There is a certain
political
theory which is made up of many great
things.
things.
Aristotle and Ancient Educational Ideals by Thomas Davidson
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 manipulation. " . . . "We would, then, condemn all
professional 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 professionals 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 philosophers,
who divide songs into ethical, practical, and enthusiastic, assigning to
them the different harmonies respectively, and we affirm that music is
to be employed, not for one useful purpose alone, but for several;
_first_, 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 _ethos_ or habit of the
soul) must be employed for instruction; the practical and enthusiastic
for entertainments 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 accompanied 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
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, we 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, however,
must be kept in view, the practicable and the befitting. I mean that we
must discuss what is specially practicable for different people, as well
as what is befitting. This, indeed, will depend upon the different
periods of life. For example, it would 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 there 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 curriculum of youth. 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, Rhetoric (including Poetics), Dialectic, Arithmetic, Geometry,
and Astronomy, which, along with Music, make up the Seven Liberal Arts,
the _Trivium_ 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 education for a thousand years. We might perhaps draw out
Aristotle's programme of secondary education thus:--
{ {Physical {Dancing (see p. 82) }Before
{ { Training {Deportment } puberty.
{ {
{ { {Running }
{ { {Leaping }Before
{_Practical_ { {Javelin-casting } puberty.
{ { {Discus-throwing }
{ { {
{ {Gymnastics {Wrestling }
{ { {Shooting }After
STUDIES: { {Marching } puberty.
{_Creative_ {Music {Drilling }
{ {Drawing {Riding }
{
{ {Grammar }
{ {Rhetoric }Before puberty.
{_Theoretic_ {Dialectic }
{ {
{ {Arithmetic }
{ {Geometry }After puberty.
{ {Astronomy }
CHAPTER VII
EDUCATION AFTER TWENTY-ONE
Be assured that happiness has its source, not in extensive
possessions, 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 splendid 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 excessive these conditions are, the more widely and deeply do
they injure their possessors, being unaccompanied with
right-mindedness. --Aristotle.
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 training become citizens or politicians,
and begin to exercise the functions of such. These are of two kinds, (1)
active, practical, or executive, and (2) deliberative, theoretical, or
legislative. As action must, on 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 deliberative 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 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 (? ? ? ? ? ? ). 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 practice, 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. They are necessary complements of each other. Practice 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
gradually 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 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 individual is but a part: not moral or
religious--a self-surrender of the individual to the supreme will;
consequently, (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 possible 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
independent 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 powerless 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)
CHAPTER I
FROM ETHNIC TO COSMOPOLITAN LIFE
'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more. --Byron.
Most glorious of all 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;
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 delicate
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 deeds 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 education 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 citizen was expected to find a field for all his activities.
We have seen how, while conservative Sparta clung 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 an epidemic of individualism which threatened
the existence of all that was Hellenic. Against this destructive power
the noblest men in the nation, an AEschylus, 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 individual 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
conclusion: 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 spirit of the
civilization which took its place. If we look closely at the schemes of
Plato and Aristotle, we shall see that they try to render innocuous the
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; 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 Chaeronea, which
took place sixteen years before Aristotle's death, by putting an end
forever to the free civic life of Greece, removed the very conditions
under which the old ideal could realize itself, and forced men to seek
a sphere of activity, and to form associations, outside of the State.
The State, indeed, still maintained a semblance of life, and the old
education, with its literature, gymnastics, and music still continued;
but the spirit of both was gone. The State was gradually replaced by the
philosophic schools, while intellectual training tended more and more to
concentrate 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
pretentious, empty individualism of the rhetorician, the lineal
descendant of the sophists, and in the philosophical 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 philistinism. 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
subject. 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. For hundreds of years they
exerted an enormous influence, 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 dispersed 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 Pythagorean 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 during the lifetime of the latter, into sects (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ,
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
contemporaneously, two other schools, which exerted an influence, deep
and wide, for over six hundred years. These were the Epicurean and the
Stoic. Widely as these differed in respect to means, they sought the
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 Roman 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.
Not 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
numerous discipleship. This, however, was no longer exclusively, or even
mainly, Greek, but was recruited from all the nations of the known
world, more especially those of the East. Phoenicians, Syrians, Jews,
Persians, etc. , not to speak of Egyptians, now became students of Greek
philosophy, and members of philosophic sects, whose members not only
studied together, but often, to a large extent, lived together in
communities. 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
discuss, and to exchange opinions. Nor was it Greek thought alone that
engaged their attention. The opinions and beliefs of Egypt and the East
came in for a share, and, in the end, for the largest share. Nor 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
Neopythagoreans, and the Neoplatonists, all of whom, notwithstanding
certain shortcomings, did much to purify life, and to pave the way for a
higher civilization.
In B. C. 146, Greece, and, in B. C. 30, Egypt, fell into the hands of the
Romans and thenceforth formed provinces of their empire. Athens and
Alexandria were now Roman university-towns, while Rome 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
Christianity. 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 Plotinus the philosopher. By doing so we
shall pave the way for the consideration of the Rise of the Christian
Schools.
CHAPTER 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 common
knowledge, and belong to no definite science. Hence everybody, 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. --Aristotle.
There is a certain political theory which is made up of many great
things. A large and important part of it is artificial eloquence,
which they call rhetoric. --Cicero.
Every duty which tends to preserve human relations and human society
must be assigned a higher place than any that stops short with
knowledge and science. --_Id. _
Zeno, having pressed his fingers together and closed his fist, said
that was like Dialectic; having 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 experimental knowledge of the usages of language 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)
exposition according to poetic figures [literary criticism], (3)
ready statement of dialectical peculiarities and allusions
[philology, geography, history, mythology], (4) discovery of
etymologies, (5) accurate account of analogies [accidence and
syntax], (6) criticism of poetical productions, which is the noblest
part of the grammatic art [ethics, politics, strategy,
etc. ]. --Dionysius Thrax.
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. --_Scholia 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 commonwealth
(from which those 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 babyhood, 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 geometer, the
horse-breaker; he rises early; he has no chance for leisure. He
becomes a cadet; again he has to fear the drill-master, the physical
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 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, vagae moderator summe juventae,
Gloria Romanae, Quintiliane, togae. --Martial.
Up to the time when Rome began to decline, the school education of her
youth was meagre in the extreme, consisting of reading, writing, and a
little law. All later education that was more than this was borrowed
from the Greeks. It was about the year 200 B. C. , at the close of the
Second Punic War, that their influence began clearly to show itself. The
severe Cato, who so cordially despised rhetoricians and philosophers,
learnt Greek in his old age and wrote, 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 Rome
lost her national character and became cosmopolitan, she more and more
adopted Greek manners, Greek religion (or irreligion), and Greek
education. When, finally, in B. C. 146, Greece became a Roman dependency,
it was strictly true that "Captive Greece took captive her rude
conqueror. " Thousands of Greek schoolmasters, rhetoricians,
philosophers, 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
mistress of the world, had either to become cosmopolitan 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, literature, (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 Roman education was in the hands of Greeks, it was conducted
in the Greek language, and the authors read and discussed were Greek.
But the Romans, though willing enough to borrow Greek culture, were
unwilling to remain permanently in intellectual dependence upon a
conquered people, which in many respects they despised. Strong efforts,
therefore, were made to develop a national literature and a national
education. About the year B. C. 100, Lucius AElius Praeconinus Stilo, a
worthy and conservative Roman knight, opened a private class in Latin
grammar 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, indeed, continued to be spoken by all persons making
any pretensions to culture; but Latin became the language of Roman
literature. Among the pupils of Stilo were Varro and Cicero, who, along
with Julius Caesar, may be called the parents of the classical Latin
language, literature, and eloquence. Both Varro and Caesar wrote works on
grammar. A certain Cornificius (generally known as _Auctor ad
Herennium_) about this time wrote the first Latin treatise on Rhetoric;
but 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 transformation 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 was Quintilian, "the 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. Dominic first saw the light. He was
educated in Rome, but afterwards returned to his native place and
established himself as a teacher of rhetoric. About A. D. 68, 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
drawing 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 child, should 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 the 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, syllables must be learnt--all the possible
syllables 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 avoiding haste. The child must not attempt words
till he can read and write all the syllables, nor sentences 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 writing 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 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. [5]
As soon as he is able, the child should go to school. Home education is
objectionable on many accounts, especially 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 employed, 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.
When 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 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 former it will be impossible to scan
verse; without the latter, to understand certain allusions 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, Astronomy, Philosophy, and Geometry.
Grammar consists of two parts, (1) _Methodics_, or the art of correct
speaking, (2) _Historics_ (German _Realien_), the interpretation of
poets, historians, philosophers, etc. _Methodics_--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, affectations, 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 inflections to use, what is
to be uttered slowly, what rapidly, 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 Virgil are best to begin with. Though their full import
cannot be understood 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 the 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 peculiarities of language and rhythm, to enumerate the
different meanings 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, where 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 AEsop, 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
composition. 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 inclined to hard work than young men. "
Such, in brief, is Quintilian's school-programme. It has no place for
physical science (except Astronomy), for manual training, or for
physical exercise. Play is, indeed, permitted as a necessary recreation,
and gymnastics and physical training (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ) are recommended in
so far as they are necessary to enable the budding orator to move and
to gesticulate gracefully; but that is all. "Nothing can please that is
not becoming. "
As soon as he is ready, the young aspirant for oratorical fame passes
into the hands of the rhetorician, under whom he learns all the arts,
and acquires all that knowledge, necessary to fit him for his
profession. No 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 maintains 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 interest 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.
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 manipulation. " . . . "We would, then, condemn all
professional 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 professionals 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 philosophers,
who divide songs into ethical, practical, and enthusiastic, assigning to
them the different harmonies respectively, and we affirm that music is
to be employed, not for one useful purpose alone, but for several;
_first_, 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 _ethos_ or habit of the
soul) must be employed for instruction; the practical and enthusiastic
for entertainments 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 accompanied 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
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, we 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, however,
must be kept in view, the practicable and the befitting. I mean that we
must discuss what is specially practicable for different people, as well
as what is befitting. This, indeed, will depend upon the different
periods of life. For example, it would 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 there 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 curriculum of youth. 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, Rhetoric (including Poetics), Dialectic, Arithmetic, Geometry,
and Astronomy, which, along with Music, make up the Seven Liberal Arts,
the _Trivium_ 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 education for a thousand years. We might perhaps draw out
Aristotle's programme of secondary education thus:--
{ {Physical {Dancing (see p. 82) }Before
{ { Training {Deportment } puberty.
{ {
{ { {Running }
{ { {Leaping }Before
{_Practical_ { {Javelin-casting } puberty.
{ { {Discus-throwing }
{ { {
{ {Gymnastics {Wrestling }
{ { {Shooting }After
STUDIES: { {Marching } puberty.
{_Creative_ {Music {Drilling }
{ {Drawing {Riding }
{
{ {Grammar }
{ {Rhetoric }Before puberty.
{_Theoretic_ {Dialectic }
{ {
{ {Arithmetic }
{ {Geometry }After puberty.
{ {Astronomy }
CHAPTER VII
EDUCATION AFTER TWENTY-ONE
Be assured that happiness has its source, not in extensive
possessions, 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 splendid 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 excessive these conditions are, the more widely and deeply do
they injure their possessors, being unaccompanied with
right-mindedness. --Aristotle.
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 training become citizens or politicians,
and begin to exercise the functions of such. These are of two kinds, (1)
active, practical, or executive, and (2) deliberative, theoretical, or
legislative. As action must, on 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 deliberative 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 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 (? ? ? ? ? ? ). 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 practice, 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. They are necessary complements of each other. Practice 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
gradually 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 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 individual is but a part: not moral or
religious--a self-surrender of the individual to the supreme will;
consequently, (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 possible 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
independent 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 powerless 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)
CHAPTER I
FROM ETHNIC TO COSMOPOLITAN LIFE
'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more. --Byron.
Most glorious of all 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;
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 delicate
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 deeds 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 education 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 citizen was expected to find a field for all his activities.
We have seen how, while conservative Sparta clung 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 an epidemic of individualism which threatened
the existence of all that was Hellenic. Against this destructive power
the noblest men in the nation, an AEschylus, 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 individual 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
conclusion: 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 spirit of the
civilization which took its place. If we look closely at the schemes of
Plato and Aristotle, we shall see that they try to render innocuous the
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; 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 Chaeronea, which
took place sixteen years before Aristotle's death, by putting an end
forever to the free civic life of Greece, removed the very conditions
under which the old ideal could realize itself, and forced men to seek
a sphere of activity, and to form associations, outside of the State.
The State, indeed, still maintained a semblance of life, and the old
education, with its literature, gymnastics, and music still continued;
but the spirit of both was gone. The State was gradually replaced by the
philosophic schools, while intellectual training tended more and more to
concentrate 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
pretentious, empty individualism of the rhetorician, the lineal
descendant of the sophists, and in the philosophical 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 philistinism. 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
subject. 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. For hundreds of years they
exerted an enormous influence, 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 dispersed 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 Pythagorean 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 during the lifetime of the latter, into sects (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ,
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
contemporaneously, two other schools, which exerted an influence, deep
and wide, for over six hundred years. These were the Epicurean and the
Stoic. Widely as these differed in respect to means, they sought the
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 Roman 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.
Not 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
numerous discipleship. This, however, was no longer exclusively, or even
mainly, Greek, but was recruited from all the nations of the known
world, more especially those of the East. Phoenicians, Syrians, Jews,
Persians, etc. , not to speak of Egyptians, now became students of Greek
philosophy, and members of philosophic sects, whose members not only
studied together, but often, to a large extent, lived together in
communities. 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
discuss, and to exchange opinions. Nor was it Greek thought alone that
engaged their attention. The opinions and beliefs of Egypt and the East
came in for a share, and, in the end, for the largest share. Nor 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
Neopythagoreans, and the Neoplatonists, all of whom, notwithstanding
certain shortcomings, did much to purify life, and to pave the way for a
higher civilization.
In B. C. 146, Greece, and, in B. C. 30, Egypt, fell into the hands of the
Romans and thenceforth formed provinces of their empire. Athens and
Alexandria were now Roman university-towns, while Rome 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
Christianity. 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 Plotinus the philosopher. By doing so we
shall pave the way for the consideration of the Rise of the Christian
Schools.
CHAPTER 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 common
knowledge, and belong to no definite science. Hence everybody, 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. --Aristotle.
There is a certain political theory which is made up of many great
things. A large and important part of it is artificial eloquence,
which they call rhetoric. --Cicero.
Every duty which tends to preserve human relations and human society
must be assigned a higher place than any that stops short with
knowledge and science. --_Id. _
Zeno, having pressed his fingers together and closed his fist, said
that was like Dialectic; having 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 experimental knowledge of the usages of language 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)
exposition according to poetic figures [literary criticism], (3)
ready statement of dialectical peculiarities and allusions
[philology, geography, history, mythology], (4) discovery of
etymologies, (5) accurate account of analogies [accidence and
syntax], (6) criticism of poetical productions, which is the noblest
part of the grammatic art [ethics, politics, strategy,
etc. ]. --Dionysius Thrax.
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. --_Scholia 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 commonwealth
(from which those 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 babyhood, 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 geometer, the
horse-breaker; he rises early; he has no chance for leisure. He
becomes a cadet; again he has to fear the drill-master, the physical
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 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, vagae moderator summe juventae,
Gloria Romanae, Quintiliane, togae. --Martial.
Up to the time when Rome began to decline, the school education of her
youth was meagre in the extreme, consisting of reading, writing, and a
little law. All later education that was more than this was borrowed
from the Greeks. It was about the year 200 B. C. , at the close of the
Second Punic War, that their influence began clearly to show itself. The
severe Cato, who so cordially despised rhetoricians and philosophers,
learnt Greek in his old age and wrote, 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 Rome
lost her national character and became cosmopolitan, she more and more
adopted Greek manners, Greek religion (or irreligion), and Greek
education. When, finally, in B. C. 146, Greece became a Roman dependency,
it was strictly true that "Captive Greece took captive her rude
conqueror. " Thousands of Greek schoolmasters, rhetoricians,
philosophers, 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
mistress of the world, had either to become cosmopolitan 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, literature, (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 Roman education was in the hands of Greeks, it was conducted
in the Greek language, and the authors read and discussed were Greek.
But the Romans, though willing enough to borrow Greek culture, were
unwilling to remain permanently in intellectual dependence upon a
conquered people, which in many respects they despised. Strong efforts,
therefore, were made to develop a national literature and a national
education. About the year B. C. 100, Lucius AElius Praeconinus Stilo, a
worthy and conservative Roman knight, opened a private class in Latin
grammar 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, indeed, continued to be spoken by all persons making
any pretensions to culture; but Latin became the language of Roman
literature. Among the pupils of Stilo were Varro and Cicero, who, along
with Julius Caesar, may be called the parents of the classical Latin
language, literature, and eloquence. Both Varro and Caesar wrote works on
grammar. A certain Cornificius (generally known as _Auctor ad
Herennium_) about this time wrote the first Latin treatise on Rhetoric;
but 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 transformation 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 was Quintilian, "the 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. Dominic first saw the light. He was
educated in Rome, but afterwards returned to his native place and
established himself as a teacher of rhetoric. About A. D. 68, 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
drawing 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 child, should 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 the 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, syllables must be learnt--all the possible
syllables 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 avoiding haste. The child must not attempt words
till he can read and write all the syllables, nor sentences 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 writing 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 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. [5]
As soon as he is able, the child should go to school. Home education is
objectionable on many accounts, especially 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 employed, 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.
When 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 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 former it will be impossible to scan
verse; without the latter, to understand certain allusions 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, Astronomy, Philosophy, and Geometry.
Grammar consists of two parts, (1) _Methodics_, or the art of correct
speaking, (2) _Historics_ (German _Realien_), the interpretation of
poets, historians, philosophers, etc. _Methodics_--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, affectations, 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 inflections to use, what is
to be uttered slowly, what rapidly, 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 Virgil are best to begin with. Though their full import
cannot be understood 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 the 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 peculiarities of language and rhythm, to enumerate the
different meanings 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, where 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 AEsop, 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
composition. 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 inclined to hard work than young men. "
Such, in brief, is Quintilian's school-programme. It has no place for
physical science (except Astronomy), for manual training, or for
physical exercise. Play is, indeed, permitted as a necessary recreation,
and gymnastics and physical training (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ) are recommended in
so far as they are necessary to enable the budding orator to move and
to gesticulate gracefully; but that is all. "Nothing can please that is
not becoming. "
As soon as he is ready, the young aspirant for oratorical fame passes
into the hands of the rhetorician, under whom he learns all the arts,
and acquires all that knowledge, necessary to fit him for his
profession. No 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 maintains 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 interest 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.
