TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been placed at the end of each chapter.

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Some minor changes to the text are noted at the [end of the book.]

THE
History of Pedagogy.

BY

GABRIEL COMPAYRÉ,

Deputy, Doctor of Letters, and Professor in the Normal School
of Fontenay-aux-Roses.

TRANSLATED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION,
NOTES, AND AN INDEX,

BY

W. H. PAYNE, A.M.,

Chancellor of the University of Nashville, and President of the
State Normal College; late Professor of the Science and the
Art of Teaching in the University of Michigan.

BOSTON:

D. C. HEATH & COMPANY.

1889.

Copyright, Sept. 30, 1885,

By W. H. PAYNE.

J. S. Cushing & Co., Printers, Boston.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.

The two considerations that have chiefly influenced me in making this translation are the following:—

1. Of the three phases of educational study, the practical, the theoretical, and the historical, the last, as proved by the number of works written on the subject, has received but very little attention from English and American teachers; and yet, if we allow that a teacher should first of all be a man of culture, and that an invaluable factor in his professional education is a knowledge of what has hitherto been done within his field of activity, there are the best of reasons why the claims of this study should be urged upon the teaching profession. For giving breadth of view, judicial candor, and steadiness of purpose, nothing more helpful can be commended to the teacher than a critical survey of the manifold experiments and experiences in educational practice. The acutest thinkers of all the ages have worked at the solution of the educational problem, and the educating art has been practised under every variety of conditions, civil, social, religious, philosophic, and ethnic. Is it not time for us to review these experiments, as the very best condition for advancing surely and steadily?

2. The almost complete neglect of this study among us has been due, in great measure, to the fact that there have been no books on the subject at all adapted to the ends to be attained. A dry, scrappy, and incomplete narration of facts can end only in bewilderment and in blunting the taste for this species of inquiry. The desirable thing has been a book that is comprehensive without being tedious, whose treatment is articulate and clear, and that is pervaded by a critical insight at once catholic and accurate. Some years ago I read with the keenest admiration, the Histoire Critique des Doctrines de l’Éducation en France depuis le Seizième Siècle, by Gabriel Compayré (Paris, 1879); and it seemed to me a model, in matter and method, for a general history of education. Within a recent period Monsieur Compayré has transformed this Histoire Critique into such a general history of education, under the title Histoire de la Pédagogie. In this book all the characteristics of the earlier work have been preserved, and it represents to my own mind very nearly the ideal of the treatise that is needed by the teaching profession of this country.

The reader will observe the distinction made by Monsieur Compayré between Pedagogy and Education. Though our nomenclature does not sanction this distinction, and though I prefer to give to the term Pedagogy a different connotation, I have felt bound on moral grounds to preserve Monsieur Compayré’s use of these terms wherever the context would sanction it.

It seems mere squeamishness to object to the use of the word Pedagogy on account of historical associations. The fact that this term is in reputable use in German, French, and Italian educational literature, is a sufficient guaranty that we may use it without danger. With us, the term Pedagogics seems to be employed as a synonym for Pedagogy. It would seem to me better to follow continental usage, and restrict the term Pedagogy to the art or practice of education, and Pedagogics to the correlative science.

I feel under special obligations to Monsieur Compayré, and to his publisher, Monsieur Paul Delaplane, for their courteous permission to publish this translation. I am also greatly indebted to my friend, Mr. C. E. Lowrey, Ph.D., for material aid in important details of my work.

W. H. PAYNE.

University of Michigan,

Jan. 4, 1886.

The issue of a second edition has permitted a careful revision of the translation and the correction of several verbal errors. In subsequent editions, no effort will be spared by the translator and his publishers to make this volume worthy of the favor with which it has been received by the educational public.

W. H. P.

Aug. 1, 1886.

INTRODUCTION.

What a Complete History of Education would be.—In writing an elementary history of pedagogy, I do not pretend to write a history of education. Pedagogy and education, like logic and science, or like rhetoric and eloquence, are different though analogous things.

What would a complete history of education not include? It would embrace, in its vast developments, the entire record of the intellectual and moral culture of mankind at all periods and in all countries. It would be a résumé of the life of humanity in its diverse manifestations, literary and scientific, religious and political. It would determine the causes, so numerous and so diverse, which act upon the characters of men, and which, modifying a common endowment, produce beings as different as are a contemporary of Pericles and a modern European, a Frenchman of the middle ages and a Frenchman subsequent to the Revolution.

In fact, there is not only an education, properly so called, that which is given in schools and which proceeds from the direct action of teachers, but there is a natural education, which we receive without our knowledge or will, through the influence of the social environment in which we live. There are what a philosopher of the day has ingeniously called the occult coadjutors of education,—climate, race, manners, social condition, political institutions, religious beliefs. If a man of the nineteenth century is very unlike a man of the seventeenth century, it is not merely because the first was educated in a Lycée of the University and the other in a college of the Jesuits; it is also because in the atmosphere in which they have been enveloped they have contracted different habits of mind and heart; it is because they have grown up under different laws, under a different social and political régime; because they have been nurtured by a different philosophy and a different religion. Upon that delicate and variable composition known as the human soul, how many forces which we do not suspect have left their imprint! How many unobserved and latent causes are involved in our virtues and in our faults! The conscious and determined influence of the teacher is not, perhaps, the most potent. In conjunction with him are at work, obscurely but effectively, innumerable agents, besides personal effort and what is produced by the original energy of the individual.

We see what a history of education would be: a sort of philosophy of history, to which nothing would be foreign, and which would scrutinize in its most varied and most trifling causes, as well as in its most profound sources, the moral life of humanity.

What an Elementary History of Pedagogy should be.—Wholly different is the limited and modest purpose of a history of pedagogy, which proposes merely to set forth the doctrines and the methods of educators properly so called. In this more limited sense, education is reduced to the premeditated action which the will of one man exercises over other men in order to instruct them and train them. It is the reflective auxiliary of the natural development of the human soul. To what can be done by nature and by the blind and fatal influences which sport with human destiny, education adds the concurrence of art, that is, of the reason, attentive and self-possessed, which voluntarily and consciously applies to the training of the soul principles whose truth has been recognized, and methods whose efficiency has been tested by experience.

Even thus limited, the history of pedagogy still presents to our inquiry a vast field to be explored. There is scarcely a subject that has provoked to the same degree as education the best efforts of human thinking. Note the catalogue of educational works published in French, which Buisson has recently prepared.[1] Though incomplete, this list contains not less than two thousand titles; and probably educational activity has been more fruitful, and has been given a still greater extension in Germany than in France. This activity is due to the fact, first of all, that educational questions, brought into fresh notice with each generation, exercise over the minds of men an irresistible and perennial attraction; and also to the fact that parenthood inspires a taste for such inquiries, and, a thing that is not always fortunate, leads to the assumption of some competence in such matters; and finally to the very nature of educational problems, which are not to be solved by abstract and independent reasoning, after the fashion of mathematical problems, but which, vitally related to the nature and the destiny of man, change and vary with the fluctuations of the psychological and the moral doctrines of which they are but the consequences. To different systems of psychology correspond different systems of education. An idealist, like Malebranche, will not reason upon education after the manner of a sensationalist like Locke. In the same way there is in every system of morals the germ of a characteristic and original system of education. A mystic, like Gerson, will not assign to education the same end as a practical and positive writer like Herbert Spencer. Hence a very great diversity in systems, or at least an infinite variety in the shades of educational opinion.

Still farther, educational activity may manifest itself in different ways, either in doctrines and theories or in methods and practical applications. The historian of pedagogy has not merely to make known the general conceptions which the philosophers of education have in turn submitted to the approbation of men. If he wishes to make his work complete, he must give a detailed account of what has been accomplished, and make an actual study of the educational establishments which have been founded at different periods by those who have organized instruction.

Pedagogy is a complex affair, and there are many ways of writing its history. One of these which has been too little considered, and which would surely be neither the least interesting nor the least fruitful, would consist in studying, not the great writers on education and their doctrines, not the great teachers and their methods, but pupils themselves. If it were possible to relate in minute detail, supposing that history would furnish us the necessary information on this point, the manner in which a great or a good man has been educated; if an analysis could be made of the different influences which have been involved in the formation of talent or in the development of virtue in the case of remarkable individuals; if it were possible, in a word, to reproduce through exact and personal biographies the toil, the slow elaboration whence have issued at different periods solidity of character, rectitude of purpose, and minds endowed with judicial fairness; the result would be a useful and eminently practical work, something analogous to what a history of logic would be, in which there should be set forth not the abstract rules and the formal laws for the search after truth, but the successful experiments and the brilliant discoveries which have little by little constituted the patrimony of science. This perhaps would be the best of logics because it is real and in action; and also the best of treatises on pedagogy, since there might be learned from it, not general truths, which are often of difficult application and of uncertain utility, but practical means and living methods whose happy and efficient applications would be seen in actual use.

We have just traced the imaginary plan of a history of pedagogy rather than the exact outline of the series of lessons which this book contains. However, we have approached this ideal as nearly as we have been able, by attempting to group about the principal philosophical and moral ideas the systems of education which they have inspired; by endeavoring to retain whatever is essential; by adding to the first rapid sketches studied and elaborate portraits; by ever mingling with the expositions of doctrines and the analysis of important works the study of practical methods and the examination of actual institutions; and, finally, by penetrating the thought of the great educators, to learn from them how they became such, and by following them, as they have united practice with theory, in the particular systems of education which they have directed with success.[2]

Division of the History of Pedagogy.—The abundance and the variety of pedagogical questions, the great number of thinkers who have written upon education, in a word, the complexity of the subject, might inspire the historian of pedagogy with the idea of dividing his work, and of distributing his studies into several series. For example, it would be possible to write the history of education in general by itself, and then the history of instruction, which is but an element of education. As education itself comprises three parts, physical education, intellectual education, and moral education, there would be an opportunity for three series of distinct studies on these different subjects. But these divisions would present grave inconveniences. In general, the opinions of an educator are not susceptible of division; there is a connection between his manner of regarding the matter of instruction and the solution he gives to educational questions proper. One mode of thinking pervades his theories or his practice in the matter of moral discipline, and his ideas on intellectual education. It is, then, necessary to consider each of the different systems of education as a whole.

Perhaps a better order of division would be that which, without regard to chronological order, should distinguish all pedagogical doctrines and applications into a certain number of schools, and connect all educators with certain general tendencies: as the ascetic tendency, that of the fathers of the church, for example, and of the middle ages; the utilitarian tendency of Locke, and of a great number of moderns; the pessimism of Port Royal, the optimism of Fénelon; the literary school of the humanists of the Renaissance, and the scientific school of Diderot and of Condorcet. Such a mode of procedure would have its interest, because in the manifestations of educational thought so apparently different it would sharply distinguish certain uniform principles which reappear at all periods of history; but this would be rather a philosophy of the history of education than a simple history of pedagogy.

The best we can do, then, is to follow the chronological order and to study in turn the educators of antiquity, those of the middle ages, of the Renaissance, and of modern times. We shall interrogate in succession those who have become eminent as teachers and educators, and ask of each how he has solved for himself the various portions of the problems of education. Besides being more simple and more natural, this order has the advantage of showing us the progress of education as it has gradually risen from instinct to reflection, from nature to art, and after long periods of groping and many halts, ascending from humble beginnings to a complete and definite organization. This plan also exhibits to us the beautiful spectacle of a humanity in a state of ceaseless growth. At first, instruction comprised but few subjects, at the same time that only a select few participated in it. Then there was a simultaneous though gradual extension of the domain of knowledge which must be acquired, of the moral qualities demanded by the struggle for existence, and of the number of men who are called to be instructed and educated,—the ideal being, as Comenius has said, that all may learn and that everything may be taught.

Utility of the History of Pedagogy.—The history of pedagogy is henceforth to form a part of the course of study for the primary normal schools of France. It has been included in the prescribed list of subjects for the third year, under this title: History of Pedagogy,—Principal educators and their doctrines; Analysis of the most important works.[3]

Is argument necessary to justify the place which has been assigned to this study? In the first place, the history of pedagogy possesses great interest from the fact that it is closely connected with the general history of thought and also with the philosophic explication of human actions. Certainly, pedagogical doctrines are neither fortuitous opinions nor events without significance. On the one hand, they have their causes and their principles in moral, religious, and political beliefs, of which they are the faithful image; on the other, they are instrumental in the training of mind and in the formation of manners. Back of the Ratio Studiorum of the Jesuits, back of the Émile of Rousseau, there distinctly appears a complete religion, a complete philosophy. In the classical studies organized by the humanists of the Renaissance we see the dawn of that literary brilliancy which distinguished the century of Louis XIV., and so in the scientific studies preached a hundred years ago by Diderot and by Condorcet there was a preparation for the positive spirit of our time. The education of the people is at once the consequence of all that it believes and the source of all that it is destined to be.

But there are other reasons which recommend the study of educators and the reading of their works. The history of pedagogy is a necessary introduction to pedagogy itself. It should be studied, not for purposes of erudition or for mere curiosity, but with a practical purpose for the sake of finding in it the permanent truths which are the essentials of a definite theory of education. The desirable thing just now is not perhaps so much to find new ideas, as properly to comprehend those which are already current; to choose from among them, and, a choice once having been made, to make a resolute effort to apply them to use. When we consider with impartiality all that has been conceived or practised previous to the nineteenth century, or when we see clearly what our predecessors have left us to do in the way of consequences to deduce, of incomplete or obscure ideas to generalize or to illustrate, and especially of opposing tendencies to reconcile, we may well inquire what they have really left us to discover.

It is profitable to study even the chimeras and the educational errors of our predecessors. In fact, these are so many marked experiments which contribute to the progress of our methods by warning us of the rocks which we should shun. A thorough analysis of the paradoxes of Rousseau, and of the absurd consequences to which the abuse of the principle of nature leads us, is no less instructive than meditation on the wisest precepts of Montaigne or of Port Royal.

In truth, for him who has an exact knowledge of the educators of past centuries, the work of constructing a system of education is more than half done. It remains only to co-ordinate the scattered truths which have been collected from their works by assimilating them through personal reflection, and by making them fruitful through psychological analysis and moral faith.

Let it be observed that as studied by the men who first conceived and practised them, pedagogical methods present themselves to our examination with a sharpness of outline that is surprising. Innovators lend to whatever they invent a personal emphasis, something life-like and occasionally extravagant; but it is exactly this which permits us the better to comprehend their thought, and the more completely to discover its truth or its falsity.

However, it is not alone the intellectual advantage which recommends the history of pedagogy; it is also the moral stimulus which will be derived from the study. For the sake of encouraging to noble efforts the men and women who are our teachers, is it of no moment to present to them the names of Comenius, Rollin, and Pestalozzi as men who have attained such high excellence in their profession? Will not the teacher who each day resumes his heavy burden be revived and sustained? Will he not enter his class-room, where so many difficulties and toils await him, a better and a stronger man if his imagination teems with articulate memories of those who, in the past, have opened for him the way, and shown him by their example how to walk in it? By the marvellous agency of electricity we are now able to transport material and mechanical power, and to cause its transfer across space without regard to distance. But by reading and by meditation we are able to do something analogous to this in the moral world; we are able to borrow from the ancients, across the centuries, something of the moral energy that inspired them, and to make live again in our own hearts some of their virtues of devotion and faith. Doubtless a brief history of pedagogy could not, from this point of view, serve as a substitute for the actual reading of the authors in question; but it is a preparation for this work and inspires a taste for it.

We are warranted in saying, then, that the utility of the history of pedagogy blends with the utility of pedagogy itself. To-day it is no longer necessary for us to offer any proof on this point. Pedagogy, long neglected even in our country, has regained its standing; nay more, it has become the fashion. “France is becoming addicted to pedagogy” was a remark recently made by one of the men who, of our day, will have contributed most to excite and also to direct the taste for pedagogical studies.[4] The words pedagogue, pedagogy, have encountered dangers in the history of our language. Littré tells us that the word pedagogue “is most often used in a bad sense.” On the other hand, we shall see, if we consult his dictionary, that several years ago the sense of the word pedagogy was not yet fixed, since it is there defined as “the moral education of children.” To-day, not only in language, but in facts and in institutions, the fate of pedagogy is settled. Of course we must neither underrate it nor attribute to it a sovereign and omnipotent efficiency that it does not have. We might freely say of pedagogy what Sainte-Beuve said of logic: The best is that which does not argue in its own favor; which is not enamoured of itself, but which modestly recognizes the limits of its power. The best is that which we make for ourselves, not that which we learn from books.

Even with this reserve, the teaching of pedagogy is destined to render important services to the cause of education, and education, let us be assured, is in the way of acquiring a fresh importance day by day. This is due to the fact, first, that under a liberal government, and in a republican society, it is more and more necessary that the citizens shall be instructed and enlightened. Liberty is a dangerous thing unless it has instruction for a counterpoise. Moreover, we must recollect that in our day, among those occult coadjutors of which we have spoken, and which at all times add their action to that of education proper, some have lost their influence, while others, so far from co-operating in this movement, oppose it and compromise it. On the one hand, religion has seen her influence curtailed. She is no longer, as she once was, the tutelary power under whose shadow the rising generations peacefully matured. It is necessary that education, through the progress of the reason and through the reflective development of morality, should compensate for the waning influence of religion.

On the other hand, social conditions, the very progress of civil and political liberty, the growing independence accorded the child in the family, the multiplication of books, good and bad, all these collateral agents of education are not always compliant and useful aids. They would prove the accomplices of a moral decadence did not our teachers make an effort as much more vigorous to affect the will and the heart, as well as the mind, in order to establish character, and thus assure the recuperation of our country.

A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF GABRIEL COMPAYRÉ.[5]

Gabriel Compayré was born Jan. 2, 1843, at Albi, a city of Southern France, containing about fifteen thousand inhabitants, and the capital of the province of Tarn. His early education was received from his father, a man of sterling character, and the author of a book entitled, Historical Studies Concerning the Albigenses.

He passed from his father’s care to the collège of Castres, then to the lycée of Toulouse, and finally to the lycée Louis-le-Grand at Paris. His fellow-pupils recall with pleasure his triumphs at these institutions of learning. His brilliant intellectual powers, his vivid imagination, his well-stored memory, and his unwearied industry, marked him as destined to render signal services to his race.

He entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1862. His tastes led him to philosophical studies; indeed, he had already manifested a strong tendency to moral and intellectual science. Yet his intensely practical nature could not long remain satisfied with metaphysical subtleties where he found no sure foot-hold. He became a warm advocate of experimental methods, and of the Baconian philosophy. He set himself to a study of man as he appears in society and in the family; to the analysis of his emotions and his acts, and to the deduction, from these analyses, of those rules which ought to preside over his conduct and his intellectual and moral development.

He graduated from the normal school in 1865, and was immediately appointed professor of philosophy at the lycée of Pau. A lecture upon Rousseau, which he delivered here, brought upon him the severe condemnation of the ultramontane party, and involved him in a controversy which has continued to the present time.

In 1868, having been made a fellow of the University, he was sent to the lycée of Poitiers. At this place he manifested his sympathy for the common people by a course of lectures to workmen on moral subjects. About this time he received honorable mention from the Academy for an eloquent eulogy upon Rousseau, in which he carefully portrayed the influence of Rousseau upon the government of his country and upon methods of school instruction, giving him full credit for the reform in both.

From this time forward Compayré’s life has been filled with labors and with honors. In addition to his professional duties and philosophical writings, he has made careful study of the social and political questions of his country.

Promoted from one post of honor to another, on the 14th of July, 1880, he was appointed Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

In 1874 he presented his theme for his doctor’s degree upon the Philosophy of David Hume, a work of the highest philosophical thought and language, which received a prize from the Academy.

Between 1874 and 1880 his lectures were largely devoted to the subjects most closely connected with modern thought. A Study of Darwinism, The Psychology of a Child, Educational Principles, are subjects that indicate the sweep of his investigations. The brilliancy of his style, the liberality of his opinions, and the extent of his learning have exposed him to bitter attacks from those who envy his powers and disbelieve his doctrines; yet his popularity has continually increased, and the young professor has become a great power in the party of the republic, to whose cause he early devoted himself.

The works which he published during this period were numerous. He translated with great care, adding valuable matter of his own: Bain’s Inductive and Deductive Logic, Huxley’s Hume, His Life and Philosophy, and Locke’s Thoughts on Education. His most considerable work is his History of the Doctrine of Education in France since the Sixteenth Century, a work of two volumes, published in 1879, which reached its fourth edition in France in 1883, has been translated entire into German, and from which numerous extracts have been made for the educational journals of England and America. If we add to these labors his work upon the Revue Philosophique, and the Dictionnaire de Pédagogie, we shall understand why he was called to Paris in 1881, by the Minister of Public Instruction, to aid in founding the École Normale Supérieure des Institutrices, de Fontenay-aux-Roses. He successfully arranged the course of instruction for this school. In the same year he assisted in the organization of a new school at Sèvres, which prepares young teachers for the course of instruction in the normal schools.

In 1880 he published his Manual of Civil and Moral Instruction, in two courses, or parts. This book has had a remarkable career. In less than three years more than three hundred thousand copies of the first part, and over five hundred thousand of the second part, were sold.

In 1882, in conjunction with a friend, M. A. Delplan, an author of merit, he published his Civil and Moral Lectures. In 1883 he published a Course of Civil Instruction for normal schools.

Compayré entered political life in 1881, having been elected deputy from the arrondissement of Lavaur in Tarn. He occupies a distinguished position among the men of to-day; his character, his talents, his popularity, and his devotion to the cause of civil and intellectual freedom, give him the assurance of a place no less important among the men of the future.

In his personal appearance Compayré combines the scholar and the man of the world. His dark hair, parted in the middle, is combed back from a forehead very high and very broad. His eye is bright and piercing, and his face, clean shaven except upon the upper lip, bears the impress of both his ingenuousness and his indomitable perseverance.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See the Dictionnaire de Pédagogie, by F. Buisson, Article Bibliographie.

[2] The book now offered to the public was taught before it was written. It is the result of the lectures given for three years past, either at the higher normal school of Fontenay-aux-Roses, or in the normal courses for men at Sèvres and at Saint Cloud.

[3] Resolution of Aug. 3, 1881.

[4] See the Article of M. Pécaut in the Revue Pédagogique, No. 2, 1882.

[5] Furnished by Mr. Geo. E. Gay, Principal of the Malden High School.

THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

THE

HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

[CHAPTER I.]
EDUCATION IN ANTIQUITY.

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS; EDUCATION AMONG THE HINDOOS; POLITICAL CASTE AND RELIGIOUS PANTHEISM; EFFECTS ON EDUCATION; BUDDHISTIC REFORM; CONVERSATION OF BUDDHA AND PURNA; EDUCATIONAL USAGES; EDUCATION AMONG THE ISRAELITES; PRIMITIVE PERIOD; RELIGIOUS AND NATIONAL EDUCATION; PROGRESS OF POPULAR INSTRUCTION; ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOLS; RESPECT FOR TEACHERS; METHODS AND DISCIPLINE; EXCLUSIVE AND JEALOUS SPIRIT; EDUCATION AMONG THE CHINESE; FORMALISM; LÂO-TSZE AND KHUNG-TSZE (CONFUCIUS); EDUCATION AMONG OTHER PEOPLE OF THE EAST; THE EGYPTIANS AND THE PERSIANS; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.

1. Preliminary Considerations.—A German historian of philosophy begins his work by asking this question: “Was Adam a philosopher?” In the same way certain historians of pedagogy begin by learned researches upon the education of savages. We shall not carry our investigations so far back. Doubtless from the day when a human family began its existence, from the day when a father and a mother began to love their children, education had an existence. But there is very little practical interest in studying these obscure beginnings of pedagogy. It is a matter of erudition and curiosity.[6] Besides the difficulty of gathering up the faint traces of primitive education, there would be but little profit in painfully following the slow gropings of primeval man. In truth, the history of pedagogy dates but from the period relatively recent, when human thought, in the matter of education, substituted reflection for instinct, art for blind nature. So we shall hasten to begin the study of pedagogy among the classical peoples, the Greeks and the Romans, after having thrown a rapid glance over some Eastern nations considered either in their birthplace and remote origin, or in their more recent development.

2. The Pedagogy of the Hindoos.—It would not be worth our while to enter into details respecting a civilization so different from our own as that of the Hindoos. But we should not forget that we are in part the descendants of that people, and that we belong to the same ethnic group, and that the European languages are derived from theirs.

3. Political Caste and Religious Pantheism.—The spirit of caste, from the social point of view, and pantheism, from the religious point of view, are the characteristics of Hindoo society. The Indian castes constituted hereditary classes where social rank and special vocation were determined, not by free choice, but by the accident of birth. The consequence of this was an endless routine, with no care either for the individuality, or the personal talents, or the inclination of children, and without the possibility of rising by personal effort above one’s rank in life.[7] On the other hand, religious ideas came to restrict, within the limits where it was already imprisoned, the activity of the young Hindoo. God is everywhere present; he manifests himself in all the phenomena of heaven and earth, in the sun and in the stars, in the Himalayas and in the Ganges; he penetrates and animates everything; the things of sense are but the changing and ephemeral vestments of the unchangeable being. “With this pantheistic conception of the world and of life, the thought and the will of the Hindoo perished in the mystic contemplation of the soul. To become master of one’s inclinations; to abandon every terrestrial thought; after this life to lose one’s identity, and to be annihilated by absorption in the divine nature; to prepare one’s self by macerations and expiations for complete submersion in the original principle of all being,—this is the highest wisdom, the true happiness of the Hindoo, the ideal of all serious education.”[8]

4. Effects on Education.—It is easy to predict what education would become under the weight of these double chains, social and religious. While the ideal in our modern societies is more and more to enfranchise the individual, and to create for him personal freedom and self-consciousness, the effort of the Hindoo Brahmins consisted above all in crushing out all spontaneity, in abolishing individual predilections, by preaching the doctrine of absolute self-renunciation, of voluntary abasement, and of contempt for life. Man was thus born doubly a slave,—by his social condition, which predestinated him to the routine apprenticeship of his ancestral caste, and by his mysterious dependence on the divine being who absorbed in himself all real activity, and left to human beings only the deceptive and frail appearance of it.

5. Buddhist Reform.—The Buddhist reform, which so profoundly affected Brahmanism at about the sixth century B.C., did not sensibly modify, from the educational point of view, the ideas of the Hindoos. Buddha also taught that the cause of evil resides in the passions of men, and that in order to attain moral peace, there is no other means to be employed than that of self-abnegation and of the renouncement of everything selfish and personal.

6. Conversation of Buddha and Purna.—One of the traditions which permit us the better to appreciate the original character, at once affecting and ingenuous, of Indian thought, is the conversation of Buddha with his disciple Purna about a journey the latter was going to undertake to the barbarians for the purpose of teaching them the new religion:—

“They are men,” said Buddha, “who are fiery in temper, passionate, cruel, furious, insolent. If they openly address you in words which are malicious and coarse, and become angry with you, what will you think?”

“If they address me to my face in coarse and insolent terms, this is what I shall think: they are certainly good men who openly address me in malicious terms, but they will neither strike me with their hands nor stone me.”

“But should they strike you with their hands and stone you, what will you think?”

“I shall think that they are good men, gentle men, who strike me with their hands and stone me, but do not beat me with a club nor with a sword.”

“But if they beat you with a club and with a sword?”

“They are good men, gentle men, who beat me with a club and with a sword, but they do not completely kill me.”

“But if they were really to kill you?”

“They are good men, gentle men, who deliver me with so little pain from this body encumbered with defilements.”

“Very good, Purna! You may live in the country of those barbarians. Go, Purna! Being liberated, liberate; being consoled, console; having reached Nirvâna thus made perfect, cause others to go there.”[9]

Whatever there is to admire in such a strange system of morals should not blind us to the vices which resulted from its practical consequences: such as the abuse of passive resignation, the complete absence of the idea of right and of justice, and no active virtues.

7. Effects on Education.—Little is known of the actual state of educational practice among the Hindoos. It may be said, however, that the Brahmins, the priests, had the exclusive charge of education. Woman, in absolute subjection to man, had no share whatever in instruction.

As to boys, it seems that in India there were always schools for their benefit; schools which were held in the open country under the shade of trees, or, in case of bad weather, under sheds. Mutual instruction has been practised in India from the remotest antiquity; it is from here, in fact, that Andrew Bell, at the close of the eighteenth century, borrowed the idea of this mode of instruction. Exercises in writing were performed first upon the sand with a stick, then upon palm leaves with an iron style, and finally upon the dry leaves of the plane-tree with ink. In discipline there was a resort to corporal punishment; besides the rod the teacher employed other original means of correction; for example, he threw cold water on the offender. The teacher, moreover, was treated with a religious respect; the child must respect him as he would Buddha himself.

The higher studies were reserved for the priestly class, who, long before the Christian era, successfully cultivated rhetoric and logic, astronomy and the mathematics.

8. Education among the Israelites.—“If ever a people has demonstrated the power of education, it is the people of Israel.”[10] In fact, what a singular spectacle is offered us by that people, which, dispossessed of its own country for eighteen hundred years, has been dispersed among the nations without losing its identity, and has maintained its existence without a country, without a government, and without a ruler, preserving with perennial energy its habits, its manners, and its faith! Without losing sight of the part of that extraordinary vitality of the Jewish people, which is due to the natural endowments of the race, its tenacity of temperament, and its wonderful activity of intelligence, it is just to attribute another part of it to the sound education, at once religious and national, which the ancient Hebrews have transmitted by tradition to their descendants.

9. Education, Religious and National, during the Primitive Period.—The chief characteristic of the education of the Hebrews in the earliest period of their history is that it was essentially domestic. During the whole Biblical period there is no trace of public schools, at least for young children. Family life is the origin of that primitive society where the notion of the state is almost unknown, and where God is the real king.

The child was to become the faithful servant of Jehovah. To this end it was not needful that he should be learned. It was only necessary that he should learn through language and the instructive example of his parents the moral precepts and the religious beliefs of the nation. It has been very justly said[11] that “among all nations the direction impressed on education depends on the idea which they form of the perfect man. Among the Romans it is the brave soldier, inured to fatigue, and readily yielding to discipline; among the Athenians it is the man who unites in himself the happy harmony of moral and physical perfection; among the Hebrews the perfect man is the pious, virtuous man, who is capable of attaining the ideal traced by God himself in these terms: ‘Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy!’”[12]

The discipline was harsh, as is proved by many passages in the Bible: “He that spareth his rod, hateth his son,” say the Proverbs; “but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.”[13] “Withhold not correction from the child, for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.”[14] And still more significant: “Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying.”[15]

Only boys, it seems, learned to read and write. As to girls, they were taught to spin, to weave, to prepare food for the table, to superintend the work of the household, and also to sing and to dance.

In a word, intellectual culture was but an incident in the primitive education of the Hebrews; the great thing, in their eyes, was moral and religious instruction, and education in love of country. Fathers taught their children the nation’s history, and the great events that had marked the destiny of the people of God. That series of events celebrated by the great feasts which were often renewed, and in which the children participated, served at once to fill their hearts with gratitude to God and with love for their country.

10. Progress of Popular Instruction.—It is not easy to conceive to what extent the zeal for instruction was developed among the ancient Jews in the years that followed the advent of Christianity. From being domestic, as it had been up to that time, Jewish education became public. Besides, it was no longer sufficient to indoctrinate children with good principles and wholesome moral habits; they must also be instructed. From the first centuries of the Christian era, the Israelites approached our modern ideal, with respect to making education obligatory and universal. Like every brave nation that has been vanquished, whose energy has survived defeat, like the Prussians after Jena, or the French after 1870, the Jews sought to defend themselves against the effects of conquest by a great intellectual effort, and to regain their lost ground by the development of popular instruction.

11. Organization of Schools.—In the year 64, the high priest, Joshua Ben Gamala, imposed on each town, under pain of excommunication, the obligation to support a school. If the town is cut in two by a river, and there is no means of transit by a safe bridge, a school must be established on each side. Even to-day we are far from having realized, as regards the number of schools and of teachers, this rule stated in the Talmud: If the number of children does not exceed twenty-five, the school shall be conducted by a single teacher; for more than twenty-five, the town shall employ an assistant; if the number exceeds forty, there shall be two masters.

12. Respect for Teachers.—In that ancient time, what an exalted and noble conception men had of teachers, “those true guardians of the city”! Even then, how exacting were the requirements made of them! But, on the other hand, how they were esteemed and respected! The Rabbins required that the schoolmaster should be married; they mistrusted teachers who were not at the same time heads of families. Is it possible to enforce the advantages of maturity and experience more delicately than in this beautiful language? “He who learns of a young master is like a man who eats green grapes, and drinks wine fresh from the press; but he who has a master of mature years is like a man who eats ripe and delicious grapes, and drinks old wine.” Mildness, patience, and unselfishness were recommended as the ruling virtues of the teacher. “If your teacher and your father,” says the Talmud, “have need of your assistance, help your teacher before helping your father, for the latter has given you only the life of this world, while the former has secured for you the life of the world to come.”[16]

13. Method and Discipline.—The child entered school at the age of six. “If a child below the age of six is brought to your school,” says the Talmud, “you need not receive him”; and to indicate that after that age it is proper to regain the lost time, the Talmud adds, “After the age of six, receive the child, and load him like an ox.” On the contrary, other authorities of the same period, more judicious and far-seeing, recommend moderation in tasks, and say that it is necessary to treat “the young according to their strength, and the grown-up according to theirs.”

There was taught in the Jewish schools, along with reading and writing,[17] a little of natural history, and a great deal of geometry and astronomy. Naturally, the Bible was the first book put in the hands of children. The master interspersed moral lessons with the teaching of reading. He made a special effort to secure a correct pronunciation, and multiplied his explanations in order to make sure of being understood, repeating his comments even to the four-hundredth time if it were necessary. It seems that the methods were suggestive and attractive, and the discipline relatively mild. There were but few marks of the proverbial severity of the ancient times. “Children,” says the Talmud, “should be punished with one hand, and caressed with two.” The Christian spirit, the spirit of him who had said “suffer the little children to come unto me,” had affected the Jews themselves. However, corporal punishment was tolerated to a certain extent, but, strange to say, only for children above the age of eleven. In case of disobedience, a pupil above that age might be deprived of food, and even struck with a strap of shoe-leather.

14. Exclusive and Jealous Spirit.—Some reservation must accompany the encomiums justly due Jewish education. With respect to the rest of the human race, the Jewish spirit was mean, narrow, and malevolent. The Israelites of this day have retained something of these jealous and exclusive tendencies. At the beginning of the Christian era, the fierce and haughty patriotism of the Jews led them to proscribe whatever was of Gentile origin, whatever had not the sanction of the national tradition. Nothing of Greek or Roman culture penetrated this closed world.[18] The Jewish doctors covered with the same contempt him who raises hogs and him who teaches his son Greek science.

15. Education among the Chinese.—We have attempted to throw into relief the educational practices of two Eastern nations to which the civilization of the West is most intimately related. A few words will suffice for the other primitive societies whose history is too little known, and whose civilization is too remote from our own, to make their plans of education anything more than an object of curiosity.

China has been civilized from time immemorial, and at every period of her long history she has preserved her national characteristics. For more than three thousand years an absolute uniformity has characterized this immobile people. Everything is regulated by tradition. Education is mechanical and formal. The preoccupation of teachers is to cause their pupils to acquire a mechanical ability, a regular and sure routine. They care more for appearances, for a decorous manner of conduct, than for a searching and profound morality. Life is but a ceremonial, minutely determined and punctually followed. There is no liberty, no glow of spontaneity. Their art is characterized by conventional refinement and by a prettiness that seems mean; there is nothing of the grand and imposing. By their formalism, the Chinese educators are the Jesuits of the East.

16. Lâo-tsze and Khung-tsze.—Towards the sixth century B.C. two reformers appeared in China, Lâo-tsze and Khung-tsze. The first represents the spirit of emancipation, of progress, of the pursuit of the ideal, of protest against routine. He failed. The second, on the contrary, who became celebrated under the name of Confucius, and to whom tradition ascribes more than three thousand personal disciples, secured the triumph of his ideas of practical, utilitarian morality, founded upon the authority of the State and that of the family, as well as upon the interest of the individual.

A quotation from Lâo-tsze will prove that human thought, in the sixth century B.C., had reached a high mark in China:—

“Certain bad rulers would have us believe that the heart and the spirit of man should be left empty, but that instead his stomach should be filled; that his bones should be strengthened rather than the power of his will; that we should always desire to have the people remain in a state of ignorance, for then their demands would be few. It is difficult, they say, to govern a people that are too wise.

“These doctrines are directly opposed to what is due to humanity. Those in authority should come to the aid of the people by means of oral and written instruction; so far from oppressing them and treating them as slaves, they should do them good in every possible way.”

In other words, it is by enlightening the people, and by an honest devotion to their interests, that one becomes worthy to govern them.

If the Chinese have not fully profited by these wise and exalted counsels, it appears that at least they have attempted to make instruction general. Hue, a Chinese missionary, boldly declares that China is the country of all countries where primary instruction is most widely diffused. To the same effect, a German writer affirms that in China there is not a village so miserable, nor a hamlet so unpretending, as not to be provided with a school of some kind.[19] In a country of tradition, like China, we can infer what once existed from what exists to-day. But that instruction which is so widely diffused is wholly superficial and tends merely to an exterior culture. As Dittes says, the educational method of the Chinese consists, not in developing, but in communicating.[20]

17. Education among the Other Nations of the East.—Of all the oriental nations, Egypt is the one in which intellectual culture seems to have reached the highest point, but only among men of a privileged class. Here, as in India, the priestly class monopolized the learning of the day; it jealously guarded the depository of mysterious knowledge which it communicated only to the kings. The common people, divided into working classes, which were destined from father to son to the same social status, learned scarcely more than was necessary in order to practise their hereditary trades and to be initiated into the religious beliefs.

In the more military but less theocratic nation, the Persian, efforts were made in favor of a general education. The religious dualism which distinguished Ormuzd, the principle of good, from Ahriman, the principle of evil, and which promised the victory to the former, made it the duty of each man to contribute to this final victory by devoting himself to a life of virtue. Hence arose noble efforts to attain physical and moral perfection. The education of the Persians in temperance and frugality has excited the admiration of certain Greek writers, especially Xenophon, and there will be found in his Cyropædia a thrilling picture of the brave and noble manners of the ancient Persians.[21]

On the whole, the history of pedagogy among the people of the East offers us but few examples to follow. That which, in different degrees, characterizes primitive education is that it is the privilege of certain classes; that woman is most generally excluded from its benefits; that in respect of the common people it is scarcely more than the question of an apprenticeship to a trade, or of the art of war, or of a preparation for the future life; that no appeal is made to the free energy of individuals, but that the great masses of the people in antiquity have generally lived under the harassing oppression of religious conceptions, of fixed traditions, and of political despotism.

[18. Analytical Summary.—Speaking generally, the education of the primitive nations of the East had the following characteristics:—

1. It was administered by the hieratic class. This was due to the fact that the priests were the only men of learning, and consequently the only men who could teach.

2. The knowledge communicated was in the main religious, ethical, and prudential, and the final purpose of instruction was good conduct.

3. As the matter of instruction was knowledge bearing the sanction of authority, the learner was debarred from free inquiry, and the general tendency was towards immobility.

4. As the knowledge of the day was embodied in language, the process of learning consisted in the interpretation of speech, and so involved a large and constant use of the memory; and this literal memorizing of the principles and rules of conduct promoted stability of character.

5. As the purpose of instruction was guidance, there was no appearance of the conception that one main purpose of education is discipline or culture.

6. The conception of education as a means of national regeneration had a distinct appearance among the Jews; and among this people we find one form of compulsion,—the obligation placed on towns to support schools.

7. In Persia, the State appears for the first time as a distinct agency in promoting education.

8. In China, from time immemorial, scholarship has been made the condition for obtaining places in the civil service, and in consequence education has been made subordinate to examinations.

9. Save to a limited extent among the Jews, woman was debarred from the privileges of education.

10. In the main, education was administered so as to perpetuate class distinctions. There was no appearance of the conception that education is a universal right and a universal good.]

FOOTNOTES:

[6] A knowledge of the mental and moral condition of savages serves the invaluable purpose of showing what education has accomplished for the human race. There would be much less grumbling at the tax-gatherer if men could clearly conceive the condition of societies where no taxes are levied. To know what education has actually done we need to know the condition of societies unaffected by systematic education. Such a book as Lubbock’s Origin of Civilization is a helpful introduction to the history of education. Whoever reads such a book carefully will be confronted with this problem: How is it that intellectual inertness, amounting almost to stupidity, is frequently the concomitant of an acute and persistent sense-training? Besides, savage tribes are historical illustrations of what has been produced on a large scale by “following Nature.” (P.)

[7] There is an argument for caste in the modern fiction of a “beautiful economy of Nature,” which plants human beings in society as it does trees in the earth, and thus makes education consist in the action of environment upon man and in the reaction of man upon his environment. To support existence, man needs certain endowments; but the force of circumstances creates these very endowments. One man is predestined to be a Red Indian, another a Bushman, and still another an accountant; and in each case the function of education is to adapt the man to the place where Nature has fixed him. This modern justification of caste is adroitly worked out by Mr. Spencer in the first chapter of his Education. (P.)

[8] Dittes, Histoire de l’éducation et de l’instruction, translated by Redolfi, 1880, p. 38.

[9] Burnouf, Introduction à l’histoire du Bouddhisme, p. 252.

[10] Dittes, p. 49.

[11] L’éducation et l’instruction chez les anciens Juifs, by J. Simon, Paris, 1879, p. 16.

[12] Levit. xix. 2.

[13] Prov. xiii. 24.

[14] Prov. xxiii. 13, 14.

[15] Prov. xix. 18.

[16] On similar grounds, Alexander declared that he owed more to Aristotle his teacher, than to Philip his father. (P.)

[17] What were the methods followed in teaching reading and writing? We are told by Renan in his Vie de Jésus that “Jesus doubtless learned to read and write according to the method of the East, which consists in putting into the hands of the child a book which he repeats in concert with his comrades till he knows it by heart.”

[18] This statement needs qualifying. “In nearly all the families of high rank,” says the Dictionnaire de Pédagogie (1^ere Partie, Article Juifs), “the daughters spoke Greek. The Rabbins did not look with any favor upon the study of profane philosophy; but notwithstanding their protests, there were many devoted readers of Plato and Aristotle. It is said that among the pupils of the celebrated Gamaliel there were five hundred who studied the philosophy and the literature of Greece.” (P.)

[19] For a series of interesting documents on the actual state of education in China, consult the article Chine, in Buisson’s Dictionnaire de Pédagogie.

[20] Dittes, op. cit., p. 32.

[21] On a recent occasion Archdeacon Farrar referred to Persian education as follows: “We boast of our educational ideal. Is it nearly as high in some essentials as that even of some ancient and heathen nations long centuries before Christ came? The ancient Persians were worshippers of fire and of the sun; most of their children would have been probably unable to pass the most elementary examination in physiology, but assuredly the Persian ideal might be worthy of our study. At the age of fourteen—the age when we turn our children adrift from school, and do nothing more for them—the Persians gave their young nobles the four best masters whom they could find to teach their boys wisdom, justice, temperance, and courage—wisdom including worship, justice including the duty of unswerving truthfulness through life, temperance including mastery over sensual temptations, courage including a free mind opposed to all things coupled with guilt.” (P.)

[CHAPTER II.]
EDUCATION AMONG THE GREEKS.

GREEK PEDAGOGY; ATHENIAN AND SPARTAN EDUCATION; THE SCHOOLS OF ATHENS; SCHOOLS OF GRAMMAR; SCHOOLS OF GYMNASTICS; THE PALESTRA; SCHOOLS OF MUSIC; THE SCHOOLS OF RHETORIC AND OF PHILOSOPHY; SOCRATES AND THE SOCRATIC METHOD; SOCRATIC IRONY; MAIEUTICS, OR THE ART OF GIVING BIRTH TO IDEAS; EXAMPLES OF IRONY AND OF MAIEUTICS BORROWED FROM THE MEMORABILIA OF XENOPHON; PLATO AND THE REPUBLIC; THE EDUCATION OF WARRIORS AND MAGISTRATES; MUSIC AND GYMNASTICS; RELIGION AND ART IN EDUCATION; THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE GOOD; HIGH INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION; THE LAWS; DEFINITION OF EDUCATION; DETAILED PRECEPTS; XENOPHON; THE ECONOMICS AND THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN; THE CYROPÆDIA; PROTESTS OF XENOPHON AGAINST THE DEGENERATE MANNERS OF THE GREEKS; ARISTOTLE; GENERAL CHARACTER OF HIS PLAN OF EDUCATION; PUBLIC EDUCATION; PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN NATURE; PHYSICAL EDUCATION; INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL EDUCATION; DEFECTS IN THE PEDAGOGY OF ARISTOTLE, AND IN GREEK PEDAGOGY IN GENERAL; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.

19. Greek Pedagogy.—Upon that privileged soil of Greece, in that brilliant Athens abounding in artists, poets, historians, and philosophers, in that rude Sparta celebrated for its discipline and manly virtues, education was rather the spontaneous fruit of nature, the natural product of diverse manners, characters, and races, than the premeditated result of a reflective movement of the human will. Greece, however, had its pedagogy, because it had its legislators and its philosophers, the first directing education in its practical details, the second making theoretical inquiries into the essential principles underlying the development of the human soul. In respect of education, as of everything else, the higher spiritual life of modern nations has been developed under the influence of Grecian antiquity.[22]

20. Athenian and Spartan Education.—In the spectacle presented to us by ancient Greece, the first fact that strikes us by its contrast with the immobility and unity of the primitive societies of the East, is a freer unfolding of the human faculties, and consequently a diversity in tendencies and manners. Doubtless, in the Greek republics, the individual is always subordinate to the State. Even in Athens, little regard is paid to the essential dignity of the human person. But the Athenian State differs profoundly from the Spartan, and consequently the individual life is differently understood and differently directed in these two great cities. At Athens, while not neglecting the body, the chief preoccupation is the training of the mind; intellectual culture is pushed to an extreme, even to over-refinement; there is such a taste for fine speaking that it develops an abuse of language and reasoning which merits the disreputable name of sophistry. At Sparta, mind is sacrificed to body; physical strength and military skill are the qualities most desired; the sole care is the training of athletes and soldiers. Sobriety and courage are the results of this one-sided education, but so are ignorance and brutality. Montaigne has thrown into relief, not without some partiality for Sparta, these two contrasted plans of education.

“Men went to the other cities of Greece,” he says, “to find rhetoricians, painters, and musicians, but to Lacedæmon for legislators, magistrates, and captains; at Athens fine speaking was taught; but here, brave acting; there, one learned to unravel a sophistical argument and to abate the imposture of insidiously twisted words; here, to extricate one’s self from the enticements of pleasure and to overcome the menaces of fortune and death by a manly courage. The Athenians busied themselves with words, but the Spartans with things; with the former, there was a continual activity of the tongue; with the latter, a continual activity of the soul.”[23]

The last remark is not just. The daily exercises of the young Spartans,—jumping, running, wrestling, playing with lances and at quoits,—could not be regarded as intellectual occupations. On the other hand, in learning to talk, the young Athenians learned also to feel and to think.

21. The Schools of Athens.—The Athenian legislator, Solon, had placed physical and intellectual training upon the same footing. Children, he said, ought, above everything else, to learn “to swim and to read.” It seems that the education of the body was the chief preoccupation of the Athenian republic. While the organization of schools for grammar and music was left to private enterprise, the State took a part in the direction of the gymnasia. The director of the gymnasium, or the gymnasiarch, was elected each year by the assembly of the people. Nevertheless, Athenian education became more and more a course in literary training, especially towards the sixth century B.C.

The Athenian child remained in the charge of a nurse and an attendant up to his sixth or seventh year. At the age of seven, a pedagogue, that is, a “conductor of children,” usually a slave, was charged with the oversight of the child. Conducted by his pedagogue, the pupil attended by turns the school for grammar, the palestra,[24] or school for gymnastics, and the school for music. The grammarian, who sometimes gave his lessons in the open air, in the streets and on the public squares, taught reading, writing, and mythology. Homer was the boy’s reading-book. Instruction in gymnastics was given in connection with instruction in grammar. It was begun in the palestra and continued in the gymnasium. Instruction in music succeeded the training in grammar and gymnastics. The music-master, or citharist, first taught his pupils to sing, and then to play upon the stringed instruments, the lyre and the cithara. We know what value the Athenians attributed to music. Plato and Aristotle agree in thinking that the rhythm and harmony of music inspire the soul with the love of order, with harmoniousness, regularity, and a soothing of the passions. We must recollect, moreover, that music held a large place in the actual life of the Greeks. The laws were promulgated in song. It was necessary to sing in order to fulfil one’s religious duties. It was held that the education of Themistocles had been neglected because he had not learned music. “We must regard the Greeks,” says Montesquieu, “as a race of athletes and fighters. Now those exercises, so proper to make men hardy and fierce, had need of being tempered by others which could soften the manners. Music, which affected the soul through the organs of the body, was exactly adapted to this purpose.”[25]

In the elementary schools of Athens, at least at the first, the current discipline was severe. Aristophanes, bewailing the degeneracy of his time, recalls in these terms the good order that reigned in the olden school:[26]—

“I will relate what was the ancient education in the happy time when I taught (it is Justice who speaks) and when modesty was the rule. Then the boys came out of each street with bare heads and feet, and, regardless of rain and snow, went together in the most perfect order towards the school for music. There they were seated quietly and modestly. They were not permitted to cross their legs, and they learned some good songs. The master sang the song for them slowly and with gravity. If some one took a notion to sing with soft and studied inflections, he was severely flogged.”

22. The Schools of Rhetoric and Philosophy.—Grammar, gymnastics, and music proper, represented the elementary instruction of the young Athenian. But this instruction was reserved for citizens in easy circumstances. The poor, according to the intentions of Solon, were to learn only reading, swimming, and a trade. The privilege of instruction became still more exclusive in the case of the schools of rhetoric and philosophy frequented by those of adult years.

It would be beside our purpose to speak in this place of the courses in literature, or to make known the methods of those teachers of rhetoric who taught eloquence to all who presented themselves for instruction, either in the public squares or in the gymnasia. The sophists, those itinerant philosophers who went from city to city offering courses at high rates of tuition, and teaching the art of speaking on every subject, and of making a plea for error and injustice just as skilfully as for justice and truth, at the same time made illustrious and disgraceful the teaching of eloquence.[27] The philosophers were more worthy of their task. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were illustrious professors of ethics. Socrates had no regular school, but he grouped about him distinguished young men and initiated them into learning and virtue. The Academy of Plato and the Lyceum of Aristotle were great schools of philosophy, real private universities, each directed by a single man. The teaching given in these schools has traversed the ages, and has been preserved in imperishable books. Moreover, those illustrious spirits of Greece have transmitted to us either methods or general ideas which the history of pedagogy should reverently collect, as the first serious efforts of human reflection on the art of education.

23. Socrates: the Socratic Method.—Socrates spent his life in teaching, and in teaching according to an original method, which has preserved his name. He had the genius of interrogation. To question all whom he met, either at the gymnasium or in the streets; to question the sophists in order to convince them of their errors and to confound their arrogance, and presumptuous young men in order to teach them the truth of which they were ignorant; to question great and small, statesmen and masons, now Pericles and now a shopkeeper; to question always and everywhere in order to compel every one to form clear ideas; such was the constant occupation and passion of his life. When he allowed himself to dream of the future life, he said smilingly that he hoped to continue in the Elysian Fields the habits of the Athenian Agora, and still to interrogate the shades of the mighty dead. With Socrates, conversation became an art, and the dialogue a method. He scarcely ever employed the didactic form, or that of direct teaching. He addressed himself to his interlocutor, urged him to set forth his ideas, harassed him with questions often somewhat subtile, skilfully led him to recognize the truth which he himself had in mind, or the rather permitted him to go off on a false route in order finally to discover to him his error and to sport with his confusion; and all this with an art of wonderful analysis, with a subtilty of reasoning pushed almost to an extreme, and also with a great simplicity of language, and with examples borrowed from common life, such as we are accustomed to call intuitive examples.

24. The Socratic Irony.—To form an intelligible account of the Socratic method, it is necessary to distinguish its two essential phases. Socrates followed a double method and sought a double end.

In the first case, he wished to make war against error and to refute false opinions. Then he resorted to what has been called the Socratic irony.[28] He raised a question as one who simply desired to be instructed. If there was the statement of an error in the reply of the respondent, Socrates made no objection to it, but pretended to espouse the ideas and sentiments of his interlocutor. Then, by questions which were adroit and sometimes insidious, he forced him to develop his opinions, and to display, so to speak, the whole extent of his folly, and the next instant slyly brought him face to face with the consequences, which were so absurd and contradictory that he ended in losing confidence, in becoming involved in his conclusions, and finally in making confession of his errors.

25. Maieutics, or the Art of giving Birth to Ideas.—Analogous processes constituted the other part of the Socratic method, that which he himself called maieutics, or the art of giving birth to ideas.

Socrates was convinced that the human mind in its normal condition discovers certain truths through its own energies, provided one knows how to lead it and stimulate it; and so he here appealed to the spontaneity of his auditor, to his innate powers, and thus gently led him on his way by easy transitions to the opinion which he wished to make him admit. However, he applied this method only to the search for truths which could either be suggested by the intuitions of reason and common sense, or determined by a natural induction, that is, psychological, ethical, and religious truths.[29]

26. Examples of Irony and Maieutics.—We can best give an exact idea of the Socratic method by means of examples. These examples are to be found in the writings of the disciples of Socrates, as in the Dialogues of Plato, such as the Gorgias, the Euthydemus, etc., and still better in the Memorabilia of Xenophon, where the thought of the master and his manner of teaching are more faithfully reproduced than in the bold and original compositions of Plato. While recognizing the insufficiency of these extracts, we shall here make two quotations, in which is displayed either his incisive, critical spirit, or his suggestive and fruitful method: “The thirty tyrants had put many of the most distinguished citizens to death, and had encouraged others to acts of injustice. ‘It would surprise me,’ said Socrates one day, ‘if the keeper of a flock, who had killed one part of it and had made the other part poor, would not confess that he was a bad herdsman; but it would surprise me still more if a man standing at the head of his fellow-citizens should destroy a part of them and corrupt the rest, and were not to blush at his conduct and confess himself a bad magistrate.’ This remark having come to the ears of the Thirty, Critias and Charicles sent for Socrates, showed him the law, and forbade him to hold conversation with the young.

“Socrates inquired of them if he might be permitted to ask questions touching what might seem obscure to him in this prohibition. Upon their granting this permission: ‘I am prepared,’ he said, ‘to obey the laws, but that I may not violate them through ignorance, I would have you clearly inform me whether you interdict the art of speaking because it belongs to the number of things which are good, or because it belongs to the number of things which are bad. In the first case, one ought henceforth to abstain from speaking what is good; in the second, it is clear that the effort should be to speak what is right.’

“Thereupon Charicles became angry, and said: ‘Since you do not understand us, we will give you something easier to comprehend: we forbid you absolutely to hold conversation with the young.’ ‘In order that it may be clearly seen,’ said Socrates, ‘whether I depart from what is enjoined, tell me at what age a youth becomes a man.’ ‘At the time when he is eligible to the senate, for he has not acquired prudence till then; so do not speak to young men who are below the age of thirty.’

“‘But if I wish to buy something of a merchant who is below the age of thirty, may I ask him at what price he sells it?’

“‘Certainly you may ask such a question; but you are accustomed to raise inquiries about multitudes of things which are perfectly well known to you; it is this which is forbidden.’

“‘So I must not reply to a young man who asks me where Charicles lives, or where Critias is.’ ‘You may reply to such questions,’ said Charicles. ‘But recollect, Socrates,’ added Critias, ‘you must let alone the shoemakers, and smiths, and other artisans, for I think they must already be very much worn out by being so often in your mouth.’

“‘I must, therefore,’ said Socrates, ‘forego the illustrations I draw from these occupations relative to justice, piety, and all the virtues.’”[30]

In the final passage of this cutting dialogue, observe the elevation of tone and the gravity of thought. So Socrates had marvellous skill in allying enthusiasm with irony.

Here is an extract in which Socrates applies the maieutic art to the establishment of a moral truth, the belief in God:

“I will mention a conversation he once had in my presence with Aristodemus, surnamed the Little, concerning the gods. He knew that Aristodemus neither sacrificed to the gods, nor consulted the oracles, but ridiculed those who took part in these religious observances. ‘Tell me, Aristodemus,’ said he, ‘are there men whose talents you admire?’ ‘There are,’ he replied. ‘Then tell us their names,’ said Socrates. ‘In epic poetry I especially admire Homer; in dithyrambic, Melanippides; in tragedy, Sophocles; in statuary, Polycletus; in painting, Zeuxis.’ ‘But what artists do you think most worthy of admiration, those who form images destitute of sense and movement, or those who produce animated beings, endowed with the faculty of thinking and acting?’ ‘Those who form animated beings, for these are the work of intelligence and not of chance.’ ‘And which do you regard as the creation of intelligence, and which the product of chance, those works whose purpose cannot be recognized, or those whose utility is manifest?’ ‘It is reasonable to attribute to an intelligence the works which have some useful purpose.’”[31]

Socrates then points out to Aristodemus how admirably the different organs of the human body are adapted to the functions of life and to the use of man. And so proceeding from example to example, from induction to induction, always keeping the mind of his auditor alert by the questions he raises, and the answers that he suggests, forcing him to do his share of the work, and giving him an equal share in the train of reasoning, he finally brings him to the goal which is to make him recognize the existence of God.

27. The Republic of Plato.—“Would you form,” said J. J. Rousseau, “an idea of public education? read the Republic of Plato. It is the finest treatise on education ever written.” For truth’s sake we must discount the enthusiasm of Rousseau. The Republic doubtless contains some elements of a wise and practical scheme of education; but, on the whole, it is but an ideal creation, a compound of paradoxes and chimeras. In Plato’s ideal commonwealth, the individual and the family itself are sacrificed to the State. Woman becomes so much like man as to be subjected to the same gymnastic exercises; she too must be a soldier as he is. Children know neither father nor mother. From the day of their birth they are given in charge of common nurses, veritable public functionaries. In that common fold, “care shall be taken that no mother recognize her offspring.” We may guess that in making this pompous eulogy of the Republic, the paradoxical author of the Émile hoped to prepare the reader for giving a complaisant welcome to his own dreams.

28. The Education of Warriors and Magistrates.—Plato, by some unexplained recollection of the social constitution of the Hindoos, established three castes in his ideal State,—laborers and artisans, warriors, and magistrates. There was no education for laborers and artisans; it was sufficient for men of this caste to learn a trade. In politics, Plato is an aristocrat; he feels a disdain for the people, “that robust and indocile animal.” It should be observed, however, that the barriers which he set up between these three social orders are not insuperable. If a child of the inferior class gives evidence of exceptional qualities, he must be admitted to the superior class; and so if the son of a warrior or of a magistrate is notably incompetent and unworthy of his rank, he must suffer forfeiture, and become artisan or laborer.

As to the education which he designs for the warriors and the magistrates, Plato is minutely careful in regulating it. The education of the warriors comprises two parts,—music and gymnastics. The education of the magistrates consists of a training in philosophy of a high grade; they are initiated into all the sciences and into metaphysics. Plato’s statesmen must be, not priests, as in the East, but scholars and philosophers.

29. Music and Gymnastics.—Although Plato attaches a high value to gymnastics, he gives precedence to music. Before forming the body, Plato, the idealist, would form the soul, because it is the soul, according to him, which, by its own virtue, gives to the body all the perfection of which it is capable. Even in physical exercises, the purpose should be to give increased vigor to the soul: “In the training of the body, our young men shall aim, above everything else, at augmenting moral power.” Note this striking picture of the man who trains only his body: “Let a man apply himself to gymnastics, and become trained, and eat much, and wholly neglect music and philosophy, and at first his body will become strengthened; but if he does nothing else, and holds no converse with the Muses, though his soul have some natural inclination to learn, yet if it remains uncultivated by acquiring knowledge, by inquiry, by discourse, in a word, by some department of music, that is, by intellectual education, it will insensibly become weak, deaf, and blind. Like a wild beast, such a man will live in ignorance and rudeness, with neither grace nor politeness.” However, Plato is far from despising health and physical strength. On the contrary, it is a reproach to him that he has imposed on the citizens of his Republic the obligation of being physically sound, and of having excluded from it all those whose infirmities and feeble constitution condemn them to “drag out a dying life.” The right to live, in Plato’s city, as in the most of ancient societies, belonged only to men of robust health. The weak, the ailing, the wretched, all who are of infirm constitution,—Plato does not go so far as ordering such to be killed, but, what amounts almost to the same thing,—“they shall be exposed,” that is, left to die. The good of the State demands that every man be sacrificed whose health renders him unfit for civil duties. This cruel and implacable doctrine shocks us in the case of him whom Montaigne calls the divine Plato, and shocks us even more when we discover it among contemporary philosophers, whom the inspirations of Christian charity or the feeling of human fraternity should have preserved from such rank heartlessness. Is it not Herbert Spencer who blames modern societies for nourishing the diseased and assisting the infirm?

30. Religion and Art in Education.—Plato had formed a high ideal of the function of art in education, but this did not prevent him from being severe against certain forms of art, particularly comedy and tragedy, and poetry in general. He would have the poets expelled from the city and conducted to the frontier, though paying them homage with perfumes which will continue to be shed upon their heads, and with flowers with which they will ever be crowned. He admits no other poetry than that which reproduces the manners and discourse of a good man, and celebrates the brave deeds of the gods, or chants their glory. As a severe moralist and worshipper of the divine goodness, he condemns the poets of his time, either because they attribute to the divinity the vices and passions of men, or because they invest the imagination with base fears as they speak of Cocytus and the Styx, and portray a frightful hell and gods always mad with desire to persecute the human race. Elsewhere, in the Laws, Plato explains his conception of religion. He says that the religious books placed in the hands of children should be selected with as much care as the milk of a nurse. God is an infinite goodness who watches over men, and he should be honored, not by sacrifices and vain ceremonies, but by lives of justice and virtue.

For making men moral, Plato counts more upon art than upon religious feeling. To love letters, to hold converse with the Muses, to cultivate music and dancing, such, in the opinion of the noble spirits of Athens, is the natural route towards moral perfection. In their view, moral education is above all an education in art. The soul rises to the good through the beautiful. “Beautiful and good” (καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός) are two words constantly associated in the speech of the Greeks. Even to-day we have much to learn from reflections like these: “We ought,” says Plato, “to seek out artists who by the power of genius can trace out the nature of the fair and the graceful, that our young men, dwelling, as it were, in a healthful region, may drink in good from every quarter, whence any emanation from noble works may strike upon their eye or their ear, like a gale wafting health from salubrious lands, and win them imperceptibly from their earliest years into resemblance, love, and harmony with the true beauty of reason.

“Is it not, then, on these accounts that we attach such supreme importance to a musical education, because rhythm and harmony sink most deeply into the recesses of the soul, bringing gracefulness in their train, and making a man graceful if he be rightly nurtured; but if not, the reverse? and also because he that has been duly nurtured therein will have the keenest eye for defects, whether in the failures of art, or in the misgrowths of nature; and feeling a most just disdain for them, will commend beautiful objects, and gladly receive them into his soul, and feed upon them, and grow to be noble and good; whereas he will rightly censure and hate all repulsive objects, even in his childhood, before he is able to be reasoned with; and when reason comes, he will welcome her most cordially who can recognize her by the instinct of relationship, and because he has been thus nurtured?”[32]

31. High Intellectual Education.—In the Republic of Plato the intellectual education of the warrior class remains exclusively literary and æsthetic. In addition to this, the education of the ruling class is to be scientific and philosophic. The future magistrate, after having received the ordinary instruction up to the age of twenty, is to be initiated into the abstract sciences, mathematics, geometry, and astronomy. To this scientific education, which is to continue for ten years, there will succeed for five years the study of dialectics,[33] or philosophy, which develops the highest faculty of man, the reason, and teaches him to discover, through and beyond the fleeting appearances of the world of sense, the eternal verities and the essence of things. But Plato prolongs the education of his magistrates still further. After having given them the nurture of reason and intellectual insight, he sends them back to the cavern[34] at the age of thirty-five, that is, calls them back to public life, and makes them pass through all kinds of civil and military employments, until finally, at the age of fifty, in possession of all the endowments assured by consummate experience superadded to profound knowledge, they are fitted to be charged with the burdens of office. In the Republic of Plato statesmen are not improvised. And yet in this elaborate system of instruction Plato omits two subjects of great importance. On the one hand, he entirely omits the physical and natural sciences, because, in his mystic idealism, things of sense are delusive and unreal images, and so did not appear to him worthy of arresting the attention of the mind; and on the other, though coming after Herodotus, and though a contemporary of Thucydides, he makes no mention of history, doubtless through a contempt for tradition and the past.

32. The Laws.—In the Laws, the work of his old age, Plato disavows in part the chimeras of the Republic, and qualifies the radicalism of that earlier work. The philosopher descends to the earth and really condescends to the actual state of humanity. He renounces the distinction of social castes, and his very practical and very minute precepts are applied without distinction to children of all classes.[35]

First note this excellent definition of the end of education: “A good education is that which gives to the body and to the soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable.” As to methods, it seems that Plato hesitates between the doctrine of effort and the doctrine of attractive toil. In fact, he says on the one hand that education is a very skilful discipline which, by way of amusement,[36] leads the mind of the child to love that which is to make it finished. On the other hand, he protests against the weakness of those parents who seek to spare their children every trouble and every pain. “I am persuaded,” he says, “that the inclination to humor the likings of children is the surest of all ways to spoil them. We should not make too much haste in our search after what is pleasurable, especially as we shall never be wholly exempt from what is painful.”

Let us add this definition of a good education: “I call education the virtue which is shown by children when the feelings of joy or of sorrow, of love or of hate, which arise in their souls, are made conformable to order.”

With the statement of these principles, Plato enters into details. For children up to the age of six, he recommends the use of swaddling-clothes. The habit of rocking, the natural plays which children find out for themselves, the separation of the sexes; swimming, the bow, and the javelin, for boys; wrestling for giving bodily vigor, and dancing, for graceful movement; reading and writing reserved till the tenth year and learned for three years.

It would require too much time to follow the philosopher to the end. In the rules he proposes, he makes a near approach to the practices followed by the Athenians of his day. The Republic was a work of pure imagination. The Laws are scarcely more than a commentary on the actual state of practice. But here we still find what was nearest the soul of Plato, the constant search for a higher morality.

33. Xenophon.—As an educator, Xenophon obeyed two different influences. His master, Socrates, was his good genius. That graceful and charming book, the Economics, was written under the benign and tempered inspiration of the great Athenian sage. But Xenophon also had his evil genius,—the immoderate enthusiasm which he felt for Sparta, her institutions and her laws. The first book of the Cyropædia, which relates the rules of Persian education, is an unfortunate imitation of the laws of Lycurgus.

34. The Economics, and the Education of Woman.—All should read the Economics, that charming sketch of the education of woman. We may say of this little work what Renan has said of the writings of Plutarch on the same subject: “Where shall we find a more charming ideal of family life? What good nature! What sweetness of manners! What chaste and lovable simplicity!” Before her marriage, the Athenian maiden has learned only to spin wool, to be discreet, and to ask no questions,—virtues purely negative. Xenophon assigns to her husband the duty of training her mind and of teaching her the positive duties of family life,—order, economy, kindness to slaves, and tender care of children. As a matter of fact, the Athenian woman was still held in a position of inferiority. Shut up in her own apartments, it was an exception that she learned to read and write; it was very rare that she was instructed in the arts and sciences. The idea of human dignity and of the value of the human person had not yet appeared. Man had value only in proportion to the services which he could render the State, or commonwealth, and woman formed no part of the commonwealth. Xenophon has the merit of rising above the prejudices of his time, and of approaching the ideal of the modern family, in calling woman to participate more intimately in the affairs of the house and in the occupations of the husband.[37]

35. The Cyropædia.—The Cyropædia is not worthy of the same commendation. Under the pretext of describing the organization of the Persian State, Xenophon here traces, after his manner, the plan of an education absolutely uniform and exclusively military. There is no domestic education, no individual liberty, no interest in letters and arts. When the period of infancy is over, the young Persian is made subject to military duty, and must not leave the encampment, even at night. The state is but a camp, and human existence a perpetual military parade. Montaigne praises Xenophon for having said that the Persians taught their children virtue “as other nations do letters.” But it is difficult to form an estimate of the methods which were followed in these schools of justice and temperance, and we may be allowed to suspect the efficiency of the means proposed by Xenophon; for example, that which consisted in transforming the petty quarrels of the scholars into regular trials which were followed by sentences, acquittals, or convictions. The author of the Cyropædia is on surer ground when, recollecting his own studies, he recommends the study of history to those who would become just. He teaches temperance by practice rather than by precept; his pupils have only bread for their food, only cresses for seasoning, and only water for their drink.

Whatever may be the faults and the fancies of the Cyropædia, we must recollect, as a partial excuse for them, that the purpose of the writer in tracing this picture of a simple, frugal, and courageous life, was to induce a reaction against the excesses of the fashionable and formal life of the Athenians. As Rousseau, in the middle of the eighteenth century, protested against the license and the artificial manners of his time by advising an imaginary return to nature, so Xenophon, a contemporary of the sophists, held forth the sturdy virtues of the Persians in opposition to the degenerate manners of the Greeks and the refinements of an advanced civilization.

36. Aristotle: General Character of his Plan of Education.—By his vast attainments, by his encyclopædic knowledge, by the experimental nature of his researches, and by the positive and practical tendencies of his genius, Aristotle was enabled to excel Plato in clearness of insight into pedagogical questions. He had another advantage over Plato in having known and enjoyed the delights of family life, and in having loved and trained his own children, of whom he said, “parents love their children as a part of themselves.” Let us add, finally, that he was a practical teacher, since he was the preceptor of Alexander from 343 to 340 B.C. Such opportunities, superadded to the force of the most mighty genius the world has ever seen, give promise of a competent and clear-sighted educator. Unfortunately, we have lost the treatise, On Education (περὶ παιδείας), which on the authority of Diogenes Laërtius, Aristotle is said to have composed; and to form some conception of his ideas on education, we have at our disposal only some imperfect sketches, some portions, and those in an imperfect state, of his treatises on ethics and politics.[38]

Whoever labors to give stability to the family, and to tighten its bond of union, labors also for the promotion of education. Even in this respect, education is under great obligations to Aristotle. In him the communism of Plato finds an able critic. That feeling of affection which we of to-day would call charity or fraternity, he declared to be the guaranty and the foundation of social life. Now, communism weakens this feeling by diluting it, just as a little honey dropped into a large quantity of water thereby loses all its sweetness. “There are two things which materially contribute to the rise of interest and attachment in the hearts of men,—property and the feeling of affection.” It was thus in the name of good sense, and in opposition to the distempered fancies of Plato, that Aristotle vindicated the rights of the family and the individual.

37. Public Education.—But Aristotle does not go so far as his premises would seem to lead him, and relinquish to parents the care of educating their children. In accordance with the general tendencies of antiquity, he declares himself the partisan of an education that is public and common. He commends the Spartans for having ordained that “education should be the same for all.” “As there is one end in view in every city,” he says, “it is evident that education ought to be one and the same in all, and that this should be a common care, and not of each individual.... It is the duty of the legislator to regulate this interest for all the citizens.” There must, therefore, be the intervention of the State, not from the day of birth, as Plato would have it, for the nursing of infants, but only at the age of seven, for instructing and training them in the habits of virtue.

What, then, should be the training of the child, and upon what subjects would Aristotle direct his studies?

38. The Progressive Development of Human Nature.—An essential and incontrovertible distinction is taken by the Greek philosopher as his starting-point. There are, he says, three moments, three stages, in human development: first, there is the physical life of the body; then, instinct and sensibility, or the irrational part of the soul; and finally, the intelligence, or the reason. From this, Aristotle concludes that the course of discipline and study should be graduated according to these three degrees of life. “The first care should necessarily be given to the body rather than to the mind; and then to that part of the spiritual nature which is the seat of the desires.” But he adds this important observation, which is a refutation of Rousseau in advance: “In the care which we give to the sensibilities, we must not leave out of account the intelligence; and in our care of the body, we must not forget the soul.”

39. Physical Education.—The son of a physician of the Macedonian court, and well versed in the natural sciences, Aristotle is very happy in his treatment of physical education. It begins before the child is born, even before it has been conceived. Consequently he enjoins a legal regulation of marriages, interdicts unions that are too early or too late, indicates the climatic conditions most favorable for marriage, and gives mothers wise counsels on matters of hygiene, recommending them to nurse their own children, and prescribing cold baths. Such, in outline, is a plan which a modern hygienist would not disavow.

40. Intellectual and Moral Education.—It was the opinion of Aristotle that intellectual education should not begin before the age of five. But, in accordance with the principle stated above, this period of waiting should not be the occasion of loss to the intelligence of the child; even his play should be a preparation for the work to which he will apply himself at a later period. On the other hand, Aristotle strongly insists on the necessity of shielding the child from all pernicious influences, such as those which come from association with slaves, or from immoral plays.

In accord with all his contemporaries, Aristotle includes grammar, gymnastics, and music, among the elements of instruction. To these he adds drawing. But he is chiefly preoccupied with music, by reason of the moral influence which he attributes to it. He shared the prepossession which caused the Greeks to say, that to relax or to reform the manners of a people, it suffices to add a string to the lyre or to take one from it.[39]

Aristotle was strongly preoccupied with moral education. Like Plato, he insists on the greatest care in forming the moral habits of early life. In his different writings on ethics he has discussed different human virtues in a spirit at once wise, practical, and liberal. No one has better sung the praises of justice, of which he says, “Neither the evening nor the morning star inspires as much respect as justice.”

It would do Aristotle injustice to seek for a complete expression of his thoughts on education in the incomplete and curtailed statements of theory which are found in his Politics. In connection with these, we should recall the admirable instruction which he himself gave in the Lyceum, and which embraced almost all the sciences in its vast programme. He excluded from it only the sciences and the arts which have a mechanical and utilitarian character. Enslaved on this point to the prejudices of antiquity, he regarded as servile and unworthy of a free man whatever has a direct bearing on the practical and material utilities of life. He recommended to his hearers only studies of the intellectual type, those whose sole purpose is to elevate the mind and to fill it with noble thoughts.[40]

41. Faults in the Pedagogy of Aristotle, and in Greek Pedagogy in General.—It must be said in conclusion, that whatever admiration we may feel for the pedagogy of Aristotle, it was wrong, like that of all the Greek writers, in being but an aristocratic system of education. The education of which Plato and Aristotle dreamed was restricted to a small minority, and was even made possible only because the majority was excluded from it. The slaves, charged with the duty of providing for the sustenance of their superiors, and of creating for them the leisure claimed by Aristotle, had no more participation in education than in liberty or in property. In the century of Pericles, at the most glorious period of the Athenian republic, let us not forget that there were at Athens nearly four hundred thousand slaves to do the bidding of twenty thousand free citizens. To indulge in an easy admiration for Greek pedagogy, we must detach it from its setting, and consider it in itself, apart from the narrow plan on which the Greek states were constructed, and apart from that social régime which assured the education of some, only by perpetuating the oppression of the many.

[42. Analytical Summary.—1. A leading conception in Greek education is that of symmetry, or harmony; the ideal man, in Plato’s phrase, must be “harmoniously constituted”; all opposing tendencies must be reconciled; and while the physical, the intellectual, and the moral must each be made the subject of systematic training, there must be no disproportionate development in either direction.

2. The preoccupation of the Greek teacher was discipline or culture, rather than the communication of useful knowledge; and the final aim was a life of contemplation, rather than a life of action; ethical rather than practical; “good conduct” rather than mastery over what is material.

3. Physical training received great emphasis, not as an end in itself, but as a means towards mental and spiritual health; and knowledge was valued chiefly as the means for attaining moral excellence.

4. The staple of instruction was wisdom, i.e., ethical and prudential knowledge, which was the basis of right action; and teaching, especially according to the Socratic conception of it, consisted in causing the pupil’s mind to react on the materials supplied by his own mind. Socrates, says Lewes, “believed that in each man lay the germs of wisdom. He believed that no science could be taught; only drawn out.”

5. The great teaching instrument was dialectic, i.e., discussion, resolution, or analysis. Its use assumed that the subject-matter of instruction was already in the pupil’s possession, and that the highest office of the teacher was to liberate the thought which had been formed by the active energies of the pupil’s own mind. This is the maieutic art of Socrates.

6. The mode of mental activity which was chiefly brought into requisition was the reason; in a secondary degree the imagination and the emotions; and in a still lower degree, the memory.

7. The large place assigned to music by Plato and Aristotle shows that the culture of the emotions was an important element in Greek education. Æsthetic training was not only an end in itself, but was regarded as the basis of moral and religious culture.

8. In the writings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, we see the first attempt to formulate a body of educational doctrine; we have the germs of a science of education based on psychology, ethics, and politics.

9. In the Republic, we see the theory of compulsion in both its phases: the State must provide an education suitable for State needs; and the young must accept this education because the State has ordained it. For the first time in the history of thought, the State appears distinctly and avowedly as an educator.

10. Practically, education was administered on the basis of caste; though in the construction of his ideal State, Plato made it possible for talent, industry, and worth, to find their proper level.]

FOOTNOTES:

[22] Upon this subject consult the excellent study of Alexander Martin, entitled Les Doctrines Pédagogiques des Grecs. Paris, 1881.

[23] Montaigne, Essais, I. I. chap. XXIV.

[24] The palestra was the school of gymnastics for children; the gymnasium was set apart for adults and grown men.

[25] Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, I. IV. chap. VIII.

[26] Aristophanes, Clouds.

[27] The reputation of the sophists has been considerably raised by Mr. Grote (History of Greece, vol. VIII.). For an entertaining account of a sophist of a later age, see Pliny’s Letters, Melmoth’s translation, Book II., Letter III. See also Blackie’s Four Phases of Morals, and Ferrier’s Greek Philosophy. (P.)

[28] The primitive meaning of the Greek word εἰρωνεία, irony, is interrogation. Socrates gave a jeering, ironical turn to his questions, and in consequence this word lost its primary meaning, and took the one which we give it at this time.

[29] The Socratic method for the discovery of truth can be employed only in those cases where the pupil has the crude materials of the new knowledge actually in store. Psychology, logic, ethics, mathematics, and perhaps grammar and rhetoric, fall within the sphere of the Socratic method; but to apply this method of instruction to geography, history, geology, and, in general, to subjects where the material is inaccessible, is palpably absurd. The Socratic dialogue, in its negative phase, is aimed at presumption, arrogance, and pretentious ignorance; but it is sometimes misused to badger and bewilder an honest and docile pupil. (P.)

[30] Memorabilia, I. II.

[31] Memorabilia, I. IV.

[32] Republic, 401, 402. I have quoted from the version of Vaughan and Davies. (P.)

[33] Dialectic, as used in the Republic, is neither philosophy nor logic. I doubt whether it can be considered a subject of instruction at all. It is rather a method or an exercise, the purpose of which is to subject received opinions, formulated knowledge, current beliefs, etc., to a sifting or analysis for the purpose of distinguishing the real from the apparent, the true from the false. The Socratic dialogues are examples of the dialectic method. Dialectic might be defined as the method of thought proper or the discursive reason in act. (P.)

[34] See the allegory of the cavern, Republic, Book VII. ‘In Plato’s scheme of education, knowing is to precede doing,’ thus following Socrates (Memorabilia, IV. chap. II.) and Bias (Γνῶθι καὶ τότε πράττε), and anticipating Bacon (“studies perfect nature, and are perfected by experience”). (P.)

[35] See especially Book VII. of the Laws.

[36] Compare also this quotation: “A free mind ought to learn nothing as a slave. The lesson that is made to enter the mind by force, will not remain there. Then use no violence towards children; the rather, cause them to learn while playing.”

[37] See particularly Chaps. VII. and VIII.

[38] See especially the Politics, Books IV., V.

[39] It seems impossible to comprehend the almost sovereign power which the Greeks ascribed to music, unless we conceive that the Greek was endowed with peculiar and extreme sensitiveness. Perhaps there is special significance in the story of Orpheus and his lyre. (P.)

[40] I think it may be doubted whether the disfavor shown by Plato and Aristotle to practical studies was merely a mean prejudice. Preoccupied as they were with the disciplinary value of studies, they may have seen that the culture aim and the utilitarian aim are in some sort antagonistic. (P.)

[CHAPTER III.]
EDUCATION AT ROME.

TWO PERIODS IN ROMAN EDUCATION; EDUCATION OF THE PRIMITIVE ROMANS; PHYSICAL AND MILITARY EDUCATION; ROME AT SCHOOL IN GREECE; WHY THE ROMANS HAD NO GREAT EDUCATORS; VARRO; CICERO; QUINTILIAN; THE INSTITUTES OF ORATORY; GENERAL PLAN OF EDUCATION; THE CHILD’S FIRST EDUCATION; READING AND WRITING; PUBLIC EDUCATION; THE DUTIES OF TEACHERS; GRAMMAR AND RHETORIC; THE SIMULTANEOUS STUDY OF THE SCIENCES; SCHOOLS FOR PHILOSOPHY; SENECA; PLUTARCH; THE LIVES OF ILLUSTRIOUS MEN; THE TREATISE ON THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN; A CHARMING PICTURE OF FAMILY LIFE; THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN; THE FUNCTION OF POETRY IN EDUCATION; THE TEACHING OF MORALS; MARCUS AURELIUS AND PERSONAL EDUCATION; CONCLUSION; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.

43. Two Periods in Roman Education.—In Greece, as we have seen, there were two essentially different systems of education in use: at Sparta, a one-sided education, wholly military, with no regard for intellectual culture; at Athens, a complete education, which brought into happy harmony the training of the body and the development of the mind, and by means of which, as Thucydides observed, “men philosophized without becoming effeminate.”

Rome, in the long course of her history, followed these two systems in succession. Under the Republic, down to the conquest of Greece, preference was given to education after the Spartan type; while under the emperors, Athenian education was dominant, with a very marked tendency to give the first place to an education in literature and oratory.

44. The Education of the Early Romans.—The first schools were not opened at Rome till towards the end of the third century B.C. Till then, the Romans had no teachers save their parents and nature. Education was almost exclusively physical and moral, or rather, military and religious. On the one hand, there were the gymnastic exercises on the Campus Martius, and on the other, the recitation of the Salian hymns, a sort of catechism containing the names of the gods and goddesses. Besides this, there was the study of the Twelve Tables, that is, of the Roman Law. Men the most robust, the most courageous, the best disciplined, and the most patriotic that ever lived, were the fruit of this natural education. Rome was the great school of the civic and military virtues. The Romans did not imitate the Athenians in a disinterested pursuit of a perfect physical and intellectual development. Rome worked for practical ends; she was guided only by considerations of utility; she had no regard for ideals; her purpose was simply the education of soldiers and citizens who should be obedient and devoted. She did not know man in the abstract; she knew only the Roman citizen.

These high qualities of the early Romans were marred by a sort of brutal insensibility and a contempt for the graces of intellect and heart; and leaving out of account the circumstances of environment and race, their practical virtues may be ascribed to three or four principal causes. First among these was a firm family discipline. The authority of the father was absolute, and answering to this excessive power, there was blind obedience. Another cause was the position of the mother in the family. At Rome, woman was held in higher esteem than at Athens. She became almost the equal of man. She was the guardian of the family circle and the teacher of her children. The very name matron inspires respect. Coriolanus, who took up arms against his country, could not withstand the tears of his mother Veturia. The noble Cornelia was the teacher of her sons, the Gracchi, whom she was accustomed to call “her fairest jewels.” Besides, the influence of religion was made to supplement the active efforts of the family. The Roman lived surrounded by deities. When a child was weaned, tradition would have it that one goddess taught him to eat, and another to drink. Later on, four goddesses guided his first steps and held his two hands. All these superstitions imposed regularity and exactness on the most ordinary acts of daily life. Men breathed, as it were, a divine atmosphere. Finally, the young Roman learned to read in the laws of the Twelve Tables, that is, in the civil code of his country. He was thus accustomed from infancy to consider the law as something natural, inviolable, and sacred.

45. Rome at School in Greece.—The primitive state of manners did not last. Under Greek influence, Roman simplicity suffered a change, and, as Horace says, Greece, in being conquered, conquered in turn her rude victor. The taste for letters and arts was introduced at Rome towards the close of the third century B.C., and transformed the austere and rude education of the primitive era. The Romans, in their turn, acquired a liking for fine phrases and subtile dialectics. Schools were opened, and the rhetoricians and philosophers took up the business of education. Parents no longer charged themselves with the instruction of their children. Following the fashion at Athens, they entrusted them to slaves, without troubling themselves about the faults or even the vices of these common pedagogues.

“For if any of their servants,” says Plutarch, “be better than the rest, they dispose some of them to follow husbandry, some to navigation, some to merchandise, some to be stewards in their houses, and some, lastly, to put out their money to use for them. But if they find any slave that is a drunkard or a glutton, and unfit for any other business, to him they assign the government of their children; whereas, a good pedagogue ought to be such a one in his disposition as Phœnix, tutor to Achilles, was.”[41]

46. Why Rome had no Great Educators.—In the age of Augustus, when Latin literature was in all its glory, we are astonished not to find, as in the century of Pericles, some great thinker like Plato or Aristotle, who presents general views on education, and makes himself famous by a remarkable work on pedagogy. This is due to the fact that the Romans never formed a taste for disinterested science and speculative inquiry. They reached distinction only in the practical sciences; in the law, for example, in which they excelled. Now pedagogy, while in one sense a practical science, nevertheless reposes upon philosophical principles, upon a knowledge of human nature, and upon a theoretical conception of human destiny,—questions which had no living interest for the Roman mind, and which even Cicero has noticed only in passing, in the course of his translation of Plato, made with his usual magnificence of literary style.

It is to be noted, moreover, that the Romans seem never to have considered education as a national undertaking, as an affair of the State. The Law of the Twelve Tables is silent upon the education of children. Up to the time of Quintilian there were at Rome no public schools, no professional teachers. In the age of Augustus each teacher had his own method. “Our ancestors,” says Cicero, “did not wish that children should be educated by fixed rules, determined by the laws, publicly promulgated and made uniform for all.”[42] And he does not seem to disapprove of this neglect, even while noting the fact that Polybius saw in this an important defect in Roman institutions.

47. Cicero.—In all Cicero’s works we find scarcely a line relative to education. And yet the great orator exclaims: “What better, what greater service can we of to-day render the Republic than to instruct and train the young?”[43] But he was content with writing fine discourses on philosophy for his country, abounding more in eloquence than in originality.

48. Varro.—A less celebrated writer, Varro, seems to have had some pedagogic instinct. He wrote real educational works on grammar, rhetoric, history, and geometry. Most of these have been lost; but if we may trust his contemporaries, they were instrumental in the education of several generations.

49. Quintilian (35-95 A.D.).—After the age of Augustus, education became more and more an affair of oratory. The chief effort in the way of education was a preparation for a career in the Forum. But from these vulgar rhetoricians, occupied with the exterior artifices of style, these “traffickers in words,” as Saint Augustine called them, we must distinguish a rhetorician of a higher order, who does not separate rhetoric from a general culture of the intelligence. This is Quintilian, the author of the Institutes of Oratory.

Appointed at the age of twenty-six to a chair of eloquence, the first that was established by the Roman state, and called at a later period by the Emperor Domitian to direct the education of his grand-nephews, Quintilian was practically acquainted with both public and private instruction.

50. The Institutes of Oratory.—This work, under the form of a treatise on rhetoric, is in parts a real treatise on education. The author, in fact, begins the training of the future orator from the cradle; he gives counsel to its nurse, and “not blushing to descend to petty details,” he follows step by step the education of his pupil. Let us add, that in the noble ideal which he conceives, eloquence never being considered apart from wisdom, Quintilian was led by his very subject to treat of moral education.

51. His General Plan of Education.—The first book entire is devoted to education in general, and its teachings might be applied indifferently to all children, whether destined or not to the practice of oratory.

“Has a son been born to you? From the first conceive the highest hopes of him.” Thus Quintilian begins. He thinks that we cannot have too high an opinion of human nature, nor propose for it too high a purpose. Minds that rebel against all instruction are unnatural. Most often it is the training which is at fault; it is not nature that is to blame.

52. The Early Education of the Child.—The child’s nurses should be virtuous and prudent. Quintilian does not demand that they shall be learned, as the stoic Chrysippus would have them; but he requires that their language shall be irreproachable. The first impressions of the child are very durable: “New vases preserve the taste of the first liquor that is put into them; and wool, once colored, never regains its primitive whiteness.”

By an illusion analogous to that of the literary men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who would have the little French boy first learn Latin, Quintilian teaches his pupil Greek before making him study his native tongue.