No More Learning

" "lam — and you ? " " 0, mine's a mere romancer ! "
"So Plato is. " "Then read him —do ; And I'll read mine in answer. "
I read. " My Plato (Plato, too, — That wisdom thus should harden ! ) Declares ' blue eyes look doubly blue
Beneath a Dolly Varden. ' "
She smiled. " My book in turn avers (No author's name is stated)
That sometimes those Philosophers Are sadly mis-translated. "
" But hear, — the next's in stronger style : The Cynic School asserted
That two red lips which part and smile May not be controverted ! "
She smiled once more — " My book, I find, Observes some modern doctors
Would make the Cynics out a kind Of album-verse concooters. "
108 PLATO AND BACON.
Then I — " Why not ? ' Ephesian law, No less than time's tradition,
Enjoined fair speech on all who saw Diana's apparition. ' "
She blushed — this time. " If Plato's page No wiser precept teaches,
Then I'd renounce that doubtful sage, And walk to Burnham Beeches. "
" Agreed," I said. "For Socrates (I find he too is talking)
Thinks Learning can't remain at ease While Beauty goes a walking. "
She read no more. I leapt the sill: The sequel's scarce essential —
Nay, more than this, I hold it still Profoundly confidential.
PLATO AND BACON. By LORD MACAULAY.
[Thomas Babingtox Maoaulat : An English historian and essayist ; born October 25, 1800 ; son of a noted philanthropist and a Quaker lady ; died at London, December 28, 1859. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and called to the bar, but took to writing for the periodicals and to politics ; became famous for historical essays, was a warm advocate of Parliamentary Reform, and was elected to Parliament in 1830. In 1834 he was made a member of the Supreme Legislative Council for India, residing there till 1838, and making the working draft of the present Indian Penal Code. He was Secretary at War in 1839. The first two volumes of his " History of England " were published in December, 1848. His fame rests even more on his historical essays, his unsur passed speeches, and his "Lays of Ancient Rome. "]
It is altogether incorrect to say, as has often been said, that Bacon was the first man who rose up against the Aristotelian philosophy when in the height of its power. The authority of that philosophy had received a fatal blow long before he was born. The part which Bacon played in this great change was the part, not of Robespierre, but of Bonaparte. The philosophy which he taught was essentially new. It differed from that of the celebrated ancient teachers, not merely in method, but also in object. Its object was the good of mankind, in the sense in which the mass of mankind always have understood and always will understand the word "good. "
PLATO AND BACON. 109
The difference between the philosophy of Bacon and that of his predecessors cannot, we think, be better illustrated than by comparing his views on some important subjects with those of Plato. We select Plato, because we conceive that he did more than any other person towards giving to the minds of speculative men that bent which they retained till they received from Bacon a new impulse in a diametrically opposite direction.
It is curious to observe how differently these great men estimated the value of every kind of knowledge. Take arith metic for example. Plato, after speaking slightly of the con venience of being able to reckon and compute in the ordinary transactions of life, passes to what he considers as a far more important advantage. The study of the properties of numbers, he tells us, habituates the mind to the contemplation of pure truth, and raises us above the material universe. He would have his disciples apply themselves to this study, not that they may be able to buy or sell, not that they may qualify them selves to be shopkeepers or traveling merchants, but that they may learn to withdraw their minds from the ever-shifting spectacle of this visible and tangible world, and to fix them on the immutable essences of things.
Bacon, on the other hand, valued this branch of knowledge only on account of its uses with reference to that visible and tangible world which Plato so much despised. He speaks with scorn of the mystical arithmetic of the later Platonists, and laments the propensity of mankind to employ, on mere matters of curiosity, powers the whole exertion of which is required for purposes of solid advantage. He advises arithmeticians to leave these trifles, and to employ themselves in framing con venient expressions, which may be of use in physical researches.
The same reasons which led Plato to recommend the study of arithmetic led him to recommend also the study of mathe matics. The vulgar crowd of geometricians, he says, will not understand him. They have practice always in view. They do not know that the real use of the science is to lead men to the knowledge of abstract, essential, eternal truth. Indeed, if we are to believe Plutarch, Plato carried this feeling so far that he considered geometry as degraded by being applied to any pur pose of vulgar utility. Archytas, it seems, had framed machines of extraordinary power on mathematical principles. Plato re monstrated with his friend, and declared that this was to degrade a noble intellectual exercise into a low craft, fit only for carpen
110 PLATO AND BACON.
ters and wheelwrights. The office of geometry, he said, was to discipline the mind, not to minister to the base wants of the body. His interference was successful ; and from that time, according to Plutarch, the science of mechanics was considered as unworthy of the attention of a philosopher.
Archimedes in a later age imitated and surpassed Archytas. But even Archimedes was not free from the prevailing notion that geometry was degraded by being employed to produce anything useful. It was with difficulty that he was induced to stoop from speculation to practice. He was half ashamed of those inventions which were the wonder of hostile nations, and always spoke of them slightingly as mere amusements, as trifles in which a mathematician might be suffered to relax his mind after intense application to the higher parts of his science.
The opinion of Bacon on this subject was diametrically opposed to that of the ancient philosophers. He valued geome try chiefly, if not solely, on account of those uses which to Plato appeared so base. And it is remarkabe that the longer Bacon lived the stronger this feeling became. When in 1605 he wrote the two books on the Advancement of Learning, he dwelt on the advantages which mankind derived from mixed mathematics ; but he at the same time admitted that the bene ficial effect produced by mathematical study on the intellect, though a collateral advantage, was "no less worthy than that which was principal and intended. " But it is evident that his views underwent a change. When, near twenty years later, he published the " De Augmentis," which is the Treatise on the Advancement of Learning, greatly expanded and carefully cor rected, he made important alterations in the part which related to mathematics. He condemned with severity the high preten sions of the mathematicians, "delicias et fastum mathemati- corum. " Assuming the well-being of the human race to be the end of knowledge, he pronounced that mathematical science could claim no higher rank than that of an appendage or aux iliary to other sciences. Mathematical science, he says, is the handmaid of natural philosophy ; she ought to demean herself as such ; and he declares that he cannot conceive by what ill chance it has happened that she presumes to claim precedence over her mistress. He predicts — a prediction which would have made Plato shudder — that as more and more discoveries are made in physics, there will be more and more branches of mixed mathematics. Of that collateral advantage the value of
PLATO AND BACON.
Ill
which, twenty years before, he rated so highly, he says not one word. This omission cannot have been the effect of mere inad vertence. His own treatise was before him. From that trea tise he deliberately expunged whatever was favorable to the study of pure mathematics, and inserted several keen reflections on the ardent votaries of that study. This fact, in our opinion, admits of only one explanation. Bacon's love of those pursuits which directly tend to improve the condition of mankind, and his jealousy of all pursuits merely curious, had grown upon him, and had, it may be, become immoderate. He was afraid of using any expression which might have the effect of inducing any man of talents to employ in speculations, useful only to the mind of the speculator, a single hour which might be employed in extending the empire of man over matter. If Bacon erred here, we must acknowledge that we greatly prefer his error to the opposite error of Plato. We have no patience with a philosophy which, like those Roman matrons who swal lowed abortives in order to preserve their shapes, takes pains to be barren for fear of being homely.
Let us pass to astronomy. This was one of the sciences which Plato exhorted his disciples to learn, but for reasons far removed from common habits of thinking. " Shall we set down astronomy," says Socrates, "among the subjects of study? " " I think so," answers his young friend Glaucon : " to know something about the seasons, the months, and the years is of use for military purposes, as well as for agriculture and naviga tion. " " It amuses me," says Socrates, " to see how afraid you are, lest the common herd of people should accuse you of recom mending useless studies. " He then proceeds, in that pure and magnificent diction which, as Cicero said, Jupiter would use if Jupiter spoke Greek, to explain that the use of astronomy is not to add to the vulgar comforts of life, but to assist in rais ing the mind to the contemplation of things which are to be perceived by the pure intellect alone. The knowledge of the actual motions of the heavenly bodies Socrates considers as of little value. The appearances which make the sky beautiful at night are, he tells us, like the figures which a geometrician draws on the sand, mere examples, mere helps to feeble minds. We must get beyond them ; we must neglect them ; we must attain to an astronomy which is as independent of the actual stars as geometrical truth is independent of the lines of an ill- drawn diagram. This is, we imagine, very nearly, if not exactly,
112 PLATO AND BACON.
the astronomy which Bacon compared to the ox of Prometheus, a sleek, well-shaped hide, stuffed with rubbish, goodly to look at, but containing nothing to eat. He complained that astron omy had, to its great injury, been separated from natural phi losophy, of which it was one of the noblest provinces, and annexed to the domain of mathematics. The world stood in need, he said, of a very different astronomy, of a living astronomy, of an astronomy which should set forth the nature, the motion, and the influences of the heavenly bodies, as they really are.
On the greatest and most useful of all human inventions, the invention of alphabetical writing, Plato did not look with much complacency. He seems to have thought that the use of letters had operated on the human mind as the use of the gocart in learning to walk, or of corks in learning to swim, is said to operate on the human body. It was a support which, in his opinion, soon became indispensable to those who used it, which made vigorous exertion first unnecessary and then impossible. The powers of the intellect would, he conceived, have been more fully developed without this delusive aid. Men would have been compelled to exercise the understanding and the memory, and, by deep and assiduous meditation, to make truth thoroughly their own. Now, on the contrary, much knowl edge is traced on paper, but little is engraved in the soul. A man is certain that he can find information at a moment's notice when he wants it. He therefore suffers it to fade from his mind. Such a man cannot in strictness be said to know anything. He has the show without the reality of wisdom. These opinions Plato has put into the mouth of an ancient king of Egypt. But it is evident from the context that they were his own ; and so they were understood to be by Quinctilian. Indeed they are in perfect accordance with the whole Platonic system.
Bacon's views, as may easily be supposed, were widely dif ferent. The powers of the memory, he observes, without the help of writing, can do little towards the advancement of any useful science. He acknowledges that the memory may be dis ciplined to such a point as to be able to perform very extraor dinary feats. But on such feats he sets little value. The habits of his mind, he tells us, are such that he is not disposed to rate highly any accomplishment, however rare, which is of no practical use to mankind. As to these prodigious achieve ments of the memory, he ranks them with the exhibitions of
PLATO AND BACON. 113
ropedancers and tumblers. "These two performances," he says, " are much of the same sort. The one is an abuse of the powers of the body ; the other is an abuse of the powers of the mind. Both may perhaps excite our wonder; but neither is entitled to our respect. "
To Plato, the science of medicine appeared to be of very disputable advantage. He did not indeed object to quick cures for acute disorders, or for injuries produced by accidents. But the art which resists the slow sap of a chronic disease, which repairs frames enervated by lust, swollen by gluttony, or inflamed by wine, which encourages sensuality by mitigating the natural punishment of the sensualist, and prolongs existence when the intellect has ceased to retain its entire energy, had no share of his esteem. A life protracted by medical skill he pronounced to be a long death. The exercise of the art of medicine ought, he said, to be tolerated, so far as that art may serve to cure the occasional distempers of men whose constitutions are good. As to those who have bad constitutions, let them die ; and the sooner the better. Such men are unfit for war, for magistracy, for the management of their domestic affairs, for severe study and speculation. If they engage in any vigorous mental exer cise, they are troubled with giddiness and fullness of the head, all which they lay to the account of philosophy. The best thing that can happen to such wretches is to have done with life at once. He quotes mythical authority in support of this doctrine ; and reminds his disciples that the practice of the sons of ^sculapius, as described by Homer, extended only to the cure of external injuries.
Far different was the philosophy of Bacon. Of all the sciences, that which he seems to have regarded with the greatest interest was the science which, in Plato's opinion, would not be tolerated in a well-regulated community. To make men perfect was no part of Bacon's plan. His humble aim was to make imperfect men comfortable. The beneficence of his phi losophy resembled the beneficence of the common Father, whose sun rises on the evil and the good, whose rain descends for the just and the unjust. In Plato's opinion man was made for philosophy ; in Bacon's opinion philosophy was made for man ; it was a means to an end ; and that end was to increase the pleasures and to mitigate the pains of millions who are not and cannot be philosophers. That a valetudinarian who took great
pleasure in being wheeled along his terrace, who relished his VOL. IV,—8
114
PLATO AND BACON.
boiled chicken and his weak wine and water, and who enjoyed a hearty laugh over the Queen of Navarre's tales, should be treated as a caput lupinum because he could not read the Timaeus without a headache, was a notion which the humane spirit of the English school of wisdom altogether rejected. Bacon would not have thought it beneath the dignity of a phi losopher to contrive an improved garden chair for such a vale tudinarian, to devise some way of rendering his medicines more palatable, to invest repasts which he might enjoy, and pillows on which he might sleep soundly ; and this though there might not be the smallest hope that the mind of the poor invalid would ever rise to the contemplation of the ideal beautiful and the ideal good. As Plato had cited the religious legends of Greece to justify his contempt for the more recondite parts of the art of healing, Bacon vindicated the dignity of that art by appealing to the example of Christ, and reminded men that the great Physi cian of the soul did not disdain to be also the physician of the body.
When we pass from the science of medicine to that of legis lation, we find the same difference between the systems of these two great men. Plato, at the commencement of the Dialogue on Laws, lays it down as a fundamental principle that the end of legislation is to make men virtuous. It is unnecessary to point out the extravagant conclusions to which such a propo sition leads. Bacon well knew to how great an extent the happiness of every society must depend on the virtue of its members ; and he also knew what legislators can and what they cannot do for the purpose of promoting virtue. The view which he has given of the end of legislation, and of the principal means for the attainment of that end, has always seemed to us emi nently happy, even among the many happy passages of the same kind with which his works abound. "Finis et scopus quem leges intueri atque ad quem jussiones et sanctiones suas dirigere debent, non alius est quam ut cives feliciter degant. Id fiet si pietate et religione recte instituti, moribus honesti, armis adver- sus hostes externos tuti, legum auxilio adversus seditiones et privatas injurias muniti, imperio et magistratibus obsequentes, copiis et opibus locupletes et florentes fuerint. " The end is the well-being of the people. The means are the imparting of moral and religious education; the providing of everything necessary for defense against foreign enemies ; the maintaining of internal order ; the establishing of a judicial, financial, and
PLATO AND BACON. 115
commercial system, under which wealth may be rapidly accu mulated and securely enjoyed.
Even with respect to the form in which laws ought to be drawn, there is a remarkable difference of opinion between the Greek and the Englishman. Plato thought a preamble essen tial ; Bacon thought it mischievous. Each was consistent with himself. Plato, considering the moral improvement of the people as the end of legislation, justly inferred that a law which commanded and threatened, but which neither convinced the reason, nor touched the heart, must be a most imperfect law. He was not content with deterring from theft a man who still continued to be a thief at heart, with restraining a son who hated his mother from beating his mother. The only obedi ence on which he set much value was the obedience which an enlightened understanding yields to reason, and which a virtu ous disposition yields to precepts of virtue. He really seems to have believed that, by prefixing to every law an eloquent and pathetic exhortation, he should, to a great extent, render penal enactments superfluous. Bacon entertained no such romantic hopes ; and he well knew the practical inconveniences of the course which Plato recommended. " Neque nobis," says he, " prologi legum qui inepti olim habiti sunt, et leges intro- ducunt disputantes non jubentes, utique placerent, si priscos mores ferre possemus. . . . Quantum fieri potest prologi evi- tentur, et lex incipiat a jussione. "
Each of the great men whom we have compared intended to illustrate his system by a philosophical romance ; and " each left his romance imperfect. Had Plato lived to finish the Critias," a comparison between that noble fiction and the "New Atlantis " would probably have furnished us with still more striking instances than any which we have given. It is amusing to think with what horror he would have seen such an institution as Solomon's House rising in his republic : with what vehe mence he would have ordered the brewhouses, the perfume houses, and the dispensatories to be pulled down; and with what inexorable rigor he would have driven beyond the frontier all the Fellows of the College, Merchants of Light and Depre dators, Lamps and Pioneers.
To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to provide man with what he requires while he continues to be man. The aim of the Pla
116 PLATO AND BACON.
tonic philosophy was to raise us far above vulgar wants. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to supply our vulgar wants. The former aim was noble ; but the latter was attainable. Plato drew a good bow ; but, like Acestes in Virgil, he aimed at the stars ; and therefore, though there was no want of strength or skill, the shot was thrown away. His arrow was indeed followed by a track of dazzling radiance, but it struck nothing.
Volans liquidis in nubibus arsit arundo Signavitque viam flammis, tenuisque recessit Consumta in ventos.
Bacon fixed his eye on a mark which was placed on the earth, and within bowshot, and hit it in the white. The phi losophy of Plato began in words and ended in words, noble words indeed, words such as were to be expected from the finest of human intellects exercising boundless dominion over the finest of human languages. The philosophy of Bacon began in observations and ended in arts.
The boast of the ancient philosophers was that their doctrine formed the minds of men to a high degree of wisdom and virtue. This was indeed the only practical good which the most cele brated of those teachers even pretended to effect ; and undoubt edly, if they had effected this, they would have deserved far higher praise than if they had discovered the most salutary medicines or constructed the most powerful machines. But the truth is that, in those very matters in which alone they pro fessed to do any good to mankind, in those very matters for the sake of which they neglected all the vulgar interests of man kind, they did nothing, or worse than nothing. They promised what was impracticable ; they despised what was practicable ; they filled the world with long words and long beards ; and they left it as wicked and as ignorant as they found it.
An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia. The smallest actual good is better than the most magnificent promises of impossibilities. The wise man of the Stoics would, no doubt, be a grander object than a steam engine. But there are steam engines. And the wise man of the Stoics is yet to be born. A philosophy which should enable a man to feel per fectly happy while in agonies of pain would be better than a philosophy which assuages pain. But we know that there are remedies which will assuage pain ; and we know that the ancient
PLATO AND BACON. 117
sages liked the toothache just as little as their neighbors. A philosophy which should extinguish cupidity would be better than a philosophy which should devise laws for the security of property. But it is possible to make laws which shall, to a very great extent, secure property. And we do not understand how any motives which the ancient philosophy furnished could extinguish cupidity. We know indeed that the philosophers were no better than other men. From the testimony of friends as well as of foes, from the confessions of Epictetus and Seneca, as well as from the sneers of Lucian and the fierce invectives of Juvenal, it is plain that these teachers of virtue had all the vices of their neighbors, with the additional vice of hypocrisy. Some people may think the object of the Baconian philosophy a low object, but they cannot deny that, high or low, it has been attained. They cannot deny that every year makes an addition to what Bacon called "fruit. " They cannot deny that mankind have made, and are making, great and constant progress in the road which he pointed out to them. Was there any such progressive movement among the ancient philoso phers? After they had been declaiming eight hundred years, had they made the world better than when they began ? Our belief is that, among the philosophers themselves, instead of a progressive improvement there was a progressive degeneracy. An abject superstition which Democritus or Anaxagoras would have rejected with scorn, added the last disgrace to the long dotage of the Stoic and Platonic schools. Those unsuccessful attempts to articulate which are so delightful and interesting in a child shock and disgust in an aged paralytic ; and in the same way those wild and mythological fictions which charm us, when we hear them lisped by Greek poetry in its infancy, excite a mixed sensation of pity and loathing, when mumbled by Greek philosophy in its old age. We know that guns, cutlery, spyglasses, clocks, are better in our time than they
were in the time of our fathers, and were better in the time of our fathers than they were in the time of our grandfathers.
We might, therefore, be inclined to think that, when a philoso phy which boasted that its object was the elevation and puri fication of the mind, and which for this object neglected the sordid office of ministering to the comforts of the body, had flourished in the highest honor during many hundreds of years, a vast moral amelioration must have taken place. Was it so ? Look at the schools of this wisdom four centuries before the
118 PLATO AND BACON.
Christian era and four centuries after that era. Compare the men whom those schools formed at those two periods. Compare Plato and Libanius. Compare Pericles and Julian. This phi losophy confessed, nay boasted, that for every end but one it was useless. Had it attained that one end ?
Suppose that Justinian, when he closed the schools of Athens, had called on the last few sages who still haunted the Portico and lingered round the ancient plane trees, to show their title to public veneration : suppose that he had said : " A thousand years have elapsed since, in this famous city, Socrates posed Protagoras and Hippias ; during those thousand years a large proportion of the ablest men of every generation has been em ployed in constant efforts to bring to perfection the philosophy which you teach, that philosophy has been munificently patron ized by the powerful ; its professors have been held in the highest esteem by the public ; it has drawn to itself almost all the sap and vigor of the human intellect : and what has it effected? What profitable truth has it taught us which we should not equally have known without it ? What has it en abled us to do which we should not have been equally able to do without it ? " Such questions, we suspect, would have puz zled Simplicius and Isidore. Ask a follower of Bacon what the new philosophy, as it was called in the time of Charles the Second, has effected for mankind, and his answer is ready : " It has lengthened life ; it has migitated pain ; it has extinguished diseases ; it has increased the fertility of the soil ; it has given new securities to the mariner ; it has furnished new arms to the warrior ; it has spanned great rivers and estuaries with bridges of form unknown to our fathers ; it has guided the thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to earth ; it has lighted up the night with the splendor of the day ; it has extended the range of the human vision ; it has multiplied the power of the human muscles ; it has accelerated motion ; it has annihilated distance ; it has facilitated intercourse, correspondence, all friendly offices, all dispatch of business ; it has enabled man to descend to the depths of the sea, to soar into the air, to penetrate securely into the noxious recesses of the earth, to traverse the land in cars which whirl along without horses, and the ocean in ships which run ten knots an hour against the wind. These are but a part of its fruits, and of its first fruits. For it is a philosophy which never rests, which has never at tained, which is never perfect. Its law is progress. A point
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119
which yesterday was invisible is its goal to-day, and will be its starting post to-morrow. "
Great and various as the powers of Bacon were, he owes his wide and durable fame chiefly to this, that all those powers received their direction from common sense. His love of the vulgar useful, his strong sympathy with the popular notions of good and evil, and the openness with which he avowed that sympathy, are the secret of his influence. There was in his system no cant, no illusion. He had no anointing for broken bones, no fine theories definibus, no arguments to persuade men out of their senses. He knew that men, and philosophers as well as other men, do actually love life, health, comfort, honor, security, the society of friends, and do actually dislike death, sickness, pain, poverty, disgrace, danger, separation from those to whom they are attached. He knew that religion, though it often regulates and moderates these feelings, seldom eradicates them ; nor did he think it desirable for mankind that they should be eradicated. The plan of eradicating them by con ceits like those of Seneca, or syllogisms like those of Chrysippus, was too preposterous to be for a moment entertained by a mind like his. He did not understand what wisdom there could be in changing names where it was impossible to change things ; in denying that blindness, hunger, the gout, the rack, were evils, and calling them airoirpoijyfieva ; in refusing to acknowl edge that health, safety, plenty, were good things, and dubbing them by the name of aSid<f>opa. In his opinions on all these subjects, he was not a Stoic, nor an Epicurean, nor an Academic, but what would have been called by Stoics, Epicureans, and Academics a mere iBucrrji, a mere common man. And it was precisely because he was so that his name makes so great an era in the history of the world. It was because he dug deep that he was able to pile high. It was because, in order to lay his foundations, he went down into those parts of human nature which lie low, but which are not liable to change, that the fabric which he reared has risen to so stately an elevation, and stands with such immovable strength.
We have sometimes thought that an amusing fiction might be written, in which a disciple of Epictetus and a disciple of Bacon should be introduced as fellow-travelers. They come to a village where the smallpox has just begun to rage, and find houses shut up, intercourse suspended, the sick abandoned, mothers weeping in terror over their children. The Stoic
120 THE BATTLE OF LEDCTRA.
assures the dismayed population that there is nothing bad in the smallpox, and that to a wise man disease, deformity, death, the loss of friends, are not evils. The Baconian takes out a lancet and begins to vaccinate. They find a body of miners in great dismay. An explosion of noisome vapors has just killed many of those who were at work ; and the survivors are afraid to venture into the cavern. The Stoic assures them that such an accident is nothing but a mere avoirpotfy/jtpov. The Baco nian, who has no such fine word at his command, contents him self with devising a safety lamp. They find a shipwrecked merchant wringing his hands on the shore. His vessel with an inestimable cargo has just gone down, and he is reduced in a moment from opulence to beggary. The Stoic exhorts him not to seek happiness in things which lie without himself, and repeats the whole chapter of Epictetus 777309 toik tt/v airoplav Se&oiKoras. The Baconian constructs a diving bell, goes down in it, and returns with the most precious effects from the wreck. It would be easy to multiply illustrations of the difference be tween the philosophy of thorns and the philosophy of fruit, the philosophy of words and the philosophy of works.
THE BATTLE OF LEUCTRA (b. o. 399). By GEORGE GROTE.
[Georoe Gbotb, the greatest modern historian of ancient Greece, perhaps the greatest man altogether who ever wrote history, was of mingled German, Huguenot French, Irish, and English blood ; born in Kent, 1794 ; died in Lon don, 1871. Educated till sixteen at the Charterhouse School in London, he then entered his father's banking house, still using all his leisure time for study. A massive scholar, thinker, and logician, he was also (what even for his works of pure scholarship was of the first value) a practical and experienced man of affairs. He worked hard for Parliamentary reform, and was member of Parlia ment 1832-1841 ; strove annually to introduce voting by ballot, and was a great humanist with a deep sympathy for the " dim common millions. " This ardent democratic feeling was the genesis of his immortal " History of Greece " (twelve volumes, 1846-1856). In 1865 he brought out his " Plato " ; after his death his unfinished "Aristotle" and two volumes of minor writings were published, and his widow wrote a biography. In his later years he was president of University College and vice-chancellor of London University (unsectarian). ]
The Thebans with their allied Boeotians were posted on a
declivity opposite to the Spartan camp. They were commanded by the seven Boeotarchs of whom Epaminondas was one. But
THE BATTLE OF LEUCTRA.
121
such was the prevalent apprehension of joining battle with the Spartans on equal terms, that even when actually on the ground, three of these Boeotarchs refused to concur in the order for fighting, and proposed to shut themselves up in Thebes for a siege, sending their wives and families away to Athens. Epaminondas was vainly combating their determination, when the seventh Boeotarch, Branchylides, arrived from the passes of Kithaeron, where he had been on guard, and was prevailed upon to vote in favor of the bolder course.
While others were comforted by the hope of superhuman aid, Epaminondas, to whom the order of the coming battle had been confided, took care that no human precautions should be wanting. His task was arduous ; for not only were his troops dispirited, while those of the enemy were confident, but their numbers were inferior, and some of the Boeotians present were hardly even trustworthy. What the exact numbers were on either side we are not permitted to know. Diodorus assigns about 6000 men to the Thebans ; Plutarch states the numbers of Cleombrotus at 11,000. Without placing faith in these fig ures, we see good reason for believing that the Theban total was decidedly inferior. For such inferiority Epaminondas strove to make up by skillful tactics, and by a combination at that time novel as well as ingenious. In all former Grecian battles, the opposite armies had been drawn up in line, and had fought along the whole line; or at least such had been the intention of the generals — and if it was not realized, the cause was to be sought in accidents of the ground, or backwardness or disorder on the part of some division of the soldiers. Depart ing from this habit, Epaminondas now arrayed his troops so as to bring his own left to bear with irresistible force upon the Spartan right, and to keep back the rest of his army compara tively out of action. Knowing that Cleombrotus, with the Spartans and all the official persons, would be on the right of their own line, he calculated that, if successful on this point against the best troops, he should find little resistance from the remainder. Accordingly he placed on his own left wing chosen Theban hoplites to the prodigious depth of fifty shields, with Pelopidas and the Sacred Band in front. His order of advance was disposed obliquely or in echelon, so that the deep column on the left should join battle first, while the center and right kept comparatively back and held themselves more in a defen sive attitude.
122 THE BATTLE OF LEUCTRA.
In 371 B. C. such a combination was absolutely new, and betokened high military genius. It is therefore no disgrace to Cleombrotus that he was not prepared for it, and that he ad hered to the ordinary Grecian tactics of joining battle at once along the whole line. But so unbounded was the confidence reigning among the Spartans, that there never was any occasion on which peculiar precautions were less thought of. When, from their entrenched camp on the Leuctrian eminence, they saw the Thebans encamped on an opposite eminence, separated from them by a small breadth of low ground and moderate de clivities, their only impatience was to hurry on the decisive moment, so as to prevent the enemy from escaping. Both the partisans and the opponents of Cleombrotus united in provok ing the order for battle, each in their own language. The partisans urged him, since he had never yet done anything against the Thebans, to strike a decisive blow, and clear him self from the disparaging comparisons which rumor instituted between him and Agesilaus ; the opponents gave it to be un derstood that if Cleombrotus were now backward, their sus picions would be confirmed that he leaned in his heart towards the Thebans. Probably the king was himself sufficiently eager to fight, and so would any other Spartan general have been, under the same circumstances, before the battle of Leuctra. But even had he been otherwise, the impatience prevalent among the Lacedaemonian portion of his army left him no option. Accordingly, the decided resolution to fight was taken. The last council was held, and the final orders issued by Cleom brotus after his morning meal, where copious libations of wine both attested and increased the confident temper of every man. The army was marched out of the camp, and arrayed on the lower portion of the declivity : Cleombrotus with the Spartans and most of the Lacedaemonians being on the right, in an order of twelve deep. Some Lacedaemonians were also on the left, but respecting the order of the other parts of the line we have no information. The cavalry was chiefly posted along the front.
Meanwhile, Epaminondas also marched down his declivity in his own chosen order of battle, his left wing being brought forward and strengthened into very deep order for desperate attack. His cavalry too were posted in front of his line. But before he commenced his march, he sent away his baggage and attendants home to Thebes, while at the same time he made proclamation that any of his Boeotian hoplites who were not
THE BATTLE OF LEUCTRA. 123
hearty in the cause might also retire if they chose. Of such permission the Thespians immediately availed themselves, so many were there, in the Theban camp, who estimated the chances to be all in favor of Lacedaemonian victory. But when these men, a large portion of them unarmed, were seen retir ing, a considerable detachment from the army of Cleombrotus, either with or without orders, ran after to prevent their escape, and forced them to return for safety to the main Theban army. The most zealous among the allies of Sparta present — the Pho- cians, the Phliasians, and the Heracleots, together with a body of mercenaries — executed this movement, which seems to have weakened the Lacedaemonians in the main battle, without doing any mischief to the Thebans.
The cavalry first engaged in front of both lines ; and here the superiority of the Thebans soon became manifest. The Lacedaemonian cavalry — at no time very good, but at this moment unusually bad, composed of raw and feeble novices, mounted on horses provided by the rich — was soon broken and driven back upon the infantry, whose ranks were disturbed by the fugitives. To reestablish the battle Cleombrotus gave the word for the infantry to advance, himself personally lead ing the right. The victorious cavalry probably hung upon the Lacedaemonian infantry of the center and left, and pre vented them from making much forward movement; while Epaminondas and Pelopidas with their left advanced accord ing to their intention to bear down Cleombrotus and his right wing. The shock here was terrible ; on both sides victory was resolutely disputed, in a close hand combat, with pushing of
opposite shields and opposite masses. But such was the over whelming force of the Theban charge — with the Sacred Band or chosen warriors in front, composed of men highly trained in the palestra, and the deep column of fifty shields propelling behind — that even the Spartans, with all their courage, obsti nacy, and discipline, were unable to stand up against it. Cle ombrotus, himself either in or near the front, was mortally wounded, apparently early in the battle ; and it was only by heroic and unexampled efforts on the part of his comrades around that he was carried off yet alive, so as to preserve him from fall ing into the hands of the enemy. Around him also fell the most eminent members of the Spartan official staff : Deinon the Pole- march, Sphodrias with his son Cleonymus, and several others. After an obstinate resistance and a fearful slaughter, the right
124 THE BATTLE OF LEUCTRA.
wing of the Spartans was completely beaten and driven back to their camp on the higher ground.
It was upon the Spartan right wing, where the Theban left was irresistibly strong, that all the stress of the battle fell, as Epaminondas had intended that it should. In no other part of the line does there appear to have been any serious fighting : partly through his deliberate scheme of not pushing forward either his center or his right — partly through the preliminary victory of the Theban cavalry, which probably checked in part the forward march of the enemy's line — and partly also through the lukewarm adherence, or even suppressed hostility, of the allies marshaled under the command of Cleombrotus. The Phocians and Heracleots — zealous in the cause from hatred of Thebes — had quitted the line to strike a blow at the retiring baggage and attendants, while the remaining allies, after mere nominal fighting and little or no loss, retired to the camp as soon as they saw the Spartan right defeated and driven back to it. Moreover, even some Lacedaemonians on the left wing, probably astounded by the lukewarmness of those around them, and by the unexpected calamity on their own right, fell back in the same manner. The whole Lacedaemonian force, with the dying king, was thus again assembled and formed behind the intrenchment on the higher ground, where the victorious Thebans did not attempt to molest them.
But very different were their feelings as they now stood arrayed in the camp from that exulting boastfulness with which they had quitted it an hour or two before, and fearful was the loss when it came to be verified. Of seven hundred Spartans who had marched forth from the camp, only three hundred re turned to it. One thousand Lacedaemonians, besides, had been left on the field, even by the admission of Xenophon ; probably the real number was even larger. Apart from this, the death of Cleombrotus was of itself an event impressive to every one, the like of which had never occurred since the fatal day of Ther mopylae. But this was not all. The allies who stood alongside of them in arms were now altered men. All were sick of their cause, and averse to further exertion ; some scarcely concealed a positive satisfaction at the defeat. And when the surviving polemarchs, now commanders, took counsel with the principal officers as to the steps proper in the emergency, there were a few, but very few, Spartans who pressed for renewal of the bat tle, and for recovering by force their slain brethren in the field,
THE BATTLE OF LEUCTRA. 125
or perishing in the attempt. All the rest felt like beaten men ; so that the polemarchs, giving effect to the general sentiment, sent a herald to solicit the regular truce for burial of their dead. This the Thebans granted, after erecting their own trophy. But Epaminondas, aware that the Spartans would practice every stratagem to conceal the magnitude of their losses, coupled the grant with the condition that the allies should bury their dead first. It was found that the allies had scarcely any dead to pick up, and that nearly every slain warrior on the field was a Lacedaemonian. And thus the Theban general, while he placed the loss beyond possibility of concealment, proclaimed at the same time such public evidence of Spartan courage as to rescue the misfortune of Leuctra from all aggravation on the score of dishonor. What the Theban loss was Xenophon does not tell us. Pausanias states it at forty-seven men, Diodorus at three hundred. The former number is preposterously small, and even the latter is doubtless under the truth, for a victory in close fight, over soldiers like the Spartans, must have been dearly purchased. Though the bodies of the Spartans were given up to burial, their arms were retained, and the shields of the principal officers were seen by the traveler Pausanias at Thebes, five hundred years afterwards.
Twenty days only had elapsed, from the time when Epami nondas quitted Sparta after Thebes had been excluded from the general peace, to the day when he stood victorious on the field of Leuctra. The event came like a thunderclap upon every one in Greece — upon victors as well as vanquished — upon allies and neutrals, near and distant, alike. The general expectation had been that Thebes would be speedily overthrown and dismantled ; instead of which, not only she had escaped, but had inflicted a crushing blow on the military majesty of Sparta.
It is in vain that Xenophon — whose account of the battle is obscure, partial, and imprinted with that chagrin which the event occasioned to him — ascribes the defeat to untoward acci dents, or to the rashness and convivial carelessness of Cleom- brotus, upon whose generalship Agesilaus and his party at Sparta did not scruple to cast ungenerous reproach, while others faintly exculpated him by saying that he had fought contrary to his better judgment, under fear of unpopularity. Such criticisms, coming from men wise after the fact, and con soling themselves for the public calamity by censuring the unfortunate commander, will not stand examination. Cleom
126 THE BATTLE OF LEUCTRA.
brotus represented on this occasion the feeling universal among his countrymen. He was ordered to march against Thebes with the full belief, entertained by Agesilaus and all the Spar tan leaders, that her unassisted force could not resist him. To fight the Thebans on open ground was exactly what he and every other Spartan desired. While his manner of forcing the entrance of Boeotia, and his capture of Creusis, was a creditable maneuver, he seems to have arranged his order of battle in the manner usual with Grecian generals at the time. There ap pears no reason to censure his generalship, except in so far as he was unable to divine — what no one else divined — the su perior combinations of his adversary, then for the first time applied to practice.
To the discredit of Xenophon, Epaminondas is never named in his narrative of the battle, though he recognizes in substance that the battle was decided by the irresistible Theban force brought to bear upon one point of the enemy's phalanx — a fact which both Plutarch and Diodorus expressly refer to the genius of the general. All the calculations of Epaminondas turned out successful. The bravery of the Thebans, cavalry as well as infantry, seconded by the training which they had re ceived during the last few years, was found sufficient to carry his plans into full execution. To this circumstance principally was owing the great revolution of opinion throughout Greece which followed the battle. Every one felt that a new military power had arisen, and that the Theban training, under the gen eralship of Epaminondas, had proved itself more than a match on a fair field, with shield and spear, and with numbers on the whole inferior, for the ancient Lycurgean discipline; which last had hitherto stood without a parallel as turning out artists and craftsmen in war, against mere citizens in the opposite ranks, armed, yet without the like training. Essentially sta tionary and old-fashioned, the Lycurgean discipline was now overborne by the progressive military improvement of other states, handled by a preeminent tactician — a misfortune pre dicted by the Corinthians at Sparta sixty years before, and now realized, to the conviction of all Greece, on the field of Leuctra.
EDUCATING A CITIZEN. 127
EDUCATING A CITIZEN.
By PLATO.
(From the " Republic " : translated by Benjamin Jewett. )
Socrates — Is not war an art ? Glaucon — Certainly. . . .
But the mere handling of tools will not make a man a skilled workman. How then will he who takes up a shield or other implement of war all in a day become a good fighter ?
Yes, he said, the tools which would teach their own use would be of rare value.
And the greater the business of the guardian is, I said, the more time and art and skill will be needed by him ?
That is what I should suppose, he replied.
Will he not also require natural gifts ?
Certainly.
We shall have to select natures which are suited to their
task of guarding the city ?
That will be our duty.
And anything but an easy duty, I said ; but still we must
endeavor to do our best as far as we can ?
Wemust. . . .
Well, and your guardian must be brave if he is to fight
well? Certainly.
And is he likely to be brave who has no spirit ? Did you never observe how the presence of spirit makes the soul of any creature absolutely fearless and invincible ?
Then now we have a clear idea of the bodily qualities which are required in the guardian ?
True.
And also of the mental ones ; his soul is to be full of spirit? Yes.
But then, Glaucon, those spirited natures are apt to be
furious with one another, and with everybody else ?
There is the difficulty, he replied.
Whereas, I said, they ought to be gentle to their friends,
Yes: I have observed that.
128 EDUCATING A CITIZEN.
and dangerous to their enemies ; or, instead of their enemies destroying them, they will destroy themselves.
True, he said.
What is to be done then, I said ; how shall we find a gen tle nature which has also a great spirit, for they seem to be inconsistent with one another ?
True.
And yet he will not be a good guardian who is wanting in either of these two qualities ; and, as the combination of them appears to be impossible, this is equivalent to saying that to be a good guardian is also impossible.
I am afraid that what you say is true, he replied.
Here feeling perplexed I began to think over what had pre ceded. My friend, I said, we deserve to be in a puzzle ; for we have lost sight of the simile with which we started.
What do you mean? he said.
I mean to say that there do exist natures gifted with those opposite qualities.
Many animals, I replied, furnish examples of them ; our friend the dog is a very good one : you know that well-bred dogs are perfectly gentle to their familiars and acquaintances, and the reverse to strangers.
Yes, I know.
Then there is nothing impossible or out of the order of nature in our finding a guardian who has a similar combination of qualities.
Certainly not.
And where do you find them ?
Would you not say that he should combine with the spirited nature the qualities of a philosopher ?
I do not apprehend your meaning.
The trait of which I am speaking, I replied, may be also seen in the dog, and is remarkable in an animal.
What trait?
Why, a dog, whenever he sees a stranger, is angry ; when an acquaintance, he welcomes him, although the one has never done him any harm, nor the other any good.