Nor could this be otherwise,
seeing the nature of the divine things, the contemplation of which was
reckoned so important.
seeing the nature of the divine things, the contemplation of which was
reckoned so important.
Aristotle and Ancient Educational Ideals by Thomas Davidson
Hardly any motive is so powerful.
When a boy is sent to school, his teacher's first business is to
investigate his character and capacity. The chief marks of ability are
memory and power of imitation. Imitation is not mimicry, which is always
a sign of low nature. Slowness, though objectionable, is better than
precocity, which should be discouraged in every way. Different treatment
is required for different boys: some need the bit, some the spur. The
best boy is the one "whom praise excites, whom glory pleases, who cries
when he is beaten. Such a one may be nourished with emulation; reproach
will sting him; honor will rouse him. " Boys ought to have seasons of
rest and play, neither too short to afford recreation, nor too long to
encourage idleness. Games of question and answer are good for
sharpening the wits. In play an excellent opportunity is offered to the
teacher for learning the character of his pupils. Corporal punishment is
altogether to be deprecated, and, indeed, is unneeded when the teacher
does his duty.
What boys learn in school is grammar; but this must be supplemented by
music and astronomy. Without the former it will be impossible to scan
verse; without the latter, to understand certain allusions and modes of
fixing dates in the poets. A little philosophy is necessary for the sake
of understanding such poets as Empedocles and Lucretius; geometry, in
order to give practice in apodictic reasoning, as well as for practical
uses. Thus the curriculum of school education will consist of Grammar,
Music, Astronomy, Philosophy, and Geometry.
Grammar consists of two parts, (1) _Methodics_, or the art of correct
speaking, (2) _Historics_ (German _Realien_), the interpretation of
poets, historians, philosophers, etc. _Methodics_--grammar in the modern
sense--should aim at enabling a boy to speak and write with correctness,
clearness, and elegance. All barbarisms (_i. e. _ foreign words and
idioms), solecisms, affectations, and careless pronunciations are to be
avoided. In the use of language, four things are to be taken into
account, (1) reason, (2) antiquity, (3) authority, (4) custom. In
reading, the boy must be taught "where to draw his breath, where to
divide a verse, where the sense is complete, where it begins, where the
voice is to be raised, where lowered, what inflections to use, what is
to be uttered slowly, what rapidly, what forcibly, what gently. " "That
he may be able to do all this, he must _understand_. Reading must above
all be manly and grave, with a certain sweetness. " Poetry must not be
read either as prose, nor yet in a sing-song way. All theatrical
personification, and all gesticulation smacking of the comedian, are to
be avoided.
For _Histories_ the teacher must be very careful in his selection of
texts. Homer and Virgil are best to begin with. Though their full import
cannot be understood by youth, they awake enthusiasm for what is noble
and spirited, and will often be read in later life. "Tragedies are
useful. There is nourishment in the lyric poets"; but they must be used
with caution and in selections, from which everything relating to love
must be excluded. Even Horace must be expurgated. Satire and comedy,
though of the utmost value for the orator, must be deferred till the
moral character is sufficiently established not to be injured by them.
Passages from the poets ought to be committed to memory. In all reading,
the utmost care ought to be taken to promote purity and manliness
(_sanctitas et virilitas_).
After reading a piece of poetry, boys must be made to analyze and scan
it, to point out peculiarities of language and rhythm, to enumerate the
different meanings of words, to name and explain the various figures of
speech. But far more important than all this it is, that the teacher
should impress on their minds the importance of systematic arrangement
and propriety of description, "showing what is suitable for each role,
what is commendable in thought, what in expression, where diffuseness
is proper, and where brevity. " In giving collateral information, whether
in history, mythology, or geography, he should keep within bounds,
giving only what is necessary and rests on respectable authority. "It is
one of the virtues of a schoolmaster to be ignorant of some things. "
As regards lessons in composition, the teacher should begin by making
his pupils write out from memory the _Fables_ of AEsop, in pure, simple,
direct, and unadorned language. He should then call upon them to turn
poetry into prose, and to paraphrase it, either briefly or diffusely. He
should then make them write out proverbs, apophthegms, aphorisms, short,
brilliant anecdotes, etc. Famous stories related by the poets may be
used as subjects for composition, but chiefly for the sake of
information. Beyond this the schoolmaster should not go in the matter of
composition. The rest should be left to the rhetorician.
It is of great importance in youthful education that several subjects
should be studied at the same time. Boys like and need variety, and,
when they get it, it is truly astonishing how much they can accomplish.
"There is not the slightest reason for fearing that boys will shrink
from the labor of study. No age is less easily fatigued. " . . . "Boys are
naturally more inclined to hard work than young men. "
Such, in brief, is Quintilian's school-programme. It has no place for
physical science (except Astronomy), for manual training, or for
physical exercise. Play is, indeed, permitted as a necessary recreation,
and gymnastics and physical training (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ) are recommended in
so far as they are necessary to enable the budding orator to move and
to gesticulate gracefully; but that is all. "Nothing can please that is
not becoming. "
As soon as he is ready, the young aspirant for oratorical fame passes
into the hands of the rhetorician, under whom he learns all the arts,
and acquires all that knowledge, necessary to fit him for his
profession. No kind of knowledge, and no moral excellence ought to be
foreign to the orator. Quintilian is very severe upon the philosophers
for claiming, in their title, to be, in an exceptional way, lovers of
wisdom, and maintains that the true orator is the truly wise and good
man. He is surely superior to the philosopher, who turns his back upon
the world and manifests no interest in human affairs. Moreover,
"philosophy may be simulated; eloquence cannot. "
The closing chapter of the last book of Quintilian's work treats of the
orator after his retirement from public life. He is to devote himself to
writing and to the study of art, science, and philosophy. The picture is
charming; but it ends with death, and there is nothing beyond. God may
be defined for oratorical purposes; but his existence is a matter of
conjecture.
In Quintilian we have the highest type of the civic man living under a
cosmopolitan despotism. His defects--his pedantry, his servility, his
externality, his worldliness--are only such as are natural to a good man
placed in this position, without any outlook upon a higher existence.
CHAPTER III
PLOTINUS AND PHILOSOPHIC EDUCATION
The material body, which is subject to motion, change, dissolution,
and division, requires an immaterial principle to hold and bind it
together in unity. This principle of unity is the soul. If it were
material, it would require another principle of unity, and so on _ad
infinitum_, till an immaterial first were reached, which would then
be the true soul. --Ammonius Saccas.
Intelligible things, when they are united with other things, are not
changed, as corporeal things are when they are united with each
other, but remain as they are, and what they are. Soul and body are
intimately united, but not mixed. The soul can separate and withdraw
itself from the body, not only in sleep, but also in thought. As the
sun illuminates and yet remains itself a separate light, so is the
soul in its relation to the body. It is not in the body as in place;
rather the body is in it and of it. --_Id. _
One's duty is to become first man, then God. --Hierocles.
Neither Schelling nor Baader nor Hegel has refuted Plotinus: in many
ways he soars above them. --Arthur Richter.
What is loved by us here is mortal and hurtful. Our love is love for
an image, that often turns into its opposite, because what we loved
was not truly worthy of love, nor the good which we sought. God
alone is the true object of our love. --Plotinus.
The practical and the contemplative lives, which Plato and Aristotle had
labored so hard to combine and correlate, in order to save human worth
and Greek civilization, fell asunder, despite all their
efforts--greatly, of course, to the detriment of both. In the terrible
picture which Quintilian draws of Roman life in the first century of
our era, we see one side of the result of this divorce: in the cruel
satires of Lucian, written less than a century later, we may find
depicted the other. But, just as, in the midst of the moral corruption
and brutality, there arose from time to time worthy men like Quintilian
and Tacitus, so amid the philosophical charlatanry and pretence, there
still survived a few earnest thinkers, who aspired with all the power
that was in them to divine truth, and strove to find in the eternal
world that reality which was so miserably wanting in this. By far the
greater number of these men were neither Greeks nor Romans, but
Orientals, men whose thinking combined Greek philosophy with some
earnest form of Eastern mysticism. To such men this life was merely an
opportunity of preparing for a higher, in which lay all beauty, all
good, and all blessedness. It is not difficult to see what sort of
education would follow from this view of life. It may best be
characterized by the one word "ascetic. " It no longer seeks to train
harmoniously all the faculties of body and mind with a view to a worthy
social life, but to enable the soul to die to the body and to social
life, and so rise to union and consubstantiality with God. In no sect
was this tendency more marked than in the Neoplatonic, or, as it might
equally well be called, the Neoaristotelian or Neopythagorean, the
greatest name in which is Plotinus.
Plotinus was born in Egypt about A. D. 205. His nationality is unknown.
He received his education in Alexandria--grammar, rhetoric, and
philosophy,--and adopted the teaching of the last as a profession. He
sought in vain, however, for a system that could satisfy him, till he
met with Ammonius "the Sack-bearer," whom he at once recognized as his
master. This Ammonius had been reared as a Christian, but had
apostatized on becoming acquainted with philosophy. His Christian
education, however, had not been altogether lost on him; for he had
carried over into philosophy a religious spirit, and not a few of the
esoteric ideas then current in certain Christian sects. It was this,
apparently, that enabled him to give a new direction to philosophy, and
to found a new school, whose influence upon subsequent, even Christian,
thought, it would be difficult to overestimate. His school was the
Neoplatonic, which, more than any other, united profound thought with
mystic theosophy (? ? ? ? ? ? ).
Plotinus listened to Ammonius for eleven years, and, on the death of the
latter, paid a visit to Persia, with the view of studying the religion
of that country. He shortly returned, however, and, after a brief
sojourn at Antioch, betook himself, in his fortieth year (A. D. 244), to
Rome, where he spent the remainder of his life as a teacher of
philosophy. His saintly character and his deep, religious thought drew
round him a considerable number of earnest men and women, including even
members of the imperial family. He made some attempt to found in
Campania a Platonopolis, so that his principles might be realized in a
social life, in a theosophic community; but this was never carried out.
He died in A. D. 270. Plotinus was the only truly great, original ancient
thinker after Aristotle.
While Plato and Aristotle had sought to rise to the intelligible world
from, and by means of, the sensible, Plotinus, believing that he has
attained a direct, intuitional knowledge of the former, sets out from it
and thence tries to reach the other. At the summit of being he finds the
supreme Platonic principle, the One or the Good, absolutely transcendent
and self-sufficient; next below this, the supreme Aristotelian
principle, Intelligence or Absolute Knowing, the _locus_ of all ideas;
and third, the supreme principle of the Stoics, Soul, Life, or Zeus, the
animating principle of the world. Good, Intelligence, Life--these are
Plotinus' divine trinity, evolved by a process of abstraction from the
_Nous_ of Aristotle (see p. 161). The members of this trinity are
neither personal, conscious, nor equal. Each lower is caused by, but
does not emanate from, the next above it; and this causation is due, not
to any act of free will, but to an inner necessity. Thus the trinity of
Plotinus is a mere energy, acting according to necessary laws. The third
member of it turns toward matter, which is mere poverty and hunger for
being, and, in so doing, produces a world of gods, daemons, and mundane
beings, the highest of which last is man. All that has matter has
multiplicity.
It is easy enough to see what kind of ethics and education will spring
from such a system as this. Inasmuch as the good means self-sufficiency,
freedom from multiplicity and matter, evil means dependence,
multiplicity, materiality. Whatever evil there is in man is due to his
connection with matter, for which he is in no sense responsible. His
sole business, if he desires blessedness, is to free himself from
matter and multiplicity, and return to the unity of the Supreme Good.
The steps by which this may be accomplished are, (1) Music or Art, (2)
Love, (3) Philosophy or Dialectic: through all these he rises above
multiplicity into unity. In all this there is, obviously, neither moral
evil nor moral good, and, indeed, the world of Plotinus contains no
moral element, for the simple reason that it contains nothing personal,
either in God or man. Evil is the product of necessity, and
consciousness, implying as it does, multiplicity, is part of it. The
unethical character of Plotinus' teaching comes out very clearly in his
reversal of the positions of instruction and purgation in the scheme of
education. According to the old view, purgation was a mere medical
process, preparatory to ethical training (see p. 7). According to the
Neoplatonic view, ethical training and the "political virtues" are a
mere preparation for purgation and the intellectual virtues. And this is
perfectly logical; for evil, being physical, must be cured by physical
means. And the means which Plotinus recommends are magical, rather than
moral; rites and prayers, rather than heroic deeds; the suppression of
the will, rather than its exercise.
Plotinus is too much of a Greek to accept, or even see, all the
consequences of his own theory, which makes moral life consist in an
attempt to escape from the world and to quench consciousness and
personality. Accordingly, though he has a poor opinion of civic life (a
thing excusable enough in those days), he believes that the civic
virtues ought to be cultivated, as a means toward the higher, and has
apparently nothing to say against the ordinary grammatical, rhetorical,
and musical education of his time. He has a good deal to say in favor of
Mathematics, as a preparation for what to him is the supreme branch of
education, Dialectics. But the tendency of his teaching is only too
obvious, and the conclusions which he did not draw, time and succeeding
generations drew for him. The effect of Neoplatonism was, in the long
run, to make the super-civic part of man the whole man, to discredit
political life and political effort, and to pave the way for the mystic,
the ascetic, and the hermit. Nor were the tendencies of the other
philosophical schools in any marked degree different. Thus philosophy,
instead of contributing to harmonize man and society, and to restore
moral life, came to be one of the strongest agencies in bringing about
confusion and dissolution, by ignoring moral life altogether, embracing
superstition, and turning man into a mere plaything of blind necessity
and magical forces. And thus ancient civilization fell to pieces,
because man himself had fallen to pieces, and each piece tried to set
itself up for the whole. The civic fragment finds its highest expression
in Quintilian, the super-civic in Plotinus. Ere the fragments can be
united into a truly moral being, a member of a truly moral society, a
new combining force, unknown to either rhetorician or philosopher, must
arise.
CHAPTER IV
CONCLUSION
Truly it was an old world, and even Caesar's patriotic genius was not
enough to make it young again. The dawn does not return till the
night has fully set in. --Mommsen.
My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,
saith the Lord. --Isaiah.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all
thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first
commandment. And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself. --Jesus.
Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things
that are God's. --_Id. _
Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings? and not one of them is
forgotten in the sight of God. But the very hairs of your head are
all numbered. --_Id. _
We love because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and
hateth his brother, he is a liar. --John.
By one intelligible form, which is the divine Essence, and one
conscious intention, which is the divine Word, things may be known
in their multiplicity by God. --Thomas Aquinas.
If God acts in all things, and such action in no way derogates from
his dignity, but even belongs to his universal and supreme power, he
cannot consider it below him, nor does it stain his dignity, if he
extend his providence to the individual things of this world. --_Id. _
Une immense esperance a passe sur la terre. --Alfred de Musset.
We have seen that the Greek ideal of life rested upon the complete
identification of the man with the citizen. We have seen also how this
ideal was paralyzed by the growth of individualism; how the wisest men
thought to render this innocuous and even beneficent, by providing for
it a sphere of contemplation, superior to that of practice, but
organically related to it, and, finally how, with the failure of this
attempt, the two sides of human nature, divorced from each other,
degenerated, the one into selfish worldliness, the other into equally
selfish other-worldliness, both conditions equally destitute of moral
significance.
This sad result was mainly due to three causes, (1) that the remedies
proposed for individualism were not sufficient, (2) that the best remedy
was set aside, (3) that the conditions for which the remedies were
offered soon ceased to exist. Both Plato and Aristotle wrote for the
small Greek polities, which lost their autonomy through the Macedonian
conquest. If it may be doubted whether even the proposals of the latter
would have redeemed these polities, had they continued free, it is
certain that they would have been ineffective under the changed
circumstances. At all events, they were never adopted, and even for the
super-civic man the teaching of Plato was preferred to his.
As the new cosmopolitanism deepened the gulf between the citizen and the
individual, and immeasurably widened the sphere of the latter, in the
same proportion did the teaching of Plato fail to bridge over that gulf,
and provide activity for that sphere. To tell the super-civic man now
that his function was to contemplate divine things and oracularly
deliver laws for the guidance of the world, would have argued an absence
of humor not common in those days. Besides, those persons who claimed
to have contemplated divine things showed no such fitness for
legislation as to induce practical men to accept their guidance. The
sober fact was, that the contemplation of divine things, which more and
more absorbed the energy of Greek thought, was, except for Aristotle, a
mere vague asperation without moral value, and became ever more a sort
of mystic ecstasy, in which the individual, instead of acquiring insight
and power to live worthily and beneficently in the world, was thrown
back upon himself, with his will paralyzed.
Nor could this be otherwise,
seeing the nature of the divine things, the contemplation of which was
reckoned so important. Instead of being personal attributes, or a person
imposing a moral law seen to be binding, they were mere abstractions,
increasing in emptiness the higher they were in the series, the highest
being absolute vacancy. In vain had Aristotle protested that all reality
is individual: the Platonic theory, that all knowledge is of ideas or
universals, prevailed, with the result that the highest knowledge was
held to be knowledge of that which is absolutely universal, viz.
indeterminate being or, as Plotinus held, something lacking even the
determination of being--the Supreme Good. That the super-civic man
should find satisfaction in gazing into vacancy, or be any more valuable
in the world after he had done so, no matter how spotless his life and
ecstatic his look, is inconceivable.
But while, in the Greek world, the sphere of activity of the super-civic
man was vanishing into nothingness, among a small and obscure band of
restored exiles of Semitic race, that sphere had come to claim the
entire man and all his relations, practical and spiritual. Isaiah's
little band of faithful followers (see p. 133) had grown into a nation,
living by no law save that of Jehovah, a very real, very awful, and very
holy personality, whom the heaven of heavens could not contain, but who
yet watched the rising up and the sitting down of every son of man. Long
before Quintilian wrote his elegant treatise on rhetoric, or Plotinus
his pantheistic Enneads, there had sprung from the bosom of this people
a man who, bursting, at the expense of his life, the narrow bounds of
his nationally, elevated the theocracy of his people into a Kingdom of
Heaven, which he had bade proclaim to all the world. It was proclaimed,
and then (though to some it seemed a stumbling-block, and to others
foolishness) the super-civic man, who for hundreds of years had been
wandering in darkness, in search of his fatherland, suddenly became
aware that he had found it in the Church of Christ. He now no longer
tries to escape from the visible world into the emptiness of an abstract
first principle; but, in the service of a First Principle who is the
most concrete of realities, and who numbers the very hairs of his head,
he goes down into the most loathsome depths of the material world to
elevate and redeem the meanest of the sons of men. There is no question
of bond or free, ruler or ruled, now. In the Kingdom of Heaven there are
no such relations. The only greatness recognized there is greatness in
service; the only law, the Law of Love. Love! yes, the whole secret is
in that one word. By adding love to the conception of the God of his
people, by exemplifying it in his own life, and demanding it of his
followers, Jesus accomplished what had baffled all the wisdom of the
Greek sages. He restored the moral unity of man, abolished the old
world, and made a new heaven and a new earth. In vain have the advocates
of an indeterminate, self-evolving first principle, whether calling
themselves Neoplatonists, mystics, materialists, evolutionists,
Hegelians, or Theosophists, striven to bring back the old world with its
class distinctions and institutional ethics; in vain have they sought to
sink the individual God and man of reality in the universal ideas of
thought. The Law of Love, which is the ground of individuality, as well
as of true society, has bidden, and will bid them, defiance.
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS
The Greeks originally recognized two branches of liberal education[6]
(1) Gymnastics, for the body, and (2) Music, for the soul. Out of music
grew, in process of time, not only the so-called Liberal Arts, that is,
the arts that go to constitute the education of every freeman, but also
what was regarded as a superfluous luxury (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ), Philosophy. It is
the purpose of this appendix to trace, as far as possible, this gradual
development.
In doing so, one must bear in mind that originally the term "Music"
covered, not only what we call music, but also poetry, and that poetry
was the vehicle of all the science that then was. The Homeric _aoidos_
knows the "works of gods and men. " Strictly speaking, therefore, it was
out of music and poetry that all the arts and sciences grew. The first
step in this direction was taken when Letters were introduced, that is,
about the first Olympiad. [7] But it was long before Letters were
regarded as a separate branch of education; they were simply a means of
recording poetry. Even as late as the time of Plato, Letters are still
usually included under Music. In Aristotle, they are recognized as a
separate branch. It follows from this that, when we find Greek writers
confining soul-education to Music, or Music and Letters, we must not
conclude that these signify only playing and singing, reading and
writing. Socrates was saying nothing new or paradoxical, when he
affirmed that Philosophy was the "highest music. " The Pythagoreans had
said the same thing before him, and there can be no doubt that
Pythagoras himself included under Music (1) Letters, (2) Arithmetic, (3)
Geometry, (4) Astronomy, (5) Music, in our sense, and (6) Philosophy (a
term invented by him). Plato did the same thing. He speaks of "the true
Muse that is accompanied with truth (? ? ? ? ? ) and philosophy. " But in his
time "Music" was used in two senses, a broad one, in which it included
the whole of intellectual education, and a narrow one, in which it is
confined to music in the modern sense. It is in this latter sense that
it is used by Aristotle, when he makes the intellectual branches of
school education (1) Letters, (2) Music, and (3) Drawing. Philosophy he
places in a higher grade. Having distinguished Letters from Music, it is
natural enough that he should assign to the former the branches which
Pythagoras had included under the latter. His literary scheme appears to
be (1) Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Dialectic, (4) Arithmetic, (5)
Geometry, (6) Astronomy. Add Music, and we have exactly the Seven
Liberal Arts; but, as Drawing must also be added, it is clear that there
was, as yet, no thought of fixing definitely the number seven. That
Drawing was for a long time part of the school curriculum, is rendered
clear by a passage in a work of Teles (B. C. 260) quoted by Stobaeus
(xcviii, 72), in which it is said that boys study (1) Letters, (2)
Music, (3) Drawing; young men, (4) Arithmetic, and (5) Geometry. The
last two branches are here already distinguished from Letters; but we
cannot be sure that the list is intended to be exhaustive. What is
especially noticeable in the list of Teles is, that it draws a clear
distinction between the lower and higher studies, a distinction which
foreshadows the _Trivium_ and _Quadrivium_ of later times. [8]
Philosophy, or the highest education, Aristotle divided into (1) Theory
and (2) Practice. Theory he subdivided into (a) Theology, First
Philosophy, or Wisdom, called later Metaphysics, the science of the
Unchangeable, and (b) Physics, the science of the Changeable; Practice
into (a) Ethics, including Politics and OEconomics, and (b) Poetics or
AEsthetics.
After Teles we hear little of the Greek school-curriculum until about
the Christian era. Meanwhile, the Romans, having acquired a smattering
of Greek learning, began to draw up a scheme of studies suitable for
themselves. It is noticeable that in this scheme there is no such
distinction as the Greeks drew between liberal (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? , ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ,
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ) and illiberal (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ) arts. [9] As early as the first half of
the second century B. C. , Cato the Censor wrote a series of manuals for
his son on (1) Ethics, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Medicine, (4) Military Science,
(5) Farming, (6) Law. It is very significant that the only Greek
school-study which appears here is Rhetoric; this the Romans, and
notably Cato himself, always studied with great care for practical
purposes. It seems that Cato, in order to resist the inroads of Greek
education and manners, which he felt to be demoralizing, tried to draw
up a characteristically Roman curriculum. Greece, however, in great
measure, prevailed, and half a century later we find Varro writing upon
most of the subjects in the Greek curriculum: Grammar, Rhetoric,
Dialectic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, Music, Philosophy, besides
many others. He wrote a treatise in nine books, called _Disciplinarum
Libri_. Ritschl, in his _Quaestiones Varronianae_,[10] tried to show that
these "Disciplinae" were the Seven Liberal Arts, _plus_ Architecture and
Medicine, and Mommsen, in his _Roman History_, has followed him; but
Ritschl himself later changed his opinion. There seems no doubt that (1)
Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Dialectic, (4) Music, (5) Geometry, and (6)
Architecture were treated in the work: what the rest were we can only
guess. [11] There is no ground for the assertion that the Seven Liberal
Arts were obtained by dropping Architecture and Medicine from Varro's
list. It must have been about the time of Varro, if not earlier, that
Roman education came to be divided into three grades, called
respectively (1) Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, and (3) Philosophy, the last
falling to the lot of but few persons. Of course "Grammar" now came to
have a very extensive meaning, as we can see from the definition of it
given by Dionysius Thrax, in his grammar, prepared apparently for Roman
use (B. C. 90). In the Scholia to that work (I am unable to fix their
date), we find the Liberal Arts enumerated as (1) Astronomy, (2)
Geometry, (3) Music, (4) Philosophy, (5) Medicine, (6) Grammar, (7)
Rhetoric. [12]
But to return to the Greeks. In the works of Philo Judaeus, a
contemporary of Jesus, we find the Encyclic Arts frequently referred to,
and distinguished from Philosophy. The former, he says, are represented
by the Egyptian slave Hagar, the latter by Sarah, the lawful wife. One
must associate with the Arts before he can find Philosophy fruitful. In
no one passage does Philo give a list of the Encyclic Arts. In one place
we find enumerated (1) Grammar, (2) Geometry, (3) Music, (4) Rhetoric
(_De Cherub. _, ? 30); in another (1) Grammar, (2) Geometry, (3) "the
entire music of encyclic instruction" (_De Agricult. _, ? 4); in another
(1) Grammar, (2) Music, (3) Geometry, (4) Rhetoric, (5) Dialectic (_De
Congressu Quaer. Erud. Grat. _, ? 5); in another, (1) Grammar, (2)
Arithmetic, (3) Geometry, (4) Music, (5) Rhetoric (_De Somniis_, ? 35),
etc.
It would seem that the Encyclic Arts, according to Philo, were (1)
Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Dialectic, (4) Arithmetic, (5) Geometry, (6)
Music. Astronomy appears in none of the lists. Philosophy is divided
into (1) Physics, (2) Logic, (3) Ethics (_De Mutat. Nom. _, ? 10), a
division that was long current.
From what has been adduced, I think we may fairly conclude that at the
Christian era no definite number had been fixed for the liberal arts
either at Athens, Alexandria, or Rome. The list apparently differed in
different places. Clearly the Roman programme was quite different from
the Greek. Shortly after this era, we find Seneca (who died A. D. 65)
giving the liberal arts, _liberalia studia_, as (1) Grammar, (2) Music,
(3) Geometry, (4) Arithmetic, (5) Astronomy (_Epist. _, 88). He divides
Philosophy into (1) Moral, (2) Natural, (3) Rational, and the last he
subdivides into (a) Dialectic and (b) Rhetoric. Above all he places
Wisdom, "_Sapientia perfectum bonum est mentis humanae_" (_Epist. _, 89).
Here we see that two of the Seven Liberal Arts are classed under
Philosophy. A little later, Quintilian divides all education into (1)
Grammar, and (2) Rhetoric, but condescends to allow his young orator to
study a little Music, Geometry, and Astronomy.
Turning to the Greeks, we find Sextus Empiricus, who seems to have
flourished in Athens and Alexandria toward the end of the second
century, writing a great work against the dogmatists or
"mathematicians," of whom he finds nine classes, corresponding to six
arts, and three sciences of philosophy. The arts are (1) Grammar, (2)
Rhetoric, (3) Geometry, (4) Arithmetic, (5) Astronomy, (6) Music: the
sciences, (1) Logic, (2) Physics, (3) Ethics. We are now not far from
the Seven Liberal Arts; still we have not reached them.
There is not, I think, any noteworthy list of the liberal arts to be
found in any ancient author after Sextus, till we come to St. Augustine.
In his _Retractiones_, written about 425, he tells us (I, 6) that in his
youth he undertook to write _Disciplinarum Libri_ (the exact title of
Varro's work! ), that he finished the book on (1) Grammar, wrote six
volumes on (2) Music, and made a beginning with _other five_
disciplines, (3) Dialectic, (4) Rhetoric, (5) Geometry, (6) Arithmetic,
(7) Philosophy. It has frequently been assumed that we have here, for
the first time, the Seven Liberal Arts definitely fixed; but there is
nothing whatever in the passage to justify this assumption. The author
does not say "_the_ other five disciplines," but merely "other five. "
Among these five, moreover, is named Philosophy, which, though certainly
a "discipline," was never, so far as I can discover, called an art,
liberal or otherwise. There is not the smallest reason for tracing back
the Seven Liberal Arts to St. Augustine, who surely was incapable of any
such playing with numbers. He does not, indeed, recognize the "Seven. "
It is in the fantastic and superficial work of Martianus Capella, a
heathen contemporary of Augustine's, that they first make their
appearance, and even there no stress is laid upon their number. They are
(1) Grammar, (2) Dialectic, (3) Rhetoric, (4) Geometry, (5) Arithmetic,
(6) Astronomy, (7) Music. These, no doubt, were the branches taught in
the better schools of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth
centuries, when, on the whole, the Greek liberal curriculum had
supplanted the Roman rhetorical one. There is not the slightest ground
for supposing that Capella had anything to do with fixing the curriculum
which he celebrates. His work is a wretched production, sufficiently
characterized by its title, _The Wedding of Mercury and Philology_. He
wrote about seven arts because he found seven to write about. Attention
was first called to the _number_ of the arts, and a mystical meaning
attached to it, by the Christian senator, Cassiodorus (480-575) in his
_De Artibus et Disciplinis Liberalium Litterarum_. He finds it written
in Prov. ix, 1, that "Wisdom hath builded her house. She hath hewn out
her seven pillars. " He concludes that the Seven Liberal Arts are the
seven pillars of the house of Wisdom. They correspond also to the days
of the week, which are also seven. It is to be observed that he
distinguishes the "Arts" from the "Disciplines," or, as they said later,
the _Trivium_ from the _Quadrivium_. The pious notion of Cassiodorus was
worked out by Isidore of Seville (died 636) in his _Etymologiae_, and by
Alcuin (died 804) in his _Grammatica_. Of course, as soon as the number
of the arts came to be regarded as fixed by Scripture authority, it
became as familiar a fact as the number of the planets or of the days of
the week, or indeed, as the number of the elements. About A. D. 820
Hrabanus Maurus (776-856), a pupil of Alcuin's, wrote a work, _De
Clericorum Institutione_, in which the phrase _Septem Liberales Artes_
is said to occur for the first time. About the same date Theodulfus
wrote his allegorical poem _De Septem Liberalibus in quadam Pictura
Descriptis_. [13]
The Liberal Studies after St. Augustine did not include Philosophy,
which rested upon the Seven Arts, as upon "seven pillars," and was
usually divided into (1) Physical, (2) Logical, (3) Ethical. [14] After a
time Philosophy came to be an all-embracing term. In a commentary on the
_Timaeus_ of Plato, assigned by Cousin to the twelfth century, we find
the following scheme:--
{ Ethics.
{ Practical { Economics.
{ { Politics.
{
{ { Theology.
PHILOSOPHY { { { Arithmetic }
{ { Mathematics. { Music }
{ Theoretical { { Geometry } = Quadrivium.
{ { { Astronomy }
{ { Physics.
The author expressly says that "Mathematica quadrivium continet"; but he
plainly does not include the _Trivium_ under Philosophy. This, however,
was done the following century. In the _Itinerarium Mentis in Deum_ of
St. Bonaventura (1221-74) we find the following arrangements:--
{ { Metaphysics--essence: leads to First
{ { Principle = Father.
{ Natural { Mathematics--numbers, figures: leads
{ { to Image = Son.
{ { Physics--natures, powers, diffusions:
{ { leads to Gift of Holy Spirit.
{
PHILOSOPHY { { Grammar--power of expression = Father.
{ Rational { Logic--perspicuity in argument = Son.
{ { Rhetoric--skill in persuading = Holy
{ { Spirit.
{
{ { Monastics--innascibility of Father.
{ Moral { OEconomics--familiarity of Son.
{ { Politics--liberality of Holy Spirit.
Here we have the _Trivium_, under the division "Rational," while the
_Quadrivium_ must still be included under "Mathematics. " In both cases
we get nine sciences or disciplines, and the number was apparently
chosen, because it is the square of three, the number of the Holy
Trinity.
When a boy is sent to school, his teacher's first business is to
investigate his character and capacity. The chief marks of ability are
memory and power of imitation. Imitation is not mimicry, which is always
a sign of low nature. Slowness, though objectionable, is better than
precocity, which should be discouraged in every way. Different treatment
is required for different boys: some need the bit, some the spur. The
best boy is the one "whom praise excites, whom glory pleases, who cries
when he is beaten. Such a one may be nourished with emulation; reproach
will sting him; honor will rouse him. " Boys ought to have seasons of
rest and play, neither too short to afford recreation, nor too long to
encourage idleness. Games of question and answer are good for
sharpening the wits. In play an excellent opportunity is offered to the
teacher for learning the character of his pupils. Corporal punishment is
altogether to be deprecated, and, indeed, is unneeded when the teacher
does his duty.
What boys learn in school is grammar; but this must be supplemented by
music and astronomy. Without the former it will be impossible to scan
verse; without the latter, to understand certain allusions and modes of
fixing dates in the poets. A little philosophy is necessary for the sake
of understanding such poets as Empedocles and Lucretius; geometry, in
order to give practice in apodictic reasoning, as well as for practical
uses. Thus the curriculum of school education will consist of Grammar,
Music, Astronomy, Philosophy, and Geometry.
Grammar consists of two parts, (1) _Methodics_, or the art of correct
speaking, (2) _Historics_ (German _Realien_), the interpretation of
poets, historians, philosophers, etc. _Methodics_--grammar in the modern
sense--should aim at enabling a boy to speak and write with correctness,
clearness, and elegance. All barbarisms (_i. e. _ foreign words and
idioms), solecisms, affectations, and careless pronunciations are to be
avoided. In the use of language, four things are to be taken into
account, (1) reason, (2) antiquity, (3) authority, (4) custom. In
reading, the boy must be taught "where to draw his breath, where to
divide a verse, where the sense is complete, where it begins, where the
voice is to be raised, where lowered, what inflections to use, what is
to be uttered slowly, what rapidly, what forcibly, what gently. " "That
he may be able to do all this, he must _understand_. Reading must above
all be manly and grave, with a certain sweetness. " Poetry must not be
read either as prose, nor yet in a sing-song way. All theatrical
personification, and all gesticulation smacking of the comedian, are to
be avoided.
For _Histories_ the teacher must be very careful in his selection of
texts. Homer and Virgil are best to begin with. Though their full import
cannot be understood by youth, they awake enthusiasm for what is noble
and spirited, and will often be read in later life. "Tragedies are
useful. There is nourishment in the lyric poets"; but they must be used
with caution and in selections, from which everything relating to love
must be excluded. Even Horace must be expurgated. Satire and comedy,
though of the utmost value for the orator, must be deferred till the
moral character is sufficiently established not to be injured by them.
Passages from the poets ought to be committed to memory. In all reading,
the utmost care ought to be taken to promote purity and manliness
(_sanctitas et virilitas_).
After reading a piece of poetry, boys must be made to analyze and scan
it, to point out peculiarities of language and rhythm, to enumerate the
different meanings of words, to name and explain the various figures of
speech. But far more important than all this it is, that the teacher
should impress on their minds the importance of systematic arrangement
and propriety of description, "showing what is suitable for each role,
what is commendable in thought, what in expression, where diffuseness
is proper, and where brevity. " In giving collateral information, whether
in history, mythology, or geography, he should keep within bounds,
giving only what is necessary and rests on respectable authority. "It is
one of the virtues of a schoolmaster to be ignorant of some things. "
As regards lessons in composition, the teacher should begin by making
his pupils write out from memory the _Fables_ of AEsop, in pure, simple,
direct, and unadorned language. He should then call upon them to turn
poetry into prose, and to paraphrase it, either briefly or diffusely. He
should then make them write out proverbs, apophthegms, aphorisms, short,
brilliant anecdotes, etc. Famous stories related by the poets may be
used as subjects for composition, but chiefly for the sake of
information. Beyond this the schoolmaster should not go in the matter of
composition. The rest should be left to the rhetorician.
It is of great importance in youthful education that several subjects
should be studied at the same time. Boys like and need variety, and,
when they get it, it is truly astonishing how much they can accomplish.
"There is not the slightest reason for fearing that boys will shrink
from the labor of study. No age is less easily fatigued. " . . . "Boys are
naturally more inclined to hard work than young men. "
Such, in brief, is Quintilian's school-programme. It has no place for
physical science (except Astronomy), for manual training, or for
physical exercise. Play is, indeed, permitted as a necessary recreation,
and gymnastics and physical training (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ) are recommended in
so far as they are necessary to enable the budding orator to move and
to gesticulate gracefully; but that is all. "Nothing can please that is
not becoming. "
As soon as he is ready, the young aspirant for oratorical fame passes
into the hands of the rhetorician, under whom he learns all the arts,
and acquires all that knowledge, necessary to fit him for his
profession. No kind of knowledge, and no moral excellence ought to be
foreign to the orator. Quintilian is very severe upon the philosophers
for claiming, in their title, to be, in an exceptional way, lovers of
wisdom, and maintains that the true orator is the truly wise and good
man. He is surely superior to the philosopher, who turns his back upon
the world and manifests no interest in human affairs. Moreover,
"philosophy may be simulated; eloquence cannot. "
The closing chapter of the last book of Quintilian's work treats of the
orator after his retirement from public life. He is to devote himself to
writing and to the study of art, science, and philosophy. The picture is
charming; but it ends with death, and there is nothing beyond. God may
be defined for oratorical purposes; but his existence is a matter of
conjecture.
In Quintilian we have the highest type of the civic man living under a
cosmopolitan despotism. His defects--his pedantry, his servility, his
externality, his worldliness--are only such as are natural to a good man
placed in this position, without any outlook upon a higher existence.
CHAPTER III
PLOTINUS AND PHILOSOPHIC EDUCATION
The material body, which is subject to motion, change, dissolution,
and division, requires an immaterial principle to hold and bind it
together in unity. This principle of unity is the soul. If it were
material, it would require another principle of unity, and so on _ad
infinitum_, till an immaterial first were reached, which would then
be the true soul. --Ammonius Saccas.
Intelligible things, when they are united with other things, are not
changed, as corporeal things are when they are united with each
other, but remain as they are, and what they are. Soul and body are
intimately united, but not mixed. The soul can separate and withdraw
itself from the body, not only in sleep, but also in thought. As the
sun illuminates and yet remains itself a separate light, so is the
soul in its relation to the body. It is not in the body as in place;
rather the body is in it and of it. --_Id. _
One's duty is to become first man, then God. --Hierocles.
Neither Schelling nor Baader nor Hegel has refuted Plotinus: in many
ways he soars above them. --Arthur Richter.
What is loved by us here is mortal and hurtful. Our love is love for
an image, that often turns into its opposite, because what we loved
was not truly worthy of love, nor the good which we sought. God
alone is the true object of our love. --Plotinus.
The practical and the contemplative lives, which Plato and Aristotle had
labored so hard to combine and correlate, in order to save human worth
and Greek civilization, fell asunder, despite all their
efforts--greatly, of course, to the detriment of both. In the terrible
picture which Quintilian draws of Roman life in the first century of
our era, we see one side of the result of this divorce: in the cruel
satires of Lucian, written less than a century later, we may find
depicted the other. But, just as, in the midst of the moral corruption
and brutality, there arose from time to time worthy men like Quintilian
and Tacitus, so amid the philosophical charlatanry and pretence, there
still survived a few earnest thinkers, who aspired with all the power
that was in them to divine truth, and strove to find in the eternal
world that reality which was so miserably wanting in this. By far the
greater number of these men were neither Greeks nor Romans, but
Orientals, men whose thinking combined Greek philosophy with some
earnest form of Eastern mysticism. To such men this life was merely an
opportunity of preparing for a higher, in which lay all beauty, all
good, and all blessedness. It is not difficult to see what sort of
education would follow from this view of life. It may best be
characterized by the one word "ascetic. " It no longer seeks to train
harmoniously all the faculties of body and mind with a view to a worthy
social life, but to enable the soul to die to the body and to social
life, and so rise to union and consubstantiality with God. In no sect
was this tendency more marked than in the Neoplatonic, or, as it might
equally well be called, the Neoaristotelian or Neopythagorean, the
greatest name in which is Plotinus.
Plotinus was born in Egypt about A. D. 205. His nationality is unknown.
He received his education in Alexandria--grammar, rhetoric, and
philosophy,--and adopted the teaching of the last as a profession. He
sought in vain, however, for a system that could satisfy him, till he
met with Ammonius "the Sack-bearer," whom he at once recognized as his
master. This Ammonius had been reared as a Christian, but had
apostatized on becoming acquainted with philosophy. His Christian
education, however, had not been altogether lost on him; for he had
carried over into philosophy a religious spirit, and not a few of the
esoteric ideas then current in certain Christian sects. It was this,
apparently, that enabled him to give a new direction to philosophy, and
to found a new school, whose influence upon subsequent, even Christian,
thought, it would be difficult to overestimate. His school was the
Neoplatonic, which, more than any other, united profound thought with
mystic theosophy (? ? ? ? ? ? ).
Plotinus listened to Ammonius for eleven years, and, on the death of the
latter, paid a visit to Persia, with the view of studying the religion
of that country. He shortly returned, however, and, after a brief
sojourn at Antioch, betook himself, in his fortieth year (A. D. 244), to
Rome, where he spent the remainder of his life as a teacher of
philosophy. His saintly character and his deep, religious thought drew
round him a considerable number of earnest men and women, including even
members of the imperial family. He made some attempt to found in
Campania a Platonopolis, so that his principles might be realized in a
social life, in a theosophic community; but this was never carried out.
He died in A. D. 270. Plotinus was the only truly great, original ancient
thinker after Aristotle.
While Plato and Aristotle had sought to rise to the intelligible world
from, and by means of, the sensible, Plotinus, believing that he has
attained a direct, intuitional knowledge of the former, sets out from it
and thence tries to reach the other. At the summit of being he finds the
supreme Platonic principle, the One or the Good, absolutely transcendent
and self-sufficient; next below this, the supreme Aristotelian
principle, Intelligence or Absolute Knowing, the _locus_ of all ideas;
and third, the supreme principle of the Stoics, Soul, Life, or Zeus, the
animating principle of the world. Good, Intelligence, Life--these are
Plotinus' divine trinity, evolved by a process of abstraction from the
_Nous_ of Aristotle (see p. 161). The members of this trinity are
neither personal, conscious, nor equal. Each lower is caused by, but
does not emanate from, the next above it; and this causation is due, not
to any act of free will, but to an inner necessity. Thus the trinity of
Plotinus is a mere energy, acting according to necessary laws. The third
member of it turns toward matter, which is mere poverty and hunger for
being, and, in so doing, produces a world of gods, daemons, and mundane
beings, the highest of which last is man. All that has matter has
multiplicity.
It is easy enough to see what kind of ethics and education will spring
from such a system as this. Inasmuch as the good means self-sufficiency,
freedom from multiplicity and matter, evil means dependence,
multiplicity, materiality. Whatever evil there is in man is due to his
connection with matter, for which he is in no sense responsible. His
sole business, if he desires blessedness, is to free himself from
matter and multiplicity, and return to the unity of the Supreme Good.
The steps by which this may be accomplished are, (1) Music or Art, (2)
Love, (3) Philosophy or Dialectic: through all these he rises above
multiplicity into unity. In all this there is, obviously, neither moral
evil nor moral good, and, indeed, the world of Plotinus contains no
moral element, for the simple reason that it contains nothing personal,
either in God or man. Evil is the product of necessity, and
consciousness, implying as it does, multiplicity, is part of it. The
unethical character of Plotinus' teaching comes out very clearly in his
reversal of the positions of instruction and purgation in the scheme of
education. According to the old view, purgation was a mere medical
process, preparatory to ethical training (see p. 7). According to the
Neoplatonic view, ethical training and the "political virtues" are a
mere preparation for purgation and the intellectual virtues. And this is
perfectly logical; for evil, being physical, must be cured by physical
means. And the means which Plotinus recommends are magical, rather than
moral; rites and prayers, rather than heroic deeds; the suppression of
the will, rather than its exercise.
Plotinus is too much of a Greek to accept, or even see, all the
consequences of his own theory, which makes moral life consist in an
attempt to escape from the world and to quench consciousness and
personality. Accordingly, though he has a poor opinion of civic life (a
thing excusable enough in those days), he believes that the civic
virtues ought to be cultivated, as a means toward the higher, and has
apparently nothing to say against the ordinary grammatical, rhetorical,
and musical education of his time. He has a good deal to say in favor of
Mathematics, as a preparation for what to him is the supreme branch of
education, Dialectics. But the tendency of his teaching is only too
obvious, and the conclusions which he did not draw, time and succeeding
generations drew for him. The effect of Neoplatonism was, in the long
run, to make the super-civic part of man the whole man, to discredit
political life and political effort, and to pave the way for the mystic,
the ascetic, and the hermit. Nor were the tendencies of the other
philosophical schools in any marked degree different. Thus philosophy,
instead of contributing to harmonize man and society, and to restore
moral life, came to be one of the strongest agencies in bringing about
confusion and dissolution, by ignoring moral life altogether, embracing
superstition, and turning man into a mere plaything of blind necessity
and magical forces. And thus ancient civilization fell to pieces,
because man himself had fallen to pieces, and each piece tried to set
itself up for the whole. The civic fragment finds its highest expression
in Quintilian, the super-civic in Plotinus. Ere the fragments can be
united into a truly moral being, a member of a truly moral society, a
new combining force, unknown to either rhetorician or philosopher, must
arise.
CHAPTER IV
CONCLUSION
Truly it was an old world, and even Caesar's patriotic genius was not
enough to make it young again. The dawn does not return till the
night has fully set in. --Mommsen.
My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,
saith the Lord. --Isaiah.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all
thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first
commandment. And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself. --Jesus.
Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things
that are God's. --_Id. _
Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings? and not one of them is
forgotten in the sight of God. But the very hairs of your head are
all numbered. --_Id. _
We love because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and
hateth his brother, he is a liar. --John.
By one intelligible form, which is the divine Essence, and one
conscious intention, which is the divine Word, things may be known
in their multiplicity by God. --Thomas Aquinas.
If God acts in all things, and such action in no way derogates from
his dignity, but even belongs to his universal and supreme power, he
cannot consider it below him, nor does it stain his dignity, if he
extend his providence to the individual things of this world. --_Id. _
Une immense esperance a passe sur la terre. --Alfred de Musset.
We have seen that the Greek ideal of life rested upon the complete
identification of the man with the citizen. We have seen also how this
ideal was paralyzed by the growth of individualism; how the wisest men
thought to render this innocuous and even beneficent, by providing for
it a sphere of contemplation, superior to that of practice, but
organically related to it, and, finally how, with the failure of this
attempt, the two sides of human nature, divorced from each other,
degenerated, the one into selfish worldliness, the other into equally
selfish other-worldliness, both conditions equally destitute of moral
significance.
This sad result was mainly due to three causes, (1) that the remedies
proposed for individualism were not sufficient, (2) that the best remedy
was set aside, (3) that the conditions for which the remedies were
offered soon ceased to exist. Both Plato and Aristotle wrote for the
small Greek polities, which lost their autonomy through the Macedonian
conquest. If it may be doubted whether even the proposals of the latter
would have redeemed these polities, had they continued free, it is
certain that they would have been ineffective under the changed
circumstances. At all events, they were never adopted, and even for the
super-civic man the teaching of Plato was preferred to his.
As the new cosmopolitanism deepened the gulf between the citizen and the
individual, and immeasurably widened the sphere of the latter, in the
same proportion did the teaching of Plato fail to bridge over that gulf,
and provide activity for that sphere. To tell the super-civic man now
that his function was to contemplate divine things and oracularly
deliver laws for the guidance of the world, would have argued an absence
of humor not common in those days. Besides, those persons who claimed
to have contemplated divine things showed no such fitness for
legislation as to induce practical men to accept their guidance. The
sober fact was, that the contemplation of divine things, which more and
more absorbed the energy of Greek thought, was, except for Aristotle, a
mere vague asperation without moral value, and became ever more a sort
of mystic ecstasy, in which the individual, instead of acquiring insight
and power to live worthily and beneficently in the world, was thrown
back upon himself, with his will paralyzed.
Nor could this be otherwise,
seeing the nature of the divine things, the contemplation of which was
reckoned so important. Instead of being personal attributes, or a person
imposing a moral law seen to be binding, they were mere abstractions,
increasing in emptiness the higher they were in the series, the highest
being absolute vacancy. In vain had Aristotle protested that all reality
is individual: the Platonic theory, that all knowledge is of ideas or
universals, prevailed, with the result that the highest knowledge was
held to be knowledge of that which is absolutely universal, viz.
indeterminate being or, as Plotinus held, something lacking even the
determination of being--the Supreme Good. That the super-civic man
should find satisfaction in gazing into vacancy, or be any more valuable
in the world after he had done so, no matter how spotless his life and
ecstatic his look, is inconceivable.
But while, in the Greek world, the sphere of activity of the super-civic
man was vanishing into nothingness, among a small and obscure band of
restored exiles of Semitic race, that sphere had come to claim the
entire man and all his relations, practical and spiritual. Isaiah's
little band of faithful followers (see p. 133) had grown into a nation,
living by no law save that of Jehovah, a very real, very awful, and very
holy personality, whom the heaven of heavens could not contain, but who
yet watched the rising up and the sitting down of every son of man. Long
before Quintilian wrote his elegant treatise on rhetoric, or Plotinus
his pantheistic Enneads, there had sprung from the bosom of this people
a man who, bursting, at the expense of his life, the narrow bounds of
his nationally, elevated the theocracy of his people into a Kingdom of
Heaven, which he had bade proclaim to all the world. It was proclaimed,
and then (though to some it seemed a stumbling-block, and to others
foolishness) the super-civic man, who for hundreds of years had been
wandering in darkness, in search of his fatherland, suddenly became
aware that he had found it in the Church of Christ. He now no longer
tries to escape from the visible world into the emptiness of an abstract
first principle; but, in the service of a First Principle who is the
most concrete of realities, and who numbers the very hairs of his head,
he goes down into the most loathsome depths of the material world to
elevate and redeem the meanest of the sons of men. There is no question
of bond or free, ruler or ruled, now. In the Kingdom of Heaven there are
no such relations. The only greatness recognized there is greatness in
service; the only law, the Law of Love. Love! yes, the whole secret is
in that one word. By adding love to the conception of the God of his
people, by exemplifying it in his own life, and demanding it of his
followers, Jesus accomplished what had baffled all the wisdom of the
Greek sages. He restored the moral unity of man, abolished the old
world, and made a new heaven and a new earth. In vain have the advocates
of an indeterminate, self-evolving first principle, whether calling
themselves Neoplatonists, mystics, materialists, evolutionists,
Hegelians, or Theosophists, striven to bring back the old world with its
class distinctions and institutional ethics; in vain have they sought to
sink the individual God and man of reality in the universal ideas of
thought. The Law of Love, which is the ground of individuality, as well
as of true society, has bidden, and will bid them, defiance.
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS
The Greeks originally recognized two branches of liberal education[6]
(1) Gymnastics, for the body, and (2) Music, for the soul. Out of music
grew, in process of time, not only the so-called Liberal Arts, that is,
the arts that go to constitute the education of every freeman, but also
what was regarded as a superfluous luxury (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ), Philosophy. It is
the purpose of this appendix to trace, as far as possible, this gradual
development.
In doing so, one must bear in mind that originally the term "Music"
covered, not only what we call music, but also poetry, and that poetry
was the vehicle of all the science that then was. The Homeric _aoidos_
knows the "works of gods and men. " Strictly speaking, therefore, it was
out of music and poetry that all the arts and sciences grew. The first
step in this direction was taken when Letters were introduced, that is,
about the first Olympiad. [7] But it was long before Letters were
regarded as a separate branch of education; they were simply a means of
recording poetry. Even as late as the time of Plato, Letters are still
usually included under Music. In Aristotle, they are recognized as a
separate branch. It follows from this that, when we find Greek writers
confining soul-education to Music, or Music and Letters, we must not
conclude that these signify only playing and singing, reading and
writing. Socrates was saying nothing new or paradoxical, when he
affirmed that Philosophy was the "highest music. " The Pythagoreans had
said the same thing before him, and there can be no doubt that
Pythagoras himself included under Music (1) Letters, (2) Arithmetic, (3)
Geometry, (4) Astronomy, (5) Music, in our sense, and (6) Philosophy (a
term invented by him). Plato did the same thing. He speaks of "the true
Muse that is accompanied with truth (? ? ? ? ? ) and philosophy. " But in his
time "Music" was used in two senses, a broad one, in which it included
the whole of intellectual education, and a narrow one, in which it is
confined to music in the modern sense. It is in this latter sense that
it is used by Aristotle, when he makes the intellectual branches of
school education (1) Letters, (2) Music, and (3) Drawing. Philosophy he
places in a higher grade. Having distinguished Letters from Music, it is
natural enough that he should assign to the former the branches which
Pythagoras had included under the latter. His literary scheme appears to
be (1) Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Dialectic, (4) Arithmetic, (5)
Geometry, (6) Astronomy. Add Music, and we have exactly the Seven
Liberal Arts; but, as Drawing must also be added, it is clear that there
was, as yet, no thought of fixing definitely the number seven. That
Drawing was for a long time part of the school curriculum, is rendered
clear by a passage in a work of Teles (B. C. 260) quoted by Stobaeus
(xcviii, 72), in which it is said that boys study (1) Letters, (2)
Music, (3) Drawing; young men, (4) Arithmetic, and (5) Geometry. The
last two branches are here already distinguished from Letters; but we
cannot be sure that the list is intended to be exhaustive. What is
especially noticeable in the list of Teles is, that it draws a clear
distinction between the lower and higher studies, a distinction which
foreshadows the _Trivium_ and _Quadrivium_ of later times. [8]
Philosophy, or the highest education, Aristotle divided into (1) Theory
and (2) Practice. Theory he subdivided into (a) Theology, First
Philosophy, or Wisdom, called later Metaphysics, the science of the
Unchangeable, and (b) Physics, the science of the Changeable; Practice
into (a) Ethics, including Politics and OEconomics, and (b) Poetics or
AEsthetics.
After Teles we hear little of the Greek school-curriculum until about
the Christian era. Meanwhile, the Romans, having acquired a smattering
of Greek learning, began to draw up a scheme of studies suitable for
themselves. It is noticeable that in this scheme there is no such
distinction as the Greeks drew between liberal (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? , ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ,
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ) and illiberal (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ) arts. [9] As early as the first half of
the second century B. C. , Cato the Censor wrote a series of manuals for
his son on (1) Ethics, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Medicine, (4) Military Science,
(5) Farming, (6) Law. It is very significant that the only Greek
school-study which appears here is Rhetoric; this the Romans, and
notably Cato himself, always studied with great care for practical
purposes. It seems that Cato, in order to resist the inroads of Greek
education and manners, which he felt to be demoralizing, tried to draw
up a characteristically Roman curriculum. Greece, however, in great
measure, prevailed, and half a century later we find Varro writing upon
most of the subjects in the Greek curriculum: Grammar, Rhetoric,
Dialectic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, Music, Philosophy, besides
many others. He wrote a treatise in nine books, called _Disciplinarum
Libri_. Ritschl, in his _Quaestiones Varronianae_,[10] tried to show that
these "Disciplinae" were the Seven Liberal Arts, _plus_ Architecture and
Medicine, and Mommsen, in his _Roman History_, has followed him; but
Ritschl himself later changed his opinion. There seems no doubt that (1)
Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Dialectic, (4) Music, (5) Geometry, and (6)
Architecture were treated in the work: what the rest were we can only
guess. [11] There is no ground for the assertion that the Seven Liberal
Arts were obtained by dropping Architecture and Medicine from Varro's
list. It must have been about the time of Varro, if not earlier, that
Roman education came to be divided into three grades, called
respectively (1) Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, and (3) Philosophy, the last
falling to the lot of but few persons. Of course "Grammar" now came to
have a very extensive meaning, as we can see from the definition of it
given by Dionysius Thrax, in his grammar, prepared apparently for Roman
use (B. C. 90). In the Scholia to that work (I am unable to fix their
date), we find the Liberal Arts enumerated as (1) Astronomy, (2)
Geometry, (3) Music, (4) Philosophy, (5) Medicine, (6) Grammar, (7)
Rhetoric. [12]
But to return to the Greeks. In the works of Philo Judaeus, a
contemporary of Jesus, we find the Encyclic Arts frequently referred to,
and distinguished from Philosophy. The former, he says, are represented
by the Egyptian slave Hagar, the latter by Sarah, the lawful wife. One
must associate with the Arts before he can find Philosophy fruitful. In
no one passage does Philo give a list of the Encyclic Arts. In one place
we find enumerated (1) Grammar, (2) Geometry, (3) Music, (4) Rhetoric
(_De Cherub. _, ? 30); in another (1) Grammar, (2) Geometry, (3) "the
entire music of encyclic instruction" (_De Agricult. _, ? 4); in another
(1) Grammar, (2) Music, (3) Geometry, (4) Rhetoric, (5) Dialectic (_De
Congressu Quaer. Erud. Grat. _, ? 5); in another, (1) Grammar, (2)
Arithmetic, (3) Geometry, (4) Music, (5) Rhetoric (_De Somniis_, ? 35),
etc.
It would seem that the Encyclic Arts, according to Philo, were (1)
Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Dialectic, (4) Arithmetic, (5) Geometry, (6)
Music. Astronomy appears in none of the lists. Philosophy is divided
into (1) Physics, (2) Logic, (3) Ethics (_De Mutat. Nom. _, ? 10), a
division that was long current.
From what has been adduced, I think we may fairly conclude that at the
Christian era no definite number had been fixed for the liberal arts
either at Athens, Alexandria, or Rome. The list apparently differed in
different places. Clearly the Roman programme was quite different from
the Greek. Shortly after this era, we find Seneca (who died A. D. 65)
giving the liberal arts, _liberalia studia_, as (1) Grammar, (2) Music,
(3) Geometry, (4) Arithmetic, (5) Astronomy (_Epist. _, 88). He divides
Philosophy into (1) Moral, (2) Natural, (3) Rational, and the last he
subdivides into (a) Dialectic and (b) Rhetoric. Above all he places
Wisdom, "_Sapientia perfectum bonum est mentis humanae_" (_Epist. _, 89).
Here we see that two of the Seven Liberal Arts are classed under
Philosophy. A little later, Quintilian divides all education into (1)
Grammar, and (2) Rhetoric, but condescends to allow his young orator to
study a little Music, Geometry, and Astronomy.
Turning to the Greeks, we find Sextus Empiricus, who seems to have
flourished in Athens and Alexandria toward the end of the second
century, writing a great work against the dogmatists or
"mathematicians," of whom he finds nine classes, corresponding to six
arts, and three sciences of philosophy. The arts are (1) Grammar, (2)
Rhetoric, (3) Geometry, (4) Arithmetic, (5) Astronomy, (6) Music: the
sciences, (1) Logic, (2) Physics, (3) Ethics. We are now not far from
the Seven Liberal Arts; still we have not reached them.
There is not, I think, any noteworthy list of the liberal arts to be
found in any ancient author after Sextus, till we come to St. Augustine.
In his _Retractiones_, written about 425, he tells us (I, 6) that in his
youth he undertook to write _Disciplinarum Libri_ (the exact title of
Varro's work! ), that he finished the book on (1) Grammar, wrote six
volumes on (2) Music, and made a beginning with _other five_
disciplines, (3) Dialectic, (4) Rhetoric, (5) Geometry, (6) Arithmetic,
(7) Philosophy. It has frequently been assumed that we have here, for
the first time, the Seven Liberal Arts definitely fixed; but there is
nothing whatever in the passage to justify this assumption. The author
does not say "_the_ other five disciplines," but merely "other five. "
Among these five, moreover, is named Philosophy, which, though certainly
a "discipline," was never, so far as I can discover, called an art,
liberal or otherwise. There is not the smallest reason for tracing back
the Seven Liberal Arts to St. Augustine, who surely was incapable of any
such playing with numbers. He does not, indeed, recognize the "Seven. "
It is in the fantastic and superficial work of Martianus Capella, a
heathen contemporary of Augustine's, that they first make their
appearance, and even there no stress is laid upon their number. They are
(1) Grammar, (2) Dialectic, (3) Rhetoric, (4) Geometry, (5) Arithmetic,
(6) Astronomy, (7) Music. These, no doubt, were the branches taught in
the better schools of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth
centuries, when, on the whole, the Greek liberal curriculum had
supplanted the Roman rhetorical one. There is not the slightest ground
for supposing that Capella had anything to do with fixing the curriculum
which he celebrates. His work is a wretched production, sufficiently
characterized by its title, _The Wedding of Mercury and Philology_. He
wrote about seven arts because he found seven to write about. Attention
was first called to the _number_ of the arts, and a mystical meaning
attached to it, by the Christian senator, Cassiodorus (480-575) in his
_De Artibus et Disciplinis Liberalium Litterarum_. He finds it written
in Prov. ix, 1, that "Wisdom hath builded her house. She hath hewn out
her seven pillars. " He concludes that the Seven Liberal Arts are the
seven pillars of the house of Wisdom. They correspond also to the days
of the week, which are also seven. It is to be observed that he
distinguishes the "Arts" from the "Disciplines," or, as they said later,
the _Trivium_ from the _Quadrivium_. The pious notion of Cassiodorus was
worked out by Isidore of Seville (died 636) in his _Etymologiae_, and by
Alcuin (died 804) in his _Grammatica_. Of course, as soon as the number
of the arts came to be regarded as fixed by Scripture authority, it
became as familiar a fact as the number of the planets or of the days of
the week, or indeed, as the number of the elements. About A. D. 820
Hrabanus Maurus (776-856), a pupil of Alcuin's, wrote a work, _De
Clericorum Institutione_, in which the phrase _Septem Liberales Artes_
is said to occur for the first time. About the same date Theodulfus
wrote his allegorical poem _De Septem Liberalibus in quadam Pictura
Descriptis_. [13]
The Liberal Studies after St. Augustine did not include Philosophy,
which rested upon the Seven Arts, as upon "seven pillars," and was
usually divided into (1) Physical, (2) Logical, (3) Ethical. [14] After a
time Philosophy came to be an all-embracing term. In a commentary on the
_Timaeus_ of Plato, assigned by Cousin to the twelfth century, we find
the following scheme:--
{ Ethics.
{ Practical { Economics.
{ { Politics.
{
{ { Theology.
PHILOSOPHY { { { Arithmetic }
{ { Mathematics. { Music }
{ Theoretical { { Geometry } = Quadrivium.
{ { { Astronomy }
{ { Physics.
The author expressly says that "Mathematica quadrivium continet"; but he
plainly does not include the _Trivium_ under Philosophy. This, however,
was done the following century. In the _Itinerarium Mentis in Deum_ of
St. Bonaventura (1221-74) we find the following arrangements:--
{ { Metaphysics--essence: leads to First
{ { Principle = Father.
{ Natural { Mathematics--numbers, figures: leads
{ { to Image = Son.
{ { Physics--natures, powers, diffusions:
{ { leads to Gift of Holy Spirit.
{
PHILOSOPHY { { Grammar--power of expression = Father.
{ Rational { Logic--perspicuity in argument = Son.
{ { Rhetoric--skill in persuading = Holy
{ { Spirit.
{
{ { Monastics--innascibility of Father.
{ Moral { OEconomics--familiarity of Son.
{ { Politics--liberality of Holy Spirit.
Here we have the _Trivium_, under the division "Rational," while the
_Quadrivium_ must still be included under "Mathematics. " In both cases
we get nine sciences or disciplines, and the number was apparently
chosen, because it is the square of three, the number of the Holy
Trinity.
