued all
kinds of education, making no distinction, but beating about gen-
erally. — Abistotle.

In treating of Greek education subsequent to the
introduction of letters and tlie establishment of schools,
we shall be obliged, in th^ interest of clearness, to
make three distinctions : —

(1) Between the educational systems of different
periods.

(2) Between the educational systems of different
peoples and states.

(3) Between the education actually imparted in the
various states, and that recommended by theorists or
philosophers.

In pursuance of the first, it will be convenient first
to distinguish two main periods, the Hellenic, and the
Hellenistic, and then to subdivide these into minor
periods.

I. The Hellenic Period (776-338 b.c). This in-
cludes, roughly speaking, the whole historic life of
free Greece, from the date of the first Olympiad to
26

EPOCHS IN GREEK EDUCATION 27

that of the absorption of Greece into the Macedonian
Empire. It naturally subdivides itself into two pe-
riods, (a) 776-450; (6) 450-338.

(a) That of the " Old Education, " authoritative and
puritanical, whose aim was the training of good citi-
zens, god-fearing, law-abiding, patriotic, and brave.

(b) That of the " New Education, " rationalistic and
"liberal," whose aim was the training of formidable
individuals, self-centred, law-despising, time-serving,
and cunning.

It is in the struggle between the two systems, and
in the practical triumph of the latter, that Greece
loses her moral fibre; so that her citizens, weakened
through sundering selfishness, fall an easy prey to
the foreign invader.

II. The Hellenistic Period (338 B.C.-313 a.d.).
This extends from the Battle of Chseronea, in which
Greece lost her independence, to the definitive tri-
umph of Christianity, which brought a new ideal and
a new spirit into life and education. It naturally
subdivides itself into two periods, (a) b.c. 338-146;
(6) B.C. 146-A.D. 313.

(a) The Macedonian Period, during which Mace-
donian influence prevailed, and Greek thought and
education, absorbing foreign, chiefly Oriental, ele-
ments, tended toward an encyclopaedic cosmopalitan-
ism. During this period, Alexandria is the centre of
Greek influence.

(6) The Roman Period, during which, as Horace
says, "Captive Greece took captive her rude con-
queror," and Rome became, alongside Alexandria, a
diffusive centre of Greek thought, art, and education.

28 ARISTOTLE

Between the two great periods, the Hellenic and the
Hellenistic, stands the man who draws up the testa-
ment of the former and outlines the programme of the
latter, the Macedonian Greek, Aristotle.

Our second distinction will lead us to treat sepa-
rately, in the Hellenic period, the educational system
of the three Greek races, (1) the ^olic, (2) the Doric,
(3) the Ionic, the first having its chief centre at Thebes,
the second at Sparta, the third at Athens. For an
account of the education of the first our data are but
meagre ; with the main features of Spartan and Athe-
nian education we are well acquainted. In education,
as in everything, Sparta was conservative, socialistic,
and aristocratic, while Athens tended to liberalism,
individualism, and democracy. Hence Sparta clung
desperately to the " Old Education, " and almost closed
her doors against art, letters, and philosophy, while
Athens, dragged into the "New Education," became
the home of all these. It must always be borne in
mind that, in favoring individualism and the " New
Education," Athens was abandoning the Hellenic
ideal, and paving the way for the cosmopolitanism of
the Hellenistic period. In this latter, we shall have
to distinguish between the educational systems of
Athens, Alexandria, and Rome.

Our third distinction is that between individual
theory and popular practice. In all epochs of their
history the Greek states produced men who strove to
realize in thought and imagination the ideal of their
people, and to exhibit it as an aim, an encouragement,
and an inspiration, in contrast with the imperfect
actual. In more than one case this ideal'modified the

EPOCHS IN GREEK EDUCATION 29

education of the following periods. Of course, such
theories did not arise until practice was compelled to
defend itself by producing sanctions, either in religion
or in reason, and it may perhaps be affirmed that the
aim of them all was to discover such sanctions for the
Greek ideal. Among the many educational theorists
of Greece^ there are six who especially deserve to be
considered: (1) Pythagoras, who in Southern Italy
sought to graft on the Doric ideal a half-mystical, half-
ethical theology, and a mathematical theory of the
physical world; (2) Xenophon, who sought to secure
the same ideal by connecting it with a monarchical
form of government ; (3) Plato, who sought to elevate
it, and find a sanction for it in his theory of super-
sensuous ideas; (4) Aristotle, who presented in all
its fulness the Hellenic ideal, and sought to find
sanctions for it in history, social well-being, and the
promise of a higher life ; (5) Quintilian, who, in Rome,
embodies the rhetorical or worldly education of the
Hellenistic period; and (6) Plotinus, who presents
an ideal of philosophical or other-worldly education,
and paves the way for the triumph of Christian dogma.

Book II
THE HELLENIC PERIOD (b.c. 776-338)

Part I

THE "OLD EDUCATION" (b.c. 776-480)

CHAPTEE I

EDUCATION FOR WORK AND FOR LEISURE

When we consider the different arts that have been discovered,
and distinguish between those which relate to the necessary condi-
tions of life and those which contribute to the free enjoyment of it
(Siaywyij) , we always consider the man who is acquainted with the
latter wiser than him who is acquainted with the former, for the
reason that the sciences of the latter have no reference to use.
Hence it was only when all the necessary conditions of life had
been attained that those arts were discovered which have no refer-
ence either to pleasure or to the common needs of life; and this
took place first in those countries where men enjoyed leisure. —
Aristotle.

The free life of God is such as are our brief best moments. — Id.

It is not fitting that the free enjoyment of life should be per-
mitted to boys or to young persons; for the crown of perfection
belongs not to the imperfect. — Id.

Obviously, the free enjoyment of life demands not only the noble
but also the pleasant ; for happiness consists of these too. — Id.

Among the Homeric Greeks, whose life was almost
entirely devoted to practical pursuits, education was
mainly practical, aiming to produce "a speaker of
words and a doer of deeds." As civilization advanced,
and higher political forms were evolved, certain classes

33

34 ARISTOTLE

of men found themselves blessed with leisure which
they were not inclined to devote to mere play. In
order to make a worthy use of this leisure, they re-
quired a certain training in those arts which were
regarded as befitting a free man. Education, accord-
ingly, in some states, widened its scope, to include
those accomplishments, which enable men to fill their
hours of freedom with refined and gracious enjoyment
— music and letters. Music, indeed, had been cul-
tivated long before, not only by professional bards,
but even by princes, like Achilles and Paris; this,
however, was for the sake of amusement and recrea-
tion rather than of the free enjoyment of life. It had
been regarded as a means, not as an end. We must
be careful, in our study of Greek life and education,
not to confound play and recreation, which are for the
sake of work, with the free enjoyment of life, which
is an end in itself, and to which all work is but a
means. "Enjoyment is the end." We shall see, as
we proceed, to what momentous results this distinc-
tion leads, how it governs not only all education but
all the institutions of life, and how it finally contrib-
utes to break up the whole civilization which it de-
termines. It may fairly be said that Greece perished
because she placed the end of life in individual aesthetic
enjoyment, possible only for a few and regarding only
the few.

In historic Greece, music came to be an essential
part of the education of every free man. Even free
women learnt it. Along with music went poetry, and
when this came to be written down, it was termed
"letters." As every free man came to be his own

EDUCATION FOR WORK AND FOR LEISURE 35

minstrel and his own rhapsode, the professional min-
strel and rhapsode disappeared, and the Homeric
poems even, in order to be preserved from oblivion,
were committed to writing by an enlightened tyrant
— Pisistratus.

The first portion of the Greek people that attained
a degree of civilization demanding an education for
hours of leisure, was the ^olian race, and particularly
the Asiatic portion of it. Accordingly we find that
all the earliest musicians and poets, didactic and lyric,
are J^olians — Hesiod, Terpander, Arion, Alcseus,
Sappho, Pittacus, etc. Lesbos seems to have taken
the lead, in this "higher education." The last five
names all belong to that island, which produced also
the earliest Greek historian and prose-writer — Hel-
lanicus. But the ^olians, though earliest in the
field, were soon outstripped by the other two races, the
Doric and the Ionic, ^olian education and culture
never advanced beyond music and lyric poetry. It
knew no drama, science, or philosophy.

The ^olians were followed, almost simultaneously,
by the Dorians and lonians, who pursued two widely
divergent directions. The former borrowed the lyric
education and culture of the ^Eolians, and produced
several lyric poets of distinguished merit — Tyrtaeus,
Alcman, Ibycus, Stesichorus : nay, they even advanced
far enough to take the first steps in science, philoso-
phy, and dramatic poetry. Pythagoras, Epicharmus,
Sophron, Xenarchus, and Susarion were all Dorians.
But the progress of the race was retarded and finally
checked^ by rigid political institutions of a socialistic
character, which, by suppressing individual initiative,
reduced the whole to immobility.

36 ARISTOTLE

The lonians, on the contrary, borrowing freely from
both ^olians and Dorians, and evolving ever freer and
freer institutions, carried education and culture to a
point which has never been passed, and rarely, if ever,
reached, in the history of our race. And when they
ceased to grow, and decay set in, this was due to ex-
actly the opposite cause to that which stunted them
among the Dorians; namely, to excessive individual-
ism, misnamed liberty. Individualism ruined Athens.

Although education assumed different forms among
different portions of the Greek race, there are certain
features that seem to have been common to all these
forms during the epoch of the " Old Education." Two
of these deserve attention.

First. Education was everywhere a branch of state-
craft, and the State itself was only the highest educa-
tional institution. This was equally true whether the
schools were public, as at Sparta, or private, as at
Athens. Everywhere citizenship was a degree, con-
ferred only upon sons of free citizens, after a satis-
factory examination (SoKt/Aao-ta) .

Second. The stages or grades of education were
everywhere the same, although their limits were not
everywhere marked by the same number of years.
The first, extending usually from birth to the end of
the seventh year, was that of home education; the
second, extending from the beginning of the eighth
year to the end of the sixteenth or, perhaps oftener,
the eighteenth year, was that of school education ; the
third, extending from the beginning of the seventeenth
or nineteenth year to the end of the twentieth (in
Sparta of the thirtieth), was that of college education,

EDUCATION FOR WORK AND FOR LEISURE 37

or education for the duties of citizenship ; the fourth,
including the remainder of life, was that of university-
education, or education through the State, which then
was the only u:iiversity. At the beginning of the third
period, the young men took their first State examina-
tion, and if they passed it successfully, they received
the degree of Cadet or Citizen-novice (ecfyrj/Sos) ; but it
was only at the beginning of the fourth period, and
after they had passed a second examination (SoKt/mo-ta
CIS avSpas:), that they received the degree of Man and
Citizen and were permitted to exercise all the func-
tions of freemen. The State then became, in a very
real sense, their Alma Mater.

In most states, this graded education fell only to the
lot of males, the education of females stopping short
with the first grade, the family, which was regarded
as their only sphere. It was otherwise at Sparta,
Teos, and apparently among the ^olians generally.
As a consequence it is only among the ^olians and
Dorians that any poetesses of note appear — Sappho,
Corinna, Telesilla, etc. Although, however, woman's
sphere was the family, and she was considered to have
done her duty when she worthily filled the place of
wife, mother, and mistress, there was nothing to pre-
vent her from acquiring the higher education, if she
chose to do so. That she did not often so choose,
seems true ; still there are examples of learned women
even among the Athenians. The daughter of Thucyd-
ides is said to have continued his history after his
death, and, whether the statement be true or not, the
fact that it was made shows that the ability to write
history was not regarded as impossible or surprising
in a woman.

CHAPTER II

^OLIAN OR THEBAN EDUCATION

Hesiod is the teacher of most. — Heraclitus.

When thou art dead, thou shalt lie in the earth.

Not even the memory of thee shall be

Thenceforward nor forever ; for thou hast

No share in the Pierian roses ; but

Ev'n in the halls of Hades thou shalt flit,

A frightened shadow, with the shadowy dead.

— Sappho {to an uneducated icoman).

What rustic hoyden ever charms the soul.

That round her ankles cannot kilt her'coats? — 7d.

The ^olians appear to have been the earliest of
the Greek races to make any considerable advance in
culture. Their claim to Homer can hardly be sus-
tained; but they certainly produced Hesiod, most of
the greater lyric poets and poetesses, and the first
historian. Yov a time they bade fair to lead the cul-
ture of Greece. But the promise was not fulfilled.
During the palmy period of Greek history, they were
not only the most uncultured and uncouth of the
Greeks, but they even prided themselves upon their
boorishness of speech and manner,, and derided cul-
ture. In the glorious struggle in which Greece main-
tained the cause of culture and freedom against Persia,
Thebes, then the chief centre of ^Eolianism, sided with
the barbarian, as, indeed, was natural.
38

JEOLIAN OR THEBAN EDUCATION 39

Theban education was, of course, a reflex of the
character of the Theban and, indeed, of the Boeotian,
people. Its main divisions were those of Greek edu-
cation generally, — Gymnastics and Music ; but the
former was learnt solely for athletic purposes, and
the latter mainly for use at banquets and drinking-
bouts, in which the Boeotians found their chief delight.
Letters were studied as little as at Sparta (see p. 47),
and the language of the people remained harsh and
unmusical. Of higher education there was hardly a
trace. The sophists passed Boeotia by. Even Pindar,
who was by birth a Theban, and a sincerely patriotic
one, sought and found recognition anywhere rather
than among his own people. He did not even write
in their dialect.

The reason for this backwardness on the part of the
Boeotian ^olians lay in the fact that they lived, as a
conquering race, in the midst of a people superior to
them in every respect save strength, and could main-
tain their ascendency only by brute force. When this
failed, and the conquered race, which had never for-
gotten Cadmus and its ancient traditions, came to the
front, education and culture found their way even to
Thebes. It was due to this change in political con-
ditions that a Pindar could arise, and it was doubtless
the demand for culture consequent thereupon that
induced certain members of the scattered Pythagorean
school (see p. 54) to seek refuge in Thebes and there
devote themselves to teaching. Among these were
Philolaus ^ and Lysis, tlie latter of whom was proba-

1 It is worth while to note that it was a passage from Philolaus
that suggested to Copernicus the revolution otJii» earth round a
centre. /'^'W^^^i^'^' '^>'">

V OF * .

40 ARISTOTLE

bly tlie author of the famous " Golden Words " (see
p. 57). But he has a better claim to fame than this;
for he was the teacher of the bravest and most lovable
man that Greece ever produced — Epaminondas.

If any enthusiastic believer in the power of educa-
tion desire to fortify his cause by means of a brilliant
example, he will find none superior to Epaminondas ;
for there can hardly be any question that it was the
earnest, systematic, religious, and moral Pythagorean
training which he received from the aged Lysis, whom
he treated as a father, that made him what he was,
and enabled him to do what he did, — which was
nothing less than to place Thebes at the head of
Greece. Thebes rose and fell with Epaminondas. But
that was not all. It was the example of Epaminondas
that kindled the ambition of Philip of Macedon, who
was educated under his eye, and of his far more
famous son, Alexander, who made all Greece a prov-
ince of his empire. Pythagoras, Lysis, Epaminondas,
Philip, Alexander — in five brief generations an ear-
nest teacher conquers a world !

From the time of Epaminondas on, Thebes followed
the ordinary course of Greek education.

CHAPTEK, III

DORIAN OR SPARTAN EDUCATION

\^y Go, tell at Sparta, thou that passest by,
That here, obedient to her laws, we lie.

— SiMONiDES {Epitaph on the Three Hundred
who fell at Thermopylx) .

This is a matter for which the Lacedaemonians deserve appro-
bation : they are extremely solicitous about the education of their
youth and make it a public function. — Aristotle.

The Lacedaemonians impart to their children the look of wild
beasts, through the severity of the exercises to which they subject
them, their notion being that such training is especially calculated
to heighten courage. — Id.

These are so far behind in education and philosophy that they do
not learn even letters. — Isocrates.

Old Men. We were once strong men (youths).

Men. And we are ; if you will, behold.

Boys. And we shall he far superior. — Spartan Choric Anthem.

They asked no clarion's voice to fire

Their souls with an impulse high :
But the Dorian reed and the Spartan lyre

For the sons of liberty !
So moved they calmly to their field.

Thence never to return.
Save bearing back the Spartan shield.

Or on it proudly borne ! — Hbmans.

There was a law that the cadets should present themselves naked
in public before the ephors every ten days; and, if they were well
knit and strong, and looked as if they had been carved and ham-
mered into shape by gymnastics, they were praised ; but if their
limbs showed any flabbiness or softness, any little swelling or sus-

41

42 ARISTOTLE

picion of adipose matter due to laziness, they were flogged and
justiced there and then. The ephors, moreover, subjected their
clothing every day to a strict examination, to see that everything
was up to the mark. No cooks were permitted in Lacedsemon but
flesh-cooks. A cook who knew anything else was driven out of
Sparta, as physic for invalids. — ^lian.

Every rational system of education is determined
by some aim or ideal more or less consciously set up.
That of the Dorians, and particularly of the Spartans,
may be expressed in one word — Strexgth, which, in
the individual, took the form of physical, endurance,
in the State, that of self-sufficiency (avTap/ceta). A
self-sufficient State, furnishing a field for all the
activities and aspirations of all its citizens, and
demanding their strongest and most devoted exertions
— such is the Dorian ideal. It is easy to see what
virtues Dorian education would seek to develop —
physical strength, bravery, and obedience to the laws
of the State. Among the, Dorians the human being
is entirely absorbed in the citizen. The State is all
in all.

The Dorian ideal realized itself chiefly in two places,
Crete and Sparta. Both these were repeatedly held
up in ancient times as models of well-governed states,
and even Plato puts the substance of his Laws into
the mouth of a Cretan.

About the details of Cretan education we are but
poorly informed. Two things, however, we know:
(1) that Lycurgus, the reputed founder of Spartan
education, was held to have drawn many of his ideas
from Crete, and (2) that the final result of Cretan
education — and the same is true of all education that
merges the man in the citizen — was, in spite of its

DORIAN OR SPARTAN EDUCATION 43

strictness, demoralizing. The character of the people
was summed up by their poet Epimenides, a contem-
porary of Solon's, in a famous line quoted by St. Paul,
"The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy
bellies."

With regard to Spartan education our information
is much greater, and we may therefore select it as the
type of Dorian education generally.

The Peloponnesian Dorians having, through contact
with the more civilized peoples whom they conquered,
lost much of that rigorous discipline and unquestion-
ing loyalty which made them formidable, were, in the
ninth century e.g., becoming disorganized, so that in
two of the Dorian states they were assimilated by
the native population, the Argives and the Messe-
nians. The same process was rapidly going on in the
third state, Lacedsemon, when Lycurgus, fired with
patriotic zeal, resolved to put an end to it, by restor-
ing among his people the old Dorian military disci-
pline. To prepare himself for this task, he visited
Crete and studied its institutions. On his return he
persuaded his countrymen to submit to a " Constitu-
tion," which ever afterwards went by his name. This
constitution included a scheme of education, whose
aim was a thorough training of the whole of the free
citizens, both male and female, (1) in physical endur-
ance, and (2) in complete subordination to the State.
The former was sought to be imparted by means of a
rigorous and often cruel, system of gymnastics; the
latter, through choric music and dancing, including
military drill. Spartan education, therefore, was
confined to two branches, Gymnastics and Music.

44 ARISTOTLE

Instruction in letters was confined to tlie merest ele-
ments. Sparta accordingly never produced a poet,
an historian, an artist, or a philosopher of any note.
Even the arrangers of her choruses were foreigners
— Tyrtseus, Terpander, Arion, Alcman, Thaletas,
Stesichorus.

As Spartan education was nothing more or less than
a training for Spartan citizenship, we must preface
our account of it by a few words on the Spartan State.

The government of Sparta was in the hands of a
closed aristocracy, whose sole_aim was the mainte-
nance of its own supremacy, as against (1) foreign
enemies, (2) Perioikoiy or disfranchised native citizens,
(3) Helots, or native serfs. To secure this, it formed
itself into a standing army, with a strict military
organization. Sparta, its one abode, was a camp; all
free inhabitants were soldiers. Though they were
compelled to marry, the city contained no homes.
The men and, from the close of their seventh year,
the boys, lived in barracks and ate at public tables
(Pliiditia). The women had but one recognized func-
tion, that of furnishing the State with citizens, and
were educated solely with a view to this. No other
virtue was expected of them. Aristotle tells us that
"they lived in every kind of profligacy and in luxury."
Polyandry was common, and, when a woman lost all
her husbands, she was often compelled to enter into
relations with slaves, in order that she might not fail
in her political duty.

Among a people organized on the basis of brute
force, it were vain to look for any of the finer traits
of human nature — gentleness, tenderness, sympathy,

DORIAN OR SPARTAN EDUCATION 45

pity, mercy. The mercilessness and cruelty of the
Spartans were proverbial. Perioikoi and Helots incur-
ring the displeasure or suspicion of the authorities
were secretly put to death, without even the form of
a trial. A striking instance of such cruelty is recorded
by Thucydides. The facts are thus stated by Grote
{History of Greece, vol. ii, pp. 376-7) : '' It was in
the eighth year of the Peloponnesian War, after the
Helots had been called upon for signal military efforts
in various ways, . . . that the ephors felt especially
apprehensive of an outbreak. Anxious to single out
the most forward and daring Helots, as men from
whom they had most to dread, they issued proclama-
tion that every member of that class who had rendered
distinguished services should make his claim known
at Sparta, promising liberty to the most deserving.
A large number of Helots came forward to claim the
boon: not less than two thousand of them were
approved, formally manumitted, and led in solemn
procession round the temples, with garlands on their
heads, as an inauguration to their coming life of free-
dom. But the treacherous garland only marked them
out as victims for sacrifice : every man of them forth-
with disappeared ; the manner of th^ir death was an
untold mystery."

Spartan education was entirely conducted by the
State, at the expense of the State, and for the ends of
the State. It differed in this respect from nearly
every other system of Greek education. It was divided
into four periods, corresponding respectively to child-
hood, boyhood, youth, and manhood.

(a) Childhood. — As soon as the Spartan child

46 ARISTOTLE

came into the world, the State, through officers ap-
pointed for that purpose, sent to examine it. If it
seemed vigorous, and showed no bodily defect, it was
permitted to live, and forthwith adopted by the State ;
otherwise it was carried to the mountains and thrown
over a precipice. The children accepted by the State
were for the next seven years left in charge of their
mothers, but, doubtless, still under State surveillance.
Just how they were trained during these years, we
do not know. We can only guess that they under-
went very much the same process as other Greek chil-
dren, any difference being in the direction of rigor.
As the details of Greek education generally will be
dealt with under the head of Athens, they may be
omitted here.

(b) Boyhood. — On completing his seventh year,
the Spartan boy was transferred from his mother's
house and care to a public barracks and the direct
tuition of the State. Although the boys were in charge
of a special officer (7rai8ovo/xos), who divided them into
squads and companies, and arranged their exercises
for them, they were nevertheless taught to regard
every grown man as a teacher, and every such man
was expected to correct them promptly and rigorously,
whenever he saw them doing wrong. At the same
time, every boy was expected to form an intimate con-
nection with some one man, who then, to a large extent,
became responsible for his conduct; and, though the
choice in this matter rested with the parties concerned,
it was considered a disgrace in a man, no less than in
a boy, to be without such connection. Though this
arrangement, it is said, often led to lamentable abuses,

DORIAN OR SPARTAN EDUCATION 47

there can be no doubt that it admirably served the
purposes of Sparta. It furnished eveny boy with a
tutor, who, under the circumstances, 'could hardly fail
to treat him kindly, and who was interested in making
him surpass all other boys in courage and endurance.
This friendly influence of teacher on pupil was some-
thing in which the Greeks at all times strongly be-
lieved, and which formed an important force in all
their education. In Sparta, as in Crete and Thebes,
At was legally recognized. One of the duties of Spar-
tan " inspirer" (ela-n-vrjXa^ or cia-irvrjXo^) , as he was
called, was to teach his young friend (dtra?) to demean
himself properly on all occasions, and to hold his
tongue except when he had something very important
to say. In this way it was that the young Spartans
received their moral education, and acquired that
effective brevity of speech which to this day we call
"laconic."

The formal education of Spartan boys consisted
mainly of gymnastics, music, choric dancing, and
larceny. Their literary education was confined to a
little reading, writing, and finger-arithmetic; every-
thing beyond this was proscribed. And the reasons
for this proscription are not difficult to discover.
Sparta staked everything upon her political strength,
and this involved two things, (1) equality among her
free citizens, and (2) absolute devotion on their part
to her interest, both of which the higher education
would have rendered impossible. Education estab-
lishes among men distinctions of worth quite other
than military, and gives them individual interests
distinct from those of the State. It was the same

48 ARISTOTLE

reason that induced Rome, during the best period of
her history, to exclude her citizens from all higher
education, which is essentially individual and cosmo-
politan.

The education of the Spartan boys was conducted
mostly in the open air and in public, so that they were
continually exposed to the cheers or scoffs of critical
spectators, to whom their performances were a con-
tinual amusement of the nature of a cock-fight.
Whether the different " inspirers " betted on their own
boys may be doubtful; but they certainly used every
effort to make them win in any and every contest, and
the " inspirer " of a " winning " boy was an envied man.
The result was that many boys lost their lives amid
cheers, rather than incur the disgrace of being beaten.
Inasmuch as the sole purpose of gymnastics was
strength and endurance; of dancing, order; and of
music, martial inspiration, it is easy to see what forms
these studies necessarily assumed ; and we need only
stop to remark that Dorian music received the unqual-
ified approbation of all the great educational writers
of antiquity, — even of Aristotle, who had only words
of condemnation for Spartan gymnastics.

There was only one branch of Spartan school-educa-
tion that was not conducted in public, and that was
larceny. The purpose of this curious discipline was
to enable its subjects to act, on occasion, as detectives
and assassins among the ever discontented and rebel-
lious Helots. How successful it was, may be judged
from the incident recorded on page 45. Larceny, when
successfully carried out under difficult circumstances,
was applauded; when discovered, it was severely pun-

DORIAN OR SPARTAN EDUCATION 49

ished. A story is told of a boy who, rather than be-
tray himself, allowed a stolen fox, concealed under
his clothes, to eat out his entrails.

In one respect Spartan education may claim supe-
riority over that of most other Greek states : it was
not confined to one sex. Spartan girls, though appar-
ently permitted to live at home, were subjected to a
course of training differing from that of their brothers
only in being less severe. They had their own exer-
cise-grounds, on which they learnt to leap, run, cast
the javelin, throw the discus, play ball, wrestle, dance,
and sing; and there is good evidence to show that their
exercises had an admirable effect upon their physical
constitution. That the breezy daughters of Sparta
were handsomer and more attractive than the hot-
house maidens of Athens, is a well-attested fact. Many
Spartan women continued their athletic and musical
exercises into ripe womanhood, learning even to ride
spirited horses and drive chariots. If we may believe
Aristotle, however, the effect of all this training upon
their moral nature was anything but desirable. They
were neither virtuous nor brave.

(c) Youth. — About the age of eighteen, Spartan
boys passed into the class of epheboi, or cadets, and
began their professional training for war. This was
their business for the next twelve years, and no light
business it was. For the first two years they were
called melleirenes, and devoted themselves to learning
the use of arms, and to light skirmishing. They were
under the charge of special officers called hideoi, but
had to undergo a rigid examination before the ephors
every ten days (see p. 41). Their endurance was put

50 ARISTOTLE

to severe tests. Speaking of the altar of Artemis
Orthia, Pausanias says: "An oracle commanded the
people to imbrue the altar with, human blood, and
hence arose the custom of sacrificing on it a man
chosen by lot. Lycurgus did away with this practice,
and ordained that, instead, the cadets should be
scourged before the altar, and thus the altar is covered
with blood. While this is going on, a priestess stands
by, holding, in her arms the wooden image (of Arte-
mis). This image, being small, is, under ordinary
circumstances, light; but, if at any time the scourgers
deal too lightly with any youth, on account of his
beauty or his rank, then the image becomes so heavy
that the priestess cannot support it; whereupon she
reproves the scourgers, and declares that she is bur-
dened on their account. Thus the image that came
from the sacrifices in the Crimea has always con-
tinued to enjoy human blood." This Artemis appears,
with a bundle of twigs in her arm, next to Ares, among
the Spartan divinities, on the frieze of the Parthe-
non. At twenty years of age, the young men became
eirenes, and entered upon a course of study closely
resembling actual warfare. They lived on the coarsest
food, slept on reeds, and rarely bathed or walked.
They exercised themselves in heavy arms, in shooting,
riding, swimming, ball-playing, and in conflicts of the
most brutal kind. They took part in complicated and
exhausting dances, the most famous of which was the
Pyrrhic, danced under arms. They manned fortresses,
assassinated Helots, and, in cases of need, even took
the field against an enemy.

(d) Manhood. — At the age of thirty, being sup-

DORIAN OR SPARTAN EDUCATION 51

posed to have reached their majority, they fell into
the ranks of full citizens, and took their share in all
political functions. They were compelled to marry,
but were allowed to visit their wives only rarely and
by stealth. They sometimes had two or three chil-
dren before they had ever seen their wives by day-
light. When not engaged in actual war, they spent
much of their time in watching the exercises of their
juniors, and the rest in hunting wild boars and similar
game in the mountains. Like Xenophon, they thought
hunting the nearest approach to war.

Such was the education that Sparta gave her sons.
That it produced strong warriors and patriotic citizens,
there can be no doubt. But that is all : it produced
no men. It was greatly admired by men like Xeno-
phon and Plato, who were sick of Athenian democ-
racy; but Aristotle estimated it at its true worth.
He says: "As long as the Laconians were the only
people who devoted themselves to violent exercises,
they were superior to all others; but now they are
inferior even in gymnastic contests and in war. Their
former superiority, indeed, was not due to their train-
ing their young men in this way, but to the fact that
they alone did so." And even Xenophon, at the end
of a long panegyric on the Spartan constitution, is
obliged to admit that already in his time it has fallen
from its old worth into feebleness and corruption, and
this in spite of the fact that he had his own sons edu-
cated at Sparta. When Sparta fell before the heroic
and cultured Epaminondas, she fell unpitied, leaving
to the world little or nothing but a warning example.

I

CHAPTER IV

PYTHAGORAS
Virtue and health and all good and God are a harmony. — Py-

THAGOKAS.

One is the principle of all. — Philolaus the Pythagorean.

All things that are known have number. — Id.

The principles of all virtue are three, knowledge, power, and
choice. Knowledge is like sight, whereby we contemplate and
judge things; power is like bodily strength, whereby we endure
and adhere to things ; choice is like hands to the soul, whereby we
stretch out and lay hold of things. — Theages the Pythagorean.

The Doric discipline, even in Sparta, where it could
exhibit its character most freely, produced merely
soldiers and not free citizens or cultivated men. It
was, nevertheless, in its essential features, the Hel-
lenic ideal, and numerous attempts were made to
remedy its defects and to give it permanence, by con-
necting it with higher than mere local and aristocratic
interests. One of the earliest and most noteworthy
of these was made by Pythagoras.

This extraordinary personage appears to have been
born in the island of Samos in the first quarter of the
sixth century B.C. Though he was born among loni-
ans, his family appears to have been Achaian and, to
some extent, Pelasgian (Tyrrhenian), having emi-
grated from Phlius in the Argolid. After distinguish-
ing himself in Ionia, he emigrated in middle life to
62

PYTHAGORAS 53

Magna Graecia, and took up his abode in tlie Achaian
colony of Croton, then a rich and flourishing city.
The cause of his emigration seems to have been the
tyranny of Polycrates, which apparently imparted to
him a prejudice against Ionic tendencies in general.
Whether he derived any part of his famous learning
from visits to Egypt, Phoenicia, Babylonia, etc., as
was asserted in later times, is not clear. It is not
improbable that he visited Egypt, and there is good
reason for believing that he became acquainted with
Phoenician theology through Pherecydes of Syros.
That he was an omnivorous student is attested by
his contemporary, Heraclitus. He was undoubtedly
affected by the physical theories current in his time
in Ionia, while he plainly drew his political and ethi-
cal ideas from Sparta or Crete.

Of his activity in Ionia we know little; but we may
perhaps conclade that it was of the same nature as that
which he afterwards displayed in Italy. Here he
appeared in the triple capacity of theologian, ethical
teacher, and scientist. His chief interest for us lies
in the fact that he was apparently the first man in
Greece, and, indeed, in the western world, who sought
to establish an ethical institution apart from the State.
In this respect he bears a strong resemblance to the
prophet Isaiah, who may be said to have originated
the idea of a Church (see p./3 5). Pythagoras' aim
seems to have been to gather round him a body of
disciples who should endeavor to lead a perfect life,
based upon certain theological or metaphysical notions,
and guided by a rule of almost monastic strictness.
Like other men who have found themselves in the

54 ARISTOTLE

midst of irreverence, selfishness, and democratic vul-
garity and anarchy, he believed that his time de-
manded moral discipline, based upon respect for
authority and character, with a firm belief in future
retribution, and inculcated by a careful study of the
order and harmony of nature ; and such discipline he
strove, with all his might, to impart. Having no
faith in the capacity of the State to be an instrument
for his purpose, he set to work independently of it,
and seems to have met with very marked success,
drawing to him many of the best men and women of
Southern Italy. So numerous and powerful, indeed,
did his followers become that they held the balance
of power in several cities, and were able to use it for
the enforcement of their own principles. As these
were exceedingly undemocratic, and opposed to the
tendencies of the time, they finally roused bitter
opposition, so that the Pythagoreans were persecuted
and attempts made to exterminate them with fire
and sword. In this way their political influence was
broken, and their assemblies suppressed; but the
effect of Pythagoras' teaching was not lost. His
followers, scattered abroad throughout the Hellenic
world, carried his precepts and his life-ideal with
them. In the following centuries they found many
noble sympathizers — Pindar, Socrates, Plato, Epi-
charmus, etc. — and underwent many modifications,
until they finally witnessed a resurrection, in the
forms of Xeo-Pythagoreanism and Neo-Platonism,
after the Christian era. In these later guises, Pythag-
oreanism lost itself in mysticism and contemplation,
turning its followers into inactive ascetics; but in its

PYTHAGORAS 55

original form it seems to have been especially adapted
to produce men of vigorous action and far-sighted
practicality. Milo of Croton, the inimitable wrestler;
Archytas of Tarentum, philosopher, mathematician,
musician, inventor, engineer, general, statesman; and
Epaminondas, the greatest and noblest of Theban
generals, were professed Pythagoreans.

We might perhaps express the aim of Pythagoras'
pedagogical efforts by the one word Harmony. Just
as he found harmony everywhere in the physical
world, so he strove to introduce the same into the
constitution of the human individual, and into the
relations of individuals with each other. He may
perhaps be regarded as the originator of that view of
the world, of men, and of society which makes all
good consist in order and proportion, a view which
recommends itself strongly to idealists, and has given
birth to all those social Utopias, whose static perfec-
tion seems to relieve the individual from the burden
of responsibility, and which have been dangled before
the eyes of struggling humanity from his days to
ours. According to this view, which had its roots in
Greek thought generally, the aim of education is to
find for each individual his true place and to make
him efficient therein. Man is made for order, and
not order for man. He is born into a world of order,
as is shown by the fact that number and proportion
are found in everything that is known. Pythagoras,
in his enthusiasm for his principle, carried his doc-
trine of numbers to absurd lengths, identifying them
with real things ; but this enthusiasm was not without
its valuable results, since it is to Pythagoras and his

56 ARISTOTLE

school that we owe the sciences of geometry and
music. Moreover, experience must have taught him
that it is one thing to propound a theory, another to
make it effective in regulating huriian relations. In
order to accomplish the latter object, he invoked the
aid of divine authority and of the doctrines of metemp-
sychosis and future retribution. Hence his educa-
tional system had a strong religious cast, which
showed itself even outwardly in the dignified demeanor
and quiet self-possession of his followers.

Harmony, then, to be attained by discipline, under
religious sanctions, was the aim of Pythagoras' teach-
ing. Believing, however, that only a limited number
of persons were capable of such harmony, he selected
his pupils with great care, and subjected them to a
long novitiate, in which silence, self-examination,
and absolute obedience played a prominent part. The
aim of this was to enable them to overcome impulse,
concentrate attention, and develop reverence, reflec-
tion, and thoughtfulness, the first conditions of all
moral and intellectual excellence. While the first
care was directed to their spiritual part, their bodies
were by no means forgotten. Food, clothing, and
exercise were all carefully regulated on hygienic and
moral principles.

Regarding the details of Pythagoras' educational
system we are not well informed ; but the spirit and
tendency of it have been embalmed for us in the
so-called Golden Words, which, if not due to the
pen of Pythagoras himself, certainly reach back to
very near his time, and contain nothing at variance
with what we otherwise know of his teaching. We
insert a literal version.

PYTHAGORAS 57

The Golden Words.

The Gods immortal, as by law disposed,
First venerate, and reverence the oath :
Then to the noble heroes, and the powers
Beneath the earth, do homage with just rites.

Thy parents honor and thy nearest kin,

And from the rest choose friends on virtue's scale.

To gentle words and kindly deeds give way,

Nor hate thy friend for any slight offence.

Bear all thou canst ; for Can dwells nigh to Must.

These things thus know.

What follow learn to rule :
The belly first, then sleep and lust and wrath.
Do nothing base with others or alone :
But most of all thyself in reverence hold.

Then practise justice both in deed and word,
Nor let thyself wax thoughtless about aught :
But know that death's the common lot of all.

Be not untimely wasteful of thy wealth, '

Like vulgar men, nor yet illiberal.
In all things moderation answers best.

Do things that profit thee : think ere thou act.

Let never sleep thy drowsy eyelids greet,

Till thou hast pondered each act of the day :

•' Wherein have I transgressed ? What have I done

What duty shunned ? " — beginning from the first,

Unto the last. Then grieve and fear for what

Was basely done ; but in the good rejoice.

These things perform ; these meditate ; these love.
These in the path of godlike excellence
Will place thee, yea, by Him who gave our souls
The number Four, perennial nature's spring !
But, ere thou act, crave from the gods success.

58 ARISTOTLE

These precepts having mastered, thou shalt know

The system of the never-dymg gods

And dying men, and how from all the rest

Each thing is sunder' d, and how held in one :

And thou shalt know, as it is right thou shouldst,

That nature everywhere is uniform,

And so shalt neither hope for things that lie

Beyond all hope, nor fail of any truth.

But from such food abstain as we have named,
And, while thou seek'st to purge and free thy soul,
Use judgment, and reflect on everything,
Setting o'er aU best Thought as charioteer.

Be glad to gather goods, nor less to lose.

Of human ills that spring from spirit-powers
Endure thy part nor peevishly complain.
Cure what thou canst : 'tis well, and then reflect :
" Fate never lays too much upon the good."

Words many, brave and base, assail men's ears.
Let these not disconcert or trammel thee ;
But when untruth is spoken, meekly yield.

What next I say in every act observe :
Let none by word or deed prevail on thee
To do or say what were not best for thee.
Think ere thou act, lest foolish things be done ; —
For thoughtless deeds and words the caitiff mark ; -
But strongly do what will not bring regret.
Do naught thou dost not know ; but duly learn.
So shall thy life with happiness o'erflow.

Be not neglectful of thy body's health ;
But measure use in drink, food, exercise —
I mean by ' measure ' what brings no distress.

Follow a cleanly, simple mode of life,
And guard against such acts as envy breed.

PYTHAGORAS 69

Then, if, when thou the body leav'st, thou mount
To the free ether, deathless shalt thou be,
A god immortal, — mortal never more !

In this system six things are noteworthy: (1) Its
comprehensiveness, in that it takes account of man's
whole nature, — body, soul, and spirit; affections,
intellect, and will, and of all his relations — to gods
and men, to self and nature: (2) Its aimfulness, in
that it promises happiness here and blessedness here-
after, as the reward of right living: (3) Its piety, in
that it everywhere recognizes the need of divine assist-
ance: (4) Its appreciation of science, as insight into the
nature and grounds of multiplicity and unity : (5) Its
stress laid on right doing, as the condition of right
knowing: (6) Its belief in man's divinity and perfec-
tibility. It is curious that the poem contains no
reference to the doctrine of metempsychosis, which
might apparently have been appealed to as a power-
ful moral sanction.

That a system like that of Pythagoras, combining
the religious, the mystical, the scientific, the ethical,
and the social tendencies of the Hellenic mind,
should have exerted a deep and abiding influence, need
not surprise us. We find profound traces of it, not
only in all subsequent Greek thought, but even in
foreign systems, such as Essenism, whose elements
were Hebrew Nazarenism and Greek Pythagoreanism.
The relations between Essenism and Christianity have
not yet been determined. Of the effect of Pythagoras'
teaching on Epaminondas I have already spoken.

UNIVERSITY

CHAPTER V
IONIAN OR ATHENIAN EDUCATION

Let me now give an account of the Old Education, when I, utter-
ing words of justice, was in my prime, and self-control was held in
respect. In the first place, a child was not allowed to be heard
uttering a grumble. Then all the boys of the quarter were obliged
to march in a body, in an orderly way and with the scantest of
clothing, along the streets to the music master's, and this they did
even if it snowed like barley-groats. Then they were set to rehearse
a song, without compressing their thighs, — either "Pallas, mighty
city-stormer," or "A shout sounding far," putting energy into the
melody which their fathers handed down. And, if any one attempted
any fooling, or any of those trills like the diflScult inflexions a la
Phryuis now in vogue, he received a good threshing for his pains,
as having insulted the Muses. Again, at the physical trainer's, the
boys, while sitting, were obliged to keep their legs in front of
them. . . . And at dinner they were not allowed to pick out the
best radish-head, or to snatch away anise or celery from their
elders, or to gourmandize on fish and field-fares, or to sit with their
legs crossed. . . . Take courage, young man, and choose me, the
Better Reason, and you shall know how to hate the public square,
to avoid the bath-houses, to be ashamed of what is shameful, to
show temper when any one addresses you in ribald language, to
rise from your seat when your elders approach, and not to be a
lubber to your own parents, or to do any other unseemly thing to
mar the image of Modesty, or to rush to the house of the dancing-
girl, and, while you are gaping at her performances, get struck with
an apple by a wench and fall from your fair fame, or to talk back
to your father, or, addressing him as Japhet, to revile the old age
which made the nest for you. . . . Then, fresh and blooming, you
will spend your time in the gymnasia, and not go about the public
square, mouthing monstrous jokes, like the young men of to-day,
or getting dragged into slippery, gurashon-bamboozling disputes,
but, going down to the Academy, with some worthy companion of
60

IONIAN OR ATHENIAN EDUCATION Gl

your own age, you will start a runuing-match, crowned with white
reed, smelling of smilax, leisure and deciduous white poplar, rejoic-
ing in the spring, when the plane-tree whispers to the maple. If
you do the things which I enjoin, and give your mind to them, you
will always have a well-developed chest, a clear complexion, broad
shoulders, and a short tongue. — Aristophanes, Clouds (Speech of
Right Reason).

In their systems of education, some states strive to impart a
courageous habit to their people from their very childhood by a
painful and laborious training, whereas we, though living in a free
and natural way, are ready to meet them in a fair field with no
fsivov.— Pericl.es' Funeral Oration {Thiicydides).

1 will never disgrace these sacred arms, nor desert my companion,
/in the ranks. I will fight for temples and public property, both
alone and with many. I will transmit my fatherland, not only not
less, but greater and better, than it was transmitted to me. I will
obey the magistrates who may at any time be in power. I will
observe both the existing laws and those which the people may
unanimously hereafter make, and, if any person seek to annul the
laws or to set them at nought, I will do my best to prevent him, and
will defend them both alone and with many (all?). I will honor
the religion of ray fathers. And I call to witness Aglauros, Enya-
lios, Ares, Zeus, Thallo, Auxo, and Hegemone. — Oath of the Athe-
nian Epheboi.

Consider, Men of Athens, what careful provision was made by
Solon, the ancient lawgiver, by Draco, and other lawgivers of that
period, for the cultivation of good morals. In the first place, they
made laws to secure a moral education for our children, and laid
down, in plain terms, just what the free-born boy should study and
how he should be nurtured ; secondly, they made regulations re-
garding young men ; and, thirdly, with regard to the other periods of
life in their order, including both private persons and public speak-
ers ; and, having recorded these laws, they left them in your keeping,
appointing you their guardians. — ^Eschines {against Timarchus) .

If systems of education are to be classified accord-
ing to their results — and these are perhaps the fairest
test — then the " Old Education " of Athens must be
assigned a very high place. The character which she

62 ARISTOTLE

displayed, and the exploits which she performed,
the early decades of the fifth century b.c, bear une-
quivocal testimony to the value of the training to
which her citizens had previously been subjected.
This training could perhaps hardly be better charac-
terized than by the word " puritanical." The men whc
fought at Marathon, Salamis, and Plataeae were puri-
tans, trained, in a hard school, to fear the gods,
respect the laws, their neighbors, and themselves,
reverence the wisdom of experience, to despise com-J
fort and vice, and to do honest work. They were not
enfeebled by aesthetic culture, paralyzed by abstract!
thinking, or hardened by professional training. They
were educated to be men, friends, and citizens, not to
be mere thinkers, critics, soldiers, or money-makers.
It was against a small band of such men that the
hosts of Persia fought in vain.

It is natural that this " Old Education " of Athens
should have a special interest for us, inasmuch as it
seems, in great measure, to have solved the problem
that must be uppermost with every true educator and
friend of education, viz. How can strong, wise, and
good men be produced? For this reason, as also be-
cause we are the better informed regarding the educa-
tional system of Athens than that of any other Greek
state, it seems proper to devote special attention to it,
treating it as preeminently Greek education. Indeed,
whatever is permanently valuable in Greek education
is to be found in that of Athens, other systems having
mainly but an historical interest for us.

In comparing the education of Athens with that of
Sparta, we are at once struck with two great distinc-

IONIAN OR ATHENIAN EDUCATION 63

tions: (1) While Spartan education is public, Athe-
nian education is mainly private; (2) While Sparta
educates for war, Athens educates for peace. As to
the former of these, it is not a little remarkable that,
while many of the first thinkers of Greece, including
Plato and Aristotle, advocated an entirely public edu-
cation, Athens never adopted it, or even took any steps
in that direction. It seems as if the Athenians felt
instinctively that socialistic education, by relieving
parents of the responsibility of providing for the edu-
cation of their own children, was removing a strong
moral influence, undermining the family, and jeop-
ardizing liberty. Perhaps the example of Sparta
was not without its influence. No liberty-loving peo-
ple, such as the Athenians were, would consent to
merge the family in the State, or to sacrifice private
life to public order. As to the second distinction,
which was all-pervasive, it divides the two peoples by
an impassable gulf and assigns them to two different
grades of civilizaton. And it was one of which both
peoples were entirely conscious. While Sparta rep-
resented her ideal by a chained Ares, Athens found
hers in a Wingless Victory, a form of Athena, the
divinity of political and industrial wisdom. As
the aim of Sparta was strength, so that of Athens
was Wisdom — the wise man in the wise state. By the
"wise man," was meant he whose entire faculties of
body, soul, and mind were proportionately and coor-
dinately developed; by the " wise state," that in which
each class of the population performed its proper
function, and occupied its proper relation toward the
rest, and this without any excessive exercise of author-

C4 ARISTOTLE

ity. If the Spartan, like the artificially tamed barba-
rian, submitted to living by rule and command, the
Athenian, like the naturally civilized man, delighted
to live in a free and natural way (dvct/Ae»/tos Stairao-^at)
governed from within, and not from without. To
make possible such life was the aim of Athenian edu-
cation, which, instead of seeking to merge the man
in the State, or to rend the two asunder, treated thein
as necessary correlates and strove to balance their
claims.

The endeavor on the part of Athens to steer a mid-
dle course between socialism and individualism, is
manifest in the fact that, though she had no public sys-
tem of education, she took great care to see that her
citizens were thoroughly educated in the spirit of her
institutions, and, indeed, made such education a condi-
tion of citizenship, which was thus an academic degree,
conferred only after careful examination. By a law
of Solon's, parents who had failed to give their sons
a proper education lost all claim upon them for sup-
port in their old age. Furthermore, Athens subject
all her male citizens to a systematic preparation i r
civil and militar}^ functions, before she allowed them
to exercise these.

Athenian education comprised four grades corre-
sponding to four institutions, (1) the family, (2) the
school, (3) the gymnasium or college, (4) the State.
We may consider these in their order.

(1) Family Education.

The birth of a child was regarded by the Athenians
as a joyful event, as something calling for gratitude

IONIAN OR ATHENIAN EDUCATION 65

to the gods. This expressed itself in a family festival,
called the Amphidromia, celebrated usually on the
seventh day after the birth. On this occasion, the
child was carried rapidly round the family altar and
received its name. A sacrifice was then offered to the
gods, the mother was purified, and christening presents
were displayed. The child was now a member of the
family and under the protection of its gods. For the
next seven years, it was wholly in the hands of parents
and nurses, the latter being usually slaves. During
this time its body was the chief object of care, and
everything seems to have been done to render it
healthy and hardy. Cradles do not seem to have been
in use, and the child was sung to sleep on the nurse's
knee. While it was being weaned, it was fed on milk
and soft food sweetened with honey. As soon as it
was able to move about and direct attention to external
objects, it received playthings, such as rattles, dolls
of clay or wax, hobby-horses, etc., and was allowed
to roll and dig in the sand. Such were the simple
gymnastics of this early period. As to the other
branch of education, it consisted mostly in being sung
to and in listening to stories about gods and heroes,
monsters and robbers, of which Greek mythology was
full. By means of these the child's imagination was
roused and developed, and certain aesthetic, ethical,
and national prepossessions awakened. Though chil-
dren were often frightened from certain acts and
habits by threats of bogles coming to carry them off,
yet the chief ethical agency employed was evidently
strict discipline. To secure good behavior in his
children was the first care of the Athenian parent.

66 ' ARISTOTLE

Though disinclined to harshness, he never doubted
that "he who spareth the rod hateth the child.'"
Children were never placed upon exhibition or ap-
plauded for their precocious or irreverent sayings.
They were kept as much as possible out of the way of
older people, and, when necessity brought them into
the presence of these, they were taught to behave
themselves quietly and modestly. ISTo Greek author
has preserved for us a collection of the smart sayings
or roguish doings of Athenian children.

Though the Kindergarten did not exist in those
old days, yet its place was, in great measure, filled by
the numerous games in which the children engaged,
in part at least under their nurses' superintendence.
Games played so important a part in the whole life of
the Greek people, and especially of the Athenians,
that their importance in the education of children
was fully recognized and much attention devoted to
them. During play, character both displays itself
more fully, and is more easily and deeply aif ected, than
at any other time ; and, since the whole of the waking
life of the child in its earliest years is devoted to play,
this is the time when character is formed, and there-
fore the time which calls for most sedulous care. In
playing games, children not only exercise their bodies
and their wits; they also learn to act with fairness,
and come to feel something of the joy that arises from
companionship and friendly rivalry in a common occu-
pation. Moreover, as games have no end beyond
themselves, they are admirable exercises in free, dis-
interested activity and a protection against selfish and
sordid habits. Of all this the Athenians were fully
aware.

IONIAN OK ATHENIAN EDUCATION ' 67

There are probably few games played by children
in our day that were not known in ancient Athens.
It seems, however, that games were there conducted
with more system, and a deeper sense of their peda-
gogical value, than they are with us. We hear of
running, leaping, hopping, catching, hitting, and
throwing games, gymnastic games, and games of
chance. The ball, the top, the hoop, the swing, the
see-saw, the skipping rope, the knuckle-bones were
as much in use in ancient, as in modern, times. Cards,
of course, there were not; and, indeed, games of
chance, though well known, seem rarely to have been
indulged in by children. It hardly seems necessary to
remark that there were some games peculiar to boys
and others to girls, and that the latter were less rude
than the former.. Doubtless, too, the games played
in the city, where the children would have few chances
of going beyond their homes, were different from
those played in the country, where almost complete
freedom to roam in the open air was enjoyed. We
must always bear in mind that well-to-do Athenian
families spent the greater part of the year at their
country-houses, which, with few exceptions, were so
near the city that they could be reached even on foot
in a single day. This country life had a marked
effect upon the education of Athenian children.

(2) School Education.

About the age of seven, the Athenian boy, after
being entered on the roll of prospective citizens in the
temple of Apollo Patroos, and made a member of a

68 ARISTOTLE

phratria, went to school, or, rather, he went to two
schools, that of the music-master, and that of the
physical trainer. He was always accompanied thither
and back by a pedagogue, who was usually a slave,
who carried his writing-materials, his lyre, etc. (there
being no school-books to carry), and whom he was
expected implicitly to obey. The boys of each
quarter of the city collected every morning at some
appointed place and walked to school, like little sol-
diers, in rank and file. They wore next to no cloth-
ing, even in the coldest weather, and were obliged to
conduct themselves very demurely in the streets.
The school hours were very long, beginning early in
the morning and continuing till late in the evening.
Solon found it necessary to introduce a law forbidding
schoolmasters to have their schools open before sun-
rise or after sunset. It thus appears that boys, after
the age of seven, spent their whole day at school, and
were thus early withdrawn from the influence of their
mothers and sisters, a fact which was not without
its bearing upon morals.

There are several interesting points in connection
with Athenian school life about which our informa-
tion is so scanty that we are left in some doubt
respecting them. For example, though it is quite
plain that Athens had no system of public instruction,
it is not so clear that she did not own the school
buildings. Again, it is not certain whether music
(including letters) and gymnastics were, or were not,
taught in the same locality. Thirdly, there is some
doubt about the number and order of the hours de-
voted to each of the two branches of study. In regard

IONIAN OR ATHENIAN EDUCATION 60

to these points I can state only what seems to me most
probable.

As to school buildings, we are expressly told by the
author of the fragmentary tract on The Athenian State,
currently attributed to Xenophon, but probably writ-
ten as early as b.c. 424, that "the people (8^/u.os)
builds itself many palsestras, dressing-rooms, baths,
and the masses have more enjoyment of these than
the few that are well-to-do." If we assume that
some of these palsestras were for boys, as we appar-
ently have a right to do, we must conclude that
some, at least, if not all, of the schools for bodily
training were public edifices, let out by the State to
teachers. Like all the great gymnasia, some, and
possibly all, of them were situated outside the city
walls and had gardens attached to them. Whether
the music-schools were so likewise, is doubtful, and
this brings us to our second question — whether the
two branches of education were taught in the same
place. That they were not taught in the same room,
or by the same person, is clear enough; but it does
not follow from this that they were not taught in the
same building, or at any rate in the same enclosed
space. Though there seems to be no explicit state-
ment in any ancient author on this point, I think there
are sufficient reasons for concluding that, generally
at least, they were so taught. If we find that Antis-
thenes, Plato, and Aristotle, who may be said to have
introduced a systematic " higher education " into
Athens, opened their schools in the great public
gymnasia, frequented by youths and men, we may
surely conclude that the lower mental education was

70 ARISTOTLE

not separated from the physical. In the Lysis of
Plato, we find some young men coming out of a palaes-
tra outside the city walls, and inviting Socrates to^
enter, telling him that their occupation {htaTpi^rj)
consists mostly in discussions (ra ttoXKo. h Xdyois), and
that their teacher is a certain Miccus, an admirer of
his. Socrates recognizes the man as a capable
"sophist," a term never used of physical trainers.
On entering, Socrates finds a number of boys and
youths (veaj/titTKot) playing together, the former having
just finished a sacrifice. It seems to follow directly
from this that intellectual education was imparted in
the palaestras. If this be true, we may, I think, con-
clude that in Athens the schools generally were out-
side the city walls, though the case was certainly
different in some other cities.

In regard to our third question, it is clear that, if
boys spent their whole day in one place, it would be
more easy to divide it profitably between musical
instruction and gymnastics than if they spent one
part of it in one place, and another in another. Just
how it was divided, we do not know, and I have little
doubt that much depended upon the notions of parents
and the tendencies of different periods. It is quite
clear, from certain complaints of Aristotle's, that in
Athens parents enjoyed great liberty in this matter.
In any case, since, as we know, the institutions of
education were open all day, it seems more than prob-
able that one class of boys took their gymnastic lesson
at one hour, another at another, and so with other
branches of study. It cannot be that the physical
training-schools were deserted when the music-schools

IONIAN OR ATHENIAN EDUCATION 71

were in session. I think there is sufficient reason for
believing that, generally, the younger boys took their
physical exercises in the morning, and their intellec-
tual instruction in the afternoon, the order being
reversed in the case of the older boys. How much of
the time spent at school was given up to lessons and
how much to play, is not 'at all clear; but I am
inclined to think that the playtime was at least as
long as the worktime. The schools were for boys
what the agora and the gymnasium were for grown
men — the place where their lives were spent.

Before we consider separately the two divisions of
Athenian education, a few facts common to them may
be mentioned. In the first place, they had a common
end, which was, to produce men independent but
respectful, freedom-loving but law-abiding, healthy
in mind and body, clear in thought, ready in action,
and devoted to their families, their fatherland, and
their gods. Contrary to the practice of the Komans,
the Athenians sought to prepare their sons for inde-
pendent citizenship at as early an age as possible. In
the second place, the motives employed in both
divisions were the same, viz. fear of punishment and
hope of reward. As we have seen, the Athenian boy,
if he behaved badly, was not spared the rod. As an
offset against this, when he did well, he received
unstinted praise, not to speak of more substantial
things. Education, like everything else in Greece,
took the form of competition. The Homeric line
(//., vi, 208; xi, 784),

" See that thou ever be best, and above all others distinguished,"

72 ARISTOTLE

was the motto of the Athenian in everything. In.
the third place, in both divisions the chief aim was
the realization of capacity, not the furthering of
acquisition. Mere learning and execution were almost
universally despised in the old time, while intelli-
gence and capacity were universally admired. In
the fourth place, in both divisions the utmost care
was directed to the conduct of the pupils, so that
it might be gentle, dignified, and rational. In the
fifth place, education in both its branches was in-
tended to enable men to occupy worthily and soci-
ably their leisure time, quite as much as to prepare
them for what might be called their practical duties
in family, society, and State. The fine arts, accord-
ing to the Greeks, furnished the proper amusements
for educated men (TreTratSev/AtVot) .

• (a) Musical (and Literary) Instruction.

Though the Greek word music (fiovaiK-^ came in
later times to have Un extended meaning, in the epoch
of which we are treating, it included only music in
our sense, and poetry, two things which were not
then separated. Aristophanes, as late as b.c. 422, can
still count upon an audience ready to laugh at the
idea of giving instruction in astronomy and geometry,
as things too remote from human interests (Clouds,
vv 220 sqq.). The poetry consisted chiefly of the
epics of Homer and Hesiod, the elegiacs of Tyrtseus,
Solon, Theognis, etc., the iambics of Archilochus,
Simonides, etc., and the songs of the numerous lyr-
ists, Terpander, Arion, Alcseus, Alcman, Sappho,
Simonides, etc. The music was simple, meant to

IONIAN OR ATHENIAN EDUCATION 73

"sweeten" (rjSvveLv) the words and bring out their
meaning. In fact, the music and the poetry were
always composed together, so that the poet was nec-
essarily also a musician. What we call " harmony "
was unknown in Greek music at all times, and instru-
mental music was almost entirely confined to solo-
playing.

In treating of Athenian, and, indeed, of all Greek,
education, it is of the utmost importance to realize
that the intellectual and moral part of it has music
and poetry for its starting-point. This is the core
round which everything else gathers; this is what
determines its character, influence, and ideal. Cul-
ture, as distinguished from nature, is the material
of Athenian intellectual and moral education; and by
this is meant, not the history or theory of culture, as
it might be set forth in prose, but culture itself, as
embodied in the ideals and forms of music-wedded
poetry, appealing to the emotions that stir the will,
as well as to the intelligence that guides it.

By making the works of the great poets of the
Greek people the material of their education, the
Athenians attained a variety of objects difficult of
attainment by any other one means. The fact is, the
ancient poetry of Greece, with its finished form, its
heroic tales and characters, its accounts of peoples far
removed in time and space, its manliness and pathos,
its directness and simplicity, its piety and wisdom,
its respect for law and order, combined with its admir-
ation for personal initiative and worth, furnished,
in the hands of a careful and genial teacher, a material
for a complete education such as could not well be

74 ARISTOTLE

matched even in our own day. What instruction in
ethics, politics, social life, and manly bearing could
not find a fitting vehicle in the Homeric poems, not
to speak of the geography, the grammar, the literary
criticism, and the history which the comprehension of
them involved? Into what a wholesome, unsentimen-
tal, free world did these poems introduce the imagina-
tive Greek boy ! What splendid ideals of manhood and
womanhood did they hold up for his admiration and
imitation! From Hesiod he would learn all that he
needed to know about his gods and their relation to
him and his people. From the elegiac poets he would
derive a fund of political and social wisdom, and an
impetus to partiotism, which would go far to make
him a good man and a good citizen. From the iambic
poets he would learn to express with energy his
indignation at meanness, feebleness, wrong, and
tyranny, while from the lyric poets he would learn
the language suitable to every genial feeling and
impulse of the human heart. And in reciting or sing-
ing all these, how would his power of terse, idiomatic
expression, his sense of poetic beauty and his ear for
rhythm and music be developed ! With what a treas-
ure of examples of every virtue and vice, and with
what a fund of epigrammatic expression would his
memory be furnished! How familiar he would be
with the character and ideals of his nation, how deeply
in sympathy with them! And all this was possible
even before the introduction of letters. With this
event a new era in education begins. The boy now
not only learns and declaims his Homer, and sings his
Simonides or Sappho, he learns also to write down

IONIAN OR ATHENIAN EDUCATION 75

their verses from dictation, and so at once to read and
to write. This, indeed, was the way in which these
two (to lis) fundamental arts were acquired. As soon
as the boy could trace with his finger in sand, or
scratch with a stylus on wax, the forms of the letters,
and combine them into syllables and words, he began
to write poetry from his master's dictation. The
writing-lesson of to-day was the reading, recitation,
or singing-lesson of to-morrow. Every boy made his
own reading-book, and, if he found it illegible, and
stumbled in reading, he had only himself to blame.
The Greeks, and especially the Athenians, laid the
greatest stress upon reading well, reciting well, an
singing well, and the youth who could not do all th
three was looked upon as uncultured. Nor could he
hide his want of culture, since young men were con-
tinually called upon, both at home and at more or less
public gatherings, to perform their part in the social
entertainment.

The strictly musical instruction of this period was
almost entirely confined to simple, strong Doric airs,
sung to an accompaniment which was played on an
instrument closely resembling the modern guitar (Xvpa,
KiOapLs:). Complicated and wind instruments were
unpopular, and the softer or more thrilling kinds of
music, Lydian, Phrygian, etc., had not yet been
introduced, at least into schools. Anything like the
skill and execution demanded of professional players,
who were usually slaves or foreigners, was considered
altogether unworthy of a free man and a citizen, and
was therefore not aimed at. Fond as the Athenians
were of the fine arts, they always held professional

76 ARISTOTLE

skill in any of them, except poetry and musical com-
position, to be incompatible witli that dignity and
virtue which they demanded of the free citizen. A
respectable Athenian would no more have allowed his
son to be a professional musician than he would have
allowed him to be a professional acrobat.

It is difficult for us to understand the way in which
the Greeks regarded music. Inferior as their music
was to ours in all technical ways, it exerted an influ-
ence upon their lives of which Ave can form but a faint
conception. To them it was a daemonic power, capa-
ble of rousing or assuaging the passions, and hence of
being used for in^nite good or eviL - Ne wonder, then,
that in their education they sought to employ those
kinds which tended to " purgation " (Kadapais), and
to avoid those that were exciting, sentimental, or
effeminate! Ko wonder that they disapproved of
divorcing music from the intellectual element con-
tained in the words, and allowing it to degenerate
into a mere emotional or sensual luxury! Music the
Greeks regarded, not indeed as a moral force (a
phrase that to them, who regarded morality as a mat-
ter of the will, would have conveyed no meaning), but
as a force whose office it was, by purging and harmo-
nizing the human being, to make him a fit subject for
moral instruction. Music, they held, brought har-
mony, first into the human being himself, by putting
an end to the conflict between his passions and his
intelligent will, and then, as a consequence, into his
relations with his fellows. Harmony within was held
to be the condition of harmony without.

In the period of which I am speaking, no distinc-

IONIAN OR ATHENIAN EDUCATION 77

tion was yet made between music and literature (ypa/x-
fiara), botli being taught by the citharist (KLOapLarrrjs:) .
Indeed, the term for teacher of literature (ypa/A/xaTto-Tij?)
was not then invented. But the citharist not only
taught literature: he also taught the elements of
arithmetic, a matter of no small difficulty, consider-
ing the clumsy notation then in use. This was done
by means of pebbles, a box of sand, or an abacus^
similar in principle to that now used by billiard
players to keep count of their strokes.

As to the schoolrooms in ancient Athens, they
were apparently simple in the extreme ; indeed, rather
porches open to sun and wind than rooms in the
modern sense. They contained little or no furniture.
The boys sat upon the ground or upon low benches,
like steps (ftdOpa), while the teacher occupied a high
chair (6p6vo<s). The benches were washed, apparently
every day, with sponges. The only decorations per-
mitted in the schoolrooms, it seems, were statues or
statuettes of the Muses and Apollo, and the school
festivals or exhibitions were regarded as festivals in
honor of these. Indeed, in Greece every sort of fes-
tival was regarded as an act of worship to some divin-
ity. The chief school festival seems to have been
the Musea (/otovo-cta), at which the boys recited and
sang.

(13) Gymnastics or Bodily Training. .

Under the term Gymnastics (yu/xvao-TtKTJ), the Greeks
generally included everything relating to the culture
of the body. The ends which the Athenians sought to
reach through this branch of education were health,

78 ARISTOTLE

strength, adroitness, ease, self-possession, and firm,
dignified bearing. A certain number of boys, intend-
ing to take part in the Olympic and other great games,
were allowed to train as athletes under a gymnast]
(yv/Avao-Tiy?, dAetTTTT/s) in the public gymnasia, and under]
the direction of the State ; but these were exceptions.
The athlete was not an ideal person at Athens, as he
was at Thebes and Sparta.

Gymnastic exercises were conducted partly in the
palsestras, or wrestling schools, partly on the race-
courses, both of which were under the direction of
professional trainers (7raiSoTpt)8at) . In early times,
the palaestra and race-course were simply an open
space covered with sand and probably connected with
the school (SiSao-KoActov), thus corresponding to our
playground. Later, this space was partly covered
over and furnished with dressing-rooms, a bath, seats
for spectators, an altar for sacrifices, statues, etc. Of
the five gymnastic exercises in which boys were
trained, all except wrestling seem to have been con-
ducted on the race-course, so that the palaestra was
reserved for what its name implied. It is by no neans
certain that every palaestra had a race-course con-
nected with it, at least in the time of which we are
speaking, and possibly in many cases the boys took
part of their exercises in the public race-course run-
ning from the agora to beyond the walls. Just as
the schoolroom Vv'as decorated with images of Apollo
and the ]\Iuses, so the palaestra was decorated with
images of Hermes, Heracles, and Eros, symbolizing,
respectively, adroitness, humane strength, and youth-
ful friendship. The special patron of the palaestra

IONIAN OR ATHENIAN EDUCATION 79

was Hermes, and the gymnastic exhibition took the
form of a festival to him, the Hermsea, at which a
sacrifice was offered and the boys were allowed the
use of the building to play games in, the victors wear-
ing crowns.

It would be impossible, in a work of this compass, to
enter into a minute description of all the exercises of
the Athenian palaestra. We must be content with a
general statement, which may be prefaced with the
j.*emark that these exercises were at first light, in-
creasing gradually in rigor and difficulty as the
strength and skill of the growing child i)ermitted.

The chief gymnastic exercises were five, named in
this order in a famous line of Simonides : (1) leaping,
(2) running, (3) discus-throwing, (4) javelin-casting,
(5) wrestling {TraX-q), which last gave the name to the
palsestra. We shall not strictly follow this order,
but begin with

(i) Running. — This was the simplest, lightest, most
natural, and, therefore, the most easily taught of ex-
ercises. It was probably also the oldest. We find
even Homer making his ideal Phaeacians begin their
games with it, and this practice seems to have been
general throughout antiquity. In taking this exer-
cise, the boys divested themselves of all clothing and
had their bodies rubbed with oil. The running ap-
pears to have been of the simplest kind. Hurdle-
races, sack-races, etc., were apparently excluded from
education. At the same time, the running was ren-
dered difficult by the soft sand with which the course
was covered to the depth of several inches. The races
were distinguished according to their length in fur-

80 ARISTOTLE

longs or stadia: (1) the furlong-race, (2) the double-
furlong race, (3) the horse (four-furlong) race, (4) the
long race, whose length seems to have been twenty-
four furlongs, or about three miles. The stadion was
= 202 J yards English. The shorter races called for
brief concentration of energy, the longer for persist-
ence and endurance; all were exercises in agility; all
tended to develop lung-power.

(2) Leaping or Jumping. — This exercise seems, in
the main, to have confined itself to the long leap.
Though the high leap and the pole-jump can hardly
have been unknown, we have no evidence that they
were ever employed in the gymnastic training of boys.
There may have been hygienic reasons which forbade
their use. On the other hand, boys were taught to
lengthen their leap by means of weights, somewhat
similar to our dumb-bells, carried in their hands, and
swung forward in the act of leaping. Such leaping
would be an exercise for the arms, as well as for the
legs and the rest of the body. But, just as there were
two exercises intended chiefly for the legs, so there
were two intended chiefly for the arms — discus-
throwing and javelin-casting.

(3) Discus-throwing. — The modern world has been
rendered very familiar with the method of this exer-
cise by the copies of the discobolus of Myron, preserved
in Rome and extensively engraved and photographed,
and that of the discobolus of Alcamenes which now
stands in the Vatican (see Overbeck, Griech. Plastik
vol. i, p. 276). The discus was generally a flat,
round piece of stone or metal, a sort of large quoit
with no hole in the middle, which the user sought to

I

IONIAN OR ATHENIAN EDUCATION 81

threw as far as lie could. The discobolus of Alca-
menes shows us a youth balancing the discus in his
left hand, and taking the measure of his throw with
his eye ; that of Myron shows us another in the act of
throwing. He swings the discus backward in his
right hand, and bends his body forward to balance it.
His right foot, the toes contracted with effort, rests
firmly on the ground; the left is slightly lifted; the
whole body is like a bent bow. In the next instant
the left foot will advance, the left hand, now resting
on the right knee, will swing backwards, the body will
resume its erect position, and the discus will be shot
forward from the right hand like an arrow. Nothing
could show more clearly than does this statue the per-
fect organization, symmetry, and balance which were
the aim of Greek gymnastics. Not one limb could be
moved without affecting all the rest, — which shows
that the exercise extended to the whole body.

(4) Javelin-casting. — The aim of this exercise was
to develop skill and precision of eye and hand, rather
than strength of muscle. The instrument employed
was a short dagger or lance, which was aimed at a
mark. He who could hit the mark from the greatest
distance was the most proficient scholar. The spear,
before being thrown, was balanced in the right hand
at the height of the ear.

(5) Wrestling. — This very complicated exercise was
evidently the principal one in the gymnastic course,
the one to which the others were merely preparatory.
It was the only one which a boy could not practice
by himself. It exercised not only the whole body,
but the patience and temper as well. The aim of the

82 AKISTOTLE |

wrestler was to throw (Kara/SaXXeLv) his antagonist.
Those who took part in this exercise had their bodies
rubbed with oil and strewn with fine sand. It seems
that the wrestler was allowed to do anything he chose
to his antagonist except to bite, strike, or kick him.
Before he could claim the victory he had to throw him
three times. After the contest the Avrestlers scraped
from their bodies, with a strigil, the oil and dust,^
bathed, were again rubbed with oil, exposed their
bodies to the sun, in order to dry and tan them, and
dressed. The bathing was done in cold water, and
both the bathing and the sunning were in part in-
tended to inure the body to sudden cold and heat,
which inurement was considered a very essential part
of physical training.

Such were the chief exercises employed in the gym-
nastic training of the Athenians. Thus far, we have
considered the two branches of education as conducted
separately, and as not coming at any point in contact
with each other. But it would have been very unlike
the Greek, and especially the Athenian, to leave the
two divisions of education unrelated and unharmo-
nized. And, indeed, he did not so leave them, but
brought them together in the most admirable way in
what he called orchesis, sl word for which we have no
better equivalent than

(y) Dancing (6pxr](rL<s, x^po?)-

"Dancers," says Aristotle, "by means of plastic
rhythms (rhythms reproduced in plastic forms) imi-

1 This is represented in the charming Apoxyomenos of the
Vatican.

1/ I

IONIAN OR ATHENIAN EDUCATION 83

tate characters, feelings, and actions." Xenoplion, in
his Anabasis, describing a banquet that took place
in the wilds of Paphlagonia, says : " After the treaty
was ratified and the paean sung, there first rose up
two Thracians and danced in armor to the flute, leap-
ing high and lightly, and using their swords. Finally
one of them struck the other, so that everybody thought
he had wounded him; but he fell in an artificial way.
Then the Paphlagonians raised a shout; but the as-
sailant, having despoiled the fallen man of his armor,
went out singing the Sitalcas. Then others of the
Thracians carried out the other as if he had been dead;
but he was none the worse. Next, some ^nianes and
Magnesians stood up and danced the so-called Carpsea
in armor. The manner of the dance was this: one
man, putting his arms within reach, sows and drives
a team, frequently turning round as if afraid. Then
a robber makes his appearance. As soon as the other
espies him, he seizes his arms, advances to him, and
fights in front of the team. And the two did this
keeping time to the flute. Finally the robber, having
bound the other, carries off both him and the team;
sometimes, on the contrary, the ploughman binds the
robber, in which case he yokes him, with his hands
bound behind his back, to his oxen and drives off.''
Several other dances, performed by persons of differ-
ent nationalities, follow; but enough has been quoted
to show that the Greek opxyjcn-^ was something very
different from our dancing. It was, indeed, a panto-
mimic ballet, interspersed with tableaux vivans.

In the dances here mentioned, the flute is the
instrument employed, and this the player could not

84 ARISTOTLE

accompany with his voice. But in the Athenian
schools, in the old time, the flute, and all music with-
out words, were tabooed. There can be no doul*.
therefore, that in these the orchestic performanc' -
were accompanied by the lyre, the player on whicli
sang in words what the dancers danced. It is obvious
that in such performances the musical (literary) and
gymnastic branches of education came in for about
equal shares. Dancing exercised the whole human
being, body and soul, and exercised them in a com-
pletely harmonious way. Ht is this harmony, this
rhythmic movement of the body in consonance with
the emotions of the soul and the purposes of the in-
telligence, that is grace (x^pi-^)' Hence, while tlie
Greeks relied upon gymnastics to impart strength and
firmness to the body, they looked to dancing for court-
liness and grace. Plato places the two on the same
footing, as parts of a single discipline.

The fact that the two divisions of education met
in dancing seems to prove what I surmised above,
viz. that they were conducted within the same pre-
cincts; in which case we may suppose that, while the
dancing exercises took place in the palaestra, the musi(3
was supplied by the music master. We know that
the chorus-leader was a public officer, appointed bv
the demos, and had to be over forty years old. In an
case, it is curious enough to think that Athenian, and,
generally, Greek, education culminated in dancing.
But this was a perfectly logical result; for the chorus
is the type of Greek social life, as we see most clearly
in the Republic of Plato. It hardly needs to be pointed
out that the supreme form of Greek ai-t, the dram;

IONIAN OR ATHENIAN EDUCATION 85

78iS but a development of the Bacchic or Dionysiac
horus. This development consisted in the separation
f the music from the pantomine, and the assignment
f the former to the chorus, which no longer danced,
ut walked, and of the latter to the actors, who added
he dialogue to it. Greek life was divided into three
arts — civil, military, religious. Music and letters
i^ere a preparation for the first, gymnastics for the
econd, and dancing for the third. Dancing formed a
)rominent part in Greek worship, and it may be
oubted whether free Athenians ever danced except
before the gods " — iv rats 7rp6<s tovs 6covs irpoaoSoL's, as
(^enophon says.

Two things still remain to be considered with regard
0 Athenian schools, (1) grading, (2) holidays. With
espect to the former, the practice probably differed
t different times; but we seem to be justified in as-
uming that, at the time of which I am speaking,
here were but two grades, boys (TratSes) and youths
vcavto-Kot). These are mentioned by Plato, in the Lysis,
,s celebrating the Hermeea together in a palsestra.
Dhe first grade would include the boys from seven to
ileven years of age; the second, those from eleven to
if teen. As to holidays, they seem to have been sim-
)ly the feast-days of the greater gods, when business
f every sort was suspended. Such days amounted to
bout ninety annually.

(3) College Education.

About the time when he was blossoming into man-
lood, that is, some time between his fourteenth and his
ixteenth year, the Athenian boy of the '•olden time

86 ' ARISTOTLE

was transferred from the private school and palaestra,
which belonged to the family side of life, to the gym-
nasium, which belonged to the State, and in which he
received the education calculated to fit him for the
duties of a citizen. Having, in the family and the
school, been trained to be a gentleman (KaXoKayados;),
he must now be trained to be a citizen, capable of
exercising legislative, judicial, and military functions.
The State saw to it that he received this training, if
his parents chose and could afford it.

In the time of Solon, about B.C. 590, two great
gymnasia, the Academy and Cynosarges, were erected
in the midst of extensive groves outside the city
walls. These groves were afterwards surrounded
with high walls, furnished with seats and other con-
veniences, and turned into city parks. The Academy,
which lay to the northwest of the city, in the valley
of the Cephisus, and was under the patronage of
Athena, was the resort of the full-blooded citizens,
while Cynosarges, situated to the east of the city,
near the foot of Lycabettus, was assigned to those
who had foreign blood in their veins, that is, who had
only one parent of pure Athenian stock. This gym-
nasium was under the patronage of Heracles, whose
worship always implies the presence of a foreign and
vanquished element. These were the only two gym-
nasia belonging to Athens before the time of Pericles.
They were, probably, destroyed by the Persians in
480, and had . afterwards to be rebuilt, and the groves
replanted.

"WTiile the children of nearly all the free citizens of
Athens attended the school and the palaestra, it i

IONIAN OR ATHENIAN EDUCATIOIsf 87

clear that only the youth of the wealthier classes
attended the gymnasium. One result of this was that
the government and offices of the State fell exclu-
sively into the hands of those classes; and it was
perhaps just in order to make this division, without
introducing any class-law, that the shrewd Solon
established the gymnasia, which thus became a bul-
wark against democracy.

As soon as the Athenian youth was transferred to
the gymnasium, he passed from under the charge of
the pedagogue, who represented the family, and came
under the direct surveillance of the State. He was
now free to go where he would, to frequent the agora
and the street, to attend the theatre, in which he had
his appointed place, and to make himself directly
acquainted with all the details of public life. In the
gymnashim he passed into the hands of a gymnast or
scientific trainer, and for the next two or three years
was subjected to the severer exercises, wrestling, box-
ing, etc. No special provision, beyond the fact that
he had to learn the laws, was made for his intellectual
and moral instruction. He was expected to acquire
this from contact with the older citizens whom he met
in the agora, the street, or the public park. Thus, at
Avhat is justly regarded as the most critical age, he
was almost compelled to live a free, breezy, outdoor
life, full of activity and stirring incident, his thoughts
and feelings directed outwards into acts of will, and
not turned back upon himself or his own states. At
the same time he was acquiring just that practical
knowledge of ethical laws and of real life which could
best fit him for active citizenship. He now learnt to

8S ARISTOTLE

ride, to drive, to row, to swim, to attend banquets,
to sustain a conversation, to discuss the weightiest
questions of statesmanship, to sing and dance in pub-
lic choruses, and to ride or walk in public processions.
If he abused his liberty and behaved in a lawless or
unseemly way, he was called to account by the severe
Court of the Areopagus, which attended to public
morals. He saw little of girls of his own age, except
his sisters, unless it was at public festivals, when
there was little opportunity of becoming acquainted
with them. His affectionate nature therefore ex-
pressed itself mostly in the form of devoted friend-
ships to other youths of his own, or nearly his own,
age, a fact which enables us to understand why friend-
ship fills so large a space, not only in the life, but
also in the ethical treatises of the Greeks, — Plato,
Aristotle, etc., — and why love, in the modern sense,
plays so insignificant a part. The truth is that, even
in Athens, the State encroached upon the family.
Plato's Republic was only the logical carrying out of
principles that were latent long before in the social
life of the Athenian people.

It would be impossible to treat in detail the exer-
cises to which the Athenian youth was subjected
during the years in which he attended the public
gymnasium as a pupil. The old exercises of the
palaestra were continued, running and wrestling espe-
cially; but the former was now done in armor, and
the latter became more violent, and was supplemented
by boxing. In fact, the physical exercises were now
systematized into the pentathlon — running, leaping,
discus-throwing, wrestling, boxing — which formed

IONIAN OR ATHENIAN EDUCATION 80

the programme of nearly all gymnastic exhibitions.
During these years, the youth was still regarded as a
minor, and his father or guardian was responsible for
his good behavior. But when he reached the age of
eighteen, a change took place, and he passed under
the direct control of the State. His father now
brought him before the reeve of his demos (ward or
village), as a candidate for independent citizenship.
If he proved to be the lawful child of free citizens,
and came up to the moral and physical requirements
of the law, his name was entered upon the register of
the demos, and he became a member of it. He was
now prepared to be presented to the whole people, and
to pass the State examination. He shore his long
hair for the first time, and donned the black garment
of the citizen. In this guise he presented himself to
the king-archon of the State, who, at a public assem-
bly, introduced him, along with others, to the whole
people. He was then and there armed with spear
and shield (supplied by the State if his father had
fallen in war), and thence proceeded to the shrine of
Aglauros, where, looking down on the agora, the city,
and the Attic plain, he took the Solonian oath of
citizenship (see p. 61). He was now technically
an ephebos, cadet, or citizen-novice, ready to undergo
those two years of severe discipline which at once
formed his introduction to practical affairs, and con-
stituted the State examination. During the first year
he remained in the neighborhood of Athens, drilling
in arms, and acquiring a knowledge of military
tactics. His life was now the hard life of a soldier.
He slept in the open air, or in the guard-houses

TTNIVERSITY

■y

90 ARISTOTLE

{<f>povpLa) that surrounded the city, and was liable to
be called upon at any time by the government to give
aid in an emergency. He also took part in the public
festivals. At the end of the year, all the epheboi of
one year's standing passed an examination in mili-
tary drill before the assembled people (dTreSet^avTo t<2
SrjfjLio Trept ras rd^etq ^), after vt^hich they were employed
as militia to man the frontier guard-houses, and as
rural gendarmerie (rrepLiroXoL), scouring the country in
all directions. They now lived like soldiers in war-
time, and learnt two important things, (1) the topog-
raphy of Attica, its roads, passes, brooks, springs,
etc., (2) the art of enforcing law and order. Their
life, indeed, closely resembled that of the Alpine
corps (Alpini) of the Italian army at the present day.
These spend the summer in making themselves ac-
quainted with every height, valley, pass, stream, and
covert in the Italian Alps, often bivouacking for days
together at great heights. That during this time the
epheboi should have taken any part in the legislative
or judicial duties of citizens, seems in the highest
degree improbable. At the end of their second year,
however, they passed a second examination, called the
citizenship or manhood examination (SoKt/xao-ta ei?
ai/Spas), after which they were full members of the
State.

(4) UXIVERSITY EdUCATIOX.

The Greek university was the State, and the Greek
State was a university — a Cultur-Staat, as the Ger-

1 So says Aristotle, who tells ns further that in his time on this
occasion they were presented with spear and shield by the people
(see p. 97) .

IONIAN OR ATHENIAN EDUCATION 91

mans say. That the State is a school of virtue, was
a view generally entertained in the ancient world,
which, until it began to decay, completely identified
the man with the citizen. The influence of this view
upon the attitude of the individual to the State, and
of the State to the individual, can hardly be over-
estimated. The State claimed, and the individual
accorded to it, a disciplinary right which extended to
every sphere and action of life. Thus the sphere of
morality coincided exactly with the sphere of legality,
or, to put it the other way, the sphere of legality
extended to the whole sphere of morality, and this
was considered true, whatever form the State or
government might assume — monarchy, aristocracy,
democracy, etc.

To give a full account of the university education
of old Athens would be to write her social and politi-
cal history up to the time of the Persian Wars. This
is, of course, out of the question. All I can do is
to point out those elements in the State which enabled
it to produce that splendid array of noble men, and
accomplish those great deeds and works, which make
her brief career seem the brightest spot in the world's
history.

The chief of these elements, and the one which
included all the rest, was the Greek ideal of harmony.
Athens was great as a State 8,nd as a school so long as
she embodied that ideal, so long as she distributed
power and honor in accordance with worth (dpcTy)
intellectual, moral, practical; in a word, so long as
the State was governed by the best citizens (a/ato-rot),
and the rest acknowledged their right to do so. Kot-

92 ARISTOTLE

withstanding the contention of Grote and others, it
is strictly true that Athens was great because, and so
long as, she was aristocratic (in the ancient sense),
and perished when she abandoned her fundamental
ideal by becoming democratic. This assertion must
not be construed as any slur upon democracy as such,
or as denying that Athens in perishing paved the
way for a higher ideal than her own. It simply
states a fact, which may be easily generalized without
losing its truth: An institution perishes when it
abandons the principle on which it was founded and
built up. Unless we bear this in mind, we shall
utterly fail to understand the lesson of Athenian
history. If it be maintained that some of Athens'
noblest work was done under the democracy, the
sufficient answer is, that it was nearly all done by
men who retained the spirit of the old aristocracy,
and bitterly opposed the democracy. We need name
only ^schylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Plato, Aris-
totle, Demosthenes.

Part II

THE "NEW EDUCATION" (b.c. 480-338)

CHAPTEK I

INDIVIDUALISM AND PHILOSOPHY

Homer ought to be driven from the lists and whipt, and Archilo-
chus likewise. — Heraclitus.

Thou needs must have knowledge of all things,
First of the steadfast core of the Truth that forceth conviction,
Then of the notions of mortals, where true conviction abides not.

— Parmenides.

All things were undistinguished : then Intellect came and brought
them into order. — Anaxagoras.

Man is the measure of all things.

In regard to the Gods, I am unable to know whether they are or
are not. — Protagoras.

Strepsiades. Don't you see what a good thing it is to have
learning? There isn't any Zeus, Phidippides !

Phidippides. Who is there then ?

Streps. Vortex rules, having dethroned Zeus.

Phid. Pshaw! what nonsense!

Streps. You may count it true, all the same.

Phid. Who says so ?

Streps. Socrates the Melian, and Chaerephon, who knows the
footprints of fleas. — Aristophanes, Clouds.

There is an old-fashioned saw, current of yore among mortals,
that a man's happiness, when full-grown, gives birth and dies not
childless, and that from Fortune there springs insatiate woe for
all his race. But I, dissenting from all others, am alone of differ-

• 93

94 ARISTOTLE

ent mind. It is the Irreverent Deed that begets after it more of its
kind. For to righteous homes belongs a fair-childrened lot forever ;
but old Irreverence is sure to beget Irreverence, springing up fresh
among evil men, when the numbered hour arrives. And the new
Irreverence begets Surfeit of "Wealth, and a power beyond all battle,
beyond all war, unholy Dating, twin curses, black to homes, like
to their parents. But Justice shines in smoky homes, and honors
the righteous life, and, leaving, with averted eyes, foundations
gilded with impurity of hands, she draws nigh to holy things,
honoring not the power of wealth, with its counterfeit stamp of
praise. And her will is done. — -^sc:hylus.

From the time they are children to the day of their death,
we teach them and admonish them. As soon as the child under-
stands what is said to him, his nurse and his mother and his peda-
gogue and even his father vie with each other in trying to make the
best of him that can be made, at every word and deed instructing
him and warning him, "This is right," "This is wrong," "This is
beautiful," " This is ugly," "This is righteous," "This is sinful,"
"Do this," "Don't do that," And if the child readily obeys, well
and good; if he does not, then they treat him like a bent and twisted
stick, straightening him out with threats and blows. Later on, they
send him to school, and then they lay their injunctions upon the
masters to pay much more attention to the good behavior of their
sons than to their letters and music (xiflapicns) ; and the teachers act
upon these injunctions. Later yet, when they have learnt to read,
and are proceeding to understand the meaning of what is written,
just as formerly they understood what was said to them, they put
before them on the benches to read the works of good poets, and
insist upon their learning them by heart — works which contain
many admonitions, and many narratives, noble deeds, and eulogies
of the worthy men of old — their purpose being to awaken the boy's
ambition, so that he may imitate these men and strive to be worthy
likewise. The music-teachers also, pursuing the same line, try to
inculcate self-control {au}(})po(rvvri) and to prevent the boys from fall-
ing into mischief. In addition to this, when they have learnt to
play on the lyre, their masters teach them other poems, written by
great lyric poets, making them sing them and play the accompani-
ments to them, and compelling them to work into their souls the
rhythms and melodies of them, so that they may grow in gentle-
ness, and, having their natures timed and tuned, may be fitted to
speak and act. The truth is, the whole life of man needs timing

INDIVIDUALISM AND PHILOSOPHY 95

and tuning. Furthermore, in addition to all this, parents send
their sons to the physical trainer, in order that their bodies may be
improved and rendered capable of seconding a noble intent, and
they themselves not be forced, from physical deterioration, to play
the coward in war or other (serious) matters. And those who can
best afford to give this education, give most of it, and these are the
richest people. Their sons go earliest to school and leave it latest.
And when the boys leave school, the State insists that they shall
learn the laws and live according to them, and not according to
their own caprice. . . . And if any one transgresses these laws, the
State punishes him. . . . Seeing that so much attention is devoted
to virtue, both in the family and in the State, do you wonder,
Socrates, and question whether virtue be something that can be
taught ? Surely you ought not to wonder at this, but rather to
wonder if it could not be taught. — Plato, Protagoras {words of
Protagoras) .

"Isn't it true, Lysis," said I, "that your parents love you very
much?" — "To be sure," said he. — "Then they would wish you
to be as happy as possible? " — " Of course," said he. — " And do
you think a person is happy who is a slave, and is not allowed to do
anything he desires?" — "I don't, indeed," said he. — "Then, if
your father and mother love you and wish you to be happy, they
endeavor by every means in their power to make you happy." —
" To be sure they do," said he. — " Then they allow you to do any-
thing you please, and never chide you, or prevent you from doing
what you desire." — "By Jove! they do, Socrates : they prevent me
from doing a great many things." — " What do you mean," said I;
" they wish you to be happy, and yet prevent you from doing what
you wish ? Let us take an example : If you want to ride in one of
your father's chariots, and to hold the reins, when it is competing
in a race, won't they allow you, or will they prevent you?" —
"By Jove! no: they would not allow me," said he. "But why
should they? There is a charioteer, who is hired by my father." —
" What do you mean ? They allow a hired man, rather than you, to
do what he likes with the horses, and pay him a salary besides? " —
" And why not ? " said he. — " Well then, I suppose they allow you
to manage the mule-team, and if you wanted to take the whip and
whip it, they would permit you." — " How could they ? " said he. —
" What ? " said I : "is nobody allowed to whip it ? " — " Of course,"
he said ; " the muleteer." — "A slave or a free man ? " — "A slave,"
said he. — "And so it seems they think more of a slave than of

96 ARISTOTLE

their son, and entrust their property to him rather than to you, and
allow him to do what he pleases, whereas they prevent you. But,
farther, tell me this. Do they allow you to manage yourself, or do
they not even trust you to that extent? " — " How trust me? " said
he. — "Then does some one manage you? " — " Yes, my pedagogue
here," said he. — " But he is surely not a slave? " — "Of course he
is, our slave," said he.— " Is it not strange," said I, " that a free-
man should be governed by a slave? But, to continue, what is
this pedagogue doing when he governs you? " — " Taking me to a
teacher, or something of the kind," he said. — " And these teachers,
it cannot be that they too govern you?"— "To any extent." —
" So then your father likes to set over you a host of masters and
managers ; but, of course, when you go home to your mother, she
lets you do what you like, in order to make you happy, either with
the threads or the loom, when she is weaving — does she not? She
surely doesn't in the least prevent you from handling the batten, or
the comb, or any of the instruments used in spinning." — And he,
laughing, said : " By Jove, Socrates ; she not only prevents me, but
I should be beaten if I touched them." — " By Hercules," said I,
" isn't it true that you have done some wrong to your father and
mother?" — "By Jove, not I," he said. — "But for what reason,
then, do they so anxiously prevent you from being happy, and
doing what you please, and maintain you the whole day in servi-
tude to some one or another, and without power to do almost any-
thing you like. It seems, indeed, that you derive no advantage
from all this wealth, but anybody manages it rather than you, nor
from your body, nobly born as it is, but some one else shepherds it
and takes care of it. But you govern nothing, Lysis, and do noth-
ing that you desire." — "The reason, Socrates," he said, "is, that
I am not of age." — Plato, Lysis.

The present state of the constitution is as follows : Citizenship is
a right of children whose parents are both of them citizens. Regis-
tration as member of a deme or township takes place when eigh-
teen years of age are completed. Before it takes place the towns-
men of the deme find a verdict on oath, firstly, whether they
believe the youth to be as old as the law requires, and if the ver-
dict is in the negative he returns to the ranks of the boys.
Secondly, the jury find whether he is freeborn and legitimate. If
the verdict is against him he appeals to the Heliaea, and the muni-
cipality delegate five of their body to accuse him of illegitimacy.
If he is found by the jurors to have been illegally proposed for the

INDIVIDUALISM AND PHILOSOPHY 97

register, the State sells him for a slave; if the judgment is given in
his favor, he must be registered as one of the municipality. Those
on the register are afterwards examined by the senate, and if any-
one is found not to be eighteen years old, a fine is imposed on the
municipality by which he was registered. After approbation, they
are called epheboi, or cadets, and the parents of all who belong to
a single tribe hold a meeting and, after being sworn, choose three
men of the tribe above forty years of age, whom they believe to
be of stainless character and fittest for the superintendence of
youth, and out of these the commons in ecclesia select one superin-
tendent for all of each tribe, and a governor of the whole body of
youths from the general body of the Athenians. These take them
in charge, and after visiting with them all the temples, march
down to Piraeus, where they garrison the north and south harbors,
Munychia and Acte. The commons also elect two gymnastic
trainers for them, and persons who teach them to fight in heavy
armor, to draw the bow, to throw the javelin, and to handle artil-
lery. Each of the ten commanders receives as pay a drachma
[about 20 cts.] per diem, and each of the cadets four obols [about
13 cts.]. Each commander draws the pay of the cadets of his own
tribe, buys with it the necessaries of life for the whole band (for
they mess together by tribes), and purveys for all their wants. The
first year is spent in military exercises. The second year the com-
mons meet in the theatre and the cadets, after displaying before
them their mastery in warlike evolutions, are each presented with
a shield and spear, and become mounted patrols of the frontier and
garrison the fortresses. They perform this service for two years,
wearing the equestrian cloak and enjoying immunity from civic
functions. During this period, to guard their military duties from
interruption, they can be parties to no action either as defendant or
plaintiff, except in suits respecting inheritance, or heiresses, or suc-
cessions to hereditary priesthoods. When the three years are com-
pleted they fall into the ordinary body of citizens. — Aristotle,
Constitution of Athens (Poste's Veision, with slight alterations).

That perfect harmony between power and worth
at which the Athenian State aimed, was something
not easily attained or preserved. As far back as
its recorded history reaches, we find a struggle for

08 ARISTOTLE

power going on between a party which possessed
more power than its worth justified, and a party which
possessed less; that is, between a party which, having
once been worthy, strove to hold power in virtue of
its past history, and one that claimed power in virtue
of the worth into which it was growing : in a word, a
struggle between declining aristocracy and growing
democracy. To the part}^ in power, of course, this
seemed a rebellion against lawful authority and privi-
lege, and it did its best to suppress it. Hence came
the rigorous legislation of Draco; later the more con-
ciliatory, less out-spoken, but equally aristocratic
legislation of Solon; then the tyranny of Pisistratus,
lasting as long as he could hold the balance of power
between the contending parties; then the constitution
of Clisthenes, with the breaking up of the old Athe-
nian* aristocratic system, the remodelling of the tribes,
the degradation of the Areopagus, and the definite
triumph of democracy. To complete the movement
and, as it were, to consecrate it, came the Persian
Wars, which mark the turning-point, the peripeteia,
in Athenian history and education. Whatever efforts
aristocracy makes to maintain itself after this, are
made in the name of, and under cover of a zeal for,
democracy.

The aristocratic Athenian State was based upon
land-ownership, slavery, and the entire freedom of
the land-owning class from all but family and State
duties, from all need of engaging in productive indus-
try. So long as the chief wealth of the State consisted
in land and its produce, so long the population was
•divided into two classes, the rich and the poor, and

INDIVIDUALISM AND PHILOSOPHY 99

SO long the former had little difficulty in keeping all
power in its own hands. But no sooner did the growth
of commerce throw wealth into the hands of a class
that owned no land, and was not above engaging in
industry, than this class began to claim a share in
political power. There were now two wealthy classes,
standing opposed to each other, a proud, conservative
one, with " old wealth and worth, " and a vain, radical
one, with new wealth and wants, both bidding for the
favor of the class that had little wealth, little worth,
and many wants, and thus making it feel its impor-
tance. Such is the origin of Athenian democracy. It
is the child of trade and productive industry. It owed
its final consecration to the Persian Wars, and espe-
cially to the battle of Salamis, in which Athens was
saved by her fleet, manned chiefly by marines (eTrt^arat)
from the lower classes, the upper classes, as we have
seen, being trained only for land-service. Thus the
battle of Salamis was not only a victory of Greece over
Persia, but of foreign trade over home agriculture, of
democracy over aristocracy.

The fact that the Athenian democracy owed its
origin to trade determined, in great measure, its his-
tory and tendencies. One of its many results was
that it opened Athens to the influx of foreign men,
foreign ideas, and foreign habits, not to speak of for-
eign gods, all of which tended to break up the old
self-contained, carefully organized life of the people.
In no department were their effects sooner or more
clearly felt than in that of education. From about
the date of the battle of Salamis, when the youthful
Ionian, Anaxagoras, came to Athens, a succession of

100 ARISTOTLE

men of " advanced " ideas in art and science sought a
field of action within her borders. Such a field, in-
deed, seemed purposely to have been left open for
them by the State, which had provided no means of
intellectual or moral education for its young citizens,
after they passed under its care (see p. 87). Nothing
was easier or more profitable than for these wise for-
eigners to constitute themselves public teachers, and
fill the place which the State had left vacant. The
State might occasionally object, and seek to punish
one or another of them for corrupting of the youth by
the promulgation of impious or otherwise dangerous
ideas, as it did in the case of Anaxagoras; but their
activity was too much in harmony with a tendency of
the time, — a radical and individualistic tendency
inseparable from democracy, — to be dispensed with
altogether. Hence it was that, within a few years
after the battle of Salamis, there flourished in Athens
a class of men unknown before within her boundaries,
a class of private professors, or "sophists," as they
called themselves, who undertook to teach theoretically
what the State had assumed could be taught only prac-
tically and by herself, viz., virtue and wisdom. Their
ideas were novel, striking, and radical, hence conge-
nial to a newly emancipated populace, vain of its recent
achievements, and contemptuous of all that savored of
the narrow, pious puritanism of the old time; their
premises were magnificent, and their fees high enough
to impose upon a class that always measures the
value of a thing by what it is asked to pay for it;
their method of teaching was such as to flatter the
vanity, and secure the favor, of both pupils and

INDIVIDUALISM AND PHILOS'OPifY IGl

parents. No wonder that tlieir success was immediate
and their influence enormous.

From the days of Socrates to our own, 'sophist' has
been a term of reproach, and not altogether unjustly
so. Hegel, Grote, and Zeller have, indeed, shown
that the sophists did not deserve all the obloquy
which has attached itself to their name, inasmuch as
they were neither much better nor much worse than
any class of men who set up to teach new doctrines
for money, and, as wise economists, suit supply to
demand; nevertheless, it may be fairly enough said
that they largely contributed to demoralize Athens, by
encouraging irreverence for the very conceptions upon
which her polity was built, and by pandering to some
of the most selfish and individualistic tendencies of
democracy. If it be said that they have their place
in the history of human evolution, as the heralds of
that higher view of life which allows the individual
a sphere of activities and interests outside of that
occupied by the State, this may at once and without
difficulty be admitted, without our being thereby
forced to regard them as noble men. The^imth-Ls,

fliPy-jrpprPSPritPrl^ in propfipp anr| \j] thp.nry^ thfl Bpirit
of individualiSP^j whiVh wag fhpn (^v(^ry\^rhpr(^ nssprting
itspTfa^ggJTi^tJJTP^spJ^Hf of natioTLaliftni or polityT and
which perhaps had to assert itself in an exaggerated
and destructive way, before the rightful claims of the
two could be manifested and harmonized. It is the
incorporation of this spirit of individualism into edu-
cation thatconstitutes th^JjNi^w F^diigation."

This" spirit, as manifested in the sophists and their
teaching, directed itself against the old political spirit

tfJs' ARISTOTLE

in all the departments of life — in religion, in politics,
in education. It discredited the old popular gods,
upon loyalty to whom the existence of the State had
been supposed to depend, substituting for them some
crude fancy like Vortex, or some bald abstraction like
Intellect. It encouraged the individual to seek his
end in his own pleasure, and to regard the State as
but a means to that end. It championed an educa-
tion in which these ideas occupied a prominent place.
[What the sophists actually taught the ambitious young
■men who sought their instruction, was self-assertion,
iinscrupulousness, and a showy rhetoric, in whose
triumphal procession facts, fancies, and falsehoods
marched together in brilliant array. ' It is but fair to
them to say that, in their endeavor to instruct young
men in the art of specious oratory, they laid the foun-
dations of the art of rhetoric and the science of gram-
mar. So much, at least, the world owes to them.

Since it was to the young men, who, freed from the
discipline of home, pedagogue, school, and palaestra,
could be met with anywhere, in the street, the agora,
the gymnasium, that the sophists directed their chief
attention, it was of course these who first showed the
effects of their teaching. But their influence, falling
in, as it did, with the pronounced radical tendencies
of the time, soon made itself felt in all grades of edu-
cation, from the family to the university, in the form
of an irreverent, flippant, conceited rationalism, before
whose self-erected and self-corrupted tribunal every
institution in heaven and earth was to be tried. In
the schools this influence showed itself in various
ways : (1) in an increased attention to literature, and

INDIVIDUALISM AND PHILOSOPHY 103

especially to the formal side of it, (2) in the tendency
to substitute for the works of the old epic and lyric
poets the works of more recent writers tinged with
the new spirit, (3) in the introduction of new and
complicated instruments and kinds of music, (4) in
an increasing departure from the severe physical and
moral discipline of the old days. We now, for the
first time, hear of a teacher of literature, distinct from
the music master, of teachers who possessed no copy
of Homer (Alcibiades is said to have chastised such a
one), of flutes, citharas, and the like in use in schools,
of wildness and lewdness among boys of tender age.
In the palaestra the new spirit showed itself in a ten-
dency to substitute showy and unsystematic exercises
for the vigorous and graded exercises of the older
time, to sacrifice education to execution.

But, as already remarked, the new spirit showed
itself most clearly and hurtfully in the higher educa-
tion. The young men, instead of spending their time
in vigorous physical exercise in the gymnasia and open
country, began now to hang about the streets and
public places, listening to sophistic discussions, and
to attend the schools of the sophists, exercising their
tongues more than any other part of their bodies. The
effect of this soon showed itself in a decline of physi-
cal power, of endurance, courage, and manliness, and
in a strong tendency to luxury and other physical sins.
They now began to imagine for themselves a private
life, very far from coincident with that demanded
of a citizen, and to look upon the old citizen-life,
and its ideals, sanctions, and duties, with contempt or
pity, as something which they had learnt to rise above.

104 ARISTOTLE

The glory and well-being of their country were no
longer their chief object of ambition. The dry rot of
individualism, which always seems to those affected
by it an evidence of health and manly vigor, was cor-
rupting their moral nature, and preparing the way
for the destruction of the State. For it was but too
natural that these young men, when they came to be
members of the State, should neglect its lessons and
claims, and, following the new teachings, live to them-
selves. Thus, just as the character of the " Old Edu-
cation " of Athens showed itself in the behavior of her
sons in the Persian Wars, so that of her " New Educa-
tion " showed itself fifty years later in the Peloponne-
sian War, that long and disastrous struggle which
wrecked Athens and Greece.

Yet Athens and her education were not allowed to
go to ruin without a struggle. The aristocratic party
long stuck to the old principles and tried to give them
effect; but, failing to understand the new circum-
stances and to take account of them, it erred in the
application of them, by seeking simply to restore the
old conditions. Individuals also exerted their best
efforts for the same end. ^schylus, who had fought
at Marathon, and who, more than any other Greek, was
endowed with the spirit of religion, interpreted the
old mythology in an ethical sense, and in this form
worked it into a series of dramas, whereby the history
and institutions of the Greek people were shown to be
due to a guiding Providence of inexorable justice,
rewarding each man according to his works, abhorring
proud homes "gilded with impurity of hands," and
dwelling with the pure and righteous, though housed

INDIVIDUALISM AND PHILOSOPHY 105

in the meanest cot. ^Eschylus thus became, not only
the father of Greek tragedy, but also the sublimest
moral teacher Greece ever possessed. For moral gran-
deur there is but one work in all literature that can
stand by the side of ^schylus' Oresteia, and that is
the Divine Comedy. Yet ^schylus was driven from
Athens on a charge of impiety, and died in exile.

But it was not the tragic drama alone that was
inspired and made a preacher of righteousness : in the
hands of Aristophanes, the comic drama exerted all its
power for the same end. For over thirty years this
inimitable humorist used the public theatre to lash
the follies, and hold up to contempt the wretched
leaders, of the Athenian populace, pointing out to his
countrymen the abyss of destruction that was yawn-
ing before them. The world has never seen such
earnest comedy, not even in the works of Moliere or
Beaumarchais. Yet it was all in vain. Long before
his death, Aristophanes was forbidden to hold up to
public scorn the degradation of his people.

Among the individual citizens who labored with all
their might to bring back Athens to her old worth
were two of very different character, endowments,
and position, the one laboring in the world of action,
the other in the world of thought. The first was
Pericles, who, seeing that democracy was the order
of the day, accepted it, and, by his personal character
and position, strove to guide it to worthy ends. In
order to encourage gymnastic exercises, particularly
among the sons of the newer families, he built the
Lyceum, in a grove sacred to Apollo, between Cynos-
arges and the city walls, as a gymnasium for them.

106 ARISTOTLE

"With a view to encouraging among them the study of
music, he built an odeon, or music-hall, under the
southeast end of the Acropolis. Both were mag-
nificent structures. AVhat he did towards the com-
pletion of the great theatre for the encouragement of
dancing, we do not know; that this entered into his
plan, there can hardly be any doubt. But Pericles
was too wise a man to suppose that he could induce
his pleasure-seeking countrymen to subject themselves
to the old discipline, without offering them an object
calculated to rouse their ambition and call forth their
energy. This object was nothing less than a united
Greece, with Athens as its capital. How hard he
tried to make this object familiar to them, and to
render Athens worthy of the place he desired her to
occupy, is pathetically attested to this day by the
Propylaea and the Parthenon. On the frieze of the
latter is represented the solemn sacrifice that was to
cement the union of the Hellenic people, and place
it at the head of civilization. When degenerate
Greece resisted all his efforts to make her become one
peaceably, he tried to make her do so by force, and
the Peloponnesian War, started on a mere frivolous
pretext, was the result. He did not live long enough
to learn the outcome of this desperate attempt to wake
his countrymen to new moral and political life, and
it w^as well. If he had, he might have been forced to
recognize that he had been attempting an impossible
task, — trying to erect a strong structure with rotten
timber, to make a noble State out of ignoble, selfish
men. Unfortunately, the example of his OAvn private
life, in which he openly defied one of the laws of the

INDIVIDUALISM AND PHILOSOPHY 107

State, and tried to make concubinage (kratp-q<jL<i) re-
spectable, more than undid all the good he sought to
accomplish. The truth is, Pericles was himself too
deeply imbued with the three vices of his time —
rationalism, self-indulgence, and love of show — to be
able to see any true remedy for the evils that sprang
from them. What was needed was not letters, music,
gymnastics, dancing, or dream of empire, but some-
thing entirely different — a new moral inspiration and
ideal.

This, the second of the men to whom reference has
been made, Socrates, sought to supply. In the midst
of self-indulgence, he lived a life of poverty and
privation; in the midst of splendor and the worship
of outward beauty, he pursued simplicity and took
pleasure in his ugliness ; in the midst of self-assertive
rationalism and all-knowing sophistry, he professed
ignorance and submission to the godsj The problem
of how to restore the moral life of Athens and Greece
presented itself to Socrates in this form : The old ethi-
cal social sanctions, divine and humany having, under
the influence of rationalism and individualism, lost their
power, where and how shall we^nd gther sanctions to
take_Jh£ir^j3la£e^^ To answer this one question was
the aim of Socrates' whole life. He was not long in
seeing that any true answer must rest upon a compre-
hension of man's entire nature and relations, and that
the sophists were able to impose upon his countrymen
only because no such comprehension was theirs. He
saw that the old moral life, based upon naive tradition
and prescription, sanctioned by gods of the imagina-
tion, would have to give place to a moral life resting

108 ARISTOTLE

upon self -understanding and reflection. He accord-
ingly adopted as his motto the command of the
Delphic oracle, Know Thyself (yvCjOt o-eauroV), and set to
work with all his might to obey it.

He now, therefore, went to meet the sophists on
their own ground and with their own methods, and
he did this so well as to be considered by many, Aris-
tophanes among them, as the best possible representa-
tive of the class. What is true is, that he was the
first Athenian who undertook to do what the sophists
had for some time considered their special function,

-^ — to impart a " higher education " to the youth and
men of Athens. He went about the streets, shops,
walks, schools, and gymnasia of the city, drawing all
sorts of persons into conversation, and trying to
elicit truth for himself and them (for he pretended
to know nothing). He was never so pleased as when
he met a real sophist, who professed to have knowl-
edge, and never so much in his element as when, in
the presence of a knot of young men, he could, by his

J ironical, subtle questions, force said sophist to admit
that he too knew nothing. The fact was, Socrates,
studying Heraclitus, had become convinced that the
reason why men fell into error was because they did
not know themselves, or their own thoughts, because
what they called thoughts were mere opinions, mere
fragments of thoughts. He concluded that, if men
were ever to be redeemed from error, intellectual and
moral, they must be made to think whole thoughts.
-^Accordingly, he took the ordinary opinions of men
and, by a series of well-directed questions, tried to
bring out their implications, that is, the wholes of

INDIVIDUALISM AND PHILOSOPHY 109

which they were parts. Such is the Socratic or dia-
lectic (= conversational) method. It does not pretend
to impart any new knowledge, but merely, as Socrates
said, to deliver the mind of the thoughts with which
it is pregnant. And Socrates not only held that sav-
ing truth consisted of whole thoughts; he held also
that all such thoughts were universally and neces-
sarily true ; that, while there might be many opinions
about a thing, there could be but one truth, the same
for all men, and therefore independent of any man.
This was the exact opposite of what Protagoras the
sophist had taught, the opposite of the gospel of
individualism (see p. 93). Man is so far from being
the measure of all things, that there is in all things a
measure to which he must conform, if he is not to
sink into error. This measure, this system of whole
truths, implying an eternal mind to which it is pres-
ent, and by which it is manifested in the world, is
just what man arrives at, if he will but think out his
thoughts in their completeness. In doing so, he at
once learns the laws by which the universe is governed
and finds a guide and sanction for his own conduct —
a sanction no longer external and imposed by the
State, but internal and imposed by the mind. AY"
system like this involved a complete reversal of the
old view of the relation between man and the State,
and at the same time took the feet from under indi-
vidualism. " It is true," said Socrates in effect, "that
the individual, and not the State, is the source of all
authority, the measure of all things ; but he is so, not
as individual, but as endowed with the universal rea-
son by which the world, including the State, is gov-

110 ARISTOTLE

erned." This is the sum and substance of Socrates'
teaching, this is what he believed to be true self-
knowledge. This is the truth whose application to
life begins a new epoch in human history, and sepa-
rates the modern from the ancient world; this is the
truth that, reiterated and vivified by Christianity,
forms the very life of our life to-day.

In adopting this view, Socrates necessarily formed
"a party by himself," a party which could hope for
no sympathy from either of the other two into which
his countrymen were divided. The party of tradition
charged him with denying the gods of his country and
corrupting her youth; the radical party hated him
because he convicted its champions of vanity, super-
ficiality, and ignorance. Between them, they com-
passed his death, and Athens learnt, only when it was
too late, that she had slain her prophet. But Socrates,
though slain, was not dead. His spirit lived on, and
the work which he had begun grew and prospered.
Yet it could not save Athens, except upon a condition
which she neither would nor could accept, that of
remodelling her polity and the life of her citizens in
accordance with divine truth and justice. Jndeed,
though he discovered a great truth, Socrates did not
present it in a form in which it could be accepted
under the given conditions. He himself even did not
by any means see all the stupendous implications of
his own principle, which, in fact, was nothing less than
the ground of all true etiilcsr~all liberty, and all sci-
ence. It is doubtful whether any one sees them now,
and certain that they have been nowhere realized.
Still his truth and his life were not without their im-

INDIVIDUALISM AND PHILOSOPHY 111

mediate effect upon Athens and Athenian education.
Men, working in his spirit, and inspired with his truth,
more or less clearly understood, almost immediately
replaced the sophists in Athens, and drew the atten-
tion of her citizens, old and young, to the serious
search for truth. In fact, from this time on, the
intellectual tendency began to prevail over the gym-
nastic and musical, and this continued until, finally,
it absorbed the whole life of the people, and Athens,
from being a university-State, became a State-univer-
sity. Such it was in the days of Cicero, Paul,
Plutarch, Lucian, and Proclus. That this one-sided
tendency was fatal to the political life of Athens, and
therefore, in some degree, to its moral life, is clear
enough; and, though we cannot hold Socrates person-
ally responsible for this result, we must still admit
that it was one which flowed from his system of
thought. Personally, indeed, Socrates was a moral
hero, and "five righteous" men like him, had they
appeared, would have gone far to save Athens; but
this very heroism, this inborn enthusiasm for right-
eousness, blinded him so far as to make him believe
that men had only to know the right in order to be
ready to follow it. Hence that exaggerated impor-
tance attached to right knowing, and that compara-
tive neglect of right feeling and right doing, which
in the sequel proved so paralyzing. Hence the fail-
ure of Socrates' teaching to stem the tide of cor-
ruption in Athens, and restore her people to heroism
and worth.

Socrates left behind him many disciples, some of
whom distinguished themselves in practical ways,

112 ARISTOTLE

others as founders of philosophic schools, emphasizing
different sides of his teaching. He was but a few
years in his grave when two of these were teaching
regularly in the two old gymnasia of Athens. Plato,
a full-blooded Athenian, was teaching in the Academy
the intellectual and moral theories of his master,
while Antisthenes, a half-breed (liis mother being a
Thracian), was inculcating the lesson of his heroic
life in Cynosarges. Their followers were called,
respectively, Academics and Cynics. Thus, by these -
two men, was the higher education for the first time
introduced into the public institutions of Athens.
Socrates' aim, as we have seen, had been purely a

>f moral one, and this fact was not lost sight of by his
immediate followers. The chief question with them
all was still : How can the people be brought back to
moral life? But, thanks partly to the vagueness in
which he had left the details of his doctrine, they
were divided with respect to the means whereby this
was to be accomplished. One party, best represented
by Plato, and following most closely in the footsteps
of the master, held that, man being essentially a social
being, and morality a relation in society, it was only in
and through a social order, a State, that virtue could
be realized. Another party, represented by Antis-
thenes, maintained that virtue was a purely personal
matter, and that the wise man stood high above any
and all social institutions. These two views main-
tained themselves, side by side, in nearly all subse-
quent Greek thought, and at last found expression in

^ the State and Church of the Christian world.

Two of Socrates' followers, believers in institu-

INDIVIDUALISM AND PHILOSOPHY 113

tional morality, left behind them treatises which have
come down to us, giving their views as to the manner
in which virtue might be cultivated. These are the
practical Xenophon and the theoretic Plato, both men
of pure Athenian stock. Nothing will better enable
us to comprehend the evils of the " New Education "
than a consideration of the means by which these
worthy men proposed to remedy them. Both are
idealists and Utopians; but the former is conserva-
tive and reactionary, while the latter is speculative
and progressive. Both are aiming at one thing — a
virtuous and happy State, to replace the vicious and
wretched one in which they found their lot cast; but
they differed in their views regarding the nature of
such a State, and the means of realizing it.

CHAPTER II
XENOPHON

Never a good is the rule of the many ; let one be the ruler. —
Homer.

Wealth without Worth is no harmless housemate. — Sappho.

One to me is ten thousand, if he be best.

All the Ephesians, from youth up, ought to be hanged and the
State left to the boys, because they cast out Hermodorus, the wor-
thiest man amongst them, saying : ' No one of us shall be worthiest,
else let him be so elsewhere and among others.' — Heraclitus.

Reflecting once that, of the very small states, Sparta appeared to
be the most powerful and the most renowned in Greece, I began to
wonder in what way this had come about. But when I reflected
upon the manners of the Spartans, I ceased to wonder. As to Ly-
curgus, who drew up for them the laws, by obedience to which they
have prospered, I admire him and hold him to be, in the highest
degree, a wise man. For he, instead of imitating other states,
reached conclusions opposite to those of most, and thereby rendered
his country conspicuous for prosperity. — Xenophon.

Xenophox was in no sense a philosopher or a prac-
tical teacher, but he was a man of sterling worth, of
knightly courage, of wide and varied experience, of
strong sagacity, and of genial disposition, a keen ob-
server, and a charming writer. He was a true old
Athenian puritan, broadened and softened by study
and contact with the world. He hated democracy so
cordially that he would not live in Athens to witness
its vulgarity and disorder; but he loved his coun-
114

XENOPHON 115

try, and desired to see its people restored to their
ancient worth. He believed that this could be done
only by some great, royal personality, like Lyciirgus
or Cyrus, enforcing a rigid discipline, and once more
reducing the man to the citizen. Unwilling, probably,
to hold up hated Sparta as a model to his beaten and
smarting countrymen, he laid the* scene of his peda-
gogical romance in far-off Persia.

^'In the Education of Cyrus (Kvpov TratSeta) we have
Xenophon's scheme for a perfect education.' Despite
the scene in which it is laid, it is purely Hellenic,
made up of Athenian and Spartan elements in about
equal proportions. For this reason also it has a special
interest for us. As the portion of the treatise deal-
ing directly with public education is brief, we can
hardly do better than transcribe it in a translation.

" Cyrus is still celebrated in legend and song by the
barbarians as a man of extraordinary personal beauty,
and as of a most gentle, studious, and honor-loving dis-
position, which made him ready to undergo any labor,
and brave any danger, for the sake of praise. Such is
the account that has been handed down of his appear-
ance and disposition. He was, of course, educated in
accordance with the laws of the Persians. These laws
seem to begin their efforts for the public weal at a
different point from those of most other states; for
most states, after allowing parents to educate their
children as they please, and the older people even to
spend their time according to their own preference,
lay down such laws as: Thou shalt not steal, Thou
shalt not rob. Thou shalt not commit burglary. Thou
shalt not commit assault. Thou shalt not commit

116 ARISTOTLE

adultery, Thou shalt not disobey a magistrate, etc. ;
and if any one transgresses any of these laws, they
inflict punishment on him. The Persian laws, on the
contrary, provide beforehand that the citizens shall
never, from the very first, have any disposition to
commit a wicked or base act. And they do so in this
way. They have what they call a Freemen's Square,
where the royal palace and the other public buildings
stand. From this square are removed all ^^vares and
chafferers, with their cries and vulgarities, to *an-
other place, so that their din and disorder may not
interfere with the decorum of the cultivated class.
This square in the neighborhood of the public build-
ings is divided into four parts, one for boys, one for
youths (icftrj^oL), one for mature men, and one for men
beyond the military age. The hour when these shall
appear in their places is settled by law. The boys
and mature men come at daybreak, the older men
when they think fit, except on the special days when
they are bound to appear. The youths pass the night
by the public buildings in light armor, only those who
are married being excused. These are not hunted up,
unless they have been ordered beforehand to appear;
but it is not thought decent to be often absent. Each
of these divisions is under the charge of twelve gov-
ernors, one from each of the twelve tribes into which
the Persians are divided. The governors of the boys
are chosen from among the elderly men, with special
view to their fitness for making the most of boys,
while those of the youths are chosen from among the
mature men upon a similar principle. Those of the
mature men are selected with a view to their ability

XENOPHON 117

to hold these to their regular duties, and to the special
commands of the supreme authority. Even the old
men have presidents appointed over them, who see
that they perform their duty. What the duties of
each are we shall now state, in order to show just how
provision is made for securing the highest worth on
the part of the citizens.

^' First, then, the boys, when they go to school,
spend their time in learning justice. They say they
go for that purpose, just as our boys go to learn let-
ters. Their governors spend, the greater part of the
day in acting as judges among them. It is needless
to say that boys, as well as men, bring charges against
each other of theft and robbery and violence and de-
ceit and slander, and similar things, and those whom
the judges iind guilty of any of these they punish.
But they also punish those whom they find bringing
false charges. They pronounce judgment likewise on
a charge which, more than anything else, makes men
hate each other, and for which they are judged less
than for any other, namely, ingratitude. If the judges
find a boy in a position to return a favor and not doing
it, they punish him severely, believing that persons
who are ungrateful will, more than any others, be
'undutiful to the gods, to parents, country, and friends.
It is generally held that ingratitude, more than aught
else, leads to irreverence, and we need not add that it
is the prime mover in every form of baseness. They
teach the boys also self-denial, and these are greatly
aided in learning this virtue from seeing it daily
practised by their elders. Another thing they teach
them is obedience to those placed in authority over

118 ARISTOTLE

them; and they are greatly aided in learning this,
by seeing their elders strictly obeying their governors.
Another thing yet which they teach them is self-dis-
cipline in matters of eating and drinking; and they
are greatly aided in this by seeing that their elders
never absent themselves for the purpose of eating,
until they are permitted to do so by their governors,
as well as by the fact that they (the boys) do not eat
with their mothers, but with their teachers, and at a
signal from their governors. As food, they bring with
them from home bread, as a relish, nasturtium, and
in order to drink, if they are thirsty, they bring an
earthen cup to draw water from the river with. In
addition to all these things, the boys learn to shoot
with the bow and to throw the javelin. Up to the age
of sixteen or seventeen years, these are the studies in
which the boys engage; after that they are transferred
to the class of cadets (t<^rjpoi).

"These cadets spend their time in this way: For
ten years from the time when they graduate from the
boys' class, they sleep, as we have already said, in
the precincts of the public buildings, acting at once as
a guard to the city and practising self-denial. It is
generally agreed, indeed, that this is the age whicli
especially requires attention. During the day they
are at the disposal of their governors, and ready to
perform any public service required. If no such ser-
vice is demanded, they remain in the neighborhood of
the public buildings. When the king goes out to hunt,
which he does many times a month, he takes with him
one-half of the tribes, and leaves the other behind.
Those youths who accompany him must carry with

XENOPHON 119

them bows and, in a sheath alongside their quivers, a
bill or scimitar; also a light shield, and two javelins
apiece, one to throw, the other to use, if necessary, at
close quarters. For this reason they make hunting a
matter of public concern, and the king, as in war, acts
as their leader, hunts himself, and sees that the others
hunt, the Persians being of opinion that this is the
best of all preparations for war. And, indeed, it accus-
toms them to rise early, and to bear heat and cold ; it
affords them exercise in marching and running, and
compels them to use their bows or their javelins upon
wild animals, wherever they happen to come upon
them. They are often forced, moreover, to sharpen
their courage, when they find themselves face to face
with some powerful animal. They must, of course,
wound the one that comes to close quarters, and hold
at bay the one that attacks them. Hence it is difficult
to find in war anything that is absent from the chase.
When they go out to hunt, the young men, of course,
take with them a larger luncheon than the boys are
allowed to have; but this is the only difference be-
tween the two. And while they are hunting, they
sometimes do not lunch at all; but, if they have to
remain beyond their time on account of some game,
or otherwise, if they wish to prolong the chase, they
make a dinner of this lunch, and on the following day
continue the hunt till dinner-time, counting the two
days one, because they consume only one day's food.
And they do this for the sake of practice, so that, if
ever they should run short of provisions in war, they
may be able to do the same thing. These youths have
as a relish what game they capture in the chase, other-

120 ARISTOTLE

wise they have nasturtium. And if any one thinks
that they eat without pleasure, when they have only
nasturtium with their food, or drink without pleasure,
when they drink water, let him remember how sweet
barley-cake and wheaten bread are when he is hungry,
and how sweet water is when he is thirsty. The tribes
that remain behind, when the king goes hunting,
spend their time in the same studies which, they pur-
sued as boys, including shooting and javelin-casting,
and in these continual contests are going on. There
are likewise public exhibitions in them, at which
prizes are offered ; and whichever tribe contains most
young men exceptionally proficient, manly, and steady,
is commended by the citizens, who likewise honor, not
only their present governor, but also the governor who
had charge of them as boys. The young men who are
left behind are also employed by the authorities, if
any such service is required as manning a guard-house,
tracking out malefactors, running down robbers, or
anything demanding strength and swiftness. Such
are the studies of the young men. And when they
have passed ten years in these, they graduate into the
class of mature men.

" From the date of this graduation, they spend five
and twenty years more in the following manner : In
the first place, like the young men, they place them-
selves at the disposal of the authorities for any public
service requiring at once sagacity and unimpaired
strength. If they are required to take the field in war,
men proficient as they are go armed, no longer with
bows and javelins, but with what are called hand-to-
hand weapons, breast-plates, shields in their left

XENOPHON 121

hands, snch as we see in pictures of the Persians,
and a sword or bill in their right. And all the offi-
cials are drawn from this class, except the boys'
teachers. And when they have passed twenty-five
years in this class, they are something more than fifty
years of age. At that age they graduate into the class
of elders, as, indeed, they are called.

"These elders no longer serve in war outside
their own country, but, remaining at home, act as
judges in public and private cases. They do so even
in capital cases. They likewise choose all the officials,
and if any person belonging to either of the classes of
young and mature men neglects any of his lawful
duties, the governor of his tribe, or any one else who
pleases, may report him to the elders, and these, if
they find the fact to be as reported, expel him from
his tribe, and he who is expelled remains dishonored
all his life.

" To give a clearer notion of the polity of the Per-
sians as a whole, I will retrace my steps a little.
After what has been said, this may be done in a very
few words: The Persians, then, are said to number
about one hundred and twenty thousand. Of these,
none is excluded by law from honors or offices ; but
all Persians are allowed to send their sons to the
public schools of justice. However, it is only those
who are able to maintain their sons without employ-
ment that send them there : the rest do not. On the
other hand, those that are educated by the public
teachers are permitted to spend their youth among
the epheboi, while those who have not completed this
education are not. Again those that pass their youth

122 ARISTOTLE

among the ephehoi, and come up to the legal require-
ments, are allowed to graduate into the class of mature
men, and to participate in honors and offices ; whereas
those who do not pass through the grade of the
ephehoi do not rise to the class of mature men. Finally,
those who complete the curriculum of the mature men
without reproach, pass into the class of elders. Thus
it is that this class of elders is composed of men who
have passed through all the grades of culture. Such is
the polity of the Persians, and such is the system of
training whereby they endeavor to secure the highest
worth."

This Utopian scheme of education has a peculiar
interest, because it is nothing more or less than the
old ideal of Greek education become fully conscious of
itself, under the influence of the new ideal. Let us
call attention to the main points of it. (1) The edu-
cation here set forth is purely political : men are re-
garded simply and solely as citizens ; all honors are
civic honors. (2) No provision is made for the edu-
cation of women, their range of activity being entirely
confined to the family. (3) Distinction is made to
rest upon education and conduct. (4) The poorer
classes of the population, though not legally excluded
from education, position, and power, are virtually ex-
cluded by their poverty, so that the government is
altogether in the hands of the rich, and is, in fact, an
aristocracy, while pretending to be a democrac}' :
hence, (5) Social distinctions are distinctions of
worth, which is just the Greek ideal.

There is, however, one point in the scheme which
shows that it is reactionary, directed against prevail-

XENOPHON 123

ing tendencies. Not one word is said of the intel-
lectual side of education, of music or letters." It is
evident that Xenophon, himself a man of no mean
literary attainments, clearly saw the dangers to
Greek life and liberty involved in that exaggerated
devotion to literary and intellectual pursuits which
followed the teaching of the sophists and Socrates,
and that, in order to check this perilous tendency, he
drew up a scheme of education from which intellec-
tual and literary pursuits are altogether excluded, in
which justice takes the place of letters, and music is
not mentioned.

This suggests a curious inquiry in respect to his
Memoirs of Socrates. This work has generally been
regarded as giving us a more correct notion of the
real, living Socrates than the manifestly idealizing
works of Plato. But was not Xenophon, who could
not fail to see the future power of Socrates' influence,
as anxious as Plato to claim the prophet as the cham-
pion of his own views, and does not this fact deter-
mine the whole character of his work? Is it not a
romance, in the same sense that the Cyropcedia is, with
only this difference, that the facts of Socrates' life,
being fairly well known to those for whom Xenophon
was writing, could not be treated with the same free-
dom and disregard as those of Cyrus' life?
^ Before we part with Xenophon, we must call atten-
tion to another treatise of his, in which he deals with
a subject that was then pressing for consideration —
the education of women. While, as we have seen,
the ^olian states and even Dorian Sparta provided,
in some degree, for women's education, Athens appar-

124 ARISTOTLE

ently, conceiving that woman had no duties outside
of the family, left her education entirely to the care
of that institution. The conservative Xenophon does
not depart from this view; but, seeing the moral evils
that were springing from the neglect of women and
their inability to be, in any sense, companions to
their cultured, or over-cultured, husbands, he lays
down in his (Economics a scheme for the education of
the young wife by her husband.'^ As this affords us an
admirable insight into the lives of Athenian girls and
women, better, indeed, than can be found elsewhere,
we cannot do better than transcribe the first part of it.
It takes the form of a conversation between Socrates
and a young husband, named Ischomachus (Strong
Fighter), and is reported by the former. Socrates
tells how, seeing Ischomachus sitting at leisure in a
certain portico, he entered into conversation with
him, paid him an acceptable compliment, and inquired,
how he came to be nearly always busy out of doors,
seeing that he evidently spent little time in the house.
Ischomachus replies : —

" ' As to your inquiry, Socrates, it is true that I
never remain indoors. Nor need I; for my wife is
fully able by herself to manage everything in the
house.' *This again, Ischomachus,' said I, *is some-
thing that I should like to ask you about, whether it
was you who taught your wife to be a good wife, or
whether she knew all her household duties when you
received her from her father and mother.' 'Well,
Socrates,' said he, 'what do you suppose she knew
when I took her, since she was hardly fifteen when
she came to me, and, during the whole of her life

f/-'

XENOPHON 125

before that, special care had been taken that she should
see, hear, and ask as little as possible. Indeed, don't
you think I ought to have been satisfied if, when
she came to me, she knew nothing but how to take
wool and turn it into a garment, and had seen nothing
but how tasks in spinning are assigned to maids? As
regards matters connected with eating and drinking,
of course she was extremely well educated when
she came, and this seems to me the chief education,
whether for a man or a woman.' *In all other mat-
ters, Ischomachus, ' said I, 'you yourself instructed
your wife, so as to make her an excellent housewife.'
'To be sure,' said he, 'but not until I had first sacri-
ficed, and prayed that I might succeed in teaching her,
and she might succeed in learning, what was best for
both of us.' 'Then,' said I, 'your wife took part in
your sacrifice and in these prayers, did she not?'
'Certainly she did,' said Ischomachus, 'and solemnly
promised to the gods that she would be what she
ought to be, and showed every evidence of a disposi-
tion not to neglect what was taught her.' 'But do, I
beseech you, Ischomachus, explain to me,' said I,
'what was the first thing you set about teaching her?
I shall be more interested in hearing you tell that,
than if you told me all about the finest gymnastic or
equestrian exhibition.' And Ischomachus replied:
'What should I teach her? As soon as she could be
handled, and was tame enough to converse, I spoke
to her in some such way as this : Tell me, my dear,
have you ever considered why I took you as my wife,
and why your parents gave you to me? That it was
not because I could not find any one else to share my

126 ARISTOTLE

bed, you know as well as I. No, but because I was
anxious to find for myself, and your parents were
anxious to find for you, the most suitable partner in
home and offspring,.! selected you, and your parents,
it seems, selected me, out of all possible matches.
If, then, God shall ever bless us with children, then
we will take the greatest care of them, and try to
give them the best possible education; for it will
prove a blessing to both of us to have the very best
of helpers and supports in our old age. But at pres-
ent we have this as our common home. And all that
I have, I pass over to the common stock, and all that
you have brought with you, you have added to the
same. Xor must we begin to count which of us has
contributed the larger number of things, but must
realize that whichever of us is the better partner con-
tributes the more valuable things. Then, Socrates,
my wife replied, and said : In what way can I cooper-
ate with you? What power have I? Everything
rests with you. My mother told me that my only
duty was to be dutiful. Assuredly, my dear, said I,
and my father told me the same thing. But it is
surely the duty of a dutiful husband and a dutiful
wife to act so that what they have may be improved
to the utmost, and by every fair and lawful means
increased to the utmost. And what do you find, said
my wife, that I can do towards helping you to build
up our house? Dear me! said I, whatever things the
gods have endowed you with the power to do, and the
law permits, try to do these to the best of your abil-
ity. And what are these? said she. It strikes me,
said I, that they are by no means the least important

XENOPHON 127

things, unless it be true that in the hive the queen-
bee is entrusted with the least important functions.
Indeed, it seems to me, my dear, I continued, that
the very gods have yoked together this couple called
male and female with a very definite purpose, viz. to
be the source of the greatest mutual good to the yoke-
fellows. In the first place, this union exists in order
that living species may not die out, but be preserved
by propagation; in the second, the partners in this
union, at least in the case of human beings, obtain
through it the supports of their old age. Moreover,
human beings do not live, like animals, in the open
air, but obviously require roofs. And I am sure,
people who are going to have anything to bring under
a roof must have some one to do outdoor duties;
for, you see, ploughing, sowing, planting, herding,
are all outdoor employments, and it is from them
that we obtain all our supplies. On the other hand,
when the supplies have all been brought under cover,
there is needed some one to take care of them, and to
perform those duties which must be done indoors.
Among these are the rearing of children and the
preparation of food from the produce of the earth;
likewise the making of cloth out of wool. And, since
both these classes of duties, the outdoor and the
indoor, require labor and care, it seems to me, I said,
that God has constructed the nature of woman with a
special view to indoor employments and cares, and
that of man with a view to outdoor employments and
cares. For he has made both the body and the soul of
the man better able than those of the woman to bear
cold, heat, travelling, military serxic£^_atti^so has

Cr THF ■

NIVERSITf

128 ARISTOTLE

assigned to him the outdoor employments. And, since
he has made the body of woman less able to endure
these things, he seems to me to have assigned to her
the indoor employments. Considering, moreover,
that he had made it woman's nature and duty to
nourish young children, he imparted to her a greater
love for babies than he did to man. And, inasmuch
as he had made it part of woman's duty to take care
of the income of the family, God, knowing that for
care-taking the soul is none the worse for being ready
to fear, bestowed upon woman a greater share of
fear than upon a man. On the other hand, knowing
that he who attends to the outdoor employments will
have to protect the family from wrong-doers, he
endowed him with a greater share of courage. And,
since both have to give and receive, he divided mem-
ory and carefulness between them, so that it would be
difficult to determine which of the sexes, the male or
the female, is the better equipped with these. And
the necessary self-denial he divided between them,
and made a decree that, whichever of the two, the
husband or the wife, was the superior, should be
rewarded with the larger share of this blessing. And
just because the nature of man and the nature of
woman are not both equally fitted for all tasks, the
two are the more dependent upon each other, and
their union is the more beneficial to them, because the
one is able to supply what the other lacks. And now,
said I, my dear, that we know the duties which God
has assigned to us respectively, it becomes each of
us to do our best, in order to perform these duties.
And the law, I continued, coincides with the divine

XENOPHON 129

intention, and unites man and woman. And, just as
God has made them partners in offspring, so the law
makes them partners in the household. And the law
sets its approval upon that difference of function
which God has signified by the difference of ability
which marks the sexes. For it is more respectable
for a woman to remain indoors than to spend her time
out of doors, and less respectable for a man to remain
indoors than to attend to outdoor concerns. And, if
any one acts in a manner at variance with this divine
ordination, it may be that his transgression does not
escape the notice of the gods, and that he is punished
for neglecting his own duties or performing those of
his wife. It appears to me, said I, that the queen-
bee also performs duties that are assigned to her by
God. And what duties, said my wife, does the queen-
bee perform, that have any resemblance to those
incumbent upon me? This, said I, that she remains
in the hive and does not allow the other bees to be
idle, but sends out those that have to work to their
business, and knows and receives what each brings
in, and takes care of it till it is needed for use. And
when the time for using comes, she distributes to each
her just share. Besides this, she attends to the con-
struction of the honey-combs that goes on indoors,
and sees that it is done properly and rapidly, and
carefully sees that the young swarm is properly
reared. And when it is old enough, and the young
bees are fit for work, she sends them out, as a colony,
under the leadership of one of the old ones. And
will it be my duty, said my wife, to do these things?
Exactly so, said I, it will be your duty to remain

130 ARISTOTLE

iudoors, to send out together to their work those
whose duties lie out of doors, and to superintend those
who have to work indoors, to receive whatever is
brought in, to dispense whatever has to be paid out,
while the necessary surplus you must provide for, and
take care that the year's allowance be not spent in a
month, \yhen wool is brought in to you, you must
see that it is turned into cloth ; and when dried grain
comes, that it is properly prepared for food. There
is, however, one of your duties, said I, that will
perhaps seem somewhat disagreeable to you. When-
ever any one of the slaves is sick, you will have to
see that he is properly nursed, no matter who he is.
Indeed, said my wife, that will be a most pleasant
duty, if those who have been carefully nursed are go-
ing to be grateful and kindlier than they were before.
And I, ' said Ischomachus, * admiring her answer, con-
tinued: Don't you suppose, my dear, that by such
examples of care on the part of the queen of the hive
the bees are so disposed to her that, when she leaves,
none of them are willing to remain behind, but all
follow her? And my wife replied: I should be sur-
prised if the duties of headship did not fall to you
rather than to me. For my guardianship and disposal
of things in the house would be ridiculous, unless you
saw to it that something was brought in from without.
And my bringing-in would be ridiculous, said I, if
there were no one to take care of what I brought?
Don't you see, I said, how those who pour water into a
leaky barrel, as the expression is, are pitied, as wast-
ing their labour? And indeed, said my wife, they are
to be pitied, if they do that. There are other special

XENOPHON 131

duties, said I, that are sure to become pleasant to
you; for example, when you take a raw hand at
weaving and turn her into an adept, and so double
her value to you, or when you take a raw hand at
managing and waiting and make her capable, reliable,
and serviceable, so that she acquires untold value, or
when you have it in your power to reward those male
slaves that are dutiful and useful to your family, or
to punish one who proves the opposite of this. But
the pleasantest thing of all will be, if you prove
superior to me, and make me your knight, and if you
need not fear that, as you advance in years, you will
forfeit respect in the house, but are sure that, as you
grow older, the better a partner you are to me, and
the better a mother to the children, the more highly
you will be respected in the house. For all that is
fair and good, said I, increases for men, as life
advances, not through beauties, but through virtues.
Such, Socrates, to the best of my recollection, was the
first conversation I had with my wife.' ''

Ischomachus goes on and tells how, in subsequent
conversations, he taught his wife the value of order,
" how to have a place for everything, and everything
in its place," how to train a servant, and how to
make herself attractive without the use of cosmetics
or fine clothes. But enough has been quoted to show
what the ideal family relation among the Athenians
was, and what education was thought fitting for girls
and women. Just as the man was merged in the
citizen, so the woman, was merged in the housewife,
and they each received the education and training
demanded by their respective duties./ If Athenian

132 ARISTOTLE

husbands had all been like Ischomachus, it is clear
that the lives of wives might have been very happy
and useful, and that harmony might have reigned in
the family. But, unfortunately, that was not very
often the ease. Wives, being neglected, became lazy,
wasteful, self-indulgent, shrewish, and useless, while
their husbands, finding them so, sought in immoral
relations with brilliant and cultivated hetcerce, or in
worse relations still, a coarse substitute for that satis-
faction which they ought to have sought and found in
their own homes. Thus there grew up a condition of
things which could not fail to sap the moral founda-
tions of society, and which made thoughtful men turn
their attention to the question of woman's education
and sphere of duty.

CHAPTER III

PLATO

All human laws are nourished by the one divine law; for it pre-
^vaileth as far as it listeth, and sufficeth for all and surviveth all. —
Heraclitus.

Though reason is universal, the mass of men live as if they had
each a private wisdom of his own. — Id.

Antigone. . . . But him will I inter ;

And sweet 'twill be to die in such a deed,

• And sweet will be my rest with him, the sweet,

When I have righteously offended here.
For longer time, methinks, have I to please
The dwellers in yon world than those in this ;
For I shall rest forever there. But thou,
Dishonor still what's honored of the gods.

— Sophocles, Antigone.

The circle that gathered round Isaiah and his household in these
evil days, holding themselves apart from their countrymen, treas-
uring the word of revelation, and waiting for Jehovah, were indeed,
as'Isaiah describes them, "signs and tokens in Israel from Jehovah
of hosts that dwelleth in Mount Zion." The formation of this little
community was a new thing in the history of religion. Till then no
one had dreamed of a fellowship of faith dissociated from all national
forms, maintained without the exercise of ritual services, bound
together by faith in the divine word alone. It was the birth of a
new era in the Old Testament religion, for it was the birth of the
conception of the Church, the first step in the emancipation of spir-
itual religion from the forms of political life, — a step not less sig-
nificant that all its consequences were not seen till centuries had
passed away. — W. Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel.

Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit. — Lowell.

133

134 ARISTOTLE

That which is to be known I shall declare, knowing which a
man attains immortality — the beginningless Supreme Brahma that
is said to be neither Aught nor Naught. — Bhagavad Gitd.

The only Metaphysics which really and immediately sustains
Ethics is one which is itself primarily ethical, and made of the staff
of Ethics. — Schopenhauer.

In answer to the burning question, How can Athens
be brought back to moral life and strength? Socrates
had answered, " By finding a new moral sanction." He
had even gone further, and said: "This sanction is
to be found in correct thinking, in thinking whole
thoughts, which, because they are whole, are abso-
lutely true, being the very principles according to
which God governs the world." This is, obviously,
a mere formal answer. If it was to be of any real
service, three further questions had to be answered:
(1) How can whole thoughts be reached? (2) What
do they prove to be when they are reached? (3) How
can they be applied to the moral reorganization of
human life? Plato's philosophy is but an attempt to
answer these questions. It therefore naturally falls
into three divisions, (1) Dialectics, including Logic
and Theory of Knowledge, (2) Theoretics, including
Metaphysics and Physics, (3) Practics, including
Ethics and Politics. —

^ It is obvious that any attempt to reform society on
Socratic principles must proceed, not from society it-
self, but from some person or persons in whom these
principles are realized, and who act upon it from
without. These persons will be the philosophers or,
rather, the sages. Two distinct questions, therefore,
present themselves at the outset : (1) How does a man

PLATO 135

become a sage ? (2) How can the sage organize human
life, and secure a succession of sages to continue his
work after him? To the first of these questions, dia-
lectics gives the answer; to the second, practics;
while theoretics exhibits to us at once the origin and
the end, that is, the meaning, of all existence, the
human includedr" In the teaching of Plato we find,
for the first time recognized and exhibited, the extra-
civic or super-civic man, the man who is not a mere
fragment of a social whole, completely subordinated
to it, but who, standing above society, moulds it in
accordance with ideas derived from a higher source.
Forecasts of this man, indeed, we find in all Greek
literature from Homer down, — in Heraclitus, Sopho-
cles, etc., and especially, as we have seen, in Pythag-
oras ; — but it is now for the first time that he finds
full expression, and tries to play a conscious part. In
him we have the promise of the future Church.

But to return to the first of our two questions. How
does a man become a sage? We found the answer to
be. By the dialectic method. Of this, however, not all
men have the inclination to avail themselves, but only
a chosen few, to whom the gods have granted the in-
spiration of Love (c/aws) — a longing akin to madness
(/nana), kindled by physical beauty, but tending to the
Supreme Good. This good, as we shall see, consists
in the vision (Oeoipio) of eternal truth, of being, as it
is. The few men who are blessed with this love
are the divinely appointed reformers and guides of
mankind, the well-being of which depends upon sub-
mission to them. The dialectic method is the process
by which the inspired mind rises from the beauty of

136 ARISTOTLE

physical things, which are always particulars, to the
beauty of spiritual things, which are always uni-
versals, and finally to the beauty of the Supreme
Good, which is The Universal. The man who has
reached this last, and who sees its relation to all other
tiniyersals, so that they form together a correlated
whole, sees all truth, and is the sage. 'What we call
universals Plato called "ideas" (i8€ai= forms or spe-
cies). These ideas he regards as genera, as numbers,
as active powers, and as substances, the highest of
which is God.

Two things are especially notable in connection with
this theory : (1) that it involves that Oriental ascetic
view of life which makes men turn away from the
sensible world, and seek their end and happiness in
the colorless world of thought; (2) that it suggests a
view of the nature of God which comes perilously near
to Oriental pantheism. Plato, indeed, nowhere denies
personality of God; but neither does he affirm it, and
he certainly leaves the impression that the Supreme
Being is a force acting according to a numerical ratio
or law. It would be difficult to overestimate the in-
fluence of these two views upon the subsequent course
of Greek education and life. The former suggested to
the super-civic man a sphere of activit}^ which he could
flatter himself was superior to the civic, viz. a sphere
of contemplation; while the second, by blurring, or
rather ignoring, the essential elements of personality
in God, viz. consciousness, choice, and will, left no
place for a truly religious or moral life. This explains
why Platonism, w^hile it has inspired no great civic
movement, has played such a determining part in

PLATO 137

ecclesiasticism, and why, nevertheless, the Church
for ages was compelled to fight the tendencies of it,
which it did in great measure under the aegis of Plato's
stern critic, Aristotle.

We are now ready to take up our second question :
How can the sage organize human life, and secure a
succession of sages to continue his work after him?
Plato has given two widely different answers to this
question, in his two most extensive works, (1) the
Republic, written in his earlier life, when he was
under the influence of Heraclitus, Parmenides, and
Socrates, and stood in a negative attitude toward the
real world of history, (2) the Laivs, written toward
the end of his life, when he became reconciled, in
part at least, to the real world and its traditional
beliefs, and found satisfaction and inspiration in the
teachings of Pythagoras. His change of allegiance
is shown by the fact that in the Laivs, and in them
alone, Socrates does not appear as a character. We
shall speak first of the Republic, and then point out
wherein the Laws differs from it.

When Plato wrote his Republic, he was deeply im-
pressed with the evils and dangers of the social order
in which he lived. This impression, which was that
of every serious man of the time, had in his case prob-
ably been deepened by the teaching and the tragic
death of Socrates. The dangers were, obviously, the
demoralization of Athenian men and women, and the
consequent weakening and dissolution of the social
bonds. The evils, as he saw them, were (1) the de-
fective education of children, (2) the neglect of women,
(3) the general disorganization of the State through

138 ARISTOTLE

individualism, which placed power in the hands of
ignorance and rapacity, instead of in those of wisdom
and worth. The Republic is a scheme for removing
these evils and averting the consequent dangers. It
is the Platonic sage's recipe for the healing of society,
and it is but fair to say that, of all the Utopian and
aesthetic schemes ever proposed for this end, it is
incomparably the best. It proposes nothing less than
the complete transformation of society, without offer-
ing any hint as to how a selfish and degraded people
is to be induced to submit thereto. In the transformed
society, the State is all in all ; the family is abolished ;
women are emancipated and share in the education and
duties of men; the State attends to the procreation
and education of children; private property is for^
bidden. The State is but the individual writ large,
and the* individual has three faculties, in the proper
development and coordination of which consists his
well-being: the same, therefore, must be true of the
State. These faculties are (1) intellect or reason,
(Aoyto-TiKov, Xoyos, vovs, etc.), (2) spirit or, courage (6vfi6<s,
6vfxo€i^€<i), (3) desire or appetite {linOvfxCa, i-mOvfi-qTiKov,
<l>i\oxprifJMTov) . The first resides in the head, the sec-
ond in the heart, the third in the abdomen. . The first
is peculiar to man, the second he shares with the ani-
mals, and the third with both animals and plants.
The proper relation of these faculties exists when
reason, with clear insight, rules the whole man (Pru-
dence); when spirit takes its directions from reason
in its attitude toward pleasure and pain (Fortitude) ;
when spirit and appetite together come to an under-
standing with reason as to when the one, and when

PLATO 139

the other, shall act (Temperance) ; and, finally, when
each of the three strictly confines itself to its proper
function (Justice) . Thus we obtain the four " cardinal
virtues." As existing in the individual, they are rela-
tions between his own faculties. It is only in the
State that they are relations between the individual
and his fellows. Eather we ought to say, they are
relations between different classes of society; for
society is divided into three classes, marked by
the predominance of one or other of the three facul-
ties of the soul. First, there is the intelligent class,

— the philosophers or sages ; second, the spirited class,

— the military men or soldiers; third, the covetous
class, — men devoted to industry, trade, and money-
making. The well-being of the State, as of the indi-
vidual, is secure only when the relations between
these classes are the four cardinal virtues ; when the
sages rule, and the soldiers and money-makers accept
this rule, and when each class strictly confines itself
to its own function, so, for example, that the sages do
not attempt to fight, the soldiers to make money, or
the money-makers to fight or rule. In the Platonic
ideal State, accordingly, the three classes dwell apart
and have distinct functions. All the power is in the
hands of the philosophers, who dwell in lofty isola-
tion, devoted to the contemplation of divine ideas,
and descending only through grace to mingle with
human affairs, as teachers and absolute rulers, ruling
without laws. Their will is enforced by the military
class, composed of both sexes, which lives outside the
city, devoting itself to physical exercises and the de-
fence of the State. These two classes together con-

140 ARISTOTLE

stitute the guardians (<j>vXaKes:) of the State, and stand
to each other in the relation of head and hand. They
X3roduce nothing, own nothing, live sparingly, and,
indeed, cherish a sovereign contempt for all producing
and owning, as well as for those who produce and own.
They find their satisfaction in the performance of their
functions, and the maintenance of virtue in the State.
What small amount of material good they require is
supplied to them by the industrial class, which they
protect in the enjoyment of the only good it strives
after or can appreciate, the good of the appetites.
This class, of course, has no power, either directive
or executive, being incapable of any. It is, never-
theless, entirely happy in its condition of tutelage,
and, as far as virtue can be predicated of sensuality,
virtuous, the excesses of sensuality being repressed by
the other two classes. Indeed, the great merit which
Plato claims for his scheme is, that it secures harmony,
and therefore happiness, for all, by placing every indi-
vidual citizen in the class to which by nature he be-
longs, that is, in which his nature can find the fullest
and freest expression compatible with the well-being
of the whole. Such is Plato's political scheme, marked
by the two notorious Greek characteristics, love of
harmony and contempt for labor. It is curious to
think that it foreshadowed three modern institutions
— the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the standing army, and
the industrial community, in which, however, the
relations of power demanded by Plato are almost
reversed, with (it is only fair to say) the result
which he foresaw.

In trying to answer the question, By what means

PLATO 141

shall these classes be sundered? Plato calmly assumes
that his scheme is already in full operation among
grown people, so that the only difficulty remaining is
with regard to the children. And this is completely
met by his scheme of education. The State or, let us
say at once, the philosophic class, having abolished
the family, and assumed its functions, determines
what number and kind of children it requires at any
given time, and provides for them as it would for
sheep or kine. It brings together at festivals the
vigorous males and females, and allows them to choose
their mates for the occasion. As soon as the children
are born, they are removed from their mothers and
taken charge of in State institutions, where the feeble
and deformed are at once destroyed. Any children
begotten without the authority of the State share the
same fate, either before or after birth. Those whose
birth is authorized, and who prove vigorous, are
reared by the State, none of them knowing, or being
known by, their parents. But they by no means suffer
any diminution of parentage on that account; for
every mature man regards himself as the father, and
every mature woman regards herself as the mother, of
all the children born within a certain time, so that
every child has thousands of fathers and mothers, all
interested in his welfare; and the mothers, being
relieved from nearly all the duties of maternity, share
equally with the men in all the functions of the State.
The system of education to which the children of
the State are subjected is, to a large extent, modelled
after that of Sparta, especially in respect to its rigor
and its absolutely political character. It contains.

142 ARISTOTLE

however, a strong Ionic or Athenian element, nota-
bly on the intellectual and aesthetic side. It ma}'
fairly claim to be intensely Hellenic. It accepts the
time-honored division of education into Music and
Gymnastics, making no distinct place for Letters, but
including them under Music. It demands that these
two branches shall be pursued as parts of a whole,
calculated to develop, as far as may be, the harmo-
nious human being, and fit him to become part of the
harmonious State. ^I have said "as far as may be,"
because Plato believes that only a small number of
persons at any given time can be reduced to complete
harmon}^. These are the born philosophers, who, when
their nature is fully realized, no longer require the
State, but stand, as gods, above it. In truth, the State
is needed just because the mass of mankind cannot
attain inner harmony, but would perish, were it not
for the outer harmony imposed by the philosophers.
This is a sad fact, and would be altogether dishearten-
ing, were it not for the belief, which Plato seems to
have derived from Pythagoras and the Egyptians, that
those human beings who fail to attain harmony in one
life, will have opportunities to do so in other lives, so
long as they do not, by some awful and malignant
crime or crimes, show that they are utterly incapable
of harmony. Plato's scheme of political education,
therefore, requires, as its complement, the doctrines
of individual immortality, of probation continued
through as many lives as may be necessary, and of
the possibility of final and eternal blessedness or
misery. In fact, Plato has a fully-developed escha-
tology, with an " other world," consisting of three well-

i

PLATO 143

defined parts, — Elysium, Acheron, and Tartarus, —
corresponding to the Paradise, Purgatory, and Hell of
Catholic Christianity; with one important difference,
however, d'^e to the doctrine of metempsychosis.
While the Christian purgatory is a place or state of
purgation for souls whose probation is over forever,
Acheron is merely a place where imperfect souls
remain till the end of a world-period, or geon, of ten
thousand years, when they are again allowed to
return to life and renew their struggle for that com-
plete harmony which is the condition of admission to
the society of the gods.

It is from this eschatology that Plato derives the
moral sanctions which he employs in his State. It
is true that no one has insisted with greater force
than he upon the truth that virtue is, in and for itself,
the highest human good; he believed, however, that
this could be appreciated only by the philosopher,
who had experience of it, and that for the lower
orders of men a more powerful, though less noble,
sanction was necessary. Accordingly, he depicts the
joys of Elysium in images that could not but. appeal
to the Hellenic imagination, and paints Tartarus in
gruesome colors that would do honor to a St. Ignatius.

In order fully to understand the method of Plato's
political education, we must revert to Chapter III of
Book I. There we saw that, according to the Greeks,
a complete education demanded three things, (1) a
noble nature, (2) training through habit, (3) instruc-
tion. For the first Plato would do what can be done by
artificial selection of parents ; for the second, he would
depend upon music and' gymnastics; for the third.

144 ARISTOTLE

upon philosophy. In these last two divisions we
have the root of the mediaeval trivium and quadrivium.
The Platonic pedagogical system seeks to separate
the ignoble from the noble natures, and to place the
former in the lowest class. It then trains the noble
natures in music and gymnastics, and, while this is
going on, it tries to distinguish those natures which
are capable of rising above mere training to reflective
or philosophic thought, from those which are not.
The latter it assigns to the military class, which al-
ways remains at the stage of training, while the
former are instructed in philosophy, and, if they
prove themselves adepts, are finally admitted to the
ruling class, as sages. Any member of either of the
higher classes who proves himself unworthy of that
class, may at any time be degraded into the next
below.

As soon as the children are accepted by the State,
their education under State nurses begins. The chief
efforts of these for some time are directed to the bodies
of the children, to seeing that they are healthy and
strong. As soon as the young creatures can stand
and walk, they are taught to exert themselves in an
orderly way and to play little games ; and as soon as
they understand what is said to them, they are told
stories and sung to. Such is their first introduction
to gymnastics and music. What games are to be
taught, what stories told, and what airs sung to the
children, the State determines, and indeed, since the
character of human beings depends, in great measure,
upon the first impression made upon them, this is one
of its most sacred duties. Plato altogether disap-

PLATO 145

proves of leaving children without guidance to seek
exercise and amusement in their own way, and
demands that their games shall be such as call forth,
in a gentle and harmonious way, all the latent powers
of body and mind, and develop the sense of order,
beauty, and fitness. He is still more earnest in
insisting that the stories told to children shall be
exemplifications of the loftiest morality, and the airs
sung to them such as settle, strengthen, and solemnize
the soul. He follows Heraclitus in demanding that
the Homeric poems, so long the storehouse for
children's stories, shall be entirely proscribed, on
account of the false ideals which they hold up both
of gods and heroes, and the intimidating descriptions
which they give of the other world. Virtue, he holds,
cannot be furthered by fear, which is characteristic
only of slaves. .He thinks that all early intellectual
training should be a sort of play. The truth is, the
infant-school of Plato's Republic comes as near as can
well be imagined to the ideal of the modern kinder-
garten.

While this elementary education is going on, the
officers of the State have abundant opportunity for
observing the different characters of the children, and
distinguishing the noble from the ignoble. As soon
as a child shows plainly that it belongs by nature to
the lowest class, they consign it to that class, and its
education by the State practically ceases. Of course
these officers know from what class each child came,
and they make use of this knowledge in determining
its future destiny. At the same time, they are not
to be entirely guided by it, but to act impartially.

146 ARISTOTLE

The education of the lowest class after childhood the
State leaves to take care of itself, persuaded that
appetite will always find means for its own satisfac-
tion. The nobler natures it continues to educate,
without any break, until they reach the age of twenty.
And this education is distinctly a military training.
As time goes on, the gymnastic exercises become more
violent, more complex, and more sustained, but al-
ways have for their subject the soul, rather than the
body, and never degenerate into mere athletic brutal-
ity. Special attention is directed to the musical and
literary exercises, as the means whereby the soul is
directly trained and harmonized. Plato holds that
no change can be made in the "music" of a State,
without a corresponding change in the whole organi-
zation; in other words, that the social and political
condition of a people is determined by the literature
and music which it produces and enjoys. He virtu-
ally says. Let me make the songs of a people, and
he who will may make their laws. Of the character
of the music which he recommends we have already
spoken. From literature he would exclude all that
we are in the habit of calling by that name, all that
is mimetic, poetic, or creative, and confine the term to
what is scientific, didactic, and edifying. He sends the
poets out of the State with mock-reverent politeness,
as creatures too divine for human use. He is par-
ticularly severe upon the dramatists, not sparing even
the sublime ^schylus. In fact, he would banish from
his State all art not directly edifying. The literature
which he recommends is plainly of the nature of
-^sop's Fables, the Pythagorean Golden Words, and

PLATO 147

the Parmenidean or Heraclitean work On Nature. If
we wished to express his intent in strictly modern
language, we should have to saj that he desired to
replace literary training by ethical and scientific, and
the poetical mode of presenting ideals by the prosaic.
The true music, he held, is in the human being. " If
we find," he says, "a man who perfectly combines
gymnastics with music, and in exact proportion
applies them to the soul, we shall be entirely justi-
fied in calling him the perfect musician and the
perfect trainer, far superior to the man who arranges
strings alongside each other."

There are many matters of detail in Plato's scheme
of military training that well deserve consideration,
but cannot be even touched upon here. Before we
leave it, however, we may give the dates at which the
different branches of education are to begin. Care
of the body begins at birth, story -telling with the
third year, gymnastics with the seventh, writing and
reading with the tenth, letters and music with the
fourteenth, mathematics with the sixteenth, military
drill, which for the time supplants all other training,
with the eighteenth. When the young people reach
the age of twenty, those who show no great capacity
for science, but are manly and courageous, are assigned
to the soldier class, and start on a course of higher
education in military training, while those who evince
great intellectual ability become novices in the ruling
class, and begin a curriculum in science, which lasts
till the close of their thirtieth year. This course
includes arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, the
only sciences at that time cultivated, and aims at

148 ARISTOTLE

impressing upon the youthful mind the unity and
harmony of the physical or phenomenal universe. At
the age of thirty, those students who do not show any
particular aptitude for higher studies are drafted off
into the lower public offices, while those who do,
pass five years in the study of dialectics, whereby
they rise to pure ideas. They are then, from their
thirty-fifth to their fiftieth year, made to fill the
higher public offices, in which they take their orders
directly from the sages. During this period they put
their acquirements to a practical test, and so come
really and fully into possession of them. At the end
of their fiftieth year, after half a century of contin-
uous education of body, mind, and will, they are
reckoned to have reached the vision of the supreme
good, and therefore to be fit to enter the contemplative
ruling class. They are now free men; they have
reached the goal of existence; their life is hidden
with God; they are free from the prison of the body,
and only remain in it voluntarily, and out of gratitude
to the State which has educated them, in order to
direct it, in accordance with absolute truth and right,
toward the Supreme Good.

Such, in its outlines, is Plato's theory of education,
as set forth in the Republic. It is easy to point out
its defects and its errors, which are neither small nor
few, but fundamental and all-pervasive. But it is
equally easy to see how it came to have these defects
and errors, since they are simply those of every
aesthetic social scheme which ignores the nature of
the material with which it presumes to deal, and
takes no account of the actual history of social insti-

PLATO 149

tutions or of the forces by which, they are evolved.
It is emphatically the product of a youthful intellect,
carried away by an artistic ideal. It was, however,
the intellect of a Plato, who, when he became more
mature, saw, without " irreverence for the dreams of
youth," the feebleness of ideas for the conflict with
human frailties, and strove to correct his exaggerated
estimate of their power.

This he did in the Laws, whose very title suggests,
in a way almost obtrusive, the change of attitude and
allegiance. While in the Republic the State is gov-
erned by sages, almost entirely without laws, in the
later work, the sages almost disappear and the laws
assume an all-important place. In writing the Laws,
moreover, he exchanges allegiance to Socrates and
ideas for allegiance to Pythagoras and the gods. In
saying this, I have marked the fundamental differ-
ence between the Repuhlic and the Laws. While in
the former Plato finds the moral sanctions, in the last
resort, in the ideas of the pure intellect, trained in
mathematics, astronomy, and dialectics, in the latter
he derives them from the content of the popular
consciousness, with its gods, its ethical notions, its
traditions. In these, as embodied in institutions, he
finds the most serviceable, if not the most exalted,
revelation of divine truth. Trusting to this, he no
longer seeks to abolish the family and private prop-
erty, but merely to have them regulated ; he no longer
banishes strangers and poets from his State, but
merely subjects them to State supervision; he no
longer demands a philosophical training for the rulers,
but only practical insight j he no longer divides his

160 ARISTOTLE

citizens into sages, soldiers, and wealth-producers,
but into freemen (corresponding to his previous mili-
tary class) and slaves. His government is no longer
an aristocracy of intellect, but a compound of aristoc-
racy, oligarchy, and democracy, representing, respec-
tively, worth, wealth, and will. His plan of education
is modified to suit these altered conditions. The
children, as in Sparta, do not begin the State course of
education until about their seventh year, after which
their training is very much the same as that demanded
in the Republic, with the omission, of course, of dia-
lectics. Though women are no longer to be relieved
oi their home duties, they are sfill to share in the
education and occupations of men, an arrangement
which is facilitated by the law ordauiing that both
men and women shall eat at public tables. In mak-
ing these changes, Plato believed that he was falling
from a \oitj, but unrealizable, ideal, and making con-
cessions to human weakness ; in reality, he was
approaching truth and right.

Book III
ARISTOTLE (b.c. 384-322)

CHAPTER I

ARISTOTLE — LIFE AND WORKS

Aristotle, iu my opinion, stands almost alone in philosophy. —
Cicero.

Aristotle, Nature's private secretary, dipping his pen in intellect.

— EUSEBIUS.

Wherever the divine wisdom of Aristotle has opened its mouth,
the wisdom of others, it seems to me, is to be disregarded- — Dante.

I could soon get over Aristotle's prestige, if I could only get over
his reasons. — Lessing.

If, now in my quiet days, I had youthful faculties at my com-
mand, I should devote myself to Greek, in spite of all the difficulties
I know. Nature and Aristotle should be my sole study. It is be-
yond all conception what that man espied, saw, beheld, remarked,
observed. To be sure he was sometimes hasty in his explanations ;
but are we not so, even to the present day ? — Goethe (at 78) .

If the proper earnestness prevailed in philosophy, nothing would
be more worthy of establishing than a foundation for a special lect-
ureship on Aristotle ; for he is, of all the ancients, the most worthy
of study. — Hegel.

Aristotle was one of the richest and most comprehensive geniuses
that ever appeared — a man beside whom no age has an equal to
place. — Id.

Physical philosophy occupies itself with the general qualities of
matter. It is an abstraction from the dynamic manifestations of
the different kinds of matter ; and even where its foundations were
first laid, in the eight books of Aristotle's Physical Lectures, all the
phenomena of nature are represented as the motive vital activity of
a universal world-force. — Alexander von Humboldt.

153

154 ARISTOTLE

It was characteristic of this extraordinary genius to work at both
ends of the scientific process. He was alike a devotee to facts and
a master of the highest abstractions. — Axexander Bain.

Aristotle is the Father of the Inductive Method, and he is so for
two reasons: First, he theoretically recognized its essential prin-
ciples with a cleai-ness, and exliibited them with a conviction, whichi
strike the modern man \^^th amazement ; and then he made the!
first comprehensive attempt to apply them to all the science of]
the Greeks. — Wilhelm Oncken.

Aristotle, for whose political philosophy our admiration rises,
the more we consider the work of his successors, is less guided by
imagination than Plato, examines reality more carefully, and recog-
nizes more acutely, the needs of man. — Bluxtschli.

It appears to me that there can be no question, that Aristotle
stands forth, not only as the greatest figure in antiquity, but as the
greatest intellect that has ever appeared upon the face of this earth.
— George J. Romanes.

Aristotle, with all the wisdom of Plato before him, which he was
well able to appropriate, could find no better definition of the true
good of man than the full exercise or realization of the soul's facul-
ties in accordance with its proper excellence, which was excellence
of thought, speculative and practical. — Thomas Hill Green.

It is pretty definitely settled, among men competent
to form a judgment, that Aristotle was the best edu-
cated man that ever walked on the surface of this
earth. He is still, as he was in Dante's time, the
"master of those that know." It is, therefore, not
without reason that we look to him, not only as the
best exponent of ancient education, but as one of the
worthiest guides and ensamples in education gener-
ally. That we may not lose the advantage of his
example, it will be well, before we consider his
educational theories, to cast a glance at his life, the
process of his development, and his work.

LIFE AND WORKS 155

Aristotle was born about b.c. 384, in the Greek
colony of Stagira in Thrace, near the borders of Mace-
donia. His father, Nicomachus, was a physician of
good standing, the author of several medical works,
and the trusted friend of Amyntas, the Macedonian
King. His mother, Phsestis, was descended from the
early settlers of the place. It was doubtless under
his father's guidance that the boy Aristotle first
became interested in those physical studies in which
he was destined to do such wonderful work. Losing,
however, both his parents at an early age, he came
under the charge of Proxenus, of Atarneus, who
appears to have done his duty by him. At the age
of eighteen he came to Athens for his higher educa-
tion, and entered the school of Plato in the Academy.
Here he remained for nearly twenty years, listening
to Plato, and acquiring those vast stores of informa-
tion which in later life he worked up into lectures
and scientific treatises. J^^thing^fiScaped-kim, neither
art, science, religion, philosophy, nor politics. He
seems, being well off, to have begun early to collect
a library, and to aim at encyclopaedic knowledge.
About his methods of study we know very little; but
we hear that at times he assisted Plato in his work
and was very careful of his own attire. It is clear
that, in course of time, he rose in thought above the
teachings of his master, and even rejected the most
fundamental of them, the doctrine of self -existent
ideas. But he never lost respect for that master, and
when the latter died, he retired with Xenocrates, son
of the new head of the Academy, to Atarneus, the
home of his old guardian Proxenus, and of his fellow-

OF

ALIFORN

156 ARISTOTLE

Academic, Hermias, now king or tyrant of the place.
Here he remained for three years, in the closest
intimacy with his friend, until the latter was treach-
erously murdered by the Persians. He then crossed
over to Mytilene, taking with him Pythias, Hermias'
sister or niece, whom he had married, and to whom
he was deeply devoted. He erected in Delphi a statue
to his dead friend, and dedicated to him a poem, of
which we shall hear more in the sequel. About b.c.
343, when he was over forty years old, he was called
to Macedonia, a^_tu|or_to_Alfi^ander, the thirteen-
year-old son of King Philip, and grandson of his own
father's old patron, Amyntas. This office he filled
for about three years with distinguished success, and
it may be safely said that never had so great a tutor
so great a pupil. During the latter part of the time,
at least, Aristotle and Alexander seem to have lived at
Stagira. This town had been captured and destroyed
by Philip, and its inhabitants scattered. With the
permission of the conqueror, Aristotle reassembled
the inhabitants, rebuilt the town, drew up its laws,
and laid out near it, at Mieza, in imitation of the
Academy, a gymnasium and park, which he called the
Nymph(Bum. Hither he appears to have retired with
his royal pupil and several other youths who were
receiving education along with him, among them
Theophrastus and the ill-fated Callisthenes. It was
probably here that Aristotle adopted the habit of
walking while imparting instruction, a habit which
afterwards gave the name to his school. A^^ien Alex-
ander, at sixteen, entered his father's army, Aristotle
still continued to teach in the Xymphseum, Avhich

LIFE AND WORKS 157

existed even in Plutarch's time, more than four hun-
dred years afterwards. But this lasted only for about
tive years; for in 335, when Alexander, who in the
previous year had succeeded his murdered father, was
preparing to invade Persia, Aristotle moved to Athens.
Finding that his old friend, Xenocrates, was director
of the school in the Academy, he established him-
self, as a public teacher or professor, in the Lyceum,
the Periclean gymnasium, used chiefly, it should
seem, by the lower classes and by foreign residents,
of whom he himself was one. As an alien, as the
friend of the victorious Macedonians, who three years
before had broken the power of Greece at Chseronea,
and taken away her autonomy forever, as a rival of
the Platonists, and as a wealthy, well-dressed gentle-
man, he had many enemies and detractors; but his
conduct seems to have been so unobjectionable that
no formal charge could be brought against him. His
very numerous pupils were mostly foreigners, a fact
not without its influence on the subsequent course of
thought. He divided his days between writing and
teaching, taking his physical exercise while engaged
in the latter occupation. In the mornings he gave
lectures to a narrow circle, in a strictly formal and
scientific way, upon the higher branches of science;
while in the afternoons he conducted conversations
upon more popular themes with a less select audience.
The former were called his esoteric, the latter his
exoteric, discourses. "~

It was during his second residence in Athens, in
the twelve years from B.C. 335 to 323, that Aristotle
composed most of those great works in which he

158 ARISTOTLE

sought to sum up, iu an encyclopaedic way, the results
of a life of all-embracing study and thought. He had
been in no haste to put himself on record, and it was
not until he had reached a consistent view of the
world that he ventured to treat, in a definitive way,
any aspect of it. Thus it was that each of his treat-
ises formed part of one great whole of thought. Had
he succeeded in completing his plan, he would have
left to the world a body of science such as, even in
our own day, would look in vain for a peer among the
works of any one man. Unfortunately, his plan was
not completed, and even of the works which he did
write only a portion has come down to us. But
that portion is sufficient to place their author at the
head of all scientific men. Some of his works, for
example, his Logic, 3fetaphysics, Ethics, and Politics,
still occupy the first place in the literature of these
subjects. How a single man could have done all that
he did, and in so many different departments, is almost
inconceivable. No doubt he had helpers, in the shape
of secretaries, learned slaves, and disciples; and it is
certain that he received from his royal pupil munifi-
cent aid, which enabled him to do much, especially
in the directions of physical and political research,
that would have been impossible for a poor man; but,
after all allowances have been made, his achievement
still seems almost miraculous.

During all the years in which Aristotle was thus
engaged, his positig]a_at AJbhfi5LS_ was becoming more
and more insecure. The anti-Macedonian party were
waiting for the first opportunity to rid the city of
him, and were prevented from open attempts at this

LIFE AND WORKS 159

only by dread of Alexander's displeasure. Even
when it was known that Aristotle had incurred dis-
favor with his old pupil, they did not venture to
attack him; but in 323, when the news of Alexander's
sudden death made all Greece feel that now the time
liad come to get rid forever of the hated Macedonians,
and recover its liberty, they at once gave vent to their
long-cherished hatred. How hard it was to find mat-
ter for an accusation against him, is shown, by the fact
that they had to go back to his old poem on Worth,
written in memory of Hermias (see p. 4), and to
base thereon a charge of impiety — a charge always
easily made, and always sure to arouse strong popular
prejudice. According to Athenian law, the defendant
in any such case might, if he chose, escape punish-
ment by leaving the city any time before the trial;
and Aristotle, not being, like Socrates, a citizen,
could have no ground for refusing to take advantage
of this liberty. Accordingly, with the remark that
he would not voluntarily allow the Athenians to sin
a second time against philosophy, he withdrew to his
country residence at Chalcis in Eubcsa, the old home
of his mother's family, to wait till affairs should take
another turn, as, indeed, they soon afterwards did,
when Athens had to open her gates to Antipater.
But, ere that happened, Aristotle was in his grave,
having diedMn_322^ shortly before Demosthenes, of
disease of the stomach, from which he had long suf-
fered. His remains are said to have been carried to
Stagira, where the grateful inhabitants erected an altar
over them and paid divine honors to his memory.
His library and the manuscripts of his works he left

160 ARISTOTrE

in the hands of Theophrastns, who succeeded him in
the Lyceum. His will, tlie text of which has come
down to us, bears testimony, along with all else that
we know of him, to the nobility, kindliness, and jus-
tice of his nature.

CHAPTER II

ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY

Platon revait ; Aristote pensait.— Alfred de Musset.

Are God and Nature then at strife
That Nature lends such evil dreams ?

— Tennyson.

There are three Essences. Two of these are sensible ; one being
eternal, and the other perishable. The latter is admitted by all, in
the form, for example, of plants and animals; in regard to the
former, or eternal one, we shall have to consider its elements, and
see whether they be one or many. The third is immutable [and,
therefore, inaccessible to sense], and this some thinkers hold to be
transcendent. —Aristotle.

The vision of the divine is what is sweetest and best ; and if God
always enjoys that vision as we sometimes do, it is wonderful, and
if he does so in a yet higher degree, it is more wonderful still. And
so even it is. And life belongs to him ; for the self-determination
of thought is life, and he is self-determination. And his absolute
seK-determination is the supreme and eternal life. And wo call
God a living being, eternal, best ; so that life and duration, uniform
and eternal, belong to God ; for this is God.— Id.

We must consider in what way the system of the universe con-
tains the good and the best, whether as something transcendent and
self-determined, or as order. Surely in both ways at once, as in any
army, for which the good is in order, and is the general, and the
latter more than the former. For the general is not due to the
order, but the order to the general. — Id.

The thouglit of Aristotle differs from that of Plato
l)otli in its method and in its results. Plato, reared
in the school of Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus,

161

1C2 ARISTOTLE

and Socrates, had, naturally enough, come to look for
truth in the supersensual region of mind, and thought
he found it in ideas attainable by a process of dialectic
within the individual consciousness. He thus came
to put forward a doctrine which, despite its ostensible
purpose to cement the bonds of society, in reality
tended to withdraw men from society altogether and
iiicrease_the_5:eiy_individualism it was intended to
cure. Aristotle, while still in Plato's school, had
turned away from this doctrine, and in after-life he
never lost an opportunity of combating it. He could
point to Plato's Republic as a warning example of it
logical consequences. But, in doing this, he was pit
pared to put another doctrine in its place, and he did
so on the basis of a profound study of the whole course
of Greek thought, mythological and philosophical. .

Instead of appealing, like Plato, to the individual
consciousness, and trying to discover ultimate truth
by bringing its data into harmony among themselves,
Aristotle, appeals to the historic consciousness, and
endeavors to lind truth by harmonizing and comple-
menting its data through a further appeal to the outer
world, in which these data are realized. He main-
tains that the truths reached by the dialectic process
are merely formal, and therefore empty, — useless in
practice, until they have been filled by experience
from the storehouse of nature. In consequence of this
changed attitude, he sets aside the dialectic process,
and substitutes for it the Method of Induction, which
he was the first man in the world to comprehend, ex-
pound, and apply, becoming thus the father of all true
science. And he makes a more extensive use of in-

HIS PHILOSOPHY 163

duction than any other man since his time, applying
it in a field in which even now it is hardly supposed
to yield any results, the field of the common con-
sciousness. Indeed, he everywhere begins his search
for concrete truth by examining the historic conscious-
ness, and, having, by a process of induction, discov-
ered and generalized its conten'fs, he turns with these
to nature and, by a second induction, corrects, com-
pletes, and harmonizes them. We might express this
in modern language, by saying that his whole endeavor
is to correct and supplement the imperfect human
consciousness by a continual appeal to the divine
consciousness, as manifested in the world. It is the
error of modern investigators that they employ only
one-half of the inductive method, the objective, and
either omit altogether the subjective, or else, like
Plato, apply it only to the individual consciousness.
Hence come the widely divergent results which still
meet us in so many of the sciences, in Politics, Psy-
chology, etc., hence the fact that a great deal of
science, instead of correcting, widening, and harmoniz-
ing the common consciousness, stands altogether apart
from it, or even in direct opposition to it. The man
who writes a treatise on Psychology, or on the Soul,
without troubling himself to discover what "Soul"
means in the general consciousness of mankind, and
perhaps setting out with an altogether individual
notion of it, can hardly look for any other result.
Aristotle, true to his method of induction, devotes
one entire book of his Psychology to finding out what
"Soul" means in the historic consciousness, unre-
flective as well as reflective. Then, with this meaning.

164 ARISTOTLE

he goes to nature, seeks by induction to discover what
she has to say about it, and abides by her reply.
Hence it is that his thought has laid hold upon the
world, and influenced it in practical ways, as no other-
man's thought has ever done. Hence it is that, of all
ancient men, he is the one before whom the modern
scientist bows with respect.

If we now ask ourselves what was the underlying
thought that shaped Aristotle's theory of induction,
what was his Weltanschauung, we shall find it to be
this:^The divine intelligence reveals itself subjec-
tively in an historic process in the human conscious-
ness, and objectively^ in a natural process in the outer
world.7 Truth for man is the "harmony of the two
revelations. It follows directly from this that the
scientist must take impartial account of both. So, for
example, if he finds gods in the historical conscious-
ness, and laws or forces in nature, he has no right, like
the theologian, to merge the latter in the former, or,
like the physicist, to replace the former by the latter.
He must retain both till he can bring them into har-
mony. Only then does he know either.

Such a philosophy as this, instead of drawing men
away from the world of nature and history, and con-
fining them to the narrow circle of their o^vn conscious-
ness, of necessity sent them back to that world, as
the only means by which any human well-being could
be reached. It is for this reason that it has so power-
fully affected both social life and science. Neverthe-

II am here using the terms "objective" and "subjective" in
their modern acceptation, which almost exactly inverts the ancient
usage. See Martineau, Study of Religion, vol. i, p. 385, n. 2.

HIS PHILOSOPHY 165

less, we should err greatly, if we supposed that, in
Aristotle's view, the divine is nothing more than an
immanent idea, working as a force-form in nature,
and as a thought-form in mind. He does^ indeed,
believe that the divine is all this, but not that this is
all the divine there is. Over and above the divine
which is determined in nature and in man, there is
the transcendent Mind, or God, determining himself
through himself, and "bearing the same relation to the
divine that the sun bears to light, the human mind to ^
human thought, the general to the order of his army.
Here we are far away from Pantheism, and, though we
have not yet risen to a clear conception of personality,
we have at the " helm of the universe '' a conscious
b^ing, the source of law and order. And man, rising
above the thought whereby he knows himself through
nature, and nature through himself, may enter into
the consciousness of God and become a partaker in
that life which is "sweetest and- best." These are the/
features of Aristotle's thought which in the thirteenth \
century made it acceptable to the Christian Church in V ^
her struggle against Pantheism, and v^^hich paved the '
way for that higher mysticism of which Thomas L
Aquinas is the most distinguished exponent — a mys-
ticism which does not, like that of the Neoplatonists
and Buddhists, dispense with thought to lose itself in
vacancy, but which, rising upon a broad basis of
knowledge, pierces the clouds of sense, to find itself
in the presence of the most concrete Eeality, the inex-
haustible source of all thought and all things.

CHAPTER III

ARISTOTLE'S THEORT OF THE STATE

First, then, let iis try to enumerate whatever worthy utterances
have proceeded from men of the past upon any aspect of the subject,
and then, referring to our collections of Constitutional Histories,
let us seek to arrive at a theoiy as to what sorts of things preserve
and destroy each particular form of government, and see for what
reasons some are well, some ill, managed. Succeeding in this, we
may, perhaps, the better learn both what is the best form of gov-
ernment, and what arrangements, laws, and customs are best suited
to each form. — Aristotle.

Man is a political animal — Id.

The State is prior to the individual. — Id.

Without friends no one would choose to live, although he pos-
sessed all other blessings. — Id.

If happiness be self-determination in accordance with worth, we
must conclude that it will be in accordance with the supreme worth,
which will be the worth of the noblest part of us. This part, what-
ever it may be, whether intellect {vov^) or something else, that
which by nature evidently rules and guides us and has insight into
things beautiful and divine, whether it be itself divine, or the
divinest part of us, is that whose self-determination, in accordance
with its proper worth, will be the perfect happiness. That this
consists in the vision of divine things has already been said. . . .
This, indeed, is the supreme self-determination, for the reason that
intellect is the highest part of us, and that with which it deals is
the highest of the knowable. . . . But a life of this sort would be
something higher than the human ; for he who lived it would not
be living as man, but as the subject of something divine. ... If,
then, intellect is something divine in relation to man, the life lived
according to it must be di^ine in relation to human life. Instead,
then, of following those who ad%ise us, as being human, to set our
166

HIS THEOKY OF THE STATE 167

thoughts upon human things, and, as being mortals, to set them on
mortal things, it is our duty, as far as may be, to act as immortal
beings, and do all we can to live in accordance with the supreme
part of us. — Aristotle.

Man alone, among all beings, occupies a middle place between
things corruptible and things incorruptible. . . . Two ends, there-
fore, Ineffable Providence has ordained for man : Blessedness in this
life, which consists in the exercise of native faculty, and is figured
by the Earthly Paradise, and blessedness in the eternal life, which
consists in the enjoyment of the vision of God, a thing not to be
achieved by any native faculty, unless aided by divine light, and
which is to be understood by the Heavenly Paradise. . . . These
ends and means would be disregarded by human passion, if men
were not restrained in their course by bit and bridle. . . . For this
reason man required a double directive, corresponding to this
double end. He required the Supreme Pontiff to guide the human
race to life eternal, and the Emperor to guide the human race to
temporal felicity, in accordance with the teachings of philosophy.
. . . The truth with regard to the question whether the authority
of the Emperor is derived directly from God or from another, must
not be taken so strictly as to mean that the Roman Prince is not, in
some respects, subject to the Roman Pontiff, the fact being that
this mortal felicity of ours is, in some sense, ordained with a view to
immortal felicity. Let Caesar, therefore, display that reverence for
Peter which the first-born son ought to display for his father, so
that, being illuminated by his father's grace, he may with greater
virtue enlighten the world, which he has been called to govern by
Him who is governor of all things, spiritual and temporal. —Dante.

O Grace abounding, whence I did presume
To fix my gaze upon the eternal light
So far that I consumed my sight therein !

Within its deeps I saw internalized
Into one volume, bound with love.
That which is outered in the universe ; —

Substance and accident, and all their modes.
As 't were, together merged in such a sort
That what I mean is but a simple light.

The universal form of this same knot

I think I saw, because, when thus I speak,
I feel that I rejoice with larger joy. — Id.

<L^

168 ARISTOTLE

Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever. —
Westminster Shorter Catechism.

Plato's chief purpose, in writing upon education,
had been to suggest a remedy for the social and moral
conditions of his native Athens. Aristotle has no
such purpose. He is, in a very deep sense, a _cosmo-
politan, and writes in the interest^of science and uni-
versal utility. His range of vision is not confined to
Athens, or even to Greece (though he is very proud
of being a Greek), but ranges over the whole known
world in time and space. Unlike Plato, too, who had
been familiar mainly with institutions of the past in
Egypt and Greece, Aristotle is deeply affected by the
tendencies of the Juture, and, though no one lays
greater stress than he upon the necessity of a knowl-
edge of the past for him who would construct a sound
social theory, he nevertheless declares that the whole
of the past is shaped by something which is in the
future, by the ultimate realization. This view comes
out in a paradoxical way in his famous saying that
"the St^te is prior to the individual," by which he
means that it is man's political nature working in him

at makes him an individual, and at the same time
realizes itself in a State. And this brings us to Aris-
totle's conception of the State, which we must consider
before taking up his theory of education, for tlie
reason that to him, as to all the. ancient world, educa-
tion is a function of the State, and is conducted, pri-
marily at least, for the ends of the State.

Before venturing upon a theory of the State, Aris-
totle, true to his inductive principles, wrote the Con-
stitutional Histories of over two hundred and fifty

HIS THEORY OF THE STATE 169

different states. One of these, the Consiitiitional His-
tory of Athens, has recently been discovered and pub-
lished (see p. 96). He held that it was only by means
of a broad induction, thus rendered possible, that he
could discover the idea of the State, that is, its self-
realizing form. Employing tES method, then, he
came to the conclusion that the Siata is that highfijsi:
social institution . which secures the highest good or
happiness of man. Having, in a previous treatise,
satisfied himself that this good is Worth (aperrj), and
worth being in every case the full exercise of charac-
teristic or differentiating faculty, he concludes that,
since man's distinguishing faculty is reason, the State
is the institution which secures to man the fullest and
freest exercis,e of this. It follows directly that the(
State is, simply and solely, the supreme educational
institution, the university to which all other institu-
tions are but preparatory. And two more conclusions
follow : (1) that states will differ in constitution with
the .different educational needs of the peoples among \
whom they exist, and (2) that, since all education is
but a preparation for some worthy activity, political
education, the life of man as a citizen, is but a prepa-
ration for the highest activity, which, because it is
highest, must necessarily be an end in itself. This
activity, Aristotle argues, can be none other than con-
templation, the Vision of the Divine (Oecapta).

Results which have moved the world followed
logically from this doctrine. Whereas Plato had made
provision for a small and select body of super-civic
men, and s© paved the way for religious monasticism
and asceticism, Aristotle maintains that in every

170 ARISTOTLE

civilized man, as such, there is a super-civic part,
in fact, a superhuman and divine part, for the com-
plete realization of which all the other parts, and the
State wherein they find expression, are but means.
Here we have, in embryo, the whole of Dante's
theory of the relation of Church and State, a theory
which lies at the basis of all modern political effort,
however little the fact may be recognized. Here,
indeed, we have the whole framework of the Divine
Comedy ; here too we have the doctrine of the Beatific
Vision, which for ages shaped and, to a large extent,
still shapes, the life of Christendom. Well might
Dante claim Aristotle as his master (see p. 153) ! Well
might the great doctors of the Church speak of him
as " r/ie Philosopher," and as the "Forerunner of
Christ in Things Xatural." In vain did Peter Kamus
and Luther and Bruno and Bacon depreciate or anath-
ematize him ! He is more powerful to-day in thought
and life than at any time for the last twenty^-two
centuries.

It may be asked how far, and in what form, Aris-
totle conceives the divine life to be possible for man
on earth. He answers that, though it cannot be per-
fectly or continuously realized here, it is in some
degree and for certain times attainable (see p. 161).
In so far as it is a social life, it is the life of friend-
ship or spiritual love (<^tA.6a), to which he has devoted
almost two books of his Ethics, books which give us a
loftier idea of his personal purity and worth than
any other of his extant writings. He insists that
friendship is the supreme blessing (see p. 166), and
that "whatever a man's being is, or whatever he

HIS THEORY OF THE STATE 171

chooses to live for, in that he wishes to spend his
life in the company of his friends." It is even said
that Aristotle, while teaching in the Lyceum, gath-
ered about him a knot of noble youths and earnest
students, and formed them into a kind of community,
with a view to leading a truly spiritual social life.

CHAPTEE IV

ARISTOTLE'S PEDAGOGICAL STATE

Nature is the beginning of everytliing. — Aristotle.

Life is more than meat, and the body than raiment. — Jesus.

The forces of the human passions in us, when completely re-
pressed, become more vehement; but when they are called into
action for short time and in the right degree, they enjoy a measured
delight, are soothed, and, thence being purged away, cease in a
kindly, instead of a violent, way. For this reason, in tragedy and
comedy, through being spectators of the passions of others, we still
our own passions, render them more moderate, and purge them
away ; and so, likewise, in the temples, by seeing and hearing base
things, we are freed from the injury that would come from the
actual practice of them. — Jamblichus.

Care for the body must precede care for the soul ; next to care
for the body must come care for the appetites ; and, last of all, care
for the intelligence. "We train the appetites for the sake of the
intelligence, and the body for the sake of the soul. — Aristotle.

The practice of abortion was one to which few persons in
antiquity attached any deep feeling of condemnation. . . . The
physiological theory that the foetus did not become a living creature
tUl the hour of birth had some influence on the judgments passed
upon this practice. The death of an unborn child does not appeal
very powerfully to the feeling of compassion, and men who had not
yet attained any strong sense of the sanctity of human life, who
believed that they might regulate their conduct on these matters
by utilitarian views, according to the general interest of the com-
munity, might very readily conclude that prevention of birth was
in many cases an act of mercy. In Greece, Aristotle not only
countenanced the practice, but even desired that it should be en-
forced by law, when population had exceeded certain assigned
limits. No law in Greece, or in the Roman Republic, or during the
172

HIS PEDAGOGICAL STATE 173

greater part of the Empire, condemned it. . . . The language of
the Christians from the very beginning was very different. With
unwavering consistency and with the strongest emphasis, they
denounced the practice, not simply as inliuman, but as definitely
murder. — Lecky, European Morals.

Aristotle clearly saw that the strong tendency of the human race
to increase, unless corrected by strict and positive laws, was abso-
lutely fatal to every system founded on equality of property ; and
there cannot surely be a stronger argument against any system of
this kind than the necessity of such laws as Aristotle himself pro-
poses. ... He seems to be fully aware that to encourage the
birth of children, without providing properly for their support, is to
obtain a very small accession to the population of a country, at the
expense of a very great accession of misery. — Malthus, Essay on
Population.

)
Considering Aristotle's views with, regard to man,

his end, and the function of the State, we can have
little difficulty in divining the character and method
of his educational system. Man is a being endowed
with reason; his end is the full realization of this,
his sovereign and -distinguishing faculty; the State
is the means whereby this is accomplished.

Readers of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister will remember
the description, in the second part, of the Pedagogical
Province. Kow, Aristotle's State might with entire
propriety be called a Pedagogical Province. In try-
ing to describe this State, and the manner in which
it discharges its function, it is difficult to know
where to begin, for the reason that, taken as a whole,
the State is both, teaqher and pupil. It arranges
the whole scheme of education, and is therefore
related to it as cause; it is built, up by this scheme,
and is therefore related to it as effect. It comes,
accordingly, both at the beginning and at the end.

174 ARISTOTLE

It is a university which arranges the entire scheme of
education, and is itself its highest grade. I shall try
to surmount this difficulty by distinguishing what the
State is from what it does, beginning with the former,
and ending with the latter.

With regard to what the State is, we have to con-
sider (1) its natural, (2) its social, conditions. The
former are climate, and extent, nature, and situation
of territory; the latter, number and character of in-
habitants, property regulations, distinction of classes,
city architecture, mode of life, government, and rela-
tions to other states.

Aristotle^ demands for his State a temperate cli-
mate, on the ground that a cold one renders men
strong and bold, but dull and stupid, while a hot one
renders them intellectual but effeminate. The best
climate is one that makes them at once brave and
intelligent. The territory must be extensive enough,
and fertile enough, to supply its inhabitants with all
the material conditions of life in answer to labor
which shall rouse, without exhausting, their energies.
It must face east or south, and be healthy, well-
watered, accessible from land and sea, and easily
defensible.

As to the social conditions, Aristotle finds the most
important to be the number of citizens. And here
two things must be carefully borne in mind. (1\
He means by " State " a city with a small territory.
This is not, as has been erroneously supposed, his
highest social unity. He recognizes clearly the nation
(eOvo^) and the confederacy ((rufifiaxta) ; but he holds
that they exist merely for material ends, whereas the

HIS PEDAGOGICAL STATE 176

/

end of the State is spiritual. (2) He means by " citi-
zen " a politician. A man is a citizen, not because he
is born or domiciled in a State, but because he is a
sharer in its functions. A State made up of mechan-
ics, no matter how great their number, would be a
small State, and one composed of slaves would be
no State at all. Thus, in estimating the size of
a State, we are to consider the character of its
inhabitants, their fitness for political functions, rather
than their number. Little Athens was a much larger
State than gigantic Persia on the field of Marathon.
Aristotle lays down that the number of citizens must
be large enough to insure independence, this being
essential to a Culture-State, and not too large to be
manageable. Besides the citizens, there will neces-
sarily be in the State a very large number of other
human beings, slaves, agriculturists, mechanics, sail-
ors— for all these he excludes from citizenship on
the ground that they do not make virtue, that is, the
realization of reason, the end of their lives. Women,
in a sense, are citizens, if they belong to the families
of citizens ; but their sphere is the family.

With regard to property Aristotle begins by con-
siidermg what things it is necessary for. These he
finds to be six, three private and three public. The
former are food (including clothing and shelter),
instruments of production, and arms; the latter are
public enterprises (civil and military), religion, and
law. These are the " necessaries " (dmyKata) of a State,
for which it must duly provide. The most important
of all is religion, on which he everywhere lays great
stress. As to the distribution of property, he pro-

176 ARISTOTLE

pounds a scheme which is half socialistic. All the
land is to belong to the State^jthat_is,_to the body of
theTree citizens. It is to be divided into two equal
portions, and one set apart for public, the other for
private, uses. The revenue from the public part is to
go for the support of religion (and law?) and of the
public tables, from which no citizen is excluded by
poverty. The private part is to be so divided that
each citizen shall have one lot near the city, and
one near the frontier. This will give him an interest
in defending the whole territory. Both parts are to
be cultivated by serfs or slaves, part of whom will
necessarily belong to the State, and part to private
individuals. Land-owning is to be a condition of
citizenship, and all citizens are to be forbidden to
exercise any form of productive industry. This last
rule, it is hoped, will prevent grievous inequalities of
wealth, and the evils that flow from them. A modest
competency, derived from his estate, is all that any
citizen should aim at. Only degraded people, inca-
pable of virtue, will crave for more.

Upon the distinction of _classes___some light has
been already thrown. They are two ; the ruling and
the ruled. Aristotle holds that this distinction runs
through thewhole of nature and spirit, that it is
fundamental in being itself. It holds between God
and the universe, form and matter, soul and body,
object and subject, husban(f~and wife, parent and
child, master and slave, etc., etc. The ruling class
again is sub-divided into two parts, one that thinks
and determines (legislators and judges), and one that
executes (officials, officers, soldiers); while the ruled

HIS PEDAGOGICAL STATE 177

is sub-divided into husbandmen, mechanics, and sea-
men (sailors, fishermen, etc.). All the members of
the ruled class are serfs or public slaves, working, not
for themselves, but for their masters. Aristotle holds
that they ought to be barbarians of different races,
and not Greeks.

The fl.vo.hitecture of the cvt?^ will in some degree
correspond to this social division. It will naturally
fall into three divisions, military, religious, and civil,
rirst of all, a city must have walls. These should
have towers and bastions at proper distances, and be
made as attractive as possible. The temples of the
gods and the offices of the chief magistrates should,
if possible, stand together on a fortified citadel, con-
spicuously dominating the entire city. Adjoining
this ought to be the Freemen's Square, reserved
entirely for the ruling class, and unencumbered by
business or wares of any sort. Here ought to stand
the gymnasium for the older citizens, who will thus
be brought into contact with the magistrates and
inspired with "-true reverence and freemen's fear."
The market-square must be placed so as to be conven-
ient for the reception of goods both from sea and
land. This comprehends all the civil architecture
except the mess-halls, of which we shall better speak
in the next paragraph.

The mode of life of the ruling class will necessarily
differ widely from that of the ruled. About the
latter Aristotle has nothing to say. He hopes for
little from that class beyond the possibility of being
held in contented subordination. As it has no politi-
cal life, all that is left to it is the life of the family.

178 ARISTOTLE

The ruling class, on the contrary, live to a large
extent in public, and on public funds. They exercise
in public gymnasia and eat at public tables. The
chief magistrates have their mess-hall in the citadel ;
the priests have theirs close to the temples; the
magistrates, who preside over business matters, streets,
and markets, have theirs near the market-square,
while those who attend to the defences of the city
have tables in the towers. When not engaged in pub-
lic business, the citizens may meet in the Freemen's
Square and enjoy an open-air conversazione, with
music, poetry, and philosophy, in a word, Staywy?}, for
which our language has no even approximate equiva-
lent (see p. 33). In proportion as they advance in
years, the citizens enjoy more and more StaywyT/, which,
indeed, is regarded as the end of life, here and
hereafter.

The government is entirely in the hands of the
free citizens, the legislative and deliberative power
being in those of the elders; the executive power,
civil and military, in those of the younger portion.
It is curious that, though Aristotle regards this as the
best possible arrangement under ordinary circum-
stances, he nevertheless believes that the happiest
condition for a State would be to be governed by
some divine or heroic man, far superior to all the
others in wisdom and goodness. He plainly considers
Pisistratus to have been one such man, and he perhaps
hoped that Alexander might be another.

The relations of the pedagogical State to other
States are, as far as possible, to be peaceful. Just
as all labor is for the sake of rest and Staywyi}, so all

HIS PEDAGOGICAL STATE 179

war is for the sake of peace; and tliat State is to be
envied which can maintain an honorable independ-
ence without war. A cultured State will eschew all
attempts at conquest, and be as unwilling to tyrannize
over another State as to be tyrannized over by one.
Vt the same time, it will always be prepared for war,
jiossessing an army of well-trained, well-armed sol-
diers, and a well-manned, well-equipped fleet.

Such are the chief features of Aristotle's ideal
State, based, as he believes, on man's political nature
and the history of the past. Like all social ideals,
like heaven itself, as ordinarily conceived, it is a static
condition. It^ institutions are fixed once for all, and
every effort is made to preserve them. It is curious
to note in how many points it coincides with Xeno-
phon's ideal.

The purpose of the State is to educate its citizens,
to make them virtuous. Virtue is the very life-prin-
ciple of the State, and it does not depend, as other
conditions do, upon nature or chance, but upon free
will. The ideal State, like every other, must educate
with a view to its own institutions, since only in this
way can these be preserved. "And, since the State,
as a whole, has but one aim, it is evident that the
political education of all the citizens ought to be the
same, and that this is a matter for the State to attend
to, and not one to be left to individual caprice, as is
now almost universally done, when every parent
attends to the education of his own children, and
gives them whatever schooling suits his own fancy."
For the education of those members of the State who
are not citizens the State makes no provision. They

180 AKISTOTLE

learn their practical duties by performing them, and
are completely under the control of the citizens.
Aristotle makes the most vigorous eiforts to prove
that slavery has its justification in nature, which has
established between Greek and barbarian the relation
of master and slave (see p. 12). As woman belongs
to the family, and is only indirectly a citizen of the!
State, her education is entrusted to the former insti-
tution. The daughter is to be educated by the par-
ents, and the wife by the husband, exactly as recom-
mended by Xenophon.

Having concluded that education ought to be a
matter of State legislation, and the same for all the
citizens, he continues: "It remains to inquire what
shall be the nature of the education, and the method
of imparting it. . . . The present state of education
leaves this question in a perfect muddle, no One seem-
ing to know whether we ought to teach those subjects
which enable people to make a living, or those which
foster worth, or, finally, accomplishments. All have
had their advocates. In regard to those studies which
have worth for their aim, there is no general agree-
ment, owing to the fact that different people have
different views as to what kinds of worth are admir-
able, and consequently differ in regard to the means
to be employed for the cultivation of them. One
pjwnt, however, is perfe*^ctly clear, viz. that those
) useful things which are necessary ought to be taught.
But it is equally clear that a distinction ought to be
made between liberal and illiberal studies, and that
only those^seful subjects ought to be taught which
do noFturn those learning them into craftsmen. We

HIS PEDAGOGICAL STATE 181

ought to look upon every employment, art, or study
which contributes to render the bodies, souls, or intel-
lects of free men unfit for the uses and practices of
virtue, as a craft. For this reason it is that we call
all those arts which lower the condition of the body
crafts, and extend the term to the money-making
trades, because they preoccupy and degrade the intel-
ligence. As to the liberal arts, to cultivate an
acquaintance with them up to a certain point is not
illiberal; but any over-devotion to them, with a view
to attaining professional skill, is liable to the objec^ .
tions mentioned. It also makes a great difference for
what purpose we do or learn a thing. If a man does
a thing for his own, for his friends', or for worth's
sake, it is not illiberal, wh"rj^nR_Jf hp d'^^rr H r.fft>^^-
for the sake of anybody else, he will be held to be
doing something mercenary or slavish."

^"THe next and~~aIPimportant question is. For what
end shall the State educate, — for business s^ for
leisure? In answering this, Aristotle breaks entirely
away from the old Greek traditions, as well as from
Plato, and maintains that, while it must educate for
both, yet education for leisure is fn.r more important
than education for business, and cites Nature as his
authority. "Nature itself demands," he says, "not
only that we should pursue business properly, but
that we should be able to employ our leisure ele-
gantly. If we must have both, we must; but leisure
is preferable to business, and our final inquiry must
be, in what sort of employment we shall spend our
leisure. It is useless to say that we are to spend it
in play, and that play is the end and aim of our life.

182 ARISTOTLE

If this is impossible, and tlie truth is that the proper
place for play is in the midst of business (it is the
man who is toiling that requires recreation, which is
the aim of play, business being accompanied with
exertion and tension), then, in having recourse to
play, we must select the proper seasons for adminis-
tering it, just as if it were a medicine. Indeed, all
such movement of the soul is relaxation, and becomes
recreation on account of the pleasure which it affords.
Leisure, on the contrary, is considered, in and by
itself, to involve pleasure, happiness, and a blessed
life. These fall to the lot of those who have leisure,
not of those who are engaged in business. Those
who engage in business do so for some ulterior end
not realized in it, whereas happiness is itself an end
and, according to universal belief, brings, not pain
but pleasure. Of course, as to the nature of this
pleasure, there is at present a variety of opinions,
every one having his own preferences due to his
character and habits, and the highest type of man
preferring the highest type of pleasure and that which
arises from the noblest things. We need no further
argument to show that we should receive instruction
and education in certain things with a view to otium
cum dignitate (or cultured leisure), and that these
should be ends in themselves, in contradistinction to
the instruction given for business, which is necessary
and has an ulterior aim. "

Three principles Aristotle lays dovvn as valid for
all education: (1) that the training of the body
ought to take precedence in time over that of tlie
mind; (2) that pupils should be taught to do things

HIS PEDAGOGICAL STATE 183

before they are taught the reasons and principles of
them; (3) that learning is never playing, or for the
sake of playing.

The periods of education distinguished by Aristotle
are : (1) Childhood, extending from birth to the end of
the seventh year, and spent in healthy growing and,
latterly, in preparation for discipline ; (2) Boyhood,
from the beginning of the eighth year to the advent
of puberty, devoted to the lighter forms of discipline,
bodily and m.ental ; (3) Youth, from the age of puberty
to the end of the twenty-first year, occupied with the
severer forms of discipline ; (4) Manhood, devoted to
State duties. All these are but preparations for the
divine life of the soul. We shall treat these in order,
including the second and third under one head.

CHAPTER V

EDUCATION DURING THE FIRST SEVEN YEARS

Suffer no lewdness or indecent speech

The apartment of tender youth to reach. — Juvenal.

Le coeur d'un homme vierge est un vase profond —
Lorsque la premiere eau qu'on y verse est impure,
La mer y passerait sans laver la souillure ;
Car I'abime est immense, et la tache est au fond.

— Alfred de Musset.

The State must begin the education of children be-
fore their birth ; indeed, before the marriage of their
parents. It must see that only persons of robust con-
stitutions marry. Athletes are not suited for marriage,
neither are weaklings. The best age for marriage is
thirty-seven for a man, and eighteen for a woman.
During their pregnancy women must' take special care
of their health, living on light food, and taking short
walks. The State should make a law that they visit
the temples of certain gods every day, and offer up a
prayer of thanksgiving for the honor conferred upon
them. They must carefully avoid all forms of emo-
tional excitement. When defective children are born,
they must be exposed or destroyed. The State must
determine what number of children each married
couple may have, and, if more than this number are
begotten, they must be destroyed, either before or after
birth. " As soon as children are born, it ought to be
184

EDUCATION THE FIRST SEVEN YEARS 185

remembered that their future strength will depend
greatly upon the nourishment supplied to them." A
milk diet is best, and wine must be avoided. " It is
likewise of great importance that children should
make those motions that are appropriate to their stage
of development. . . . Whatever it is possible to
inure children to, they ought to be subjected to from
the very outset, and gradual progress to be made.
Children, on account of their high natural warmth, are
the proper subjects for inurement to cold. These and
other points of the same nature are what ought to be
attended to in the first years of the child's life. In
the following years, up to the age of five, while chil-
dren ought not to be subjected to any instruction or
severe discipline, for fear of impeding their growth,
they ought to take such exercises as shall guard their
bodies from sluggishness. This may be secured by
other forms of activity as well as by play. Care must
be taken that their games shall be neither unrefined,
laborious, nor languid. As to the conversation
and stories which children are to hear, that U a
matter for the attention of those officers called Guar-
dians of Public Instruction. It ought to be seen to
that all such things tend to pave the way for future
avocations. Hence all games ought to be types of
future studies. As to the screaming and crying of
children, they are things that ought not to be prohib-
ited, as they are in some places. They contribute to
the growth of the body, by acting as a sort of gymnas-
tics. Just as persons engaged in hard work increase
their strength by holding their breath, so children
increase theirs by screaming. It is the business of

186 ARISTOTLE

the Guardians of Public Instruction to provide for
their amusement generally, as well as to see that these
bring them as little as possible in contact with slaves.
It is, of course, natural that at this age they should
learn improprieties of speech and manner from what
they hear and see. As to foul language, it ought, of
course, like everything else that is foul, to be prohib-
ited in all society (for frivolous impurity of talk easily
leads to impurity of action), but above all, in the so-
ciety of the young, so that they may neither hear nor
utter any such thing. If any child be caught uttering
or doing anything that is forbidden, if he be freeborn
and under the age when children are allowed to come
to the public table, he ought to be disgraced and sub-
jected to corporal punishment; if he be older, it will
be sufficent to punish him with disgrace, like a slave,
for having behaved like one. And if we thus prohibit
all mention of improper things, with stronger reason
shall we prohibit all looking at improper pictures and
listening to improper narratives. It ought to be made
the business of the Guardians of Public Instruction to
see that there does not exist a statue or a picture
representing any such thing anywhere in the State,
except in the temples of those gods to whom ordinary
belief ascribes a certain wantonness. . . . There
ought to be a regulation forbidding young persons to
be present at lampoons or comedies before they reach
the age when they are allowed to come to the public
table and partake of wine, and when education has
fortified them against all possible danger from them.
. . . We all have a preference for what we first know ;
for this reason everything that savors of meanness or

EDUCATION THE FIRST SEVEN YEARS 187

ignobility ought to be made alien to children. From
the completion of their fifth year to that of their
seventh, children ought to be present at the giving of
the various kinds of instruction which they will after-
Avards have to acquire."

In this brief sketch of primary education we see
that Aristotle does not depart far from the notions of
Plato. It contains even the revolting features of his
scheme. It assumes that the citizens — men, women,
and, after a certain age, children — eat at public
tables, and that education is entirely managed by the
State, — the family, in this respect, being merely its
agent. Some of its features, including the Guardians
of Public Instruction (7rat8ovo/xoi, child-herds) are
plainly borrowed from Sparta.

(university

CHAPTER VI

THE YEARS FROM SEVEN TO TWENTY-ONE

The natures that give evidence of being the noblest are just those
that most require education. — Socrates.

We found ourselves beneath a noble castle

Encompassed seven times with lofty walls,

Defended round by a fair rivulet.
O'er this we passed as upon solid earth :

Through seven gates I entered with these sages.

We came ujjon a meadow of fresh green. — Dante.

For this period, which Aristotle divides into two
(see p. 183) by the advent of puberty, he, in the
main, accepts the course of study customary in his
time. It consists, he says, of four ^branches, — "Let-
ters, Gymnastics, Music, and Drawing, the last not
being universal." Letters and Drawing are taught
because they are useful in the ordinary business of
life and for a variety of purposes, and Gymnastics
because they foster manliness, whereas the purpose
of Music is doubtful."

Of Letters Aristotle has not much to say, beyond
the fact that they are necessary in the common affairs
of life. He champions Homer against Plato, and goes
into a long discussion to show the value of the drama.
Instead of believing, with Plato, that children should
see and hear nothing that would excite their emo-
tions, he maintains that it is only by being properly
188

YEAES FROM SEVEN TO TWENTY-ONE 189

excited and " purged " that these can be trained and
made subordinate to the reason. Among the passions
that obstruct the exercise of reason are fear and pity.
Tragedy rouses these and then drains them off in a
pleasant and harmless way. Comedy does the same
thing for pleasure and laughter. In fact, he main-
tains that the special function of the fine arts is to act
as cathartics for the different passions. Art is ideal
experience. Aristotle has left us a work on tragedy
that holds the place of honor in the literature of that
subject even at the present day.

Drawing Aristotle recommends as a branch of study
which develops taste and judgment in regard to the
products of industrial art; but he says it should not
be studied merely for its use in enabling us to choose
these, or even works of fine art, correctly, but rather
because it enables us to appreciate beauty of form.
He adds : " The perpetual demand for what is merely
useful is anything but a mark of breadth or liberality."

After thus briefly dismissing Letters and Drawing,
Aristotle passes on to Gymnastics and Music, and
devotes considerable space to each.

Alongside Gymnastics, but distinguished from
them, he names Physical Culture (TraihoTpLpLKrj),
saying that, while the former gives character to the
acts of the body, the latter gives character to the
body itself. The aim of gymnastic training should
be neither athleticism nor ferocity, such as the Lace-
daemonians cultivate in their children in the hope of
making them courageous. The former is detrimental
to the beauty and growth of the body; the latter
misses its aim (see p. 41). "Hence nobility, and not

\

190 ARISTOTLE

ferocity, ought to play tlie principal part among our
aims in physical education. For neither a wolf nor
any other wild beast ever braved a noble danger. To
do that takes a noble man; and those who allow their
children to go too deep into such wild exercises, and
so leave them uninstructed in the necessary branches,
make them, in point of fact, mere professionals, use-
ful for the ends of the State only in a single requi-
site, and, as we have shown, inferior to others even
in that.

"There is a general agreement, then, as to the
utility of Gymnastics and to the manner in which
they ought to be conducted. Up to the age of
puberty, children ought to be subjected only to the
lighter exercises, and all forced dieting and violent
exertions eschewed, so that no obstacle may be ^Dut to
the growth of the body. It is no slight evidence of
the fact that violent exercise impedes growth, that
there are not more than two or three examples on rec-
ord of persons' having been victorious at the Olympic
games both as boys and men. The explanation of
this is, that the others were robbed of their strength
in their boyhood by the training they had to undergo."
After the advent of puberty, for a period of three
years, the young men are apparently to have very
little gymnastics, and to devote themselves assidu-
ously to letters, music, and drawing. The period
following this is to be devoted to severe exercise and
strict dieting, mental exertion being reduced to a
minimum; "for the two kinds of exertion naturally
work against each other, bodily exertion impeding
the intellect, and intellectual exertion the body."

YEARS FROM SEVEN TO TWENTY-ONE 191

On Music, as a branch of study, we have almost
a disquisition^ffom the pen of Aristotle. The ques-
tion that first occupies him is. What is the use of
music? Is it a recreation, an occupation for cultured
leisure, or a gymnastic for the soul? It is all three,
he replies, and would deserve study for the sake of
any one of them. At the same time, its chief value
in education lies in its third use. Music imparts a
mental habit ; about that there can be no doubt. For
example, the songs of Olympus "render the soul
enthusiastic, and enthusiasm is an affection of the
soul's habit." Aristotle reasons in this way: Music
is capable of affecting us with all kinds of pleasures
and pains. But moral worth at bottom consists in
finding pleasure in what is noble, and pain in what is
ignoble, that is, in a correct distribution of affection.
But in good music the strains that give pleasure are
attached to the ideas that are noble, and the strains
that give pain to the ideas that are ignoble; hence,
by a natural association, the pleasures and pains
which we find in the music attach themselves to the
ideas which it accompanies. " There is nothing that
we ought to learn and practice so assiduously as the
art of judging correctly and of taking delight in gen-
tlemanly bearing and noble deeds. And apart from
the natural manifestations of the passions themselves,
there is nothing in which we can find anger, gentle-
ness, courage, self-control, and their opposites, as
well as the other moods, so well represented as in
rhythms and songs. This we all know by experience;
for the moods of our souls change when we listen to
such strains. But the practice which we thus receive

192 ARISTOTLE

from rhythms and songs, in rejoicing and suffering
properly, brings ns very near being affected in the
same way by the realities themselves." Here Aris-
totle draws a distinction between music, which appeals
to the ear, and the arts that appeal to the other
senses, or rather to sight; for no art appeals to touch,
taste, or smell. In the objects of art that appeal to
the eye, we have expressions of passions only in so far
as they affect the body, whereas in music we have their
direct expression passing from soul to soul. Yet
persons are deeply moved by statuary and painting,
-so much so that young people ought not to be allowed
to see such works as those of Pauson. How much
more then must they be moved by music! "That
they are so is quite plain ; for there is such an obvious
difference of nature between harmonies that the lis-
teners are affected in entirely different ways by them.
By some they are thrown into a kind of mournful
or grave mood, e.g., by what is known as the mixed
Lydian ; by others a sentimental turn is given to their
thoughts, for example, by languid harmonies; while
there is another kind that especially produces balance
of feeling and collectedness. This effect is confined
to the Doric harmonies. The Phrygian harmonies
rouse enthusiasm. These are correct results arrived
at by those thinkers who have devoted their attention
to this branch of education, — results based upon
ax3tual experience. What is true of harmonies is
true also of rhythms. Some of these have a steady,
others a mobile, character; of the latter, again, some
have coarse, others refined, movements. From all
these considerations, it is obvious that music is cal-

YEARS FROM SEVEN TO TWENTY-ONE 193

culated to impart a certain character to the habit of
the soul, whence it follows that it ought to be brought
to bear upon children, and instruction given them in
it. Musical instruction, indeed, is admirably adapted
to their stage of development ; for young people, just
because they are young, are not fond of persisting in
anything that does not give them pleasure, and music
is one of the pleasant things. There seems even to
be a certain kinship between harmonies and rhythms
[and the soul] ; whence many philosophers hold that
the soul is a harmony, or that it has harmony."

Aristotle, having thus shnwri thatjnusic is a proper
subject of instruction, goes_£)n t^ inq^uiT^^^ ^^ whether
children ought, or ought not, to be taught music,, by
being -ta:ilght""t6 siiig~and play themselves? " His
answer is" weII"worth quoting at full length. " It is
quite evident," he says, "that music will have a very
much greater effect in moulding people, if they take
part in the performance themselves. Indeed, it is
difficult, or even impossible, for those who do not
learn to do things themselves to be good judges of
them when they are done. At the same time, chil-
dren must have some amusement, and we may look
upon Archytas' rattle, which they give to children to
spend their energies upon, and to prevent them from
breaking things about the house, as a good invention.
It is useless to try to keep a young creature quiet,
and, just as the rattle is the proper thing for babies,
so musical instruction is the proper rattle for older
children. It follows that children ought to be taught
music by being made to produce it themselves, and
it is not difficult to determine either what is suitable

194 ARISTOTLE

and unsuitable for different ages, or to answer those
people who pretend that the study of music is some-
thing ungentlemanly. In the first place, since people
must, to some extent, learn things themselves, in
order to form a correct judgment about them, they
ought to learn the practice of them while they are
young, so that, when they grow up, they may be able
to dispense with it, and yet, through their early
studies, be able to judge of them correctly and take
the proper delight in them. To the objections which
some people raise, that music turns people into crafts-
men, it is not hard to find an answer, if we consider to
what extent the practice of music ought to be required
of children who are being reared in the civic virtues,
what songs and rhythms they ought to learn, and
what instruments they ought to use — for this makes a
difference. Herein lies the solution of the difficulty.
The fact is, there is nothing to prevent certain kinds
of music from accomplishing the end proj)osed.

"It is, of course, obvious that the acquisition of
music ought not to be allowed to interfere with
future usefulness, to impart an ignoble habit to the
body, or render it unfit for civic duties, — either for
the immediate learning, or the subsequent exercise,
of them. All the beneficial results of musical educa-
tion would be attained, if, instead of going into a
laborious practice, such as is required to prepare
people for public exhibitions, if instead of trying to
perform those marvellous feats and tours de force
which have lately become popular at public exhibi-
tions, and passed from them into education, the chil-
dren were to learn just enough to enable them to take

YEARS FROM SEVEN TO TWENTY-ONE 195

delight in noble songs and rhythms, instead of finding
a mere undiscriminating pleasure in anything that
calls itself music, as some of the lower animals and
the bulk of slaves and children do. If so much be
admitted, we need be in no doubt respecting our
choice of instruments." Aristotle specially condemns
the flute, and tells how it came into use, and how it
was afterwards discarded, as exerting an immoral
influence. " In the same way were condemned many
of the older instruments, as the pectis, the barbitus,
and those which tended to produce sensual pleasure
in the hearers — also the septangle, the triangle, the
sambuca, and all those requiring scientific manipula-
tion." . . . "We would, then, condemn all profes-
sional instruction in the nature and use of these
instruments. 'Professional ' we call all instruction
that looks toward public exhibitions. The person
who receives this pursues his art, not with a view to
his own culture, but to afford a pleasure, and that a
vulgar one, to other people. For this reason we hold
that such practice is not proper for free men, but
savors of meniality and handicraft. The aim, indeed,
for which they undertake this task is an ignoble one.
For audiences, being vulgar, are wont to change their
music, and so react upon the character of the profes-
sionals who cater to their tastes, and this again has
its influence upon their bodies, on account of the
motions which they are obliged to go through."

Since different kinds of music have different effects
upon the habit of the soul, Aristotle next inquires
what kinds are suitable for education. " We accept, "
he says, "the classification made by certain philoso-

196 ARISTOTLE \

pliers, who divide songs into ethical, practical, and
enthusiastic, assigning to them the different harmo-
nies respectively, and we affirm that music is to be
employed, not for one useful purpose alone, but for
several; Jirstf for instruction; second, for purgation;
and third, for cultured leisure, for relaxation, and
for recreation. It is obvious that all harmonies ought
to be employed, though not all in the same way.
The most ethical (i.e. those that most affect the etJios
or habit of the soul) must be employed for instruc-
tion; the practical and enthusiastic for entertain-
ments by professional performers. For those emotions
which manifest themselves powerfully in some souls
are potentially present in all, with a difference in
degree merely, e.g., pity, fear, and also enthusiasm,
a form of excitement by which certain persons are
very liable to be possessed. If we watch the effects
of the sacred songs, we shall see that those persons
are restored to a normal condition under the influence
of those that solemnize the soul, just as if they had
undergone medical treatment and purgation. The
same thing must happen to all persons predisposed to
pity, fear, or emotion generally, as well as to others
in so far as they allow themselves to come within the
reach of any of these ; for them all there must exist
some form or another of purgation and relief accom-
panied with pleasure. In this way those 'purgative '
songs afford a harmless pleasure, and it is for this
reason that there ought to be a legal enactment to the
effect that performers giving public concerts should
employ such harmonies and such songs. The fact is,
since there are two kinds of public, the one free and

YEARS FROM SEVEN TO TWENTY-ONE 197

cultivated, the other rude and vulgar, composed of
mechanics, laborers, and the like, there must be
entertainments and exhibitions to afford pastime to
the latter as well as the former. As the souls of
these people are, so to speak, perverted from the
normal habit, so also among the harmonies there are
abnormities, and among songs there are the strained
and discolored; and each individual derives pleasure
from that which is germane to his nature. For this
reason performers must be allowed to produce this
kind of music, for the benefit of this portion of the
public.

" For the purposes of instruction, as has been said,
^ve must employ ethical songs and the corresponding
harmonies. Such a harmony is the Doric, as has
already been remarked. We must likewise admit
any other species of music that may have approved
itself to such persons as have devoted attention to
philosophic discussion and musical education. . . .
In respect to the Doric harmony, it is universally
admitted to be, of all harmonies, the most sedate,
expressive of the most manly character. Moreover,
since our principle is, that the mean between extremes
is desirable and ought to be pursued, and the Doric
harmony holds this relation to other harmonies, it
follows that Doric songs should be taught to young
people in preference to any other. Two things, how-
ever, must be kept in view, the practicable and the
befitting. I mean that we must discuss what is spe-
cially practicable for different people, as well as
what is befitting. This, indeed, will depend upon
the different periods of life. For example, it would

198 ARISTOTLE

not be easy for persons in the decline of life to sing
the intense harmonies; for them nature suggests the'
languid kinds. For this reason those musicians are
right who blame Socrates for having condemned the
languid harmonies, as subjects of instruction, on the
ground that they were intoxicating. (By this term
he did not mean inebriating, in the sense that wine is
inebriating, — for wine renders boisterous rather than
anything else, — but languid.) The truth is, with an
eye to the future, to old age, instruction ought to be
given in harmonies and songs of this sort. Moreover,
if there is any harmony suitable for youth, as tending
to refine as well as to instruct, as is the case notably
with the Lydian, it, of course, ought to be adopted.
It is clear, then, that_th^e are three distinct things
to be considered in" reference to education, avoidance
of extremes, practicability, and appropriateness. "

So much for the four branches of study which,
according to Aristotle, ought to compose the curric-
ulum of g^outh. We have noticed that, in his extant
works, he says little about Letters and Drawing. Just
what branches the former was supposed to include, he
has nowhere told us directly; but I think there can
be little doubt that he gave a place to Grammar,
Ehetoric (including Poetics), Dialectic, Arithmetic,
Geometry, and Astronomy, which, along with Music,
make up the Seven Liberal Arts, the THvium and
Quadrivium of the Middle Ages. This curriculum
underwent considerable changes at different times, as
we can see from Philo, Teles, Sextus Empiricus, St.
Augustine, and others; but in Martianus Capella it
returned to its original form, and in this dominated

YEARS FROM SEVEN TO TWENTY-ONE

199

education for a thousand years. We might perhaps
draw out Aristotle's programme of secondary educa-
tion thus : —

Physical

;Dancing(seep. 82) ]
[Deportment I

Before

Training

puberty

-Running

V

Leaping

Before

Practical •

Gymnastics

Javelin-casting
Discus-throwing ^
Wrestling
Shooting

puberty.

Studies: .

Creative

[Music
[ Drawing

Marching
Drilling

After
puberty.

-Riding

' Grammar

Rhetoric

Before puberty.

Dialectic

Theoretic •

Arithmetic
Geometry

After puberty.

.

.Astronomy .

I

CHAPTER VII

EDUCATION AFTER TWENTY-ONE

Be assured that happiness has its source, not in extensive pos-
sessions, but in a right disposition of the soul. Even in the case of
the body, no one would call it fortunate for being arrayed in splen-
did garments ; but one would do so, if it had health, and were nobly
developed, even without such appendages. In the same manner, we
(ought to ascribe happiness to the soul only when it is cultivated,
and to call a man happy only if he possesses such a soul, not if he
is splendidly attired outwardly, but has no worth of his own. . . .
For those whose souls are ill-conditioned, neither wealth, nor
power, nor beauty is a blessing ; on the contrary, the more exces-
sive these conditions are, the more widely and deeply do they
injure their possessors, being unaccompanied with right-mindedness.
— Akistotle.

Zeno used to tell a story about Crates, to this effect : One day
Crates was sitting in a shoemaker's shop, reading aloud Aristotle's
Exhortation (to Philosophy), addressed to Themison, king of the
Cyprians, in which the king is reminded that he possesses, in an
exceptional degree, all the conditions of philosophy, superabundant
wealth, and high position. As he was reading, the shoemaker,
without interrupting his sewing, listened to him, until at last Crates
said : " Philiscus, I think I will write an Exhortation for you ; for I
see you have more of the conditions of philosophy than Aristotle
has enumerated." — Teles.

At the age of twenty-one, those young men who
have successfully completed the State system of train-
ing become citizens or politicians, and begin to exer-
cise the functions of such. These are of two kinds,
(1) active, practical, or executive, and (2) delibera-
tive, theoretical, or legislative. As action must, on
200

k

EDUCATION AFTER TWENTY-ONE 201

the one hand, be vigorous, and, on the other, guided
by deliberation, which requires large experience, the
functions of the State must be so arranged that the
active duties fall to the young and robust, the delib-
erative to the elderly and mature. The distinguishing
virtue of the former is fortitude, with endurance or
patience ; that of the latter philosophy. Both equally
have self-control and justice. In this way does
Aristotle distribute Plato's four cardinal virtues.

When young men first become citizens, they are
assigned to posts of active service, civil and military,
and thus study practical philosophy — Ethics and
Politics — in a practical way. As they grow older,
they gradually rise to posts demanding less practice
and more thought, until at last they are admitted to
the deliberative body, or council, when their active
duties cease, and they are able to devote themselves /
to Speculative Philosophy or Theoretics. These men I
have now reached the end of life, as far as this world
is concerned. They spend their days in cultured
leisure, and the contemplation of divine things
($€0)pLa). The very oldest of them, those who are
most conversant with divine things, are chosen as
priests, so that they may, as it were, live with the
gods, and these be worthily served. Thus gradually,
almost insensibly, they pass from the world of time to
that of eternity ; from the imperfect activity of prac-
tice, whose end is beyond itself, to the perfect energy
of contemplation, which is self-sufficient and the life
of God. In this way Aristotle settles the vexed
question with regard to the compatibility and relative
value of the practical and the contemplative life.

I

202 ARISTOTLE

They are necessary complement^ of each other. Prac-
tice is the realization of what contemplation discovers
in the pure energy of God, revealing itself in the
world. Thus the practical life of man glides gradu-
ally into the contemplative life of God.

Such is the highest view of man's destiny, and the
way thither, that the Greeks ever reached, and it is in
f\ many ways a most attractive and inspiring one. Its
defects are the defects of all that is Greek. They
are two : (1) its ideal is intellectual and aesthetic, —
/ a coordinated, harmonious whole, whereof the indi-
/ vidual is but a part : not moral or religious — a self-
surrender of the individual to the supreme will ; con-
sequently, (2) it does not provide for every human
being, as such, but only for a small, select number,
the fruit of the whole. Its ethics are institutional
not personal, and, indeed, the Greek never arrived at
a distant conception- of personality, that being pos-
sible only through the moral consciousness, which is
its core. It seeks to find happiness in a correlation
and balancing of individual selves, not in the inde-
pendent conformity of each self to a supreme self.
Hence it was that, with all its marvellous grasp and
manly prudence, the ideal of Aristotle proved power-
less to restore the moral unity of man, until it was
absorbed in a higher.

Book IV

THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD

(B.C. 338-A.D. 313)

^

CHAPTEE I

FROM ETHNIC TO COSMOPOLITAN LIFE

'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more. — Byron.

Most gloriou^<)jpbll the Undying, many-named, girt round with

awe! ^'^''
Jove, author of Nature, applying to all things the rudder of law —
Hail ! Hail ! for it justly rejoices the races whose life is a span
To lift unto Thee their voices — the Author and Framer of Man.
For we are Thy sons ; Thou didst give us the symbols of speech at

our birth,
Alone of the things that live, and mortal move upon earth.
Wherefore Thou shalt find me extolling and ever singing Thy

praise ;
Since Thee the great Universe, rolling on its path round the world,

obeys : —
Obeys Thee, wherever Thou guidest, and gladly is bound in Thy

bands.
So great is the power Thou confidest, with strong, invincible hands.
To Thy mighty, ministering servant, the bolt of the thunder, that

flies.
Two-edged, like a sword and fervent, that is living and never dies.
All nature, in fear and dismay, doth quake in the path of its stroke,
What time Thou preparest the way for the one Word Thy lips have

spoke,
Which blends with lights smaller and greater, which pervadeth and

thrilleth all things.
So great is Thy power and Thy nature — in the Universe Highest of

Kings !
On earth, of all deeds that are done, O God ! there is none without

Thee.
In the holy aether not one, nor one on the face of the sea ;
Save the deeds that evil men, driven by their own blind folly, have

planned ;

205

206 A'RISTOTLE

But things that have grown uneven are made even again by Thy

hand;
And things unseemly grow seemly, the unfriendly are friendly to

Thee;
For so good and evil supremely Thou hast blended in one by decree.
For all Thy decree is one ever — a Word that endureth for aye,
Which mortals, rebellious, endeavor to flee from and shun to obey —
Ill-fated, that, worn with proneness for the lordship of goodly things.
Neither hear nor behold, in its Oneness, the law that divinity brings ;
Which men with reason obeying, might attain unto glorious life,
No longer aimlessly straying in the paths of ignoble strife.
There are men with a zeal unblest, that are wearied with following

of fame,
And men, with a baser quest, that are turned to lucre and shame.
There are men, too, that pamper and pleasure the flesh with deli-
cate stings :
All these desire beyond measure to be other than all these things.
Great Jove, all-giver, dark-clouded, great Lord of the thunderbolt's

breath !
Deliver the men that are shrouded in ignorance, dismal as death.
O Father ! dispel from their souls the darkness, and grant them the

light
Of Reason, Thy stay, when the whole wide world Thou rulest with

might,
That we, being honored, may honor Thy name with the music of

hymns,
Extolling the dee(fs of the Donor, unceasing, as rightly beseems
Mankind ; for no worthier trust is awarded to God or to man
Than forever to glory with justice in the law that endures and is

One. — Cleanthes.

The distinguishing characteristics of Hellenic ed-
ucation were unity, comprehensiveness, proportion,
and aimfulness. It extended to the whole human
being, striving to bring the various elements of his
nature into complete harmony in view of an end.
This end was the State, in which the individual citi-
zen was expected to find a field' for all his activities.
We have seen how, while conservative Sparta clung

FROM ETHNIC TO COSMOPOLITAN LIFE 207

to this ideal to the last, and rigorously excluded those
influences which tended to undermine it, Athens,
by freely admitting these, gradually broke down the
fair proportion between bodily and mental education,
in an excessive devotion to the latter, and so came to
make a distinction between the man and the citizen.
The result was aii_ epidemic of individualism which
threatened the existence of all that was Hellenic.
Against this destructive power the noblest men in the
nation, an ^Eschylus, an Aristophanes, a Pericles, a
Socrates, a Xenophon, a Plato, an Aristotle, fought
with all the might of worth and intellect. Some of
them sought once more to remerge the man in the
citizen by means of a despotism and the suppression
of all intellectual pursuits ; others, seeing clearly the
impossibility of this, tried so to define the sphere of
the individual that it should not encroach upon that
of the citizen, but stand in harmonious relation to
it. They did this by placing the sphere of the indi-
vidual above that of the State, and, inasmuch as the
former was a purely intellectual sphere, they found
themselves driven to conclude, and to lay down, that
the contemplative life is the end and consummation of
the practical, that the citizen and the State exist only
for the sake of the individual. They were very far
indeed from seeing all the implications of this con-
clusion : these showed themselves only in the sequel ;
but the fact is, that the principle of the separation
between the man and the citizen, and the assignment
of the place of honor to the former, proved at once
the destroying angel of Hellenism and the animating
spixit of the civilization which took its place. If we

208 ARISTOTLE

look closely at the schemes of Plato and Aristotle,
we shall see that they try to render innocuous the^wv
spirit of individualism by exhausting its activities in
intellectual relations to the divine, offering it heaven,
if it will only consent to relinquish to the political
spirit its earthly claims. They practically said: Man,
in all his relations to his fellow -men here below, is a
citizen J only in relation to God is he an individual.
The history of the last two thousand years is but a
commentary on this text. From the day when the
master-mind of the Greek world credited man's nature
with a divine element having a supreme activity of
its own, European thought and life have been agitated
by three questions, and largely shaped by the answers
given to them : (1) What is the nature of the divine
element in man? (2) In what form or institution
shall that element find expression and realization?
(3) How shall that institution relate itself to the
State? And they have not yet been definitely
answered.

Principles that are to move the world are never the
result of mere abstract thought, but always of a crisis
or epoch in human affairs. And so it was in the
present case. The separation between the man and
the citizen was accomplished in fact, before it was
formulated in theory. On the other hand, the theory
received emphasis from the events which accompanied
and followed its promulgation. The battle of Chaero-
nea, which took place sixteen years before Aristotle's
death, by putting an endJpQrevfijL iQ,^he free civic
life of Greece, removed the very conditions under
which the old ideal could realize itself, and forced

FROM ETHNIC TO COSMOPOLITAN LIFE 209

men to seek a sphere of activity, and to form associ-
ations, outside of the State. The State, indeed, still
maintained a semblance of life, andTthe old education,
with its literature, gymnastics,"and~rQiiSic still contin-
ued; but the spirit of both was gone. The State was
gradually replaced by the philosophic schools, while
intellectual training tended more and more to concen-
trate itself upon rhetoric, that art which enables the
individual to shine before his fellows, and to gain
wealth or public preferment. From this time on, the
spiritual life of Greece found expression in the pre-
tentious, empty individualism of the rhetoridaji^ the
lineal descendant of the sophists, and in the philo-
sophical sects, which embodied the spirit of Socrates,
their opponent.

The founder of the rhetorical schools may be said
to have been Isocrates, who, after being a pupil of
Socrates', turned against the philosophic tendency,
and championed elegant philistjnism. The aim of
these schools was to turn out clever men of the world,
thoroughly acquainted with popular opinions and
motives, and capable of expressing themselves glibly,
sententiously, and persuasively on any and every sub-
ject. They usually made no profession of imparting
profound learning or eliciting philosophic thought:
indeed, they despised both; but they did seek to
impart such an amount of ordinary knowledge as to
place their pupils in the chief current of the popular
thought of their time. They thus became the bearers
of practical education among a people who, having
lost their political life without finding any higher,
sought to obtain satisfaction in social intercourse.

210 ARISTOTLE

Por hundreds of years they exerted an enormous in-
fluence, and, indeed, at certain times and places were
formidable rivals of the philosophic schools.

The first man of Greek race who attempted to found
a sect or school outside the State was Pythagoras, and
there can be no doubt that all subsequent schools were
in some degree modelled upon his. It is true that
the Pythagorean school had been broken up and dis-
persed long before the days of Plato and Aristotle
(see p. 54); nevertheless, his followers, scattered
over Greece, had carried with them the ideas and
principles of their master, and now that Athens had
fallen into the condition against which the Pythag-
orean discipline had been a protest, these ideas found
a ready response in the hearts of those men whom the
social life of the time could not satisfy. Hence the
schools of Plato and Aristotle, which had originally
been mere educational institutions, turned, even dur-
ing the lifetime of the latter, into sects (aipcVets,
heresies, as they were called later on), with definite
sets of non-political principles, in accordance with
which their members tried to shape their lives. It
cannot be said that these two schools were in any high
degree successful, and the reasons were that they were
too purely intellectual, that they made no striking
revolt against political life, and that they called for
a type of man not easy to find. But, shortly after
the death of Aristotle, there arose, almost contem-
poraneously, two other schools, which exerted an
influence, deep and wide, for over six hundred years.
These were the Epicurean_ajid^tJ_ie_^ Widely as

these differed in respect to means, they sought the

FROM ETHNIC TO COSMOPOLITAN LIJFE 211

same end, namely, personal independence, and they
sought it by conformity to laws imposed by no human
legislator, but by nature. The former took the law
of the senses, the latter the law of the spirit, for its
guide; and, by a strange contradiction, while the
former championed free will, the latter professed
fatalism. These four schools were the only ones that
ever met with extensive patronage in Athens, and
with the exception of the Academic, they never
diverged far from the principles of their founders.
In the time of Marcus Aurelius, after Athens had
been for ages a mere Eoman university, they were
placed under State patronage, and supported by public
funds, and there is no record to show that this was
discontinued until they were finally closed by the
Emperor Justinian in a.d. 529.

Kot long after the death of Aristotle, Athens was
supplanted by Alexandria, as the centre of Greek
influence. Here the rhetorical and philosophic schools
established themselves, and could soon boast a nu-
merous discipleship. This, however, was no longer
exclusively, or even mainly, Greek, but was recruited
from all the nations of the known world, more espe-
cially those of the East. Phoenicians, Syrians, Jews,
Persians, etc., not to speak of Egyptians, now became
students of Greek philosophy, and members of philo-
sophic sects, whose members not only studied together,
but often, to a large extent, lived together in com-
munities. About the year b.c. 300 were founded the
famous Museum and Library of Alexandria — the first
university and the first public library in the world.
Round these the various sects gathered, to study, to

212 ARISTOTLE

discuss, and to exchange opinions. Nor was it Greek
thouglit alone that engaged their attention. The opin-
ions and beliefs of Egypt and the East came in for
a share, and, in the end, for the largest share. Xor
is this wonderful, when we consider the direction
that thought and life were then taking.

We have already seen that, as Greek civic life
lost the conditions of its existence, the thoughtful
portion of the people came more and more to seek for
life-principles in the supersensible world of intellect.
The nature of this world Plato and Aristotle had done
their best to reveal. But the event proved that
neither an ordered host of ideas commanded by the
Good, nor a Supreme Intelligence served by a host of
lower intelligences, could yield the principles which
the life of the time demanded ; and thus we find the
philosophers of Alexandria striving to people their
intelligible world with forms drawn from all the
religions of the East, including Judaism. Thus there
grew up the various forms of Alexandrine philosophy,
compounds of Greek thought and Oriental religion.
On the basis of these again were organized, at the
same time, various forms of social life, all tending
more or less to religious communism. Hence came
the Essenes (see p. 59), the Therapeuts, the Neopy-
thagoreans, and the Neoplatonists, all of whom, not-
withstanding certain shortcomings, did much to purify
life, and to pave the way for a higher civilization.

In B.C. 146, Greece, and,Jn b.c. 30, Egypt, fell into
the hands of the Komans and thenceforth formed
provinces of their empire. Athens and Alexandria
were now Roman university -towns, while Rome

FROM ETHNIC TO COSMOPOLITAN LIFE 213

became more and more the diffusing centre of Greek
and Oriental influence. It would be impossible, in a
work like the present, to give even a sketch of the
forms which education assumed in these three great
centres, or in the world that revolved round them, in
the six hundred and more years that passed between
the loss of Greek autonomy and the triumph of Chris-
tianity. We shall merely endeavor to give a general
notion of its two chief tendencies, which, as we saw,
were towards rhetoric and philosophy; and we shall
do this in connection with the names of two men,
who may be regarded as respectively typical of the
two tendencies, Quintilian the rhetorician, and Plo-
tinus the philosopher. By doing so we shall pave the
way for the consideration of the Rise of the Christian
Schools.

CHAPTEH II
QUINTILIAN AND RHETORICAL EDUCATION

Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic. Both have for their
subjects those things which, in a certain way, are matters of com-
mon knowledge, and belong to no definite science. Hence every-
body, in some degree, is gifted with them ; for everybody, to some
extent, tries to examine and sustain an argument, to defend himself,
and to accuse others. — Akistotle.

There is a certain political theory which is made up of many
gi-eat things. A large and important part of it is artificial elo-
quence, which they call rhetoric. — Cicero.

Every duty which tends to preserve human relations and human
society must be assigned a higher place tha^^any that stops short
with knowledge and science. — Id.

Zeno, having pressed his fingers together and closed his fist, said
that was like Dialectic; ha^dng spread them out and opened his
hand, he said Eloquence was like his palm there. — Id.

To act considerately is of more moment than to think wisely. — Id.

I pass to the pleasure of oratorical eloquence, the delight of
which one enjoys not at any one moment, but almost every day and
every hour. — Tacitus.

Grammar is an exi)erimental knowledge of the usages of lan-
guage as generally current among poets and prose writers. It is
divided into six parts, (1) trained reading with due regard to prosody
[i.e. aspiration, accentuation, quantity, emphasis, metre, etc.], (2) ex-
position according to poetic figures [literary criticism], (3) ready
statement of dialectical peculiarities and allusions [philology, geoL;-
raphy, history, mythology], (4) discovery of etymologies, (5) accu-
rate accoimt of analogies [accidence and syntax], (6) criticism of
poetical productions, which is the noblest part of the grammatic art
[ethics, politics, strategy, etc.].— Dioxysius Thkax.
214

QUTNTtLIAN AND RHETORICAL EDUCATION 215

Reading is the rendering of poetic or prose productions without
stumbling or hesitancy. It must be done with due regard to
expression, prosody, and pauses. From the expression we learn
the merit of the piece, from the prosody the art of the reader, and
from the pauses the meaning intended to be conveyed. In this way
we read tragedy heroically, comedy conversationally, elegiacs
thrillingly, epics sustainedly, lyrics musically, and dirges softly
and plaintively. Any reading done without due observance of
these rules degrades the merits of the poets and makes the habits
of readers ridiculous. — Id.

Some arts are common, others liberal. . . . The liberal arts,
which some call the logical arts, are astronomy, geometry, music,
philosophy, medicine, grammar, rhetoric. — /ScAo^m to Dionysius
Thrax.

It is obvious that man excels the other animals in worth and
speech : Why may we not hold that his worth consists as much in
eloquence as in reason ? — Quintilian.

The civil man, and he who is truly wise, who does not devote
himself to idle disputes, but to the administration of the common-
wealth (from which^ose folks who are called philosophers have
farthest withdrawn themselves), will be glad to employ every
available oratorical means to reach his ends, having previously
settled in his own mind what ends are honorable. — Id.

If we count over all the epochs of life, we shall find its pains far
more numerous than its pleasures. . . . The first, that of baby-
hood, is trying. The baby is hungry; the nurse sends it to sleep:
it is thirsty; she washes it: it wants to go to sleep; she takes a
rattle and makes a noise. When the child has escaped from the
nurse, it is taken hold of by the pedagogue, the physical trainer,
the grammar-master, the music-master, the drawing-master. In
process of time, there are added the arithmetic-master, the geome-
ter, the horse-breaker ; he rises early ; he has no chance for leisure.
He becomes a cadet ; again he has to fear the drill-fnaster, the phys-
ical trainer, the fencing-master, the gymnasiarch. By all these he
is whipt, watched, throttled. He graduates from the cadets at
twenty ; again he dreads and watches captain and general, etc. —
Teles the Stoic (b.c. 260).

The palmy period in the history of Rome is the period when she
had no literature. It was only when the Roman nationality began

216 ARISTOTLE

to break up, and cosmopolitan Greek tendencies to lay hold upon
the people, that a literature began to appear. For this reason,
Roman literature from its very inception is, from absolute necessity,
filled with the Greek spirit, and stands in the most direct opposition
to the national spirit of the people. — Mommsen.

Quintiliane, vagse moderator summe juventae,
Gloria Romanae, Quintiliane, toga;. — Martial.

Up to the time when Rome_began to decline, the
school education of her youth was meagre in the ex-
treme, consisting of reading, w^riting, and a little law.
All later education that was more than this was bor-
rowed from the Greeks. It was about the year 200 B.C.,
at the close oi the Second Punic War, that their in-
fluence began clearly to show itself. The severe Cato,
who so cordially despised rhetoricians and philoso-
phers, learnt Greek in his old age and w^rote, for the
use of his son, a series of manuals on ethics, rhetoric,
medicine, military science, farming, and law. At the
same time Scipio Africanus spent his leisure hours in
practising gymnastics. From this time on, and just
in proportion as Eome lost her national character and
became cosmopolitan, she more and more adopted
Greek manners, Greek religion (or irreligion), and
Greek education. When,^£n.ally , in b, c . 146, Greece
became a Eoman dependenc}^, it was strictly true that
"Captive Greece took captive her rude conqueror."
Thousands of Greek schoolmasters, rhetoricians, phi-
losophers, etc., flocked to Rome, and, though attempts
were made to expel or suppress them, they held their
place, for the simple reason that the education they
offered was a necessity of the time. Rome, the mis-
tress of the world, had either to become cosmopolitan

QUINTILIAN AND RHETORICAL EDUCATION 217

or perish, and she preferred the former alternative.
She now, for the first time, began to have a literature
and to cultivate her own language. The studies which
she specially affected were (1) grammar, that is, liter-
ature, (2) rhetoric, (3) philosophy, which corresponded
to school, college, and university "education. The last,
like music and geometry, was, for the most part, an
elegant accomplishment, rather than a serious study.
The physical sciences found little favor.

So long as Eoman education was in the hands
of Greeks, it was conducted in the Greek language,
and the authors read and discussed were Greek. But
the Eomans, though willing enough to borrow Greek
culture, were unwilling to remain permanently in in-
tellectual dependence upon a conquered people, which
in many respects they despised. Strong efforts, there-
fore, were made to develop a national literature and a
national education. About th^jyggj- t^.p. IOQ^ Tinoins
^lius Prseconinus Stilo, a wYvrthy_p,rifl ponsPT-vativp.
Roman knight, opened a private class in Latin gram-
mar and rhetoric for young men of the upper classes,
and from this time on the direct influence of the
Greeks, except in philosophy, declined. Greek, in-
deed, continued to be spoken by all persons making
any pretensions to culture ; but Latin became the lan-
guage of Eoman literature. Among the pupils of Stilo
were Varro_and_Cicero, who, along with Julius Caesar,
may be called the parents of the classical Latin lan-
guage, literature, and eloquence. Both Varro and
Caesar wrote works on grammar. A certain Cornificius
(generally known as Aiictor ad Herennium) about this
time wrote the first Latin treatise on Ehetoricj but

218 ARISTOTLE

the great authority on the subject, in practice as well
as theory, was Cicero, who wrote no fewer than seven
works on it. With Cicero's death, and the transfor-
mation of the republic into an empire, eloquence lost
its noblest use, the defence of liberty. Rhetoric,
nevertheless, continued to be cultivated as a fine art
and for forensic use, and, indeed, was made to cover
the whole of the higher education of youth. Of this
art the most celebrated teacher wa,s Qnnitilian, "fhp.
supreme director of giddy youth, the glory of the
Roman toga" (i.e. civil manhood).

Quintilian was born about a.d. 35 in the Spanish
city of Calagurris (Calahorra), where, later, St. Dom-
inic first saw the light. He was educated in Rome,
but afterwards returned to his native place and. estab-
lished himself as a teacher of rhetoric. About^Sf^i^S,
he was invited by the Emperor Galba to settle in
Rome, which he did, giving instruction in rhetoric
with unparalleled success for twenty years, and draw-
ing a salary from the government. At the end of that
time, he retired, rich and honored, into private life.
It was after this that he wrote the work which carried
his fame down to posterity, his Institutio Oratorica, or
Education of the Orator. In the first book of this he
draws out a scheme of preparatory education for the
family and the school ; the succeeding ten are devoted
to rhetoric, and the last to the character of the orator,
whom he regards as identical with the cultivated
gentleman. It is only the first book that concerns
the modern student of education, and of this I shall
now give a brief summary.

The first care of the parent, after the birth of a

QtnXTlLIAN AND llHETORICAL EBtFCATION 210

child, slionld be to procure for it a nurse of good
moral character and of cultivated speech. A child
that early learns bad habits in acting and speaking,
rarely, if ever, gets cured of them afterwards. Great
care ought to,, be taken with regard to th^ child's
youthful companions, and to his pedagogue, who
ought to be of good character and well-informed.
Its first language ought to be Greek ; but Latin
ought to be begun early, and both to be carefully
cultivated. There is no need to follow the ordinary
custom of not allowing -the child to learn to read or
write before the close of its seventh year. Much can
very profitably be done by play long before that. It
is a mistake to teach children to repeat the alphabet
before they know the forms of the letters. These
they may learn from tablets or blocks. As soon as
the letters are recognized, they ought to be written,
following with a pen the forms of letters engraved
on ivory tablets is a good thing. After letters, syl-
lables must be learnt — all the possible s;^ables in
both languages. After syllables come words, and
after words, sentences. In all this process, it is of
the utmost importance to secure thoroughness by
avoidingjiaste. The child must not attempt words
till he can read and write all the syllables, nor sen-
tences till he is perfectly familiar with words. In
reading sentences, he must learn to run ahead, so
that, while he is pronouncing one word with his lips,
he is recognizing others with his eye. The wrmng
lesson should be utilized in order to make the child
acquainted with rare words and good poetry. At this
stage, his memory ought to be well exercised, and

220 ARISTOTLE

made to lay up large stores of good literature for
future use. At the same time, his organs of speech
should be well trained, by being made to pronounce
rapidly verses containing difficult combinations of
sound. ^

As soon as he is able, the child should go to school.
Home education is objectionable on many accounts,
especiallj^ for boys intended for orators. These,
above all others, must learn sociability, tact, . and
esprit de corps, and form school-friendships. Many
moral lessons can be learnt, and many motives em-
ployed, in the school, that are not possible in the
family. Among the latter is ambition, which " though
itself a vice, is the parent of many virtues," and
therefore ought to be freely used. Hardly any motive
is so powerful.

A\Tien a boy is sent to school, his teacher's first
business is to investigate his character and capacity.
The chief marks of ability are memory and power of
imitation. Imitation is not mimicry, which is always
a sign of low nature. Slowness, though objectionable,
is better than precocity, which should be discouraged
in every way. Different treatment is required for
different boys : some need the bit, some the spur. The
best boy is the one " whom praise excites, whom glory
pleases, who cries when he is beaten. Such a one
may be nourished with emulation; reproach will sting
him; honor will rouse him.'^ Boys ought to have
seasons of rest and play, neither too short to afford
recreation, nor too long to encourage idleness. Games

1 Like "Peter Piper," etc., and the German "Messweehsel
Wachsmaske."

QUINTILIAN AND RHETORICAL EDUCATION 221

of question and answer are good for sharpening the
wits. In play an excellent opportunity is offered to
the teacher for learning the character of his pupils.
Corporal punishment is altogether to be deprecated,
and, indeed, is unneeded when the teacher does his
duty.

What boys learn in school is grammar; but this
must be supplemented by music and astronomy.
Without the iorn).er it will be impossible to scan
verse ; without the latter, to understand certain allu-
sions and modes of fixing dates in the poets. A little
philosophy is necessary for the sake of understanding
such poets as Empedocles and Lucretius; geometry,
in order to give practice in apodictic reasoning, as
well as for practical uses. Thus the curriculum of
school education will consist of Grammar, Music, As-
tronomy, Philosophy, and Geometry.

Grammar consists of two parts, (1) MetJiodics, or the
art of correct speaking, (2) Histories (German Bealien),
the interpretation of poets, historians, philosophers,
etc. MetJiodics — grammar in the modern sense —
should aim at enabling a boy to speak and write with
correctness, clearness, and elegance. All barbarisms
(i.e. foreign words and idioms), solecisms, affecta-
tions, and careless pronunciations are to be avoided.
In the use of language, four things are to be taken
into account, (1) reason, (2) antiquity, (3) authority,
(4) custom. In reading, the boy must be taught
"where to draw his breath, where to divide a verse,
where the sense is complete, where it begins, where
the voice is to be raised, where lowered, what inflec-
tions to use, what is to be uttered slowly, what rapidly,

222 AmSTOTLE

what forcibly, what gently." "That he may be able
to do all this, he must understand. Reading must above
all be manly and grave, with a certain sweetness."
Poetry must not be read either as prose, nor yet in a
sing-song way. All theatrical personification, and
all gesticulation smacking of the comedian, are to be
avoided.

For Histories the teacher must be very careful in
his selection of texts. Homer and Yirgil are best to
begin with. Though their full import cannot be un-
derstood by youth, they awake enthusiasm for what is
noble and spirited, and will often be read in later life.
" Tragedies are useful. There is nourishment in the
lyric poets " ; but they must be used with caution and
in selections, from which everything relating to love
must be excluded. Even Horace must be expurgated.
Satire and comedy, though of the utmost value for tlie
orator, must be deferred till the moral character is
sufficiently established not to be injured by them.
Passages from the poets ought to be committed to
memory. In all reading, the utmost care ought to be
taken to promote purity and manliness (sanctitas et
virilitas).

After reading a piece of poetry, boys must be made
to analyze and scan it, to point out i^eculiarities of
language and rhythm, to enumerate the different mean-
ings of words, to name and explain the various figures
of speech. But far more important than all this it is,
that the teacher should impress on their minds the
importance of systematic arrangement and propriety
of description, " showing what is suitable for each role,
what is commendable in thought, what in expression,

QUINTILIAN AND RHETORICAL EDUCATION 223

wliere diffuseness is proper, and where brevity.'' In
giving collateral information, whether in history,
mythology, or geography, he should keep within
bounds, giving only what is necessary and rests on
respectable authority. " It is one of the virtues of a
schoolmaster to be ignorant of some things."

As regards lessons in composition, the teacher
should begin by making his pupils write out from
memory the Fables of ^sop, in pure, simple, direct,
and unadorned language. He should then call upon
them to turn poetry into prose, and to paraphrase it,
either briefly or diffusely. He should then make them
write out proverbs, apophthegms, aphorisms, short,
brilliant anecdotes, etc. Famous stories related by
the poets may be used as subjects for composition,
but chiefly for the sake of information. Beyond this
the schoolmaster should not go in the matter of com-
position. The rest should be left to the rhetorician.

It is of great importance in youthful education that
several subjects should be studied at the same time.
Boys like and need variety, and, when they get it, it
is truly astonishing how much they can accomplish.
" There is not the slightest reason for fearing that boys
will shrink from the labor of study. No age is less
easily fatigued." . . . "Boys are naturally more in-
clined to hard work than young men."

Such, in brief, is Quintilian's school-programme.
It has no place for physical science (except Astron-
omy), for manual training, or for physical exercise.
Play is, indeed, permitted as a necessary recreation,
and gymnastics and physical training (7rai8oTpt)8cta) are
recommended in so far as they are necessary to enable

224 ARISTOTLE

the budding orator to move and to gesticulate grace-
fully; but that is all. "Nothing can please that is
not becoming."

As soon as he is ready, the young aspirant for ora-
torical fame passes into the hands of the rhetorician,
under whom he learns all the arts, and acquires all
that knowledge, necessary to tit him for his profession.
Xo kind of knowledge, and no moral excellence ought
to be foreign to the orator. Quintilian is very severe
upon the philosophers for claiming, in their title, to
be, in an exceptional way, lovers of wisdom, and main-
tains that the true orator is the truly wise and good
man. He is surely superior to the philosopher, who
turns his back upon the world and manifests no in-
terest in human affairs. Moreover, " philosophy may
be simulated; eloquence cannot."

The closing chapter of the last book of Quintilian 's
work treats of the orator after his retirement from
public life. He is to devote himself to writing and to
the study of art, science, and philosophy. The picture
is charming; but it ends with death, and there is
nothing beyond. God may be defined for oratorical
purposes ; but his existence is a matter of conjecture.

In Quintilian we have the highest type of the civic
man living under a cosmopolitan despotism. His
defects — his pedantry, his servility, his externality,
his worldliness — are only such as are natural to a
good man placed in this position, without any outlook
upon a higher existence.

CHAPTER III
PLOTINUS AND PHILOSOPHIC EDUCATION

The material body, which is subject to motion, change, disso-
lution, and division, requires an immaterial principle to hold and
bind it together in unity. This principle of unity is the soul. If it
were material, it would require another principle of unity, and so
on ad infinitum, till an immaterial first were reached, which would
then be the true soul. — Ammonius Saccas.

Intelligible things, when they are united with other things, are
not changed, as corporeal things are when they are united with
each other, but remain as they are, and what they are. Soul and
body are intimately united, but not mixed. The soul can separate
and withdraw itself from the body, not only in sleep, but also in
thought. As the sun illuminates and yet remains itself a separate
light, so is the soul in its relation to the body. It is not in the body
as in place ; rather the body is in it and of it. — Id.

One's duty is to become first man, then God. — Hierocles.

Neither Schelling nor Baader nor Hegel has refuted Plotinus : in
many ways he soars above them. — Arthur Richter.

What is loved by us here is mortal and hurtful. Our love is love
for an image, that often turns into its opposite, because what we
loved was ^t truly worthy of love, nor the good which we sought.
God alone is the true object of our love. —Plotinus.

The practical and the contemplative lives, which
Plato and Aristotle had labored so hard to combine
and correlate, in order to save human worth and Greek
civilization, fell asunder, despite all their efforts —
greatly, of course, to the detriment of both. In the
terrible picture which Quintilian draws of Roman life

225

226 ARISTOTLE

in the first century of our era, we see one side of the
result of this divorce : in the cruel satires of Lucian,
written less than a century later, we may find depicted
the other. But, just as, in the midst of the moral
corruption and brutality, there arose from time to
time worthy men like Quintilian and Tacitus, so amid
the philosophical charlatanry and pretence, there
still survived a few earnest thinkers, who aspired
with all the power that was in them to divine truth,
and strove to find in the eternal world that reality
which was so miserably wanting in this. By far the
greater number of these men were neither Greeks nor
Komans, but Orientals, men whose thinking combined
Greek philosophy with some earnest form of Eastern
mysticism. To such men this life was merely an
opportunity of preparing for a higher, in which lay
all beauty, all good, and all blessedness. It is not
difficult to see what sort of education would follow
from this view of life. It may best be characterized
by the one word "ascetic." It no longer seeks to
train harmoniously all the faculties of body and mind
with a view to a worthy social life, but to enable the
soul to die to the body and to social life, and so rise
to union and consubstantiality with God. In no sect
was this tendency more marked than in the Neo-
platonic, or, as it might equally well be called, the
Xeoaristotelian or Xeopythagorean, the greatest name
in which is Plotinus.

Plotinus was born in Egypt about a.d. 205. His
nationality is unknown. He received his education
in Alexandria — grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy,
— and adopted the teaching of, the last as a profession.

PLOTINUS AND PHILOSOPHIC EDUCATION 227

He sought in vain, however, for a system that could
satisfy him, till he met with Ammonius "the Sack-
bearer," whom he at once recognized as his master.
This Ammonius had been reared as a Christian, but
had apostatized on becoming acquainted with philos-
ophy. His Christian education, however, had not
been altogether lost on him ; for he had carried over
into philosophy a religious spirit, and not a few of the
esoteric ideas then current in certain Christian sects.
It was this, apparently, that enabled him to give a
new direction to philosophy, and to found a new
school, whose influence upon subsequent, even Chris-
tian, thought, it would be difficult to overestimate.
His school was the Neoplatonic, which, more than
any other, united profound thought with mystic
theosophy (Oeoipta).

Plotinus listened to Ammonius for eleven years,
and, on the death of the latter, paid a visit to Persia,
with the view of studying the religion of that country.
He shortly returned, however, and, after a brief
sojourn at Antioch, betook himself, in his fourtieth
year (a.d. 244), to Eome, where he spent the re-
mainder of his life as a teacher of philosophy. His
saintly character and his deep, religious thought drew
round him a considerable number of earnest men and
women, including even members of the imperial
family. He made some attempt to found in Cam-
pania a Platonopolis, so that his principles might be
realized in a social life, in a theosophic community ;
but this was never carried out. He died in a.d. 270.
Plotinus was the only truly great, original ancient
thinker after Aristotle.

228 ARISTOTLE

While Plato and Aristotle had sought to rise to the
intelligible world from, and by means of, the sensible,
Plotinus, believing that he has attained a direct,
intuitional knowledge of the former, sets out from it
and thence tries to reach the other. At the summit
of being he finds the supreme Platonic principle, the
One or the Good, absolutely transcendent and self-
sufficient; next below this, the supreme Aristotelian
principle. Intelligence or Absolute Knowing, the locus
of all ideas ; and third, the supreme principle of the
Stoics, Soul, Life, or Zeus, the animating principle
of the world. Good, Intelligence, Life — these are
Plotinus' divine trinity, evolved by a process of
abstraction from the Nous of Aristotle (see p. 161).
The members of this trinity are neither personal,
conscious, nor equal. Each lower is caused by, but
does not emanate from, the. next above it; and this
causation is due, not to any act of free will, but to
an inner necessity. Thus the trinity of Plotinus is
a mere energy, acting according to necessary laws.
The third member. of it turns toward matter, which is
mere poverty and hunger for being, and, in so doing,
produces a world of gods, daemons, and mundane
beings, the highest of which last is man. All that
has matter has multiplicity.

It is easy enough to see what kind of ethics and
education will spring from such a system as this.
Inasmuch as the good means self-sufficiency, freedom
from multiplicity and matter, evil means dependence,
multiplicity, materiality. Whatever evil there is in
man is due to his connection with matter, for which
he is in no sense responsible. His sole business, if

PLOTINUS AND PHILOSOPHIC EDUCATION 229

he desires blessedness, is to free himself from matter
and multiplicity, and return to the unity of the
Supreme Good. The steps by which this may be
accomplished are, (1) Music or Art, (2) Love, (3)
Philosophy or Dialectic: through all these he rises
above multiplicity into unity. In all this there is,
obviously, neither moral evil nor moral good, and,
indeed, the world of Plotinus contains no moral ele-
ment, for the simple reason that it contains nothing
personal, either in God or man. Evil is the product
of necessity, and consciousness, implying as it does,
multiplicity, is part of it. The unethical character
of Plotinus' teaching comes out very clearly in his
reversal of the positions of instruction and purgation
in the scheme of education. According to the old
view, purgation was a mere medical process, prepara-
tory to ethical training (see p. 7). According to
the Neoplatonic view, ethical training and the
" political virtues " are a mere preparation for purga-
tion and the intellectual virtues. And this is per-
fectly logical ; for evil, being physical, must be cured
by physical means. And the means which Plotinus
recommends are magical, rather than moral; rites
and prayers, rather than heroic deeds; the suppres-
sion of the will, rather than its exercise.

Plotinus is too much of a Greek to accept, or even
see, all the consequences of his own theory, which
makes moral life consist in an attempt to escape from
the world and to quench consciousness and personality.
Accordingly, though he has a poor opinion of civic
life (a thing excusable enough in those days), he
believes that the civic virtues ought to be cultivated,

230 ARISTOTLE

as a means toward the higher, and has apparently
nothing to say against the ordinary grammatical,
rhetorical, and musical education of his time. He has
a good deal to say in favor of Mathematics, as a prep-
aration for what to him is the supreme branch of
education, Dialectics. But the tendency of his teach-
ing is only too obvious, and the conclusions which he
did not draw, time and succeeding generations drew
for him. The effect of Neoplatonism was, in the
long run, to make the super-civic i^art of man the
whole man, to discredit political life and political
■effort, and to pave the way for the mystic, the ascetic,
and the hermit. Nor were the tendencies of Jhe other
philosophical schools in any marked degree different.
Thus philosophy, instead of contributing to harmonize
man and society, and to restore moral life, came to be
one of the strongest agencies in bringing about con-
fusion and dissolution, by ignoring moral life alto-
gether, embracing superstition, and turning man into
a mere plaything of blind necessity and magical
forces. And thus ancient civilization . fell to pieces,
because man himself had fallen to pieces, and each
piece tried to set* itself up for the whole. The civic
fragment finds its highest expression in Quintilian,
the super-civic in Plotinus. Ere the fragments can be
united into a truly moral being, a member of a truly
moral society, a new combining force, unknown to
either rhetorician or philosopher, must arise.

CHAPTER lY
CONCLUSION

Truly it was an old world, and even Caesar's patriotic genius was
not enough to make it young again. The dawn does not return
till the night has fully set in. — Mommsen.

My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my
ways, saith the Lord. — Isaiah.

Thou Shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first
commandment. And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself. — Jesus.

Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the
things that are God's. — Id.

Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings? and not one of
them is forgotten in the sight of God. But the very hairs of your
head are all numbered. — Id.

We love because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and
liateth his brother, he is a liar. —John.

By one intelligible form, which is the divine Essence, and one
conscious intention, which is the divine Word, things may be known
in their multiplicity by God. — Thomas Aquinas.

If God acts in all things, and such action in no way derogates from
his dignity, but even belongs to his universal and supreme power, he
cannot consider it below him, nor does it stain his dignity, if he ex-
tend his providence to the individual things of this world. — Id.

Une immense esperance a passe sur la terre. — Alfred de

MUSSET.

We have seen that the Greek ideal of life rested
upon the complete identification of the man with the
citizen. We have seen also how this ideal was para-

231

232 ARISTOTLE

lyzed by tlie growtli of individualism ; how the wisest
men thought to render this innocuous and even benef-
icent, by providing for it a sphere of contemplation,
superior to that of practice, but organically related to
it, and, finally how, with the failure of this attempt,
the two sides of human nature, divorced from each
other, degenerated, the one into selfish worldliness,
the other into equally selfish other-worldliness, both
conditions equally destitute of moral significance.

This sad result was mainly due to three causes,
(1) that the remedies proposed for individualism were
not sufficient, (2) that the best remedy was set aside,
(3) that the conditions for which the remedies were
offered soon ceased to exist. Both Plato and Aris-
totle wrote for the small Greek polities, which lost
their autonomy through the Macedonian conquest.
If it may be doubted whether even the proposals of
the latter would have redeemed these polities, had
they continued free, it is certain that they would have
been ineffective under the changed circumstances. At
all events, they were never adopted, and even for the
super-civic man the teaching of Plato was preferred
to his.

As the new cosmopolitanism deepened the gulf be-
tween the citizen and the individual, and immeasurably
widened the sphere of the latter, in the same propor-
tion did the teaching of Plato fail to bridge over that
gulf, and provide activity for that sphere. To tell the
super-civic man now that his function was to contem-
plate divine things and oracularly deliver laws for the
guidance of the world, would have argued an absence
of humor not common in those days. Besides, those

CONCLUSION 233

persons who claimed to have contemplated divine
things showed no such fitness for legislation as to in-
duce practical men to accept their guidance. The ,
sober fact was, that the contemplation of divine things,
which more and more absorbed the energy of Greek )
thought, was, except for Aristotle, a mere vague asper- /
ation without moral value, and became ever more a/
sort of mystic ecstasy, in which the individual, instead .
of acquiring insight and power to live worthily and
beneficently in the world, was thrown back upon him-
self, with his will paralyzed. Nor could this be other-
wise, seeing the nature of the divine things, the
contemplation of which was reckoned so important.
Instead of being personal attributes, or a person im-
posing a moral law seen to be binding, they were mere
abstractions, increasing in emptiness the higher they
were in the series, the highest being absolute vacancy.
In vain had Aristotle protested that all reality is in-
dividual : the Platonic theory, that all knowledge is
of ideas or universals, prevailed, with the result that
the highest knowledge was held to be knowledge of
that which is absolutely universal, viz. indeterminate
being or, as Plotinus held, something lacking even
the determination of being — the Supreme Good. That !
the super-civic man should find satisfaction in gazing *
into vacancy, or be any more valuable in the world
after he had done so, no matter how spotless his life j
and ecstatic his look, is inconceivable.

But while, in the Greek world, the sphere of activity
of the super-civic man was vanishing into nothing-
ness, among a small and obscure band of restored
exiles of Semitic race, that sphere had come to claim

234 ARISTOTLE

the entire man and all his relations, practical and
spiritual. Isaiah's little band of faithful followers
(see p. 133) had grown into a nation, living by no law
save that of Jehovah, a very real, very awful, and
very holy personality, whom the heaven of heavens
could not contain, but who yet watched the rising up
and the sitting down of every son of man. Long be-
fore Quintilian wrote his elegant treatise on rhetoric,
or Plotinus his pantheistic Enneads, there had sprung
from the bosom of this people a man who, bursting,
at the expense of his life, the narrow bounds of his
nationalty, elevated the theocracy of his people into
a Kingdom of Heaven, which he had bade proclaim
to all the world. It was proclaimed, and then (though
to some it seemed a stumbling-block, and to others
foolishness) the super-civic man, who for hundreds of
years had been wandering in darkness, in search of his
fatherland, suddenly became aware that he had found
it in the Church of Christ. He now no longer tries to
escape from the visible world into the emptiness of
an abstract first 'principle ; but, in the service of a First
Erinciple who is the most concrete of realities, and
who numbers the very hairs of his head, he goes down
into the most loathsome depths of the material world
to elevate and redeem the meanest of the sons of men.
There is no question of bond or free, ruler or ruled,
now. In the Kingdom of Heaven there are no such
relations. The only greatness recognized there is
greatness in service; the only law, the Law of Love.
Love ! yes, the whole secret is in that one word. By
adding love to the conception of the God of his peo-
ple, by exemplifying it in his own life, and demanding

CONCLUSION 235

it of his followers, Jesus accomplished what had baffled
all the wisdom of the Greek sages. He restored the
moral unity of man, abolished the old world, and made
a new heaven and a new earth. In vain have the
advocates of an indeterminate, self-evolving first
principle, whether calling themselves Neoplatonists,
mystics, materialists, evolutionists, Hegelians, or
Theosophists, striven to bring back the old world
with its class distinctions and institutional ethics ; in
vain have they sought to sink the individual God and
man of reality in the universal ideas of thought. The
Law of Love, which is the ground of individuality, as
well as of true society, has bidden, and will bid them,
defiance.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS

The Greeks originally recognized two branches of
liberal education ^ (1) Gymnastics, for the body, and
(2) Music, for the soul. Out of music grew, in process
of time, not only the so-called Liberal Arts, that is,
the arts that go to constitute the education of every
freeman, but also what was regarded as a superfluous
luxury {TrepLTTTJ) , Philosophy. It is the purpose of
this appendix to trace, as far as possible, this gradual
development.

In doing so, one must bear in mind that originally
the term " Music " covered, not only what we call
music, but also poetry, and that poetry was the vehicle
of all the science that then was. The Homeric aoidos
knows the " works of gods and men." Strictly speak-
ing, therefore, it was out of music and poetry that all
the arts and sciences grew. The first step in this
direction was taken when Letters were introduced,
that is, about the first Olympiad.^ But it was long
before Letters were regarded as a separate branch of
education; they were simply a means of recording
poetry. Even as late as the time of Plato, Letters
are still usually included under Music. In Aristotle,
they are recognized as a separate branch. It follows

1 It must be borne in mind that the Greek Te'x«"j, art, corresponds
almost exactly to what we mean by "science." It is defined by
Aristotle, Metaph., A. 1 ; 981 a 5 sqq. Schwegler, in his translation
of the Metaphysics, renders it by Wissenschaft. 'Ejrt<rT»jM>? is our
"philosophy."

'■^ See Jebb, Homer, pp. 110 sqq.

239

240 APPENDIX

from this that, when we find Greek writers confining
soul-education to Music, or Music and Letters, we
must not conclude that these signify only playing and
singing, reading and writing. Socrates was saying
nothing new or paradoxical, when he affirmed that
Philosophy was the '' highest music/' The Pythago-
reans had said the same thing before him, and there
can be no doubt that Pythagoras himself included
under Music (1) Letters, (2) Arithmetic, (3) Geome-
try, (4) Astronomy, (5) Music, in our sense, and
(6) Philosophy (a term invented by him). Plato did
the same thing. He speaks of "the true Muse that
is accompanied with truth (Xoywv) and philosophy."
But in his time '' Music " was used in two senses, a
broad one, in which it included the whole of intel-
lectual education, and a narrow one, in which it is
confined to music in the modern sense. It is in this
latter sense that it is used by Aristotle, when he
makes the intellectual branches of school education
(1) Letters, (2) Music, and (3) Drawing. Philosophy
he places in a higher grade. Having distinguished
Letters from Music, it is hatural enough that he
should assign to the former the branches which Py-
thagoras had included under the latter. His literary
scheme appears to be (1) Grammar, (2) Ehetoric,
(3) Dialectic, (4) Arithmetic, (5) Geometry, (6) As-
tronomy. Add Music, and we have exactly the Seven
Liberal Arts ; but, as Drawing must also be added, it
is clear that there was, as yet, no thought of fixing
definitely the number seven. That Drawing was for
a long time part of the school curriculum, is rendered
clear by a passage in a work of Teles (b.c. 260)
quoted by Stobaeus (xcviii, 72), in which it is said
that boys study (1) Letters, (2) Music, (3) Drawing ;
young men, (4) Arithmetic, and (5) Geometry. The
last two branches are here already distinguished from
Letters ; but we cannot be sure that the list is
intended to be exhaustive. What is especially notice-
able in the list of Teles is, that it draws a clear
distinction between the lower and higher studies, a

THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS 241

distinction whicli foreshadows the Trivium and Qua-
drivium of later times.-^

Philosophy, or the highest education, Aristotle
divided into (1) Theory and (2) Practice. Theory
he subdivided into (a) Theology, First Philosophy,
or Wisdom, called later Metaphysics, the science of
the Unchangeable, and (b) Physics, _the science of the
Changeable; Practice into (a) Ethics, including Poli-
tics and CE3ononiics, and (b) Poetics or Esthetics.

After Teles we hear little of the Greek school-curric-
ulum until about the Christian era. Meanwhile, the
Romans, having acquired a smattering of Greek learn-
ing, began to draw up a scheme of studies suitable for
themselves. It is noticeable that in this scheme there
is no such distinction as the Greeks drew between
liberal (cXev^epiat, eyKuKXtot, XoytKat) and illiberal (fSdvav-
o-ol) arts.^ As early as the first half of the second
century b.o,, Cato the Censor wrote a series of manuals
for his son on (1) Ethics, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Medicine,
(4) Military Science, (5) Farming, (6) Law. It is very
significant that the only Greek school-study which ap-
pears here is Rhetoric ; this the Romans, and notably
Cato himself, always studied with great care for prac-
tical purposes. It seems that Cato, in order to resist
the inroads of Greek education and manners, which
he felt to be demoralizing, tried to draw up a charac-
teristically Roman curriculum. Greece, however, in
great measure, prevailed, and half a century later we
find Varro writing upon most of the subjects in the
Greek curriculum: Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic,

1 It is a pity that we cannot fix the date of the so-called Picture
of Cebes (Ke/3»jro? HiVa^). In this we find enumerated the votaries
of False Learnins^, (1) Poets, (2) Rhetoricians, (3) Dialecticians,
(4) Musicians, (5) Arithmeticians, (6) Geometricians, (7) Astrolo-
gers (if we count Poets = Grammarians, we have exactly the Seven
Liberal Arts), (8) Hedonists, (9) Peripatetics, (10) Critics, "and
such others as are like to these." The "Hedonists" (nSovKoi) are
the Gyrenaics ; the " Critics " (<ptTi»coO can hardly be the grammari-
ans, though that is usually the meaning of the term in later times.
Should we not read kwikoL ?

2 "Liberal" means fit, "illiberal" unfit, for freemen. The
sum of the liberal arts was called 'EyKVK\i.oiTaiSeia, which we have
covrn^ted into EncyclopsBdia. y^a'^'k^^- i ''"v> , ^

f ^ C»- THc '"'^ """

242 APPENDIX

Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, Music, Philoso-
phy, besides many others. He wrote a treatise in
nine books, called Disdplinarnm Libri. Ritschl, in
his Qumstiones Varronianoe,^ tried to show that these
"Disciplinse" were the Seven Liberal Arts, plus Archi-
tecture and Medicine, and Mommsen, in his Roman
History, has followed him ; but Kitschl himself later
changed his opinion. There seems no doubt that

(1) Grammar, (2) Khetoric, (3) Dialectic, (4) Music,
(5) Geometry, and (6) Architecture were treated in
the work: what the rest were we can only guess.^
There is no ground for the assertion that the Seven
Liberal Arts were obtained by dropping Architecture
and Medicine from Yarro's list. It must have been
about the time of Varro, if not earlier, that Koman
education came to be divided into three grades, called
respectively (1) Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, and (3) Phi-
losophy, the last falling to the lot of but few persons.
Of course "Grammar" now came to have a very ex-
tensive meaning, as we can see from the definition of it
given by Dionysius Thrax, in his grammar, prepared
apparently for Roman use (b.c. 90). In the Scholia
to that work (I am unable to fix their date), we
find the Liberal Arts enumerated as (1) Astronomy,

(2) Geometry, (3) Music, (4) Philosophy, (5) Medi-
cine, (6) Grammar, (7) Rhetoric.^

But to return to the Greeks. In the works of Philo
Judaeus, a contemporary of Jesus, we find the Encyclic
Arts frequently referred to, and distinguished from
Philosophy. The former, he says, are represented by
the Egyptian slave Hagar, the latter by Sarah, the
lawful wife. One must associate with the Arts before
he can find Philosophy fruitful. In no one passage
does Philo give a list of the Encyclic Arts. In one
place we find enumerated (1) Grammer, (2) Geometry,

(3) Music, (4) Rhetoric {De Cherub., § 30) ; in another

1 Bonn, 1845. .

2 See Boissier, Etude sur la Vie et les Ouvrages de M. T. Varron,
pp. 332. sqq.

3 See Bekker's Anecdota Grssca, ii., 655.

i

THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS 243

(1) Grammer, (2) Geometry, (3) " the entire music of
encyclic instruction " (De AgriculL, § 4) ; in another
(1) Grammar, (2) Music, (3) Geometry, (4) Rhetoric,
(5) Dialectic (Be Congressu Quce7\ Erud. Orat, § 5);
in another, (1) Grammar, (2) Arithmetic, (3) Geome-
try, (4) Music, (5) Rhetoric (De Somniis, § 35), etc.

It would seem that the Encyclic Arts, according to
Philo, were (1) Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Dialectic,
(4) Arithmetic, (5) Geometry, (6) Music. Astronomy
appears in none of the lists. Philosophy is divided
into (1) Physics, (2) Logic, (3) Ethics {De Mutat.
Nom., § 10), a division that was long current.

From what has been adduced, I think we may fairly
conclude that at the Christian era no definite number
had been fixed for the liberal arts either at Athens,
Alexandria, or Rome. The list apparently differed in
different places. Clearly the Roman programme was
quite different from the Greek. Shortly after this
era, we find Seneca (who died a.d. Qb) giving the
liberal arts, Uheralia studia, as (1) Grammar, (2) Music,

(3) Geometry, (4) Arithmetic, (5) Astronomy (Epist,
88). He divides Philosophy into (1) Moral, (2)
Natural, (3) Rational, and the last he subdivides
into (a) Dialectic and (b) Rhetoric. Above all he
places Wisdom, " Sapientia perfectum honum est mentis
hiimance'^ {Epist., 89). Here we see that two of the
Seven Liberal Arts are classed under Philosophy.
A little later, Quintilian divides all education into
(1) Grammar, and (2) Rhetoric, but condescends to
allow his young orator to study a little Music, Geome-
try, and Astronomy.

Turning to the Greeks, we find Sextus Empiricus,
who seems to have flourished in Athens and Alexan-
dria toward the end of the second century, writing a
great work against the dogmatists or "mathemati-
cians," of whom he finds nine classes, corresponding
to six arts, and three sciences of philosophy. The
arts are (1) Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Geometry,

(4) Arithmetic, (5) Astronomy, (6) Music: the sci-
ences, (1) Logic, (2) Physics, (3) Ethics. We are now

244 APPENDIX

not far from the Seven Liberal Arts ; still we have not
reached them. 1

There is not, I think, any noteworthy list of the '
liberal arts to be found in any ancient author after
Sextus, till we come to St. Augustine. In his Hetrac- .
tiones, written about 425, he tells us (I, 6) that in his j
youth he undertook to write Disciplinarum Libri (the ^
exact title of Varro's work !), that he finished the book
on (1) Grammar, wrote six volumes on (2) Music, and
made a beginning with other jive disciplines, (3) Dia-
lectic, (4) Rhetoric, (5) Geometry, (6) Arithmetic,
(7) Philosophy. It has frequently been assumed that
we have here, for the first time, the Seven Liberal
Arts definitely fixed; but there is nothing whatever
in the passage to justify this assumption. The au-
thor does not say ^^tlie other five disciplines," but
merely " other five." Among these five, moreover, is
named Philosophy, which, though certainly a "disci-
pline," was never, so far as I can discover, called an art,
liberal or otherwise. There is not the smallest reaso^
for tracing back the Seven Liberal Arts to St. Augus-
tine, who surely was incapable of any such playing
with numbers. He does not, indeed, recognize the
"Seven."

It is in the fantastic and superficial work of Mar-
tianus Capella, a heathen contemporary of Augustine's,
that they first make their appearance, and even there
no stress is laid upon their number. They are (1)
Grammar, (2) Dialectic, (3) Rhetoric, (4) Geometry,
(5) Arithmetic, (6) Astronomy, (7) Music. These,
no doubt, were the branches taught in the better
schools of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth
centuries, when, on the whole, the Greek liberal cur-
riculum had supplanted the Roman rhetorical one.
There is not the slightest ground for supposing that
Capella had anything to do with fixing the curricu-
lum which he celebrates. His work is a wretched
production, sufficiently characterized by its title, The
Wedding of Mercury and Philology. He wrote about
seven arts because he found seven to write about.

THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS 245

Attention was first called to the number of the arts,
and a mystical meaning attached to it, by the Chris-
tian senator, Cassiodorus (480-575) in his De Artihiis
et Disciplinis Liheralium Litterarum. He finds it
written in Prov. ix, 1, that ''Wisdom hath builded
her house. She hath hewn out her seven pillars."
He concludes that the Seven Liberal Arts are the
seven pillars of the house of Wisdom. They corre-
spond also to the days of the week, which are also
seven. It is to be observed that he distinguishes the
" Arts " from the " Disciplines," or, as they said later,
the Trivium from the Quadrivium. The pious notion
of Cassiodorus was worked out by Isidore of Seville
(died 636) in his Etymologm, and by Alcuin (died
804) in his Grammatica. Of course, as soon as the
number of the arts came to be regarded as fixed by
Scripture authority, it became as familiar a fact as
the number of the planets or of the days of the week,
or indeed, as the number of the elements. About
A.D. 820 Hrabanus Maurus (776-856), a pupil of
Alcuin's, wrote a work, De Clericorum Institutione, in
which the phrase Septem Liherales Artes is said to
occur for the first time. About the same date Theo-
dulfus wrote his allegorical poem De Septem Liberor
libus in quadam Pictura Descriptis}

The Liberal Studies after St. Augustine did not
include Philosophy, which rested upon the Seven
Arts, as upon " seven pillars," and was usually divided
into (1) Physical, (2) Logical, (3) Ethical.^ After a
time Philosophy came to be an all-embracing term.
In a commentary on the Timceus of Plato, assigned
by Cousin to the twelfth century, we find the follow-
ing scheme : —

1 1 am indebted for a number of these facts to an article by Pro-
fessor A. F. West, in the Princeton College Bulletin, November, 181X).

2 These terms, which we still find in Isidore and Hrabanus Mau-
rus, are afterwards, in the thirteenth century, replaced by their
Latin equivalents: Natural, Rational, and Moral. In the case of
the second, this caused considerable confusion, inasmuch as when
it ceased to be used as " rational," it took the place of " dialectic."

246

APPENDIX

Philosophy

r Ethics.
Practical -I Economics.
1 Politics.

Theoretical

Theology.

Mathe-
matics

Physics.

Arithmetic ^

Geometry =Qnadrivium.
Astronomy J

The author expressly says that " Mathematica quad-
rivium contiDet " ; but he plainly does not include the
Trivium under Philosophy. This, however, was done
in the following century. In the Itinerarium Mentis
in Deinn of St. Bonaventura (1221-74) we find the
following arrangements : —

PHIIiOSOPHY

Natural

'Metaphysics — essence: leads to First

Principle = Father.
Mathematics — numbers, figures: leads

to Image = Son.
Physics — natures, powers, diffusions :

leads to Gift of Holy Spirit.

C Grammar— power of expression = Fa-
I ther.
Rational \ Logic — perspicuity in argument = Son.
Rhetoric — skill in persuading = Holy
i Spirit.

(Monastics — innascibility of Father.
CEconomics — familiarity of Son.
Politics — liberality of Holy Spirit.

Here we have the Trivium, under the division " Ra-
tional," while the Quadrivium must still be included
under "Mathematics." In both cases we get nine
sciences or disciplines, and the number was appar-
ently chosen, because it is the square of three, the
number of the Holy Trinity, In the latter case this
was certainly true. Speaking of the primary divisions
of Philosophy, the Saint says : " The first treats of the
cause of being, and therefore leads to the Power of the
Father ; the second of the ground of understanding,
and therefore leads to the Wisdom of the Word ; the
third of the order of living, and therefore leads to the
goodness of the Holy Spirit."

THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS

247

Dante, in his Convivio (II, 14, 15), gives the follow-
ing scheme, based upon the "ten heavens," nine of
which are moved by angels or intelligences, while the
last rests in God.

Liberal Arts-

Philosophy

(Grammar . . Moon .... Angels.
Dialectic. . .Mercury .Archangels.
Rhetoric . . .Venus Thrones.

{Arithmetic. Sun Dominions.
Music Mars Virtues.
Geometry. .Jupiter. . .Principalities.
Astrology. .Saturn . . .Powers.

Metaphysics } ^^^^^ Heaven Cherubim.

Moral Science, j ^^^® Heaven I Seraphim.i

Theology Empyrean God.

In Dante are summed up the ancient and mediaeval
systems of education.

1 In the XXVIIIth Canto of the Paradise, these angelic powers
are arranged somewhat differently, in deference to Dionysius Are-
opagita and St. Bernard.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

It is not intended here to give a complete Bibliography of
Greek Education, but merely to point the readers of this book,
who may desire to pursue the subject further, to the chief
sources of information.

1. ANCIENT WORKS

For the first part of the Hellenic Period, that of the " Old
Education," our authorities are fragmentary, and often vague.
They are the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, the Works and Days
of Hesiod, the fragments of the pre-Socratic philosophers (col-
lected by Mullach, in his Fragmenta Philosophorum Grcecortim,
Paris, Didot, 1860-81, 3 vols. 4to), and the comedies of Aris-
tophanes, especially the Clouds. For the second part of the
same period, that of the "New Education," the chief author-
ities are the tragedies of Euripides, the Clouds of Aristophanes,
the dialogues of Plato, especially the Protagoras, Lysis, Bepub-
lic, and Laws, and the Cyropcedia, (Economics, and Constitution
of Lacedcemon of Xenophon.

For Aristotle's educational doctrines, we are confined for /
information to his own works, and, among these, to the Ethics /
and Politics. Of the latter, the closing chapters of the seventh, '
and the whole of the eighth, book deal professedly with edu-
cation. Some information may also be gleaned from the
recently discovered Constitution_of.AtJims.

For the Hellenistic PenodV our information is derived chiefly
from inscriptions, from the vmtings of Philo Judaeus, Sextus
Empiricus, Plutarch {On the Nurture of Children), -^lian {Mis-

249

250 BIBLIOGRAPHY

cellanies), Lucian (Anacharsis chiefly), Stobaeus, Plotinus, Varro,
Cicero, Seneca, Qaintilian (Education of the Orator), Martianus
Capella {Nuptials of Mercury and Philology), and Cassiodorus,
and from stray notices in other poets, historians, and phi-
losophers.

Of the works referred to, these deserve special mention : —

1. Aristophanes, Clouds. Translations by John Ilookham

Frere, Thomas Mitchell, and W. J. Hickie (in Bohn's
Library).

2. Xenophon, Cyropcedia. Translation, in Whole Works trans-

lated by Ashley Cooper and Others, Philadelphia, 1842, and
by J. S. Watson and H. Dale (in Bohn's Library).

3. Plato, Bepuhlic. Translations by J. LI. Davies and D. J.

Vaughan, by B. Jowett, and by Henry Davis (in Bohn's
Library).

4. Plato, Laws. Translations by B. Jowett, and by G. Bm-ges

(in Bohn's Library).

5. Aristotle, Politics (Books VII, VIII). Translations by

B. Jowett, J. E. C. Weldon, and E. Walford (in Bohn's
Library) .

6. Plutarch, On the Nurture of Children. Translation in

Morals, translated from the Greek by several hands, cor-
rected and revised by W. W. Goodwin, Boston, 1878.

7. Quintilian, Education of an Orator. Translation by J. S.

Watisno (in Bohn's Library).

2. MODERN WORKS

These are very numerous ; but the most comprehensive is
Lorenz Grasberger's Erziehung und Unterricht irn klassischen
Alterthum, mit hesonderer Bucksicht auf die Bedurfnisse der
Gegenwart, Wiirzburg, 1864-81, 3 vols. The first volume deals
with the physical training of boys, the second with their intel-
lectual training, and the third with the education imparted by
the State to young men {e<pr]^oi). A volume of plates is
promised. The work is badly constructed, but is a mine of
information and of references.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 261

Along with this may be named O. H. Jager, Die Gymnastik
der Ilellenen, in ihrem Einfluss aiifs gesammte AUerthnm und
ihrer Bedeutung fur die deutsche Gegenwai% Esslingen, 1850 ;
Fournier, Sur V Education et V Instruction Puhliques chez les
Grecs, Berlin, 1833 ; Becq de Fouqui&re, Les Jeux des yi«cie?i»,
Paris, 1869 ; De Pauw, Becherches Philosojphiques sur les Grecs ;
Fr. Jacobs, JJeher die Erziehung der Hellenen zur Sittlichkeit,
Vermischte Schr. Pt. III. ; Albert Dumont, Essai sur VEpJiebie
Attique, Paris, 1875-6 ; Dittenberger, De Ephebis Atticis ; Chr.
Petersen, Das Gymnasium der Gnechen nach seiner baulichen
Einrichtung beschrieben, Hamburg, 1858 ; Alexander Kapp,
Platon^s Erziehungslehre^ Minden, 1833, and Aristotle^ s Staats-
pcedagogik, Hamm, 1837 ; J. H. Krause, Geschichte der Er-
ziehung des Unterrichts und der Bildung bei den Griechen,
Etruskern und Bomern, Halle, 1851.

Chapters on Greek Education may be found in W. A. Becker's
Charicles and G alius ; in Guhl and Koner's Life of the Greeks
and Bomans — all three translated into English. In Hellenica
is an essay, by R. S. Nettleship, on the Theory of Education in
the Bepublic of Plato, Rivington, 1880, and in Edwin Hatch's
Influence of Greek Ideas upon the Christian Church (Hibbert
Lectures) is a chapter on Greek Education (Lecture II).

INDEX

Academics, 112, 210.

Academy, 86, 112.

Achilles, 6.

^olian Education, 38 sqq.

-^clians, 35.

■/Eschylus, 104 sqq,

^Bop's Fables, 146, 223,

'Airas, 47.

Alexander the Great, 40, 156 sq., 178.

Alexandria, 211.

Ammonius Saccas, 225, 227.

Amphidroraia, 65.

Arayntas, 156.

Anaxagoras, 24, 99 sq.

Antisthenes, 112.

Apoxyoraenos, the, 82 n.

Archytas, 55, 193.

Aristocracy in Athens, 98.

Aristophanes, 105.

Aristotle, Life, 29, 153 sqq.

" Death, 159.

" Philosophy, 161.

" Theology, 165.

" Theory of the State, 166
sqq.

" Pedagogical State, 172 sqq.

" Scheme of Secondary Ed-
ucation, 199. V^
Arithmetic, how Taught, 77.
Artemis Orthia, 50.
Arts, Origin of, in Greece, 20.
Athenian Education, 60.
Athenian Ideal of the State, 63.
Athletes, 78, 184.
Athletics, 190.

Barbarians vs. Greeks, 12.

Bodily Training, 77.

Branches of Greek Education, 6.

Caesar, 217.

Cato Major, 216.

Chaeronea, Battle of, 157.

Character of the Greeks (Zeller), 18.

Children, Defective, 185.

Children, Treatment of, 185.

Christianity, 233 sqq.

Cicero, 217.

Citharist, his Functions, 77.

Citizen, Meaning of, 175.

Clistheues, 98.

College Education, 85.

Commerce, Effect of, 21, 99 sq.

Competition in Education, 71.

Conditions of Education, 9.

Contemplation, 201.

Copernicus, 39.

Cornificius (Auctor ad fferen-

nium), 217.
Cretan Education, 42.
Culture-State, 90, 175.
Cynosarges (Gymnasium), 86, 112.
Cyrus, his Education, 115 sqq.

Dancing, 82 sqq.
Democracy in Athens, 92, 99.
Diagoge (fiiaywy^), 33, 178.

253

264

INDEX

Dionysiac Chorus, 85.
Dipoenis and Scyllls, 21.
Discus-throwing, 80.
Dorian Education, 41 sqq.
Doric Harmonies, 197.
Draco, 98.
Drawing, 189.

E

Education, " Old," 27, 33, 61 sqq.

" " New," 27, 93 sqq.

" Higher, 108.
Eto-JTj'^Aas (Inspirer), 47.
Epaminondas, 40, 55.
Epheboi (Cadets) , 49, 89, 90, 116, 118.
Epheboi, Oath of, 61, 89.
Epicureans, 210.
Epochs in Education, 26.
Essenism, 59, 212.
Ethnic and Cosmopolitan Life, 205.
Examinations, 64, 90.

F

Family Education in Athens, 64.
Freedom, Greek Tendency to, 19.
Freeman's Square, 116, 177.
Friendship, Aristotle on, 170.

G

Games, 66.

Golden Words, bl sqq., 146.

Grading in Schools, 85.

Grammar, 214, 221.

Greeks a Mixed Race, 20.

Greeks vs. Barbarians, 12.

Guardians of Public Instruction,

185 sqq.
Gymnasia at Athens, 86, 105.
Gymnastics, 7, 77, 189.

Harmony, 55, 56, 76.

" Doric, Lydian, etc. 192.
" in Music, Unknown to
Greeks, 73.

Hellenic Period of Education, 26,

32 sqq.
Hellenistic Period of Education, 27,

203 sqq.
Helots, 44 sq.
Hermsea, 79, 85.
Hermias, 155.
Hesiod, 22.
Hetaerae, 132.
Holidays, 85.
Homeric Education, 6, 17.

" Society and Kings, 16.
" Poems collected, 35.
Homeridae, 21.

I

Ideal of Greek Education, 3, 206.
Individualism and Philosophy, 93

sqq., 207.
Induction, Method of, 162,
Ionian Education, 60 sqq.
Isaiah, 53, 133, 234.
Ischomachus, 124 sqq.
Isocrates, 209.

Javelin-casting, 81.
Jumping, 80.
Justinian, 211.

Kalokagathia, 8, 12, 15, 86.
Katharsis (purgation), 7, 76,
Kindergarten, 66, 145.
Kingdom of Heaven, 234.
" Know Thyself," 108.

Larceny, Instruction in, 48.

Leaping, 80.

Learning, how viewed in Greece, 72.

Leisure, Education for, 33, 179.

Letters, 22, 188.

Letters, Introduction and Uses of, 21.

Liberal Arts, 180 sqq., 198.

Library of Alexandria, 211.

INDEX

255

Life the Original School, 6.
Literary Education, 72.
Love, as a Power in Life, 234.
Lyceum, 105, 171.
Lycurgufl, 42, 43.
Lysis, 39.

M

Macedonian Period in Education,

13.
Marriage, 10, 127.
Melleirenes, 49.
Milo, the Wrestler, 55.
Money-making Classes, 13.
Music, 22, 34, 72 sqq., 188, 191.
Music, Greek Feeling for, 76, 146,
Museum at Alexandria, 211.

N

Nymphseum at Stagira, 156.
Neoplatonism, 212, 227.

(Economy, 13.
Olympic Games, 78.

riaifiovo/uioi, 46, 185, 187.

Palaestra, 69 sq., 78 sq.

Pantheism, 136.

Parmenides, 24.

Parthenon, 24, 106.

Pedagogical State, 172 sqq.

Pedagogue, 68.

Peleus, 7.

Pentathlon, 88.

Pericles, 105 sqq.

Perioikoi, 44.

Periods of Greek Education, 26

sqq.
Persian Education, 115 sqq.
Personality, 202.
Pherecydes, 53.
Phlditia, 44.
Philolaus, 39.
Philosophy, Rise of, 22.

Philosophy and Individualism,

93 sqq.
Physical Culture, 189.
Physiciano in Homer, 17.
Pindar, 39.

Pisistratus, 35, 98, 178.
Plato, 29, 112, 133 sqq., 134, 136, 137,

142.
Play, 66, 181 sqq.
PlotinuB, 29, 225 sqq., 228 sqq.
Poetesses, 21.
Poetry, Value of, for Education,

73 sqq.
" Professional," Meaning of, 195.
Prometheia, 24.
Proxenus of Atarneus, 155.
Purgation, 7, 76.
Pythagoras, 29, 52 sqq., 149.
Pythias, 156.

Quad rivi urn, 144, 198.
Quintilian, 29, 214 sqq.

Reading, 75.
Rhapsodes, 23.
Rhetorical Schools, 209, 217.
Roman Education, 216 sqq.
Roman Period, 27.
Ruling and Ruled, 176.
Running, 79.

S

School Education in Athens, 67.

•' Buildings " " 69.

" Rooms " " 77.
Scipio Africanus, 216.
Singing, 75.
Slaves, 12.

Social Life in Greece, 18.
SocratcH, 24, 107 sqq.
Socratic Method, 109.
Solon, and his Laws, 68, 98.
Soothsayers in Homer, 17.
Sophists, 23, 100 sq.
Spartan Education, 41, 43 sqq.

256

Index

Spartan Girls, 49.

"' Government, 44.

" Ideal, 42.

" Mercilessness, 45, 50.

" "Women, 44.
Stagira, 155 sq.
State, Meaning of Term, 174.
State as a School, 91.
Stilo, Lucius ^lius Praeconinus,

217.
Stoics, 210.
Supercivic Man, 136, 234.

Theban Education, 28.
Themistes, 17.
Theories of Education, 28.
Therapeuts, 212.
Thomas Aquinas, 165.
Thucyd ides' Daughter, 37.
Tragedy, 84.
Trivium, 144, 198.

U

University Education, 90.

" of Alexandria, 212.

" of Athens, 211.

W

Wilhelm Meister, 173.

Wingless Victory, 63.

Wisdom, the Ideal of Athens, 63.

Women, Education of, 49, 124.

Worth, 16, 48.

Worth, Aristotle's Paean to, 4.

Wrestling, 81 sqq.

Writing, 75.

X

Xenophon, 29, 113, 114 sqq.

" Memoirs of Socrates,

123.
•• (Economics, 124.
" on Female Education,

124 sqq.

1

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