No More Learning

"--"To be sure they do," said
he. --"Then they allow you to do anything you please, and never chide
you, or prevent you from doing what you desire. "--"By Jove! they do,
Socrates: they prevent me from doing a great many things. "--"What do
you mean," said I; "they wish you to be happy, and yet prevent you
from doing what you wish? Let us take an example: If you want to
ride in one of your father's chariots, and to hold the reins, when
it is competing in a race, won't they allow you, or will they
prevent you? "--"By Jove! no: they would not allow me," said he. "But
why should they? There is a charioteer, who is hired by my
father. "--"What do you mean? They allow a hired man, rather than
you, to do what he likes with the horses, and pay him a salary
besides? "--"And why not? " said he. --"Well then, I suppose they allow
you to manage the mule-team, and if you wanted to take the whip and
whip it, they would permit you. "--"How could they? " said
he. --"What? " said I: "is nobody allowed to whip it? "--"Of course,"
he said; "the muleteer. "--"A slave or a free man? "--"A slave," said
he. --"And so it seems they think more of a slave than of their son,
and entrust their property to him rather than to you, and allow him
to do what he pleases, whereas they prevent you. But, farther, tell
me this. Do they allow you to manage yourself, or do they not even
trust you to that extent? "--"How trust me? " said he. --"Then does
some one manage you? "--"Yes, my pedagogue here," said he. --"But he
is surely not a slave? "--"Of course he is, our slave," said he. --"Is
it not strange," said I, "that a freeman should be governed by a
slave? But, to continue, what is this pedagogue doing when he
governs you? "--"Taking me to a teacher, or something of the kind,"
he said. --"And these teachers, it cannot be that they too govern
you? "--"To any extent. "--"So then your father likes to set over you
a host of masters and managers; but, of course, when you go home to
your mother, she lets you do what you like, in order to make you
happy, either with the threads or the loom, when she is
weaving--does she not? She surely doesn't in the least prevent you
from handling the batten, or the comb, or any of the instruments
used in spinning. "--And he, laughing, said: "By Jove, Socrates; she
not only prevents me, but I should be beaten if I touched
them. "--"By Hercules," said I, "isn't it true that you have done
some wrong to your father and mother? "--"By Jove, not I," he
said. --"But for what reason, then, do they so anxiously prevent you
from being happy, and doing what you please, and maintain you the
whole day in servitude to some one or another, and without power to
do almost anything you like. It seems, indeed, that you derive no
advantage from all this wealth, but anybody manages it rather than
you, nor from your body, nobly born as it is, but some one else
shepherds it and takes care of it. But you govern nothing, Lysis,
and do nothing that you desire. "--"The reason, Socrates," he said,
"is, that I am not of age. "--Plato, _Lysis_.

The present state of the constitution is as follows: Citizenship is
a right of children whose parents are both of them citizens.
Registration as member of a deme or township takes place when
eighteen years of age are completed. Before it takes place the
townsmen of the deme find a verdict on oath, firstly, whether they
believe the youth to be as old as the law requires, and if the
verdict is in the negative he returns to the ranks of the boys.
Secondly, the jury find whether he is freeborn and legitimate. If
the verdict is against him he appeals to the Heliaea, and the
municipality delegate five of their body to accuse him of
illegitimacy. If he is found by the jurors to have been illegally
proposed for the register, the State sells him for a slave; if the
judgment is given in his favor, he must be registered as one of the
municipality. Those on the register are afterwards examined by the
senate, and if anyone is found not to be eighteen years old, a fine
is imposed on the municipality by which he was registered. After
approbation, they are called _epheboi_, or cadets, and the parents
of all who belong to a single tribe hold a meeting and, after being
sworn, choose three men of the tribe above forty years of age, whom
they believe to be of stainless character and fittest for the
superintendence of youth, and out of these the commons in ecclesia
select one superintendent for all of each tribe, and a governor of
the whole body of youths from the general body of the Athenians.
These take them in charge, and after visiting with them all the
temples, march down to Piraeus, where they garrison the north and
south harbors, Munychia and Acte. The commons also elect two
gymnastic trainers for them, and persons who teach them to fight in
heavy armor, to draw the bow, to throw the javelin, and to handle
artillery. Each of the ten commanders receives as pay a drachma
[about 20 cts. ] per diem, and each of the cadets four obols [about
13 cts. ]. Each commander draws the pay of the cadets of his own
tribe, buys with it the necessaries of life for the whole band (for
they mess together by tribes), and purveys for all their wants. The
first year is spent in military exercises. The second year the
commons meet in the theatre and the cadets, after displaying before
them their mastery in warlike evolutions, are each presented with a
shield and spear, and become mounted patrols of the frontier and
garrison the fortresses. They perform this service for two years,
wearing the equestrian cloak and enjoying immunity from civic
functions. During this period, to guard their military duties from
interruption, they can be parties to no action either as defendant
or plaintiff, except in suits respecting inheritance, or heiresses,
or successions to hereditary priesthoods. When the three years are
completed they fall into the ordinary body of citizens. --Aristotle,
_Constitution of Athens_ (_Poste's Version, with slight
alterations_).


That perfect harmony between power and worth at which the Athenian State
aimed, was something not easily attained or preserved. As far back as
its recorded history reaches, we find a struggle for power going on
between a party which possessed more power than its worth justified, and
a party which possessed less; that is, between a party which, having
once been worthy, strove to hold power in virtue of its past history,
and one that claimed power in virtue of the worth into which it was
growing: in a word, a struggle between declining aristocracy and growing
democracy. To the party in power, of course, this seemed a rebellion
against lawful authority and privilege, and it did its best to suppress
it. Hence came the rigorous legislation of Draco; later the more
conciliatory, less out-spoken, but equally aristocratic legislation of
Solon; then the tyranny of Pisistratus, lasting as long as he could hold
the balance of power between the contending parties; then the
constitution of Clisthenes, with the breaking up of the old Athenian
aristocratic system, the remodelling of the tribes, the degradation of
the Areopagus, and the definite triumph of democracy. To complete the
movement and, as it were, to consecrate it, came the Persian Wars, which
mark the turning-point, the _peripeteia_, in Athenian history and
education. Whatever efforts aristocracy makes to maintain itself after
this, are made in the name of, and under cover of a zeal for, democracy.

The aristocratic Athenian State was based upon land-ownership, slavery,
and the entire freedom of the land-owning class from all but family and
State duties, from all need of engaging in productive industry. So long
as the chief wealth of the State consisted in land and its produce, so
long the population was divided into two classes, the rich and the poor,
and so long the former had little difficulty in keeping all power in
its own hands. But no sooner did the growth of commerce throw wealth
into the hands of a class that owned no land, and was not above engaging
in industry, than this class began to claim a share in political power.
There were now two wealthy classes, standing opposed to each other, a
proud, conservative one, with "old wealth and worth," and a vain,
radical one, with new wealth and wants, both bidding for the favor of
the class that had little wealth, little worth, and many wants, and thus
making it feel its importance. Such is the origin of Athenian democracy.
It is the child of trade and productive industry. It owed its final
consecration to the Persian Wars, and especially to the battle of
Salamis, in which Athens was saved by her fleet, manned chiefly by
marines (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ) from the lower classes, the upper classes, as we have
seen, being trained only for land-service. Thus the battle of Salamis
was not only a victory of Greece over Persia, but of foreign trade over
home agriculture, of democracy over aristocracy.

The fact that the Athenian democracy owed its origin to trade
determined, in great measure, its history and tendencies. One of its
many results was that it opened Athens to the influx of foreign men,
foreign ideas, and foreign habits, not to speak of foreign gods, all of
which tended to break up the old self-contained, carefully organized
life of the people. In no department were their effects sooner or more
clearly felt than in that of education. From about the date of the
battle of Salamis, when the youthful Ionian, Anaxagoras, came to Athens,
a succession of men of "advanced" ideas in art and science sought a
field of action within her borders. Such a field, indeed, seemed
purposely to have been left open for them by the State, which had
provided no means of intellectual or moral education for its young
citizens, after they passed under its care (see p. 87). Nothing was
easier or more profitable than for these wise foreigners to constitute
themselves public teachers, and fill the place which the State had left
vacant. The State might occasionally object, and seek to punish one or
another of them for corrupting of the youth by the promulgation of
impious or otherwise dangerous ideas, as it did in the case of
Anaxagoras; but their activity was too much in harmony with a tendency
of the time,--a radical and individualistic tendency inseparable from
democracy,--to be dispensed with altogether. Hence it was that, within a
few years after the battle of Salamis, there flourished in Athens a
class of men unknown before within her boundaries, a class of private
professors, or "sophists," as they called themselves, who undertook to
teach theoretically what the State had assumed could be taught only
practically and by herself, viz. , virtue and wisdom. Their ideas were
novel, striking, and radical, hence congenial to a newly emancipated
populace, vain of its recent achievements, and contemptuous of all that
savored of the narrow, pious puritanism of the old time; their premises
were magnificent, and their fees high enough to impose upon a class that
always measures the value of a thing by what it is asked to pay for it;
their method of teaching was such as to flatter the vanity, and secure
the favor, of both pupils and parents. No wonder that their success was
immediate and their influence enormous.

From the days of Socrates to our own, 'sophist' has been a term of
reproach, and not altogether unjustly so. Hegel, Grote, and Zeller have,
indeed, shown that the sophists did not deserve all the obloquy which
has attached itself to their name, inasmuch as they were neither much
better nor much worse than any class of men who set up to teach new
doctrines for money, and, as wise economists, suit supply to demand;
nevertheless, it may be fairly enough said that they largely contributed
to demoralize Athens, by encouraging irreverence for the very
conceptions upon which her polity was built, and by pandering to some of
the most selfish and individualistic tendencies of democracy. If it be
said that they have their place in the history of human evolution, as
the heralds of that higher view of life which allows the individual a
sphere of activities and interests outside of that occupied by the
State, this may at once and without difficulty be admitted, without our
being thereby forced to regard them as noble men. The truth is, they
represented, in practice and in theory, the spirit of individualism,
which was then everywhere asserting itself against the spirit of
nationalism or polity, and which perhaps had to assert itself in an
exaggerated and destructive way, before the rightful claims of the two
could be manifested and harmonized. It is the incorporation of this
spirit of individualism into education that constitutes the "New
Education. "

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

Since it was to the young men, who, freed from the discipline of home,
pedagogue, school, and palaestra, could be met with anywhere, in the
street, the agora, the gymnasium, that the sophists directed their chief
attention, it was of course these who first showed the effects of their
teaching. But their influence, falling in, as it did, with the
pronounced radical tendencies of the time, soon made itself felt in all
grades of education, from the family to the university, in the form of
an irreverent, flippant, conceited rationalism, before whose
self-erected and self-corrupted tribunal every institution in heaven and
earth was to be tried. In the schools this influence showed itself in
various ways: (1) in an increased attention to literature, and
especially to the formal side of it, (2) in the tendency to substitute
for the works of the old epic and lyric poets the works of more recent
writers tinged with the new spirit, (3) in the introduction of new and
complicated instruments and kinds of music, (4) in an increasing
departure from the severe physical and moral discipline of the old days.
We now, for the first time, hear of a teacher of literature, distinct
from the music master, of teachers who possessed no copy of Homer
(Alcibiades is said to have chastised such a one), of flutes, citharas,
and the like in use in schools, of wildness and lewdness among boys of
tender age. In the palaestra the new spirit showed itself in a tendency
to substitute showy and unsystematic exercises for the vigorous and
graded exercises of the older time, to sacrifice education to execution.

But, as already remarked, the new spirit showed itself most clearly and
hurtfully in the higher education. The young men, instead of spending
their time in vigorous physical exercise in the gymnasia and open
country, began now to hang about the streets and public places,
listening to sophistic discussions, and to attend the schools of the
sophists, exercising their tongues more than any other part of their
bodies. The effect of this soon showed itself in a decline of physical
power, of endurance, courage, and manliness, and in a strong tendency to
luxury and other physical sins. They now began to imagine for themselves
a private life, very far from coincident with that demanded of a
citizen, and to look upon the old citizen-life, and its ideals,
sanctions, and duties, with contempt or pity, as something which they
had learnt to rise above. The glory and well-being of their country
were no longer their chief object of ambition. The dry rot of
individualism, which always seems to those affected by it an evidence of
health and manly vigor, was corrupting their moral nature, and preparing
the way for the destruction of the State. For it was but too natural
that these young men, when they came to be members of the State, should
neglect its lessons and claims, and, following the new teachings, live
to themselves. Thus, just as the character of the "Old Education" of
Athens showed itself in the behavior of her sons in the Persian Wars, so
that of her "New Education" showed itself fifty years later in the
Peloponnesian War, that long and disastrous struggle which wrecked
Athens and Greece.

Yet Athens and her education were not allowed to go to ruin without a
struggle. The aristocratic party long stuck to the old principles and
tried to give them effect; but, failing to understand the new
circumstances and to take account of them, it erred in the application
of them, by seeking simply to restore the old conditions. Individuals
also exerted their best efforts for the same end. AEschylus, who had
fought at Marathon, and who, more than any other Greek, was endowed with
the spirit of religion, interpreted the old mythology in an ethical
sense, and in this form worked it into a series of dramas, whereby the
history and institutions of the Greek people were shown to be due to a
guiding Providence of inexorable justice, rewarding each man according
to his works, abhorring proud homes "gilded with impurity of hands," and
dwelling with the pure and righteous, though housed in the meanest cot.
AEschylus thus became, not only the father of Greek tragedy, but also the
sublimest moral teacher Greece ever possessed. For moral grandeur there
is but one work in all literature that can stand by the side of
AEschylus' _Oresteia_, and that is the _Divine Comedy_. Yet AEschylus was
driven from Athens on a charge of impiety, and died in exile.

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

Among the individual citizens who labored with all their might to bring
back Athens to her old worth were two of very different character,
endowments, and position, the one laboring in the world of action, the
other in the world of thought. The first was Pericles, who, seeing that
democracy was the order of the day, accepted it, and, by his personal
character and position, strove to guide it to worthy ends. In order to
encourage gymnastic exercises, particularly among the sons of the newer
families, he built the Lyceum, in a grove sacred to Apollo, between
Cynosarges and the city walls, as a gymnasium for them. With a view to
encouraging among them the study of music, he built an odeon, or
music-hall, under the southeast end of the Acropolis. Both were
magnificent structures. What he did towards the completion of the great
theatre for the encouragement of dancing, we do not know; that this
entered into his plan, there can hardly be any doubt. But Pericles was
too wise a man to suppose that he could induce his pleasure-seeking
countrymen to subject themselves to the old discipline, without offering
them an object calculated to rouse their ambition and call forth their
energy. This object was nothing less than a united Greece, with Athens
as its capital. How hard he tried to make this object familiar to them,
and to render Athens worthy of the place he desired her to occupy, is
pathetically attested to this day by the Propylaea and the Parthenon. On
the frieze of the latter is represented the solemn sacrifice that was to
cement the union of the Hellenic people, and place it at the head of
civilization. When degenerate Greece resisted all his efforts to make
her become one peaceably, he tried to make her do so by force, and the
Peloponnesian War, started on a mere frivolous pretext, was the result.
He did not live long enough to learn the outcome of this desperate
attempt to wake his countrymen to new moral and political life, and it
was well. If he had, he might have been forced to recognize that he had
been attempting an impossible task,--trying to erect a strong structure
with rotten timber, to make a noble State out of ignoble, selfish men.
Unfortunately, the example of his own private life, in which he openly
defied one of the laws of the State, and tried to make concubinage
(? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ) respectable, more than undid all the good he sought to
accomplish. The truth is, Pericles was himself too deeply imbued with
the three vices of his time--rationalism, self-indulgence, and love of
show--to be able to see any true remedy for the evils that sprang from
them. What was needed was not letters, music, gymnastics, dancing, or
dream of empire, but something entirely different--a new moral
inspiration and ideal.

This, the second of the men to whom reference has been made, Socrates,
sought to supply. In the midst of self-indulgence, he lived a life of
poverty and privation; in the midst of splendor and the worship of
outward beauty, he pursued simplicity and took pleasure in his ugliness;
in the midst of self-assertive rationalism and all-knowing sophistry, he
professed ignorance and submission to the gods. The problem of how to
restore the moral life of Athens and Greece presented itself to Socrates
in this form: _The old ethical social sanctions, divine and human,
having, under the influence of rationalism and individualism, lost their
power, where and how shall we find other sanctions to take their place? _
To answer this one question was the aim of Socrates' whole life. He was
not long in seeing that any true answer must rest upon a comprehension
of man's entire nature and relations, and that the sophists were able to
impose upon his countrymen only because no such comprehension was
theirs. He saw that the old moral life, based upon naive tradition and
prescription, sanctioned by gods of the imagination, would have to give
place to a moral life resting upon self-understanding and reflection.
He accordingly adopted as his motto the command of the Delphic oracle,
_Know Thyself_ (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? o? ), and set to work with all his might to
obey it.

He now, therefore, went to meet the sophists on their own ground and
with their own methods, and he did this so well as to be considered by
many, Aristophanes among them, as the best possible representative of
the class. What is true is, that he was the first Athenian who undertook
to do what the sophists had for some time considered their special
function,--to impart a "higher education" to the youth and men of
Athens. He went about the streets, shops, walks, schools, and gymnasia
of the city, drawing all sorts of persons into conversation, and trying
to elicit truth for himself and them (for he pretended to know nothing).
He was never so pleased as when he met a real sophist, who professed to
have knowledge, and never so much in his element as when, in the
presence of a knot of young men, he could, by his ironical, subtle
questions, force said sophist to admit that he too knew nothing. The
fact was, Socrates, studying Heraclitus, had become convinced that the
reason why men fell into error was because they did not know themselves,
or their own thoughts, because what they called thoughts were mere
opinions, mere fragments of thoughts. He concluded that, if men were
ever to be redeemed from error, intellectual and moral, they must be
made to think whole thoughts. Accordingly, he took the ordinary opinions
of men and, by a series of well-directed questions, tried to bring out
their implications, that is, the wholes of which they were parts. Such
is the Socratic or dialectic (= conversational) method. It does not
pretend to impart any new knowledge, but merely, as Socrates said, to
deliver the mind of the thoughts with which it is pregnant. And Socrates
not only held that saving truth consisted of whole thoughts; he held
also that all such thoughts were universally and necessarily true; that,
while there might be many opinions about a thing, there could be but one
truth, the same for all men, and therefore independent of any man. This
was the exact opposite of what Protagoras the sophist had taught, the
opposite of the gospel of individualism (see p. 93). Man is so far from
being the measure of all things, that there is in all things a measure
to which he must conform, if he is not to sink into error. This measure,
this system of whole truths, implying an eternal mind to which it is
present, and by which it is manifested in the world, is just what man
arrives at, if he will but think out his thoughts in their completeness.
In doing so, he at once learns the laws by which the universe is
governed and finds a guide and sanction for his own conduct--a sanction
no longer external and imposed by the State, but internal and imposed by
the mind. A system like this involved a complete reversal of the old
view of the relation between man and the State, and at the same time
took the feet from under individualism. "It is true," said Socrates in
effect, "that the individual, and not the State, is the source of all
authority, the measure of all things; but he is so, not as individual,
but as endowed with the universal reason by which the world, including
the State, is governed. " This is the sum and substance of Socrates'
teaching, this is what he believed to be true self-knowledge. This is
the truth whose application to life begins a new epoch in human history,
and separates the modern from the ancient world; this is the truth that,
reiterated and vivified by Christianity, forms the very life of our life
to-day.

In adopting this view, Socrates necessarily formed "a party by himself,"
a party which could hope for no sympathy from either of the other two
into which his countrymen were divided.
The party of tradition charged
him with denying the gods of his country and corrupting her youth; the
radical party hated him because he convicted its champions of vanity,
superficiality, and ignorance. Between them, they compassed his death,
and Athens learnt, only when it was too late, that she had slain her
prophet. But Socrates, though slain, was not dead. His spirit lived on,
and the work which he had begun grew and prospered. Yet it could not
save Athens, except upon a condition which she neither would nor could
accept, that of remodelling her polity and the life of her citizens in
accordance with divine truth and justice. Indeed, though he discovered a
great truth, Socrates did not present it in a form in which it could be
accepted under the given conditions. He himself even did not by any
means see all the stupendous implications of his own principle, which,
in fact, was nothing less than the ground of all true ethics, all
liberty, and all science. It is doubtful whether any one sees them now,
and certain that they have been nowhere realized. Still his truth and
his life were not without their immediate effect upon Athens and
Athenian education. Men, working in his spirit, and inspired with his
truth, more or less clearly understood, almost immediately replaced the
sophists in Athens, and drew the attention of her citizens, old and
young, to the serious search for truth. In fact, from this time on, the
intellectual tendency began to prevail over the gymnastic and musical,
and this continued until, finally, it absorbed the whole life of the
people, and Athens, from being a university-State, became a
State-university. Such it was in the days of Cicero, Paul, Plutarch,
Lucian, and Proclus. That this one-sided tendency was fatal to the
political life of Athens, and therefore, in some degree, to its moral
life, is clear enough; and, though we cannot hold Socrates personally
responsible for this result, we must still admit that it was one which
flowed from his system of thought. Personally, indeed, Socrates was a
moral hero, and "five righteous" men like him, had they appeared, would
have gone far to save Athens; but this very heroism, this inborn
enthusiasm for righteousness, blinded him so far as to make him believe
that men had only to know the right in order to be ready to follow it.
Hence that exaggerated importance attached to right knowing, and that
comparative neglect of right feeling and right doing, which in the
sequel proved so paralyzing. Hence the failure of Socrates' teaching to
stem the tide of corruption in Athens, and restore her people to heroism
and worth.

Socrates left behind him many disciples, some of whom distinguished
themselves in practical ways, others as founders of philosophic
schools, emphasizing different sides of his teaching. He was but a few
years in his grave when two of these were teaching regularly in the two
old gymnasia of Athens. Plato, a full-blooded Athenian, was teaching in
the Academy the intellectual and moral theories of his master, while
Antisthenes, a half-breed (his mother being a Thracian), was inculcating
the lesson of his heroic life in Cynosarges. Their followers were
called, respectively, Academics and Cynics. Thus, by these two men, was
the higher education for the first time introduced into the public
institutions of Athens.

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

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




CHAPTER II

XENOPHON

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

Wealth without Worth is no harmless housemate. --Sappho

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

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

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


Xenophon was in no sense a philosopher or a practical teacher, but he
was a man of sterling worth, of knightly courage, of wide and varied
experience, of strong sagacity, and of genial disposition, a keen
observer, and a charming writer. He was a true old Athenian puritan,
broadened and softened by study and contact with the world. He hated
democracy so cordially that he would not live in Athens to witness its
vulgarity and disorder; but he loved his country, and desired to see
its people restored to their ancient worth. He believed that this could
be done only by some great, royal personality, like Lycurgus or Cyrus,
enforcing a rigid discipline, and once more reducing the man to the
citizen. Unwilling, probably, to hold up hated Sparta as a model to his
beaten and smarting countrymen, he laid the scene of his pedagogical
romance in far-off Persia.

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

"Cyrus is still celebrated in legend and song by the barbarians as a man
of extraordinary personal beauty, and as of a most gentle, studious, and
honor-loving disposition, which made him ready to undergo any labor, and
brave any danger, for the sake of praise. Such is the account that has
been handed down of his appearance and disposition. He was, of course,
educated in accordance with the laws of the Persians. These laws seem to
begin their efforts for the public weal at a different point from those
of most other states; for most states, after allowing parents to educate
their children as they please, and the older people even to spend their
time according to their own preference, lay down such laws as: Thou
shalt not steal, Thou shalt not rob, Thou shalt not commit burglary,
Thou shalt not commit assault, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou
shalt not disobey a magistrate, etc. ; and if any one transgresses any of
these laws, they inflict punishment on him. The Persian laws, on the
contrary, provide beforehand that the citizens shall never, from the
very first, have any disposition to commit a wicked or base act. And
they do so in this way. They have what they call a Freemen's Square,
where the royal palace and the other public buildings stand. From this
square are removed all wares and chafferers, with their cries and
vulgarities, to another place, so that their din and disorder may not
interfere with the decorum of the cultivated class. This square in the
neighborhood of the public buildings is divided into four parts, one for
boys, one for youths (? ? ? ? ? ? ), one for mature men, and one for men
beyond the military age. The hour when these shall appear in their
places is settled by law. The boys and mature men come at daybreak, the
older men when they think fit, except on the special days when they are
bound to appear. The youths pass the night by the public buildings in
light armor, only those who are married being excused. These are not
hunted up, unless they have been ordered beforehand to appear; but it is
not thought decent to be often absent. Each of these divisions is under
the charge of twelve governors, one from each of the twelve tribes into
which the Persians are divided. The governors of the boys are chosen
from among the elderly men, with special view to their fitness for
making the most of boys, while those of the youths are chosen from among
the mature men upon a similar principle. Those of the mature men are
selected with a view to their ability to hold these to their regular
duties, and to the special commands of the supreme authority. Even the
old men have presidents appointed over them, who see that they perform
their duty. What the duties of each are we shall now state, in order to
show just how provision is made for securing the highest worth on the
part of the citizens.

"First, then, the boys, when they go to school, spend their time in
learning justice. They say they go for that purpose, just as our boys go
to learn letters. Their governors spend the greater part of the day in
acting as judges among them. It is needless to say that boys, as well as
men, bring charges against each other of theft and robbery and violence
and deceit and slander, and similar things, and those whom the judges
find guilty of any of these they punish. But they also punish those whom
they find bringing false charges. They pronounce judgment likewise on a
charge which, more than anything else, makes men hate each other, and
for which they are judged less than for any other, namely, ingratitude.
If the judges find a boy in a position to return a favor and not doing
it, they punish him severely, believing that persons who are ungrateful
will, more than any others, be undutiful to the gods, to parents,
country, and friends. It is generally held that ingratitude, more than
aught else, leads to irreverence, and we need not add that _it_ is the
prime mover in every form of baseness. They teach the boys also
self-denial, and these are greatly aided in learning this virtue from
seeing it daily practised by their elders. Another thing they teach them
is obedience to those placed in authority over them; and they are
greatly aided in learning this, by seeing their elders strictly obeying
their governors. Another thing yet which they teach them is
self-discipline in matters of eating and drinking; and they are greatly
aided in this by seeing that their elders never absent themselves for
the purpose of eating, until they are permitted to do so by their
governors, as well as by the fact that they (the boys) do not eat with
their mothers, but with their teachers, and at a signal from their
governors. As food, they bring with them from home bread, as a relish,
nasturtium, and in order to drink, if they are thirsty, they bring an
earthen cup to draw water from the river with. In addition to all these
things, the boys learn to shoot with the bow and to throw the javelin.
Up to the age of sixteen or seventeen years, these are the studies in
which the boys engage; after that they are transferred to the class of
cadets (? ? ? ? ? ? ).

"These cadets spend their time in this way: For ten years from the time
when they graduate from the boys' class, they sleep, as we have already
said, in the precincts of the public buildings, acting at once as a
guard to the city and practising self-denial. It is generally agreed,
indeed, that this is the age which especially requires attention. During
the day they are at the disposal of their governors, and ready to
perform any public service required. If no such service is demanded,
they remain in the neighborhood of the public buildings. When the king
goes out to hunt, which he does many times a month, he takes with him
one-half of the tribes, and leaves the other behind. Those youths who
accompany him must carry with them bows and, in a sheath alongside
their quivers, a bill or scimitar; also a light shield, and two javelins
apiece, one to throw, the other to use, if necessary, at close quarters.
For this reason they make hunting a matter of public concern, and the
king, as in war, acts as their leader, hunts himself, and sees that the
others hunt, the Persians being of opinion that this is the best of all
preparations for war. And, indeed, it accustoms them to rise early, and
to bear heat and cold; it affords them exercise in marching and running,
and compels them to use their bows or their javelins upon wild animals,
wherever they happen to come upon them. They are often forced, moreover,
to sharpen their courage, when they find themselves face to face with
some powerful animal. They must, of course, wound the one that comes to
close quarters, and hold at bay the one that attacks them. Hence it is
difficult to find in war anything that is absent from the chase. When
they go out to hunt, the young men, of course, take with them a larger
luncheon than the boys are allowed to have; but this is the only
difference between the two. And while they are hunting, they sometimes
do not lunch at all; but, if they have to remain beyond their time on
account of some game, or otherwise, if they wish to prolong the chase,
they make a dinner of this lunch, and on the following day continue the
hunt till dinner-time, counting the two days one, because they consume
only one day's food. And they do this for the sake of practice, so that,
if ever they should run short of provisions in war, they may be able to
do the same thing. These youths have as a relish what game they capture
in the chase, otherwise they have nasturtium. And if any one thinks
that they eat without pleasure, when they have only nasturtium with
their food, or drink without pleasure, when they drink water, let him
remember how sweet barley-cake and wheaten bread are when he is hungry,
and how sweet water is when he is thirsty. The tribes that remain
behind, when the king goes hunting, spend their time in the same studies
which they pursued as boys, including shooting and javelin-casting, and
in these continual contests are going on. There are likewise public
exhibitions in them, at which prizes are offered; and whichever tribe
contains most young men exceptionally proficient, manly, and steady, is
commended by the citizens, who likewise honor, not only their present
governor, but also the governor who had charge of them as boys. The
young men who are left behind are also employed by the authorities, if
any such service is required as manning a guard-house, tracking out
malefactors, running down robbers, or anything demanding strength and
swiftness. Such are the studies of the young men. And when they have
passed ten years in these, they graduate into the class of mature men.

"From the date of this graduation, they spend five and twenty years more
in the following manner: In the first place, like the young men, they
place themselves at the disposal of the authorities for any public
service requiring at once sagacity and unimpaired strength. If they are
required to take the field in war, men proficient as they are go armed,
no longer with bows and javelins, but with what are called hand-to-hand
weapons, breast-plates, shields in their left hands, such as we see in
pictures of the Persians, and a sword or bill in their right. And all
the officials are drawn from this class, except the boys' teachers. And
when they have passed twenty-five years in this class, they are
something more than fifty years of age. At that age they graduate into
the class of elders, as, indeed, they are called.

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

"To give a clearer notion of the polity of the Persians as a whole, I
will retrace my steps a little. After what has been said, this may be
done in a very few words: The Persians, then, are said to number about
one hundred and twenty thousand. Of these, none is excluded by law from
honors or offices; but all Persians are allowed to send their sons to
the public schools of justice. However, it is only those who are able to
maintain their sons without employment that send them there: the rest do
not. On the other hand, those that are educated by the public teachers
are permitted to spend their youth among the _eph? boi_, while those who
have not completed this education are not. Again those that pass their
youth among the _eph? boi_, and come up to the legal requirements, are
allowed to graduate into the class of mature men, and to participate in
honors and offices; whereas those who do not pass through the grade of
the _eph? boi_ do not rise to the class of mature men. Finally, those who
complete the curriculum of the mature men without reproach, pass into
the class of elders. Thus it is that this class of elders is composed of
men who have passed through all the grades of culture. Such is the
polity of the Persians, and such is the system of training whereby they
endeavor to secure the highest worth. "

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

There is, however, one point in the scheme which shows that it is
reactionary, directed against prevailing tendencies. Not one word is
said of the intellectual side of education, of music or letters. It is
evident that Xenophon, himself a man of no mean literary attainments,
clearly saw the dangers to Greek life and liberty involved in that
exaggerated devotion to literary and intellectual pursuits which
followed the teaching of the sophists and Socrates, and that, in order
to check this perilous tendency, he drew up a scheme of education from
which intellectual and literary pursuits are altogether excluded, in
which justice takes the place of letters, and music is not mentioned.

This suggests a curious inquiry in respect to his _Memoirs of Socrates_.
This work has generally been regarded as giving us a more correct notion
of the real, living Socrates than the manifestly idealizing works of
Plato. But was not Xenophon, who could not fail to see the future power
of Socrates' influence, as anxious as Plato to claim the prophet as the
champion of his own views, and does not this fact determine the whole
character of his work? Is it not a romance, in the same sense that the
_Cyropaedia_ is, with only this difference, that the facts of Socrates'
life, being fairly well known to those for whom Xenophon was writing,
could not be treated with the same freedom and disregard as those of
Cyrus' life?

Before we part with Xenophon, we must call attention to another treatise
of his, in which he deals with a subject that was then pressing for
consideration--the education of women. While, as we have seen, the
AEolian states and even Dorian Sparta provided, in some degree, for
women's education, Athens apparently, conceiving that woman had no
duties outside of the family, left her education entirely to the care of
that institution. The conservative Xenophon does not depart from this
view; but, seeing the moral evils that were springing from the neglect
of women and their inability to be, in any sense, companions to their
cultured, or over-cultured, husbands, he lays down in his _OEconomics_ a
scheme for the education of the young wife _by her husband_. As this
affords us an admirable insight into the lives of Athenian girls and
women, better, indeed, than can be found elsewhere, we cannot do better
than transcribe the first part of it. It takes the form of a
conversation between Socrates and a young husband, named Ischomachus
(Strong Fighter), and is reported by the former. Socrates tells how,
seeing Ischomachus sitting at leisure in a certain portico, he entered
into conversation with him, paid him an acceptable compliment, and
inquired how he came to be nearly always busy out of doors, seeing that
he evidently spent little time in the house. Ischomachus replies:--

"'As to your inquiry, Socrates, it is true that I never remain indoors.
Nor need I; for my wife is fully able by herself to manage everything in
the house. ' 'This again, Ischomachus,' said I, 'is something that I
should like to ask you about, whether it was you who taught your wife to
be a good wife, or whether she knew all her household duties when you
received her from her father and mother. ' 'Well, Socrates,' said he,
'what do you suppose she knew when I took her, since she was hardly
fifteen when she came to me, and, during the whole of her life before
that, special care had been taken that she should see, hear, and ask as
little as possible. Indeed, don't you think I ought to have been
satisfied if, when she came to me, she knew nothing but how to take wool
and turn it into a garment, and had seen nothing but how tasks in
spinning are assigned to maids? As regards matters connected with eating
and drinking, of course she was extremely well educated when she came,
and this seems to me the chief education, whether for a man or a woman. '
'In all other matters, Ischomachus,' said I, 'you yourself instructed
your wife, so as to make her an excellent housewife. ' 'To be sure,' said
he, 'but not until I had first sacrificed, and prayed that I might
succeed in teaching her, and she might succeed in learning, what was
best for both of us. ' 'Then,' said I, 'your wife took part in your
sacrifice and in these prayers, did she not? ' 'Certainly she did,' said
Ischomachus, 'and solemnly promised to the gods that she would be what
she ought to be, and showed every evidence of a disposition not to
neglect what was taught her. ' 'But do, I beseech you, Ischomachus,
explain to me,' said I, 'what was the first thing you set about teaching
her? I shall be more interested in hearing you tell that, than if you
told me all about the finest gymnastic or equestrian exhibition. ' And
Ischomachus replied: 'What _should_ I teach her? As soon as she could be
handled, and was tame enough to converse, I spoke to her in some such
way as this: Tell me, my dear, have you ever considered why I took _you_
as my wife, and why your parents gave you to me? That it was not because
I could not find any one else to share my bed, you know as well as I.
No, but because I was anxious to find for myself, and your parents were
anxious to find for you, the most suitable partner in home and
offspring, I selected you, and your parents, it seems, selected me, out
of all possible matches. If, then, God shall ever bless us with
children, then we will take the greatest care of them, and try to give
them the best possible education; for it will prove a blessing to both
of us to have the very best of helpers and supports in our old age. But
at present we have this as our common home. And all that I have, I pass
over to the common stock, and all that you have brought with you, you
have added to the same. Nor must we begin to count which of us has
contributed the larger number of things, but must realize that whichever
of us is the better partner contributes the more valuable things. Then,
Socrates, my wife replied, and said: In what way can I cooperate with
you? What power have I? Everything rests with you. My mother told me
that my only duty was to be dutiful. Assuredly, my dear, said I, and my
father told me the same thing. But it is surely the duty of a dutiful
husband and a dutiful wife to act so that what they have may be improved
to the utmost, and by every fair and lawful means increased to the
utmost. And what do you find, said my wife, that I can do towards
helping you to build up our house? Dear me! said I, whatever things the
gods have endowed you with the power to do, and the law permits, try to
do these to the best of your ability. And what _are_ these? said she. It
strikes me, said I, that they are by no means the least important
things, unless it be true that in the hive the queen-bee is entrusted
with the least important functions. Indeed, it seems to me, my dear, I
continued, that the very gods have yoked together this couple called
male and female with a very definite purpose, viz. to be the source of
the greatest mutual good to the yoke-fellows. In the first place, this
union exists in order that living species may not die out, but be
preserved by propagation; in the second, the partners in this union, at
least in the case of human beings, obtain through it the supports of
their old age.