No More Learning

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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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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.
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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. Did this never strike you as curious ?
I never before thought of it, though I quite recognize the truth of your remark.
And surely this instinct of the dog is very charming ; — your dog is a true philosopher.
Why?
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Why, because he distinguishes the face of a friend and of an enemy only by the criterion of knowing and not knowing. And must not the creature be fond of learning who determines what is friendly and what is unfriendly by the test of knowl edge and ignorance?
Most assuredly.
And is not the love of learning the love of wisdom, which is philosophy ?
They are the same, he replied.
And may we not say confidently of man also, that he who is likely to be gentle to his friends and acquaintances, must by nature be a lover of wisdom and knowledge ?
That we may safely affirm.
Then he who is to be a really good and noble guardian of the State will require to unite in himself philosophy and spirit and swiftness and strength?
Undoubtedly.
Then we have found the desired natures ; and now that we have found them, How are they to be reared and educated ? is the inquiry which may be fairly expected to throw light on the greater inquiry which is our final end — How do justice and injustice grow up in States? for we do not want to be tedious and irrelevant, or to leave out anything which is really to the point.
Adeimantus thought that the inquiry would be of great use to us.
Then, I said, my dear friend, the task must not be given up, even if somewhat long.
Certainly not.
Come, then, and let us pass a leisure hour in story telling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes.
By all means.
And what shall be their education ? Can we find a better than the old-fashioned sort? — and this has two divisions, gymnastic for the body and music for the soul.
True.
Shall we begin education with music, and go on to gym nastic afterwards ?
By all means.
And when you speak of music, do you rank literature under music or not ?
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I do.
And literature may be either true or false ?
Yes.
And the young are trained in both kinds, and in the false
before the true ?
I do not understand your meaning, he said.
You know, I said, that we begin by telling children stories
which, though not wholly destitute of truth, are in the main fictitious ; and these stories are told them when they are not of an age to learn gymnastics.
Very true.
That was my meaning in saying that we must teach music before gymnastics.
Quite right, he said.
You know also that the beginning is the chiefest part of any work, especially in a young and tender thing ; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and most readily receives the desired impression.
Quite true.
And shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be framed by casual persons, and to receive into their minds notions which are the very opposite of those which are to be held by them when they are grown up ?
We cannot.
Then the first thing will be to have a censorship of the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of fiction which is good, and reject the bad ; and we desire mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorized ones only. Let them fashion the mind with their tales, even more fondly than they form the body with their hands ; and most of those which are now in use must be discarded.
You may find a model of the lesser in the greater, I said ; for they are necessarily cast in the same mold, and there is the same spirit in both of them.
Of what tales are you speaking ? he said.
That may be very true, he replied; but I do not as yet know what you would term the greater.
Those, I said, which are narrated by Homer and Hesiod, and the rest of the poets, who have ever been the great story tellers of mankind.
But which stories do you mean, he said ; and what fault do you find with them?
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A fault which is most serious, I said ; the fault of telling a lie, and, which is more, a bad lie.
But when is this fault committed ?
Whenever an erroneous representation is made of the nature of gods and heroes, — like the drawing of a limner which has not the shadow of a likeness to the truth.
First of all, I said, there was that greatest of all lies in high places, which the poet told about Uranus, and which was a bad lie too, — I mean what Hesiod says that Uranus did and what Cronus did to him. The doings of Cronus, and the sufferings which in turn his son inflicted upon him, even if they were true, ought certainly not to be lightly told to young and sim ple persons ; if possible, they had better be buried in silence. But if there is an absolute necesssity for their mention, a chosen few might hear them in a mystery, and in order to reduce the number of hearers they should sacrifice not a common (Eleu- sinian) pig, but some huge and unprocurable victim.
Why, yes, said he, those stories are certainly objectionable.
Yes, he said, that sort of thing is certainly very blamable ; but what are the stories which you mean ?
Yes, Adeimantus, they are stories not to be narrated in our State ; the young man should not be told that in committing the worst of crimes he is far from doing anything outrageous ; and that if he chastises his father when he does wrong, in any manner he likes, he will only be following the example of the first and greatest among the gods.
I quite agree with you, he said ; in my opinion those stories are not fit to be repeated.
Neither, if we mean our future guardians to regard the habit of quarreling as dishonorable, should anything be said of the wars in heaven and of the plots and fightings of the gods against one another, which are quite untrue. Far be it from us to tell them of the battles of the giants, and embroider them on garments ; or of all the innumerable other quarrels of gods and heroes with their friends and relations. If they would only believe us we would tell them quarreling is unholy, and that never up to this time has there been any quarrel between citizens ; this is what old men and old women should begin by telling children, and the same when they grow up. And the poets should be required to compose accordingly. But the narrative of Hephaestus binding Here his mother, or how on another occasion Zeus sent him flying for taking her part when
132 EDUCATING A CITIZEN.
she was being beaten, — such tales must not be admitted into our State, whether they are supposed to have an allegorical meaning or not. For the young man cannot judge what is allegorical and what is literal ; anything that he receives into his mind at that age is apt to become indelible and unalterable ; and therefore the tales which they first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts.
There you are right, he replied ; that is quite essential : but, then, where are such models to be found ? and what are the tales in which they are continued ? when that question is asked, what will be our answer ?
I said to him, You and I, Adeimantus, are not poets in what we are about just now, but founders of a State : now, the founders of a State ought to know the general forms in which poets should cast their tales, and the limits which should be observed by them, but actually to make the tales is not their business.
Very true, he said ; but what are those forms of theology which you mean?
Something of this kind, I replied : God is always to be represented as he truly is ; that is one form which is equally to be observed in every kind of verse, whether epic, lyric, or tragic.
Right.
And is he not truly good ? and must he not be represented as such?
Certainly.
And no good thing is hurtful ?
No, indeed.
And that which is not hurtful hurts not ?
Certainly not.
And that which hurts not does no evil ?
No.
And that which does no evil is the cause of no evil ? Impossible.
And the good is the advantageous ?
Yes.
And the good is the cause of well-being ?
Yes.
The good is not the cause of all things, but of the good
only, and not the cause of evil ? Assuredly.
EDUCATING A CITIZEN. 133
Then God, if he be good, is not the author of all things, as the many assert, but he is the cause of a few things only, and not of most things that occur to men. For few are the goods of human life, and many are the evils, and the good is to be attributed to God alone ; of the evils the cause is to be sought elsewhere, and not in him.
That appears to me to be most true, he said.
Then we must not listen to Homer or to any other poet who is guilty of the folly of saying that two casks
"Lie at the threshold of Zeus, full of lots, one of good, the other of evil lots,"
and that he to whom Zeus gives a mixture of the two "Sometimes meets with evil fortune, at other times with good; "
but that he to whom is given the cup of unmingled ill,
" Him wild hunger drives over the divine earth. "
And again
" Zeus, who is the dispenser of good and evil to us. " . . .
And if a poet writes of the sufferings of Niobe, which is the subject of the tragedy in which these iambic verses occur, or of the house of Pelops, or of the Trojan war, or any similar theme, either we must not permit him to say that these are the works of God, or if they are of God, he must devise some ex planation of them such as we are seeking : he must say that God did what was just and right, and they were the better for being punished ; but that those who are punished are miserable and that God is the author of their misery, the poet is not to be permitted to say ; though he may say that the wicked are miserable because they require to be punished, and are benefited by receiving punishment from God ; but that God being good is the author of evil to any one, is to be strenuously denied, and not allowed to be sung or said in any well-ordered com monwealth by old or young. Such a fiction is suicidal, ruin ous, impious.
134 THE TEN ATTIC ORATORS.
THE TEN ATTIC ORATORS.
The great critics of Alexandria placed ten names on their list, or canon, of the Athenian orators best worth remembrance ; which, in the order Plutarch afterward wrote their biographies (essentially though not minutely chronological) were : Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias, Isocrates, Isaeus, JSschines, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Hy- perides, Dinarchus. Specimens of the oratory of all are here col lected for the first time, four translated specially for this work, and three of the orators represented in translation for the first time. We have arranged them a little differently to bring the debates on Demosthenes' public career together.
Antiphon, born about b. C. 480, was a pupil of Gorgias, the famous teacher of rhetoric. He was of the oligarchic party. Says Professor Jebb : " Antiphon was the ablest debater and pleader of his day, and in his person the new Rhetoric first appears as a political power at Athens. He took a chief part in organizing the Revolution of the Four Hundred, and when they fell was put to death by the people (b. c. 411). " Thucydides calls him one of the three best (i. e. most useful) men in Athens; which the organized assassinations by the Four Hundred make a strange adjective to our ears. All his extant speeches are on trials for homicide.
Andocides, born about b. c. 467, and also belonging to the oligarchic party, was involved in that great and never fully ex plained scandal, the mutilation of the Herman just before the expe dition to Syracuse (b. c. 415). Thrown into prison, he saved his life by denouncing four others, who were executed; but failed to clear himself, and was banished. He made application for return later on, again to the Four Hundred in 411, still again in 410 to the Assembly after their downfall ; but failed, and was a traveling merchant till 402, when he returned under the general amnesty. He held important official positions thereafter, and died after 390, when, as ambassador to Lacedaemon to treat for peace, he made on his return the speech here excerpted.
Lysias, though born at Athens, (b. c. 459 ? ) had a Syracusan father, spent his early and middle life in southern Italy, and only settled at Athens in 412, when growing old. He was a democrat. In 404 the Thirty Tyrants put his brother to death, and he fled ; the next year, on their expulsion by Thrasybulus, he came back and impeached Eratosthenes, one of the Thirty, and some years later impeached one of their tools. He made other speeches on public affairs ; but as with most of the others, his chief work was legal.
Isocrates, born b. c. 436, was a wealthy and highly educated youth, who lost his fortune in the troubles of the Peloponnesian
THE TEN ATTIC ORATORS. 135
War, wrote law speeches for ten years, and about 392 became a teacher of elocution, continuing such till his death at nearly one hundred, in 338. His school was far the most famous in ancient Greece, drawing scholars from all parts, from Sicily to the Crimea. Cicero says they were the foremost orators and authors of their time. Among them were three of our ten (Isaeus, Lycurgus, and Hyperides), two leading historians (Ephorus and Theopompus), and many others eminent in different departments. In the great rhetori cal contest of b. o. 351, in honor of Mausolus prince of Caria, only his pupils dared enter. His life dream was of saving Greece from destroying itself through internal feuds by uniting it against Asia ; first by reconciling Athens and Sparta, then by some " tyrant " or Spartan king as leader, lastly by Philip of Macedon ; — he died in the year of the battle of Chaeronea.
IsiEUS, born about b. c. 420, probably at the Athenian colony in Chalcis, was a professional writer of law speeches, and has little known life outside his work. He is regarded as a master of logical argument and jury tactics. Of the twelve extant speeches, eleven are on will cases, and the other an appeal from arbitration.
Lycurgus, born about b. c. 396-393, was one of the three chief leaders of the anti-Macedonian party in Athens during the great struggle with Philip — Demosthenes and Hyperides being the others. His department was internal government, finances, city improvement and order, etc. He was financial director of Athens about 341-329, disbursing over $20,000,000 with clean hands, and raising the state income to nearly $1,500,000 a year. He was so much trusted that he was chosen banker for many private persons ; and when Alexander the Great demanded his surrender, the people refused to comply. He died about 323.
JSschines, born b. c. 389, was in some respects the most remark able of all, his unassisted talents raising him from the lowest station to the second place among classic orators. Even if not the son of a courtesan, and at first a low comic actor, as Demosthenes asserted, — which we should count to his honor, — he was certainly very poor and uneducated, was a soldier till about forty, then clerk to the Assembly, and began soon after to display mastery as a public speaker. He took from the first, like Isocrates, the Macedonian side in the bickerings and negotiations with Philip ; was twice envoy to him, and probably disbursing agent for his money in Athens and elsewhere, though Demosthenes failed to convict him of bribery; and in 330, eight years after Chaeronea, attempting to prevent pub lic honors to Demosthenes for patriotism, was himself exiled, and set up a school of elocution in Rhodes. He died in Samos, b. c. 314.
Demosthenes, the greatest orator of antiquity, the son of a rich Athenian manufacturer, was born about b. c. 385. His father dying
136 ANTIPHON.
when the boy was small, his education was neglected; but at seventeen he began to train himself in oratory, in spite of a bad stammer and weak lungs. His oratory was applied partly to law cases, but also to politics, especially to opposing the attempts of Philip of Macedon to form a league against Persia under Macedonian hegemony, which he felt must result first or last, as it did, in destroying Grecian freedom. He failed. The allied Athenian and Boeotian army was defeated at Chaeronea, b. o.