Aristotle and Ancient Educational Ideals Part 11

For we are Thy sons; Thou didst give us the symbols of speech at our birth, Alone of the things that live, and mortal move upon earth.

Wherefore Thou shalt find me extolling and ever singing Thy praise; Since Thee the great Universe, rolling on its path round the world, obeys:-- Obeys Thee, wherever Thou guidest, and gladly is bound in Thy bands, So great is the power Thou confidest, with strong, invincible hands, To Thy mighty, ministering servant, the bolt of the thunder, that flies, Two-edged, like a sword and fervent, that is living and never dies.

All nature, in fear and dismay, doth quake in the path of its stroke, What time Thou preparest the way for the one Word Thy lips have spoke, Which blends with lights smaller and greater, which pervadeth and thrilleth all things, So great is Thy power and Thy nature--in the Universe Highest of Kings!

On earth, of all deeds that are done, O G.o.d! there is none without Thee.

In the holy aether not one, nor one on the face of the sea; Save the deeds that evil men, driven by their own blind folly, have planned; But things that have grown uneven are made even again by Thy hand; And things unseemly grow seemly, the unfriendly are friendly to Thee; For so good and evil supremely Thou hast blended in one by decree.

For all Thy decree is one ever--a Word that endureth for aye, Which mortals, rebellious, endeavor to flee from and shun to obey-- Ill-fated, that, worn with p.r.o.neness for the lordship of goodly things, Neither hear nor behold, in its Oneness, the law that divinity brings; Which men with reason obeying, might attain unto glorious life, No longer aimlessly straying in the paths of ign.o.ble strife.

There are men with a zeal unblest, that are wearied with following of fame, And men, with a baser quest, that are turned to lucre and shame.

There are men, too, that pamper and pleasure the flesh with delicate stings: All these desire beyond measure to be other than all these things.

Great Jove, all-giver, dark-clouded, great Lord of the thunderbolt's breath!

Deliver the men that are shrouded in ignorance, dismal as death.

O Father! dispel from their souls the darkness, and grant them the light Of Reason, Thy stay, when the whole wide world Thou rulest with might, That we, being honored, may honor Thy name with the music of hymns, Extolling the deeds of the Donor, unceasing, as rightly beseems Mankind; for no worthier trust is awarded to G.o.d or to man Than forever to glory with justice in the law that endures and is One.--Cleanthes.

The distinguishing characteristics of h.e.l.lenic education were unity, comprehensiveness, proportion, and aimfulness. It extended to the whole human being, striving to bring the various elements of his nature into complete harmony in view of an end. This end was the State, in which the individual citizen was expected to find a field for all his activities.

We have seen how, while conservative Sparta clung to this ideal to the last, and rigorously excluded those influences which tended to undermine it, Athens, by freely admitting these, gradually broke down the fair proportion between bodily and mental education, in an excessive devotion to the latter, and so came to make a distinction between the man and the citizen. The result was an epidemic of individualism which threatened the existence of all that was h.e.l.lenic. Against this destructive power the n.o.blest men in the nation, an aeschylus, an Aristophanes, a Pericles, a Socrates, a Xenophon, a Plato, an Aristotle, fought with all the might of worth and intellect. Some of them sought once more to remerge the man in the citizen by means of a despotism and the suppression of all intellectual pursuits; others, seeing clearly the impossibility of this, tried so to define the sphere of the individual that it should not encroach upon that of the citizen, but stand in harmonious relation to it. They did this by placing the sphere of the individual above that of the State, and, inasmuch as the former was a purely intellectual sphere, they found themselves driven to conclude, and to lay down, that the contemplative life is the end and consummation of the practical, that the citizen and the State exist only for the sake of the individual.

They were very far indeed from seeing all the implications of this conclusion: these showed themselves only in the sequel; but the fact is, that the principle of the separation between the man and the citizen, and the a.s.signment of the place of honor to the former, proved at once the destroying angel of h.e.l.lenism and the animating spirit of the civilization which took its place. If we look closely at the schemes of Plato and Aristotle, we shall see that they try to render innocuous the spirit of individualism by exhausting its activities in intellectual relations to the divine, offering it heaven, if it will only consent to relinquish to the political spirit its earthly claims. They practically said: Man, in all his relations to his fellow-men here below, is a citizen; only in relation to G.o.d is he an individual. The history of the last two thousand years is but a commentary on this text. From the day when the master-mind of the Greek world credited man's nature with a divine element having a supreme activity of its own, European thought and life have been agitated by three questions, and largely shaped by the answers given to them: (1) What is the nature of the divine element in man? (2) In what form or inst.i.tution shall that element find expression and realization? (3) How shall that inst.i.tution relate itself to the State? And they have not yet been definitely answered.

Principles that are to move the world are never the result of mere abstract thought, but always of a crisis or epoch in human affairs. And so it was in the present case. The separation between the man and the citizen was accomplished in fact, before it was formulated in theory. On the other hand, the theory received emphasis from the events which accompanied and followed its promulgation. The battle of Chaeronea, which took place sixteen years before Aristotle's death, by putting an end forever to the free civic life of Greece, removed the very conditions under which the old ideal could realize itself, and forced men to seek a sphere of activity, and to form a.s.sociations, outside of the State.

The State, indeed, still maintained a semblance of life, and the old education, with its literature, gymnastics, and music still continued; but the spirit of both was gone. The State was gradually replaced by the philosophic schools, while intellectual training tended more and more to concentrate itself upon rhetoric, that art which enables the individual to shine before his fellows, and to gain wealth or public preferment.

From this time on, the spiritual life of Greece found expression in the pretentious, empty individualism of the rhetorician, the lineal descendant of the sophists, and in the philosophical sects, which embodied the spirit of Socrates, their opponent.

The founder of the rhetorical schools may be said to have been Isocrates, who, after being a pupil of Socrates', turned against the philosophic tendency, and championed elegant philistinism. The aim of these schools was to turn out clever men of the world, thoroughly acquainted with popular opinions and motives, and capable of expressing themselves glibly, sententiously, and persuasively on any and every subject. They usually made no profession of imparting profound learning or eliciting philosophic thought: indeed, they despised both; but they did seek to impart such an amount of ordinary knowledge as to place their pupils in the chief current of the popular thought of their time.

They thus became the bearers of practical education among a people who, having lost their political life without finding any higher, sought to obtain satisfaction in social intercourse. For hundreds of years they exerted an enormous influence, and, indeed, at certain times and places were formidable rivals of the philosophic schools.

The first man of Greek race who attempted to found a sect or school outside the State was Pythagoras, and there can be no doubt that all subsequent schools were in some degree modelled upon his. It is true that the Pythagorean school had been broken up and dispersed long before the days of Plato and Aristotle (see p. 54); nevertheless, his followers, scattered over Greece, had carried with them the ideas and principles of their master, and now that Athens had fallen into the condition against which the Pythagorean discipline had been a protest, these ideas found a ready response in the hearts of those men whom the social life of the time could not satisfy. Hence the schools of Plato and Aristotle, which had originally been mere educational inst.i.tutions, turned, even during the lifetime of the latter, into sects (a???se??, heresies, as they were called later on), with definite sets of non-political principles, in accordance with which their members tried to shape their lives. It cannot be said that these two schools were in any high degree successful, and the reasons were that they were too purely intellectual, that they made no striking revolt against political life, and that they called for a type of man not easy to find. But, shortly after the death of Aristotle, there arose, almost contemporaneously, two other schools, which exerted an influence, deep and wide, for over six hundred years. These were the Epicurean and the Stoic. Widely as these differed in respect to means, they sought the same end, namely, personal independence, and they sought it by conformity to laws imposed by no human legislator, but by nature. The former took the law of the senses, the latter the law of the spirit, for its guide; and, by a strange contradiction, while the former championed free will, the latter professed fatalism. These four schools were the only ones that ever met with extensive patronage in Athens, and with the exception of the Academic, they never diverged far from the principles of their founders. In the time of Marcus Aurelius, after Athens had been for ages a mere Roman university, they were placed under State patronage, and supported by public funds, and there is no record to show that this was discontinued until they were finally closed by the Emperor Justinian in A.D. 529.

Not long after the death of Aristotle, Athens was supplanted by Alexandria, as the centre of Greek influence. Here the rhetorical and philosophic schools established themselves, and could soon boast a numerous discipleship. This, however, was no longer exclusively, or even mainly, Greek, but was recruited from all the nations of the known world, more especially those of the East. Phnicians, Syrians, Jews, Persians, etc., not to speak of Egyptians, now became students of Greek philosophy, and members of philosophic sects, whose members not only studied together, but often, to a large extent, lived together in communities. About the year B.C. 300 were founded the famous Museum and Library of Alexandria--the first university and the first public library in the world. Round these the various sects gathered, to study, to discuss, and to exchange opinions. Nor was it Greek thought alone that engaged their attention. The opinions and beliefs of Egypt and the East came in for a share, and, in the end, for the largest share. Nor is this wonderful, when we consider the direction that thought and life were then taking.

We have already seen that, as Greek civic life lost the conditions of its existence, the thoughtful portion of the people came more and more to seek for life-principles in the supersensible world of intellect. The nature of this world Plato and Aristotle had done their best to reveal.

But the event proved that neither an ordered host of ideas commanded by the Good, nor a Supreme Intelligence served by a host of lower intelligences, could yield the principles which the life of the time demanded; and thus we find the philosophers of Alexandria striving to people their intelligible world with forms drawn from all the religions of the East, including Judaism. Thus there grew up the various forms of Alexandrine philosophy, compounds of Greek thought and Oriental religion. On the basis of these again were organized, at the same time, various forms of social life, all tending more or less to religious communism. Hence came the Essenes (see p. 59), the Therapeuts, the Neopythagoreans, and the Neoplatonists, all of whom, notwithstanding certain shortcomings, did much to purify life, and to pave the way for a higher civilization.

In B.C. 146, Greece, and, in B.C. 30, Egypt, fell into the hands of the Romans and thenceforth formed provinces of their empire. Athens and Alexandria were now Roman university-towns, while Rome became more and more the diffusing centre of Greek and Oriental influence. It would be impossible, in a work like the present, to give even a sketch of the forms which education a.s.sumed in these three great centres, or in the world that revolved round them, in the six hundred and more years that pa.s.sed between the loss of Greek autonomy and the triumph of Christianity. We shall merely endeavor to give a general notion of its two chief tendencies, which, as we saw, were towards rhetoric and philosophy; and we shall do this in connection with the names of two men, who may be regarded as respectively typical of the two tendencies, Quintilian the rhetorician, and Plotinus the philosopher. By doing so we shall pave the way for the consideration of the Rise of the Christian Schools.

CHAPTER II

QUINTILIAN AND RHETORICAL EDUCATION

Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic. Both have for their subjects those things which, in a certain way, are matters of common knowledge, and belong to no definite science. Hence everybody, in some degree, is gifted with them; for everybody, to some extent, tries to examine and sustain an argument, to defend himself, and to accuse others.--Aristotle.

There is a certain political theory which is made up of many great things. A large and important part of it is artificial eloquence, which they call rhetoric.--Cicero.

Every duty which tends to preserve human relations and human society must be a.s.signed a higher place than any that stops short with knowledge and science.--_Id._

Zeno, having pressed his fingers together and closed his fist, said that was like Dialectic; having spread them out and opened his hand, he said Eloquence was like his palm there.--_Id._

To act considerately is of more moment than to think wisely.--_Id._

I pa.s.s to the pleasure of oratorical eloquence, the delight of which one enjoys not at any one moment, but almost every day and every hour.--Tacitus.

Grammar is an experimental knowledge of the usages of language as generally current among poets and prose writers. It is divided into six parts, (1) trained reading with due regard to prosody [_i.e._ aspiration, accentuation, quant.i.ty, emphasis, metre, etc.], (2) exposition according to poetic figures [literary criticism], (3) ready statement of dialectical peculiarities and allusions [philology, geography, history, mythology], (4) discovery of etymologies, (5) accurate account of a.n.a.logies [accidence and syntax], (6) criticism of poetical productions, which is the n.o.blest part of the grammatic art [ethics, politics, strategy, etc.].--Dionysius Thrax.

Reading is the rendering of poetic or prose productions without stumbling or hesitancy. It must be done with due regard to expression, prosody, and pauses. From the expression we learn the merit of the piece, from the prosody the art of the reader, and from the pauses the meaning intended to be conveyed. In this way we read tragedy heroically, comedy conversationally, elegiacs thrillingly, epics sustainedly, lyrics musically, and dirges softly and plaintively. Any reading done without due observance of these rules degrades the merits of the poets and makes the habits of readers ridiculous.--_Id._

Some arts are common, others liberal.... The liberal arts, which some call the logical arts, are astronomy, geometry, music, philosophy, medicine, grammar, rhetoric.--_Scholia to Dionysius Thrax._

It is obvious that man excels the other animals in worth and speech: Why may we not hold that his worth consists as much in eloquence as in reason?--Quintilian.

The civil man, and he who is truly wise, who does not devote himself to idle disputes, but to the administration of the commonwealth (from which those folks who are called philosophers have farthest withdrawn themselves), will be glad to employ every available oratorical means to reach his ends, having previously settled in his own mind what ends are honorable.--_Id._

If we count over all the epochs of life, we shall find its pains far more numerous than its pleasures.... The first, that of babyhood, is trying. The baby is hungry; the nurse sends it to sleep: it is thirsty; she washes it: it wants to go to sleep; she takes a rattle and makes a noise. When the child has escaped from the nurse, it is taken hold of by the pedagogue, the physical trainer, the grammar-master, the music-master, the drawing-master. In process of time, there are added the arithmetic-master, the geometer, the horse-breaker; he rises early; he has no chance for leisure. He becomes a cadet; again he has to fear the drill-master, the physical trainer, the fencing-master, the gymnasiarch. By all these he is whipt, watched, throttled. He graduates from the cadets at twenty; again he dreads and watches captain and general, etc.--Teles the Stoic (B.C. 260).

The palmy period in the history of Rome is the period when she had no literature. It was only when the Roman nationality began to break up, and cosmopolitan Greek tendencies to lay hold upon the people, that a literature began to appear. For this reason, Roman literature from its very inception is, from absolute necessity, filled with the Greek spirit, and stands in the most direct opposition to the national spirit of the people.--Mommsen.

Quintiliane, vagae moderator summe juventae, Gloria Romanae, Quintiliane, togae.--Martial.

Up to the time when Rome began to decline, the school education of her youth was meagre in the extreme, consisting of reading, writing, and a little law. All later education that was more than this was borrowed from the Greeks. It was about the year 200 B.C., at the close of the Second Punic War, that their influence began clearly to show itself. The severe Cato, who so cordially despised rhetoricians and philosophers, learnt Greek in his old age and wrote, for the use of his son, a series of manuals on ethics, rhetoric, medicine, military science, farming, and law. At the same time Scipio Africa.n.u.s spent his leisure hours in practising gymnastics. From this time on, and just in proportion as Rome lost her national character and became cosmopolitan, she more and more adopted Greek manners, Greek religion (or irreligion), and Greek education. When, finally, in B.C. 146, Greece became a Roman dependency, it was strictly true that "Captive Greece took captive her rude conqueror." Thousands of Greek schoolmasters, rhetoricians, philosophers, etc., flocked to Rome, and, though attempts were made to expel or suppress them, they held their place, for the simple reason that the education they offered was a necessity of the time. Rome, the mistress of the world, had either to become cosmopolitan or perish, and she preferred the former alternative. She now, for the first time, began to have a literature and to cultivate her own language. The studies which she specially affected were (1) grammar, that is, literature, (2) rhetoric, (3) philosophy, which corresponded to school, college, and university education. The last, like music and geometry, was, for the most part, an elegant accomplishment, rather than a serious study. The physical sciences found little favor.

So long as Roman education was in the hands of Greeks, it was conducted in the Greek language, and the authors read and discussed were Greek.

But the Romans, though willing enough to borrow Greek culture, were unwilling to remain permanently in intellectual dependence upon a conquered people, which in many respects they despised. Strong efforts, therefore, were made to develop a national literature and a national education. About the year B.C. 100, Lucius aelius Praeconinus Stilo, a worthy and conservative Roman knight, opened a private cla.s.s in Latin grammar and rhetoric for young men of the upper cla.s.ses, and from this time on the direct influence of the Greeks, except in philosophy, declined. Greek, indeed, continued to be spoken by all persons making any pretensions to culture; but Latin became the language of Roman literature. Among the pupils of Stilo were Varro and Cicero, who, along with Julius Caesar, may be called the parents of the cla.s.sical Latin language, literature, and eloquence. Both Varro and Caesar wrote works on grammar. A certain Cornificius (generally known as _Auctor ad Herennium_) about this time wrote the first Latin treatise on Rhetoric; but the great authority on the subject, in practice as well as theory, was Cicero, who wrote no fewer than seven works on it. With Cicero's death, and the transformation of the republic into an empire, eloquence lost its n.o.blest use, the defence of liberty. Rhetoric, nevertheless, continued to be cultivated as a fine art and for forensic use, and, indeed, was made to cover the whole of the higher education of youth. Of this art the most celebrated teacher was Quintilian, "the supreme director of giddy youth, the glory of the Roman toga" (_i.e._ civil manhood).

Quintilian was born about A.D. 35 in the Spanish city of Calagurris (Calahorra), where, later, St. Dominic first saw the light. He was educated in Rome, but afterwards returned to his native place and established himself as a teacher of rhetoric. About A.D. 68, he was invited by the Emperor Galba to settle in Rome, which he did, giving instruction in rhetoric with unparalleled success for twenty years, and drawing a salary from the government. At the end of that time, he retired, rich and honored, into private life. It was after this that he wrote the work which carried his fame down to posterity, his _Inst.i.tutio Oratorica_, or Education of the Orator. In the first book of this he draws out a scheme of preparatory education for the family and the school; the succeeding ten are devoted to rhetoric, and the last to the character of the orator, whom he regards as identical with the cultivated gentleman. It is only the first book that concerns the modern student of education, and of this I shall now give a brief summary.

The first care of the parent, after the birth of a child, should be to procure for it a nurse of good moral character and of cultivated speech.

A child that early learns bad habits in acting and speaking, rarely, if ever, gets cured of them afterwards. Great care ought to be taken with regard to the child's youthful companions, and to his pedagogue, who ought to be of good character and well-informed. Its first language ought to be Greek; but Latin ought to be begun early, and both to be carefully cultivated. There is no need to follow the ordinary custom of not allowing the child to learn to read or write before the close of its seventh year. Much can very profitably be done by play long before that.

It is a mistake to teach children to repeat the alphabet before they know the forms of the letters. These they may learn from tablets or blocks. As soon as the letters are recognized, they ought to be written.

Following with a pen the forms of letters engraved on ivory tablets is a good thing. After letters, syllables must be learnt--all the possible syllables in both languages. After syllables come words, and after words, sentences. In all this process, it is of the utmost importance to secure thoroughness by avoiding haste. The child must not attempt words till he can read and write all the syllables, nor sentences till he is perfectly familiar with words. In reading sentences, he must learn to run ahead, so that, while he is p.r.o.nouncing one word with his lips, he is recognizing others with his eye. The writing lesson should be utilized in order to make the child acquainted with rare words and good poetry. At this stage, his memory ought to be well exercised, and made to lay up large stores of good literature for future use. At the same time, his organs of speech should be well trained, by being made to p.r.o.nounce rapidly verses containing difficult combinations of sound.[5]

As soon as he is able, the child should go to school. Home education is objectionable on many accounts, especially for boys intended for orators. These, above all others, must learn sociability, tact, and _esprit de corps_, and form school-friendships. Many moral lessons can be learnt, and many motives employed, in the school, that are not possible in the family. Among the latter is ambition, which "though itself a vice, is the parent of many virtues," and therefore ought to be freely used. Hardly any motive is so powerful.

When a boy is sent to school, his teacher's first business is to investigate his character and capacity. The chief marks of ability are memory and power of imitation. Imitation is not mimicry, which is always a sign of low nature. Slowness, though objectionable, is better than precocity, which should be discouraged in every way. Different treatment is required for different boys: some need the bit, some the spur. The best boy is the one "whom praise excites, whom glory pleases, who cries when he is beaten. Such a one may be nourished with emulation; reproach will sting him; honor will rouse him." Boys ought to have seasons of rest and play, neither too short to afford recreation, nor too long to encourage idleness. Games of question and answer are good for sharpening the wits. In play an excellent opportunity is offered to the teacher for learning the character of his pupils. Corporal punishment is altogether to be deprecated, and, indeed, is unneeded when the teacher does his duty.

What boys learn in school is grammar; but this must be supplemented by music and astronomy. Without the former it will be impossible to scan verse; without the latter, to understand certain allusions and modes of fixing dates in the poets. A little philosophy is necessary for the sake of understanding such poets as Empedocles and Lucretius; geometry, in order to give practice in apodictic reasoning, as well as for practical uses. Thus the curriculum of school education will consist of Grammar, Music, Astronomy, Philosophy, and Geometry.

Grammar consists of two parts, (1) _Methodics_, or the art of correct speaking, (2) _Historics_ (German _Realien_), the interpretation of poets, historians, philosophers, etc. _Methodics_--grammar in the modern sense--should aim at enabling a boy to speak and write with correctness, clearness, and elegance. All barbarisms (_i.e._ foreign words and idioms), solecisms, affectations, and careless p.r.o.nunciations 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 n.o.ble 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.

Pa.s.sages from the poets ought to be committed to memory. In all reading, the utmost care ought to be taken to promote purity and manliness (_sanct.i.tas et virilitas_).

After reading a piece of poetry, boys must be made to a.n.a.lyze 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 (pa?d?t??e?a) 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."