Edited by NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER

ARISTOTLE

AND

ANCIENT EDUCATIONAL IDEALS

BY

THOMAS DAVIDSON

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1892

COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.

PREFACE

In undertaking to treat of Aristotle as the expounder of ancient educational ideas, I might, with Kapp's Aristoteles' Staatspaedagogik before me, have made my task an easy one. I might simply have presented in an orderly way and with a little commentary, what is to be found on the subject of education in his various works—Politics, Ethics, Rhetoric, Poetics, etc. I had two reasons, however, for not adopting this course: (1) that this work had been done, better than I could do it, in the treatise referred to, and (2) that a mere restatement of what Aristotle says on education would hardly have shown his relation to ancient pedagogy as a whole. I therefore judged it better, by tracing briefly the whole history of Greek education up to Aristotle and down from Aristotle, to show the past which conditioned his theories and the future which was conditioned by them. Only thus, it seemed to me, could his teachings be seen in their proper light. And I have found that this method has many advantages, of which I may mention one. It has enabled me to show the close connection that existed at all times between Greek education and Greek social and political life, and to present the one as the reflection of the other. And this is no small advantage, since it is just from its relation to the whole of life that Greek education derives its chief interest for us. We can never, indeed, return to the purely political education of the Greeks; they themselves had to abandon that, and, since then,

A boundless hope has passed across the earth—

a hope which gives our education a meaning and a scope far wider than any that the State aims at; but in these days, when the State and the institution which embodies that hope are contending for the right to educate, it cannot but aid us in settling their respective claims, to follow the process by which they came to have distinct claims at all, and to see just what these mean. This process, the method which I have followed has, I hope, enabled me, in some degree, to bring into clearness. This, at all events, has been one of my chief aims.

In treating of the details of Greek educational practice, I have been guided by a desire to present only, or mainly, those which contribute to make up the complete picture. For this reason I have omitted all reference to the training for the Olympic and other games, this (so it seems to me) being no essential part of the system.

It would have been easy for me to give my book a learned appearance, by checkering its pages with references to ancient authors, or quotations, in the original, from them; but this has seemed to me both unnecessary and unprofitable in a work intended for the general public. I have, therefore, preferred to place at the heads of the different chapters, in English mostly, such quotations as seemed to express, in the most striking way, the spirit of the different periods and theories of Greek education. Taken together, I believe these quotations will be found to present a fairly definite outline of the whole subject.

In conclusion, I would say that, though I have used a few modern works, such as those of Kapp and Grasberger, I have done so almost solely for the sake of finding references. In regard to every point I believe I have turned to the original sources. If, therefore, my conclusions on certain points differ from those of writers of note who have preceded me, I can only say that I have tried to do my best with the original materials before me. I am far from flattering myself that I have reached the truth in every case, and shall be very grateful for corrections, in whatever spirit they may be offered; but I trust that I have been able to present in their essential features, the "ancient ideals of education."

THOMAS DAVIDSON.

"Glenmore,"
Keene, Essex Co., N.Y.
October, 1891.

CONTENTS

BOOK I

INTRODUCTORY.

BOOK II.

THE HELLENIC PERIOD (B.C. 776-338).

Part I.
THE "OLD EDUCATION" (b.c. 776-480).

Part II.
THE "NEW EDUCATION" (b.c. 480-338).

BOOK III.

ARISTOTLE (B.C. 384-322).

BOOK IV.

THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD (B.C. 338-A.D. 313).

Book I

INTRODUCTORY

ERRATA.

ARISTOTLE

CHAPTER I

CHARACTER AND IDEAL OF GREEK EDUCATION

Nothing in excess!—Solon.

No citizen has a right to consider himself as belonging to himself; but all ought to regard themselves as belonging to the State, inasmuch as each is a part of the State; and care for the part naturally looks to care for the whole.—Aristotle.

Greek life, in all its manifestations, was dominated by a single idea, and that an æsthetic one. This idea, which worked sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, was Proportion. The Greek term for this (Logos) not only came to designate the incarnate Word of Religion, but has also supplied many modern languages with a name for the Science of Manifested Reason—Logic. To the Greek, indeed, Reason always meant ratio, proportion; and a rational life meant to him a life of which all the parts, internal and external, stood to each other in just proportion. Such proportion was threefold; first, between the different parts of the individual human being; second, between the individual and his fellows in a social whole; third, between the human, as such, and the overruling divine. The realization of this threefold harmony in the individual was called by the Greeks Worth (Ἀρετή, usually, but incorrectly, rendered Virtue). There has come down to us, from the pen of Aristotle, in whom all that was implicit in Hellenism became explicit, a portion of a pæan addressed to this ideal. It may be fitly inserted here, in a literal translation.

To Worth.

With regard to this ideal, four things are especially noteworthy; first, that it took an exhaustive survey of man's nature and relations; second, that it called for strong, persistent, heroic effort; third, that it tended to sink the individual in the social whole and the universal order; fourth, that its aim was, on the whole, a static perfection. The first two were merits; the second two, demerits. The first merit prevented the Greeks from pursuing one-sided systems of education; the second, from trying to turn education into a means of amusement. Aristotle says distinctly, "Education ought certainly not to be turned into a means of amusement; for young people are not playing when they are learning, since all learning is accompanied with pain." The first demerit was prejudicial to individual liberty, and therefore obstructive of the highest human development; the second encouraged Utopian dreams, which, being always of static conditions, undisturbed by the toils and throes essential to progress, tend to produce impatience of that slow advance whereby alone man arrives at enduring results. To this tendency we owe such works as Plato's Republic and Xenophon's Education of Cyrus.

CHAPTER II

BRANCHES OF GREEK EDUCATION

With thee the aged car-borne Peleus sent me on the day whereon from Phthia to Agamemnon he sent thee, a mere boy, not yet acquainted with mutual war or councils, in which men rise to distinction—for this end he sent me forth to teach thee all these things, to be a speaker of words and a doer of deeds.—(Phœnix in) Homer.

Above all and by every means we provide that our citizens shall have good souls and strong bodies.—Lucian.

Life is the original school—life, domestic and social. All other schools merely exercise functions delegated by the family and by society, and it is not until the latter has reached such a state of complication as to necessitate a division of labor that special schools exist. Among the Homeric Greeks we find no mention of schools, and the only person recorded as having had a tutor is Achilles, who was sent away from home so early in life as to be deprived of that education which he would naturally have received from his father. In what that education consisted, we learn from the first quotation at the head of this chapter. It consisted in such training as would make the pupil "a speaker of words and a doer of deeds"—a man eloquent and persuasive in council, and brave and resolute on the field of battle. For these ends he required, as Lucian says, a good soul and a strong body.

These expressions mark the two great divisions into which Greek education at all periods fell—Mental Education and Physical Education—as well as their original aims, viz. goodness (that is, bravery) of soul and strength of body. As time went on, these aims underwent considerable changes, and consequently the means for attaining them considerable modifications and extensions. Physical education aimed more and more at beauty and grace, instead of strength, while mental education, in its effort to extend itself to all the powers of the mind, divided itself into literary and musical education.

As we have seen, the Greeks aimed at developing all the powers of the human being in due proportion and harmony. But, in course of time, they discovered that the human creature comes into the world with his powers, not only undeveloped, but already disordered and inharmonious; that not only do the germs of manhood require to be carefully watched and tended, but also that the ground in which they are to grow must be cleared from an overgrowth of choking weeds, before education can be undertaken with any hope of success. This clearing process was called by the later Greeks Katharsis, or Purgation, and played an ever-increasing part in their pedagogical systems. It was supposed to do for man's emotional nature what Medicine undertook to do for his body. The means employed were mainly music and the kindred arts, which the ancients believed to exert what we should now call a dæmonic effect upon the soul, drawing off the exciting causes of disturbing passion, and leaving it in complete possession of itself. It would hardly be too much to say that the power to exert this purgative influence on the soul was regarded by the ancients as the chief function and end of the Fine Arts. Such was certainly Aristotle's opinion.

When purgation and the twofold education of body and mind had produced their perfect work, the result was what the Greeks called Kalokagathia (καλοκἀγαθία) that is, Fair-and-Goodness. Either half of this ideal was named ἀρετή (aretê), Worth or Excellence. We are expressly told by Aristotle (Categories, chap. viii.) that the adjective to ἀρετή is σπουδαῖος (spoudaios), a word which we usually render into English by "earnest." And we do so with reason; for to the Greek, Excellence or Worth meant, above all, earnestness, genuineness, truthfulness, thoroughness, absence of frivolity.

CHAPTER III

CONDITIONS OF EDUCATION

Some hold that men become good by nature, others by training, others by instruction. The part that is due to nature obviously does not depend upon us, but is imparted through certain divine causes to the truly fortunate.—Aristotle.

It is not merely begetting that makes the father, but also the imparting of a noble education.—John Chrysostom.

There are two sorts of education, the one divine, the other human. The divine is great and strong and easy; the human small and weak and beset with many dangers and delusions. Nevertheless, the latter must be added to the former, if a right result is to be reached.—Dion Chrysostom.

The same thing that we are wont to assert regarding the arts and sciences, may be asserted regarding moral worth, viz. that the production of a completely just character demands three conditions—nature, reason, and habit. By "reason" I mean instruction, by "habit," training.... Nature without instruction is blind; instruction without nature, helpless; exercise (training) without both, aimless.—Plutarch.

To the realization of their ideal in any individual the Greeks conceived three conditions to be necessary, (1) a noble nature, (2) persistent exercise or training in right action, (3) careful instruction. If any one of these was lacking, the highest result could not be attained.

(1) To be well or nobly born was regarded by the Greeks as one of the best gifts of the gods. Aristotle defines noble birth as "ancient wealth and worth," and this fairly enough expresses the Greek view generally. Naturally enough, therefore, the Greek in marrying looked above all things to the chances of a worthy offspring. Indeed, it may be fairly said that the purpose of the Greek in marriage was, not so much to secure a helpmeet for himself as to find a worthy mother for his children. In Greece, as everywhere else in the ancient world, marriage was looked upon solely as an arrangement for the procreation and rearing of offspring. The romantic, pathological love-element, which plays so important a part in modern match-making, was almost entirely absent among the Greeks. What love there was, assumed either the noble form of enthusiastic friendship or the base one of free lust. In spite of this, and of the fact that woman was regarded as a means and not as an end, the relations between Greek husbands and wives were very often such as to render the family a school of virtue for the children. They were noble, sweet, and strong,—all the more so, it should seem, that they were based, not upon a delusive sentimentality, but upon reason and a sense of reciprocal duty.

(2) The value of exercise, practice, habituation, seems to have been far better understood by the ancients than by the moderns. Whatever a man has to do, be it speaking, swimming, playing, or fighting, he can learn only by doing it; this was a universally accepted maxim. The modern habit of trying to teach languages and virtues by rules, not preceded by extensive practice, would have seemed to the ancients as absurd as the notion that a man could learn to swim before going into the water. Practice first; theory afterwards: do the deed, and ye shall know of the doctrine—so said ancient Wisdom, to which the notion that children should not be called upon to perform any act, or submit to any restriction, without having the grounds thereof explained to them, would have seemed the complete inversion of all scientific method. It was by insisting upon a certain practice in children, on the ground of simple authority, that the ancients sought to inculcate the virtues of reverence for experience and worth, and respect for law.

(3) The work begun by nature, and continued by habit or exercise, was completed and crowned by instruction. This had, according to the Greek, two functions, (a) to make action free, by making it rational, (b) to make possible an advance to original action. Nature and habit left men thralls, governed by instincts and prescriptions; instruction, revelation of the grounds of action, set them free. Such freedom, based on insight, was to the thinkers of Greece the realization of manhood, or rather, of the divine in man. "The truth shall make you free"—no one understood this better than they. Hence, with all their steady insistence upon practice in education, they never regarded it as the ultimate end, or as any end at all, except when guided by insight, the fruit of instruction. A practicality leading to no widening of the spiritual horizon, to no freeing insight, was to them illiberal, slavish, paltry—"banausic," they said,—degrading both to body and soul.

CHAPTER IV

SUBJECTS FOR EDUCATION

It is right that Greeks should rule over barbarians, but not barbarians over Greeks; for those are slaves, but these are free men.—Euripides.

Barbarian and slave are by nature the same.—Aristotle.

Nature endeavors to make the bodies of freemen and slaves different; the latter strong for necessary use, the former erect and useless for such operations, but useful for political life.... It is evident, then, that by nature some men are free, others slaves, and that, in the case of the latter, slavery is both beneficial and just.—Id.

Instruction, though it plainly has power to direct and stimulate the generous among the young ... is as plainly powerless to turn the mass of men to nobility and goodness (Kalokagathia). For it is not in their nature to be guided by reverence, but by fear, nor to abstain from low things because they are disgraceful, but (only) because they entail punishment.—Id.

In thinking of Greek education as furnishing a possible model for us moderns, there is one point which it is important to bear in mind: Greek education was intended only for the few, for the wealthy and well-born. Upon all others, upon slaves, barbarians, the working and trading classes, and generally upon all persons spending their lives in pursuit of wealth or any private ends whatsoever, it would have seemed to be thrown away. Even well-born women were generally excluded from most of its benefits. The subjects of education were the sons of full citizens, themselves preparing to be full citizens, and to exercise all the functions of such. The duties of such persons were completely summed up under two heads, duties to the family and duties to the State, or, as the Greeks said, œconomic and political duties. The free citizen not only acknowledged no other duties besides these, but he looked down upon persons who sought occupation in any other sphere. Œconomy and Politics, however, were very comprehensive terms. The former included the three relations of husband to wife, father to children, and master to slaves and property; the latter, three public functions, legislative, administrative, and judiciary. All occupations not included under these six heads the free citizen left to slaves or resident foreigners. Money-making, in the modern sense, he despised, and, if he devoted himself to art or philosophy, he did so only for the benefit of the State. If he improved the patrimony which was the condition of his free citizenship, he did so, not by chaffering or money-lending, but by judicious management, and by kindly, but firm, treatment of his slaves. If he performed any great artistic service to the State—for example, if he wrote a tragedy for a State religious festival (and plays were never written for any other purpose)—the only reward he looked forward to was a crown of olive or laurel and the respect of his fellow-citizens.

The Greeks divided mankind, in all the relations of life, into two distinct classes, a governing and a governed, and considered the former alone as the subject of education; the latter being a mere instrument in its hands. The governing class required education in order that it might govern itself and the other class, in accordance with reason and justice; that other, receiving its guidance from the governing class, required no education, or only such as would enable it to obey. It followed that the duty of the governing class was to govern; of the governed, to obey. Only in this correlation of duties did each class find its usefulness and satisfaction. Any attempt to disturb or invert this correlation was a wilful running in the teeth of the laws of nature, a rebellion against the divine order of things.

As husband, father, master in the family, and as legislator, officer, judge in the State, each member of the governing class found his proper range of activities; and he did wrong, degrading himself to the level of the serving class, if he sought any other. This view, in a more or less conscious form, pervades the whole ancient world, conditioning all its notions and theories of education; and Paul the Apostle only echoed it when he said to wives: "Wives, be in subjection to your own husbands as to the Lord"; to children: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right"; and to slaves: "Slaves, be obedient unto them that according to the flesh are your masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as unto Christ."

CHAPTER V

EDUCATION AS INFLUENCED BY TIME, PLACE, AND CIRCUMSTANCES

The peculiar character of each form of government is what establishes it at the beginning and what usually preserves it.... Since the whole State has but one end, it is plainly necessary that there should be one education for all the citizens.—Aristotle.

Education among the Greeks, as among every other progressive people, varied with times and circumstances. The education of the Homeric Greeks was not that of the Athenians in the days of Aristotle, nor the latter the same as the education of the contemporary Spartans or Thebans. Moreover, the education actually imparted was not the same as that demanded or recommended by philosophers and writers on pedagogics. It is true that the aim was always the same; Worth, Excellence, Fair-and-Goodness (ἀρετή, καλοκἀγαθία); but this was differently conceived and differently striven after at different times and in different places.

Among the Homeric Greeks, as we have seen, education, being purely practical, aiming only at making its subject "a speaker of words and a doer of deeds," was acquired in the actual intercourse and struggles of life. The simple conditions of their existence demanded no other education and, consequently, no special educational institutions. These conditions, as described by Homer, though by no means barbarous, are primitive. Nomadism has long been left behind and the later village-communities have been mostly merged in walled towns, generally situated at some distance from the shore, on or near a hill, whose summit forms a citadel for refuge in cases of danger. Even in the most advanced of these towns, however, the type of civilization is still largely patriarchal. The government is in the hands of chiefs or kings (βασιλῆες) claiming to be born and bred of Jove, as, indeed, in a sense, they were, since they ruled quite as much by right of personal worth, which more than anything is due to the grace of God, as by hereditary title. Worth in those days consisted in physical strength, courage, beauty, judgment, and power to address an assembly, and any king proving deficient in these qualities would soon have found his position insecure, or been compelled to fortify it by lawless tyranny. The functions devolving upon the king were mainly three, those of judge, military commander, and priest. The first required judgment and ready speech; the second, strength and intelligent courage; the third, personal beauty and dignity. Though the kings were allowed to exercise great power, this was not irresponsible or arbitrary. On the contrary, it was compatible with great public freedom in speech and action. Slavery existed only to a limited extent and in a mild form. All free heads of families, however poor, had a right to attend the popular assembly, which the king consulted on all important matters, and at which the freëst discussion was allowed. When the kings exercised judicial power, they did so in accordance with certain themistes or laws, held to have originated with Zeus, and not according to their own caprice. As there was little commerce in those days, the inhabitants of the ancient cities, when not engaged in warfare, devoted themselves chiefly to agriculture, cattle-raising, and the useful arts. In these even the kings thought it no shame to engage. We find Paris helping to build his own palace, Odysseus constructing his own bed, Lycaon cutting wood to make chariot-rails, and so on. Similarly, we find Helen and other princesses spinning and weaving, while Nausicaa, the daughter of the Phæacian king, washes the clothes of the family.

In such a primitive society, unacquainted with letters, the higher education found but few aspirants. The only persons of scientific pretensions mentioned by Homer are the physicians (who are likewise surgeons) and the soothsayers. The former are highly appreciated, and are always chiefs. The soothsayers are the exponents of divine omens to the community, and occupy a kind of official position, like the Hebrew prophets. No artists, strictly speaking, are mentioned by Homer, except the bard, and he is much honored, as historian, teacher, and inspirer. We find, indeed, that Achilles and Paris are proficients in music; but such cases seem exceptional. Of artisans, several are mentioned—the worker in wood, the worker in horn and ivory, the potter (who uses the wheel), and so on. The existence of others is implied—the weaver, the mason, the metal-worker, etc.

If there were no special schools in the heroic age, life was so lived as to be an excellent school. Then, as at all other times, it was extremely social, far more so than our modern life. This was due chiefly to three causes, (1) the smallness of the states, which made it possible for every citizen to know, and to feel his solidarity with, every other, (2) the absence of titles and formalities, which had not yet been introduced from the East, (3) the fact that the people, especially the men, spent the greater part of the day in the open air,—in the streets and agora,—and so were continually rubbing against each other. This sociality had much to do with the shaping of the Greek character, the salient elements of which are thus enumerated by Zeller, the historian of Greek philosophy: "A strong sense of freedom, combined with a rare susceptibility to proportion, form, and order, a keen relish for companionship in life and action, a social tendency which compelled the individual to combine with others, to submit to the general will, to follow the traditions of his family and his community."

Between the simple social condition described by Homer and that for which Aristotle wrote, there intervened a period of at least six hundred years. During that time many great changes took place in the social and political life of the Greeks, demanding corresponding changes in education. These changes were due to several causes, (1) the natural human tendency toward freedom, (2) the influence of foreign nations, (3) the development of commerce, (4) the introduction of letters, (5) the rise of philosophy, (6) the Persian Wars. Though all these are closely interwoven with each other, there can be no harm in treating them separately.

(1) The tendency toward freedom, so essentially characteristic of human nature, was especially so of the nature of the Greeks. Among them it rapidly manifested itself in an ordered series of political forms, beginning with patriarchalism, and ending variously in the various states and races. There is, indeed, hardly a single form of political life that was not realized among the Greeks at some time or place. It was this that made it possible for Aristotle to write a work on Politics which, in the words of a recent political writer, "has remained for two thousand years one of the purest sources of political wisdom."

The varied and changeful political life of the Greeks was in itself a great education. It made them aware of the principles, political and ethical, upon which society rests, and rendered necessary a faculty of clear and ready expression, which reacted most favorably upon their intellectual and æsthetic faculties. It was in the school of practical politics that the Greeks acquired their rhetoric; and Aristotle, in his treatise on Poetry, tells us that, while "the older poets made their characters talk like statesmen, the later ones made theirs talk like rhetoricians." Not only, indeed, did political life react upon the drama, but, in developing rhetoric, it drew attention to language and led to the sciences of grammar and logic, both of which were thus called into existence by real social needs (see [p. 102]).

(2) Greece, lying, as it did, between three continents, and in the thoroughfare of the ancient nations, could hardly fail to be visited by many different races, or, considering its beauty and commercial advantages, to be coveted by them. From this followed two consequences, (a) that the Greeks were a very mixed race, (b) that they were, from the first and at all times, in manifold contact with foreign peoples. That they were a mixed race, is attested alike by their language, their mythology, and their legends. That they were in close and continual communication with foreign peoples, is rendered evident by their alphabet, their art, and the direct statements of their historians. Although it is true that the Greeks, especially after the Persian Wars, regarded themselves as a superior and chosen people, calling all others "barbarians," and considering them as fit only to be slaves, it is not the less true that hardly one of all the arts and sciences which they ultimately carried to a high degree of perfection had its origin in Greece proper. All appear first in the colonies settled among "barbarians,"—in Egypt, Asia Minor, Thrace, Crete, Sicily, or Italy. Architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry—epic, lyric, dramatic—music, history, politics, philosophy, were all borrowed, transformed, and, with the exception perhaps of tragedy and painting, carried to a high degree of excellence in the colonies, before they were transplanted to the mother-country. It is beyond any doubt that even the Homeric legends are of "barbarian" origin, though from what people they were borrowed is uncertain. It was the plasticity and versatility of their character, due in part to their mixed blood, that, by enabling them to appropriate and assimilate the arts and sciences of their neighbors, raised the Greeks to a new plane of civilization and made them the initiators of a new epoch in history, the epoch of life according to reason. Sir Henry Sumner Maine says, "Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin."

(3) It was chiefly through commerce that the arts and sciences borrowed by the colonial Greeks found their way into Greece proper. That foreign art-objects were introduced into it at an early period, is rendered certain by the recent discoveries at Mycenæ, Sparta, and other places, as well as by statements in the Homeric poems. That these were followed later by artists, bringing with them foreign art-processes and appliances, is equally certain. The earliest sculptors whose names are known to us, Dipœnis and Scyllis, were natives of Crete, settled in Sicyon; and the earliest poetic guild of which we have any mention is that of the Homeridæ in the island of Chios. But, besides introducing art and artists into Greece, commerce tended to educate the Greeks in other ways. It made them acquainted with foreign manners and luxuries, and forced them to learn the arts of navigation, ship-building and exchange, which again rendered necessary an acquaintance with arithmetic and the art of writing. And this leads us to

(4) The Introduction of Letters. This event, the date of which is uncertain, not only exercised a most furthering influence on the arts and sciences, but gave rise to a new branch of education. Letters were probably first used for diplomatic and trade purposes, then for inscriptions, and last of all for the perpetuation of literary productions. So much of a change did they effect in Greek education that even in the best times the whole of the literary and scientific education was called simply "letters" (γράμματα). As late as the time of Plato letters seem to have been considered a part of Music, and to have been taught by the same teacher as the latter; but Aristotle already distinguishes the two. It is extremely probable that the introduction of letters was the immediate cause of the establishment of schools for youth; for we find no mention of them prior to that event.

(5) The introduction of letters was closely followed by the rise of Philosophy, or the reflective spirit. Up to about the year 600 b.c., the Greeks, like the rest of the world, lived by habit, tradition, and prescription, handed on, with little or no criticism, from generation to generation. Their ideal world was shaped by the works of Homer and Hesiod. "Hesiod is the teacher of most," says Heraclitus. About the date named, however, society having advanced to a condition of organization which made possible a leisure class, there begins to appear a new spirit, destined to revolutionize, not only Greece, but the whole world. Armed with a what? a which? a why? and a wherefore? it no longer blindly accepts the world of nature and man, but calls upon it to give an account of itself. Science, philosophy, and art are the result.

At first the new spirit turns to nature with a what?; but, gradually discovering that the answer to this brings no complete explanation of the world, it propounds its other questions. It thus arrives at a consciousness of four distinguishable elements in the constitution of things,—four causes (αἴτια, αἰτίαι), as they were termed,—(1) matter, (2) form, (3) efficiency, (4) end or aim. At the same time, and by the same process, it is forced to a recognition of the presence of reason (λόγος) and intelligence (νοῦς) in the world, since form, efficiency, and aim all presuppose both. It is thus compelled to turn from nature to man, and man's mind, as the highest known expression of reason and intelligence, and to devote itself to the consideration of spirit, as alone promising any true explanation of the world. The process is a slow and difficult one, and the history of it is the history of Greek science, philosophy, and art.

Before the rise of philosophy, the teacher of the people had been the rhapsode, or public reciter; after that event he gradually gives place to the sophist (σοφιστής, one who makes wise), or, as he later with more modesty calls himself, the philosopher (φιλόσοφος, lover of wisdom). The history of Greece for centuries is, on its inner side, a history of the struggle between what the rhapsode represents and what the philosopher represents, between popular tradition and common sense on the one hand, and individual opinion and philosophy on the other. The transition from the first to the second of these mental conditions was accomplished for the world, once for all, by the Greeks, and the turning-point in the process is marked by

(6) The Persian Wars (b.c. 490-479). The victories gained in these at Marathon, Salamis, and Platææ, victories the most brilliant that history records, exerted a most powerful influence upon the thought and life of the Greeks. The consciousness of having, with their small numbers, over and over again, both by land and by sea, discomfited and crushed the countless hosts of an empire which for generations had threatened their peace and liberty, made them at once feel the superiority of their own characters and civil institutions to those of the Persians, and draw a clear line of demarcation between Greek and barbarian. From this point on, they felt themselves to be a chosen people, a nation destined by the gods to rule all others. "The soul of Greece had conquered the bulk of Persia." Persia was bulk and body; Greece was soul and spirit. This conviction appears at once in all the departments of Greek life. In the sphere of art we may instance the Prometheia of Æschylus and the Parthenon. In the former, what does the conflict between Zeus and Prometheus mean but the conflict between Greek spirituality, intellect, and freedom, on the one hand, and barbarian materiality, instinct, and thraldom or necessity, on the other? And what is the latter but a matchless pæan in stone to Divine Wisdom, as the conqueror of brute force? In the sphere of thought, we find Parmenides, Anaxagoras and, above all, Socrates (born ten years after the second Persian War), turning consciously to the study of spirit. "To be and to think are the same thing," says the first of these: "All things were confused; then Mind came and reduced them to order," says the second; "Know thyself" is the chosen motto of the third. In the political sphere we find the Athenians trying to make the State an instrument of intelligence and virtue, and insisting upon education as a means thereto. Other and less desirable results followed from the Persian Wars; but these can be better stated and estimated in another connection.

Such were the chief causes that contributed to transform the simple patriarchal State of the Homeric Greeks, with its purely practical education at home and in the field, into the free polity of the Greeks of the days of Miltiades, Themistocles, and Æschylus, with its complicated institutions and manifold education. It has seemed better to enumerate these causes than to try to trace the steps of the transformation itself. Indeed this would have been a hopeless task, owing to the lack of historical data.

CHAPTER VI

EPOCHS IN GREEK EDUCATION

When they (our ancestors) began to enjoy leisure for thought, as the result of easy circumstances, and to cherish more exalted ideas with respect to worth, and especially when, in the period before and after the Persian Wars, they came to entertain a high opinion of themselves, on account of their achievements, they pursued all kinds of education, making no distinction, but beating about generally.—Aristotle.

In treating of Greek education subsequent to the introduction of letters and the establishment of schools, we shall be obliged, in the interest of clearness, to make three distinctions:—

(1) Between the educational systems of different periods.

(2) Between the educational systems of different peoples and states.

(3) Between the education actually imparted in the various states, and that recommended by theorists or philosophers.

In pursuance of the first, it will be convenient first to distinguish two main periods, the Hellenic, and the Hellenistic, and then to subdivide these into minor periods.

I. The Hellenic Period (776-338 b.c.). This includes, roughly speaking, the whole historic life of free Greece, from the date of the first Olympiad to that of the absorption of Greece into the Macedonian Empire. It naturally subdivides itself into two periods, (a) 776-450; (b) 450-338.

(a) That of the "Old Education," authoritative and puritanical, whose aim was the training of good citizens, god-fearing, law-abiding, patriotic, and brave.

(b) That of the "New Education," rationalistic and "liberal," whose aim was the training of formidable individuals, self-centred, law-despising, time-serving, and cunning.

It is in the struggle between the two systems, and in the practical triumph of the latter, that Greece loses her moral fibre; so that her citizens, weakened through sundering selfishness, fall an easy prey to the foreign invader.

II. The Hellenistic Period (338 b.c.-313 a.d.). This extends from the Battle of Chæronea, in which Greece lost her independence, to the definitive triumph of Christianity, which brought a new ideal and a new spirit into life and education. It naturally subdivides itself into two periods, (a) b.c. 338-146; (b) b.c. 146-a.d. 313.

(a) The Macedonian Period, during which Macedonian influence prevailed, and Greek thought and education, absorbing foreign, chiefly Oriental, elements, tended toward an encyclopædic cosmopolitanism. During this period, Alexandria is the centre of Greek influence.

(b) The Roman Period, during which, as Horace says, "Captive Greece took captive her rude conqueror," and Rome became, alongside Alexandria, a diffusive centre of Greek thought, art, and education.

Between the two great periods, the Hellenic and the Hellenistic, stands the man who draws up the testament of the former and outlines the programme of the latter, the Macedonian Greek, Aristotle.

Our second distinction will lead us to treat separately, in the Hellenic period, the educational system of the three Greek races, (1) the Æolic, (2) the Doric, (3) the Ionic, the first having its chief centre at Thebes, the second at Sparta, the third at Athens. For an account of the education of the first our data are but meagre; with the main features of Spartan and Athenian education we are well acquainted. In education, as in everything, Sparta was conservative, socialistic, and aristocratic, while Athens tended to liberalism, individualism, and democracy. Hence Sparta clung desperately to the "Old Education," and almost closed her doors against art, letters, and philosophy, while Athens, dragged into the "New Education," became the home of all these. It must always be borne in mind that, in favoring individualism and the "New Education," Athens was abandoning the Hellenic ideal, and paving the way for the cosmopolitanism of the Hellenistic period. In this latter, we shall have to distinguish between the educational systems of Athens, Alexandria, and Rome.

Our third distinction is that between individual theory and popular practice. In all epochs of their history the Greek states produced men who strove to realize in thought and imagination the ideal of their people, and to exhibit it as an aim, an encouragement, and an inspiration, in contrast with the imperfect actual. In more than one case this ideal modified the education of the following periods. Of course, such theories did not arise until practice was compelled to defend itself by producing sanctions, either in religion or in reason, and it may perhaps be affirmed that the aim of them all was to discover such sanctions for the Greek ideal. Among the many educational theorists of Greece, there are six who especially deserve to be considered: (1) Pythagoras, who in Southern Italy sought to graft on the Doric ideal a half-mystical, half-ethical theology, and a mathematical theory of the physical world; (2) Xenophon, who sought to secure the same ideal by connecting it with a monarchical form of government; (3) Plato, who sought to elevate it, and find a sanction for it in his theory of super-sensuous ideas; (4) Aristotle, who presented in all its fulness the Hellenic ideal, and sought to find sanctions for it in history, social well-being, and the promise of a higher life; (5) Quintilian, who, in Rome, embodies the rhetorical or worldly education of the Hellenistic period; and (6) Plotinus, who presents an ideal of philosophical or other-worldly education, and paves the way for the triumph of Christian dogma.

BOOK II

THE HELLENIC PERIOD (b.c. 776-338)

Part I

THE "OLD EDUCATION" (b.c. 776-480)

CHAPTER I

EDUCATION FOR WORK AND FOR LEISURE

When we consider the different arts that have been discovered, and distinguish between those which relate to the necessary conditions of life and those which contribute to the free enjoyment of it (διαγωγή), we always consider the man who is acquainted with the latter wiser than him who is acquainted with the former, for the reason that the sciences of the latter have no reference to use. Hence it was only when all the necessary conditions of life had been attained that those arts were discovered which have no reference either to pleasure or to the common needs of life; and this took place first in those countries where men enjoyed leisure.—Aristotle.

The free life of God is such as are our brief best moments.—Id.

It is not fitting that the free enjoyment of life should be permitted to boys or to young persons; for the crown of perfection belongs not to the imperfect.—Id.

Obviously, the free enjoyment of life demands not only the noble but also the pleasant; for happiness consists of these too.—Id.

Among the Homeric Greeks, whose life was almost entirely devoted to practical pursuits, education was mainly practical, aiming to produce "a speaker of words and a doer of deeds." As civilization advanced, and higher political forms were evolved, certain classesof men found themselves blessed with leisure which they were not inclined to devote to mere play. In order to make a worthy use of this leisure, they required a certain training in those arts which were regarded as befitting a free man. Education, accordingly, in some states, widened its scope, to include those accomplishments, which enable men to fill their hours of freedom with refined and gracious enjoyment—music and letters. Music, indeed, had been cultivated long before, not only by professional bards, but even by princes, like Achilles and Paris; this, however, was for the sake of amusement and recreation rather than of the free enjoyment of life. It had been regarded as a means, not as an end. We must be careful, in our study of Greek life and education, not to confound play and recreation, which are for the sake of work, with the free enjoyment of life, which is an end in itself, and to which all work is but a means. "Enjoyment is the end." We shall see, as we proceed, to what momentous results this distinction leads, how it governs not only all education but all the institutions of life, and how it finally contributes to break up the whole civilization which it determines. It may fairly be said that Greece perished because she placed the end of life in individual æsthetic enjoyment, possible only for a few and regarding only the few.

In historic Greece, music came to be an essential part of the education of every free man. Even free women learnt it. Along with music went poetry, and when this came to be written down, it was termed "letters." As every free man came to be his own minstrel and his own rhapsode, the professional minstrel and rhapsode disappeared, and the Homeric poems even, in order to be preserved from oblivion, were committed to writing by an enlightened tyrant—Pisistratus.

The first portion of the Greek people that attained a degree of civilization demanding an education for hours of leisure, was the Æolian race, and particularly the Asiatic portion of it. Accordingly we find that all the earliest musicians and poets, didactic and lyric, are Æolians—Hesiod, Terpander, Arion, Alcæus, Sappho, Pittacus, etc. Lesbos seems to have taken the lead in this "higher education." The last five names all belong to that island, which produced also the earliest Greek historian and prose-writer—Hellanicus. But the Æolians, though earliest in the field, were soon outstripped by the other two races, the Doric and the Ionic. Æolian education and culture never advanced beyond music and lyric poetry. It knew no drama, science, or philosophy.

The Æolians were followed, almost simultaneously, by the Dorians and Ionians, who pursued two widely divergent directions. The former borrowed the lyric education and culture of the Æolians, and produced several lyric poets of distinguished merit—Tyrtæus, Alcman, Ibycus, Stesichorus: nay, they even advanced far enough to take the first steps in science, philosophy, and dramatic poetry. Pythagoras, Epicharmus, Sophron, Xenarchus, and Susarion were all Dorians. But the progress of the race was retarded and finally checked by rigid political institutions of a socialistic character, which, by suppressing individual initiative, reduced the whole to immobility.

The Ionians, on the contrary, borrowing freely from both Æolians and Dorians, and evolving ever freer and freer institutions, carried education and culture to a point which has never been passed, and rarely, if ever, reached, in the history of our race. And when they ceased to grow, and decay set in, this was due to exactly the opposite cause to that which stunted them among the Dorians; namely, to excessive individualism, misnamed liberty. Individualism ruined Athens.

Although education assumed different forms among different portions of the Greek race, there are certain features that seem to have been common to all these forms during the epoch of the "Old Education." Two of these deserve attention.

First. Education was everywhere a branch of statecraft, and the State itself was only the highest educational institution. This was equally true whether the schools were public, as at Sparta, or private, as at Athens. Everywhere citizenship was a degree, conferred only upon sons of free citizens, after a satisfactory examination (δοκιμασία).

Second. The stages or grades of education were everywhere the same, although their limits were not everywhere marked by the same number of years. The first, extending usually from birth to the end of the seventh year, was that of home education; the second, extending from the beginning of the eighth year to the end of the sixteenth or, perhaps oftener, the eighteenth year, was that of school education; the third, extending from the beginning of the seventeenth or nineteenth year to the end of the twentieth (in Sparta of the thirtieth), was that of college education, or education for the duties of citizenship; the fourth, including the remainder of life, was that of university education, or education through the State, which then was the only university. At the beginning of the third period, the young men took their first State examination, and if they passed it successfully, they received the degree of Cadet or Citizen-novice (ἔφηβος); but it was only at the beginning of the fourth period, and after they had passed a second examination (δοκιμασία εἰς ἄνδρας), that they received the degree of Man and Citizen and were permitted to exercise all the functions of freemen. The State then became, in a very real sense, their Alma Mater.

In most states, this graded education fell only to the lot of males, the education of females stopping short with the first grade, the family, which was regarded as their only sphere. It was otherwise at Sparta, Teos, and apparently among the Æolians generally. As a consequence it is only among the Æolians and Dorians that any poetesses of note appear—Sappho, Corinna, Telesilla, etc. Although, however, woman's sphere was the family, and she was considered to have done her duty when she worthily filled the place of wife, mother, and mistress, there was nothing to prevent her from acquiring the higher education, if she chose to do so. That she did not often so choose, seems true; still there are examples of learned women even among the Athenians. The daughter of Thucydides is said to have continued his history after his death, and, whether the statement be true or not, the fact that it was made shows that the ability to write history was not regarded as impossible or surprising in a woman.

CHAPTER II

ÆOLIAN OR THEBAN EDUCATION

Hesiod is the teacher of most.—Heraclitus.

When thou art dead, thou shalt lie in the earth.
Not even the memory of thee shall be
Thenceforward nor forever; for thou hast
No share in the Pierian roses; but
Ev'n in the halls of Hades thou shalt flit,
A frightened shadow, with the shadowy dead.
—Sappho (to an uneducated woman).

What rustic hoyden ever charms the soul,
That round her ankles cannot kilt her coats?—Id.

The Æolians appear to have been the earliest of the Greek races to make any considerable advance in culture. Their claim to Homer can hardly be sustained; but they certainly produced Hesiod, most of the greater lyric poets and poetesses, and the first historian. For a time they bade fair to lead the culture of Greece. But the promise was not fulfilled. During the palmy period of Greek history, they were not only the most uncultured and uncouth of the Greeks, but they even prided themselves upon their boorishness of speech and manner, and derided culture. In the glorious struggle in which Greece maintained the cause of culture and freedom against Persia, Thebes, then the chief centre of Æolianism, sided with the barbarian, as, indeed, was natural.

Theban education was, of course, a reflex of the character of the Theban and, indeed, of the Bœotian, people. Its main divisions were those of Greek education generally,—Gymnastics and Music; but the former was learnt solely for athletic purposes, and the latter mainly for use at banquets and drinking-bouts, in which the Bœotians found their chief delight. Letters were studied as little as at Sparta (see [p. 47]), and the language of the people remained harsh and unmusical. Of higher education there was hardly a trace. The sophists passed Bœotia by. Even Pindar, who was by birth a Theban, and a sincerely patriotic one, sought and found recognition anywhere rather than among his own people. He did not even write in their dialect.

The reason for this backwardness on the part of the Bœotian Æolians lay in the fact that they lived, as a conquering race, in the midst of a people superior to them in every respect save strength, and could maintain their ascendency only by brute force. When this failed, and the conquered race, which had never forgotten Cadmus and its ancient traditions, came to the front, education and culture found their way even to Thebes. It was due to this change in political conditions that a Pindar could arise, and it was doubtless the demand for culture consequent thereupon that induced certain members of the scattered Pythagorean school (see [p. 54]) to seek refuge in Thebes and there devote themselves to teaching. Among these were Philolaus[1] and Lysis, the latter of whom was probably the author of the famous "Golden Words" (see [p. 57]). But he has a better claim to fame than this; for he was the teacher of the bravest and most lovable man that Greece ever produced—Epaminondas.

If any enthusiastic believer in the power of education desire to fortify his cause by means of a brilliant example, he will find none superior to Epaminondas; for there can hardly be any question that it was the earnest, systematic, religious, and moral Pythagorean training which he received from the aged Lysis, whom he treated as a father, that made him what he was, and enabled him to do what he did,—which was nothing less than to place Thebes at the head of Greece. Thebes rose and fell with Epaminondas. But that was not all. It was the example of Epaminondas that kindled the ambition of Philip of Macedon, who was educated under his eye, and of his far more famous son, Alexander, who made all Greece a province of his empire. Pythagoras, Lysis, Epaminondas, Philip, Alexander—in five brief generations an earnest teacher conquers a world!

From the time of Epaminondas on, Thebes followed the ordinary course of Greek education.

CHAPTER III

DORIAN OR SPARTAN EDUCATION

Go, tell at Sparta, thou that passest by,
That here, obedient to her laws, we lie.
—Simonides (Epitaph on the Three Hundred who fell at Thermopylæ).

This is a matter for which the Lacedæmonians deserve approbation: they are extremely solicitous about the education of their youth and make it a public function.—Aristotle.

The Lacedæmonians impart to their children the look of wild beasts, through the severity of the exercises to which they subject them, their notion being that such training is especially calculated to heighten courage.—Id.

These are so far behind in education and philosophy that they do not learn even letters.—Isocrates.

Old Men. We were once strong men (youths).

Men. And we are; if you will, behold.

Boys. And we shall be far superior.—Spartan Choric Anthem.

They asked no clarion's voice to fire
Their souls with an impulse high:
But the Dorian reed and the Spartan lyre
For the sons of liberty!
So moved they calmly to their field,
Thence never to return,
Save bearing back the Spartan shield,
Or on it proudly borne!—Hemans.

There was a law that the cadets should present themselves naked in public before the ephors every ten days; and, if they were well knit and strong, and looked as if they had been carved and hammered into shape by gymnastics, they were praised; but if their limbs showed any flabbiness or softness, any little swelling or suspicion of adipose matter due to laziness, they were flogged and justiced there and then. The ephors, moreover, subjected their clothing every day to a strict examination, to see that everything was up to the mark. No cooks were permitted in Lacedæmon but flesh-cooks. A cook who knew anything else was driven out of Sparta, as physic for invalids.—Ælian.

Every rational system of education is determined by some aim or ideal more or less consciously set up. That of the Dorians, and particularly of the Spartans, may be expressed in one word—Strength, which, in the individual, took the form of physical endurance, in the State, that of self-sufficiency (αὐτάρκεια). A self-sufficient State, furnishing a field for all the activities and aspirations of all its citizens, and demanding their strongest and most devoted exertions—such is the Dorian ideal. It is easy to see what virtues Dorian education would seek to develop—physical strength, bravery, and obedience to the laws of the State. Among the Dorians the human being is entirely absorbed in the citizen. The State is all in all.

The Dorian ideal realized itself chiefly in two places, Crete and Sparta. Both these were repeatedly held up in ancient times as models of well-governed states, and even Plato puts the substance of his Laws into the mouth of a Cretan.

About the details of Cretan education we are but poorly informed. Two things, however, we know: (1) that Lycurgus, the reputed founder of Spartan education, was held to have drawn many of his ideas from Crete, and (2) that the final result of Cretan education—and the same is true of all education that merges the man in the citizen—was, in spite of its strictness, demoralizing. The character of the people was summed up by their poet Epimenides, a contemporary of Solon's, in a famous line quoted by St. Paul, "The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy bellies."

With regard to Spartan education our information is much greater, and we may therefore select it as the type of Dorian education generally.

The Peloponnesian Dorians having, through contact with the more civilized peoples whom they conquered, lost much of that rigorous discipline and unquestioning loyalty which made them formidable, were, in the ninth century b.c., becoming disorganized, so that in two of the Dorian states they were assimilated by the native population, the Argives and the Messenians. The same process was rapidly going on in the third state, Lacedæmon, when Lycurgus, fired with patriotic zeal, resolved to put an end to it, by restoring among his people the old Dorian military discipline. To prepare himself for this task, he visited Crete and studied its institutions. On his return he persuaded his countrymen to submit to a "Constitution," which ever afterwards went by his name. This constitution included a scheme of education, whose aim was a thorough training of the whole of the free citizens, both male and female, (1) in physical endurance, and (2) in complete subordination to the State. The former was sought to be imparted by means of a rigorous and often cruel, system of gymnastics; the latter, through choric music and dancing, including military drill. Spartan education, therefore, was confined to two branches, Gymnastics and Music. Instruction in letters was confined to the merest elements. Sparta accordingly never produced a poet, an historian, an artist, or a philosopher of any note. Even the arrangers of her choruses were foreigners—Tyrtæus, Terpander, Arion, Alcman, Thaletas, Stesichorus.

As Spartan education was nothing more or less than a training for Spartan citizenship, we must preface our account of it by a few words on the Spartan State.

The government of Sparta was in the hands of a closed aristocracy, whose sole aim was the maintenance of its own supremacy, as against (1) foreign enemies, (2) Perioikoi, or disfranchised native citizens, (3) Helots, or native serfs. To secure this, it formed itself into a standing army, with a strict military organization. Sparta, its one abode, was a camp; all free inhabitants were soldiers. Though they were compelled to marry, the city contained no homes. The men and, from the close of their seventh year, the boys, lived in barracks and ate at public tables (Phiditia). The women had but one recognized function, that of furnishing the State with citizens, and were educated solely with a view to this. No other virtue was expected of them. Aristotle tells us that "they lived in every kind of profligacy and in luxury." Polyandry was common, and, when a woman lost all her husbands, she was often compelled to enter into relations with slaves, in order that she might not fail in her political duty.

Among a people organized on the basis of brute force, it were vain to look for any of the finer traits of human nature—gentleness, tenderness, sympathy, pity, mercy. The mercilessness and cruelty of the Spartans were proverbial. Perioikoi and Helots incurring the displeasure or suspicion of the authorities were secretly put to death, without even the form of a trial. A striking instance of such cruelty is recorded by Thucydides. The facts are thus stated by Grote (History of Greece, vol. ii, pp. 376-7): "It was in the eighth year of the Peloponnesian War, after the Helots had been called upon for signal military efforts in various ways, ... that the ephors felt especially apprehensive of an outbreak. Anxious to single out the most forward and daring Helots, as men from whom they had most to dread, they issued proclamation that every member of that class who had rendered distinguished services should make his claim known at Sparta, promising liberty to the most deserving. A large number of Helots came forward to claim the boon: not less than two thousand of them were approved, formally manumitted, and led in solemn procession round the temples, with garlands on their heads, as an inauguration to their coming life of freedom. But the treacherous garland only marked them out as victims for sacrifice: every man of them forthwith disappeared; the manner of their death was an untold mystery."

Spartan education was entirely conducted by the State, at the expense of the State, and for the ends of the State. It differed in this respect from nearly every other system of Greek education. It was divided into four periods, corresponding respectively to childhood, boyhood, youth, and manhood.

(a) Childhood.—As soon as the Spartan child came into the world, the State, through officers appointed for that purpose, sent to examine it. If it seemed vigorous, and showed no bodily defect, it was permitted to live, and forthwith adopted by the State; otherwise it was carried to the mountains and thrown over a precipice. The children accepted by the State were for the next seven years left in charge of their mothers, but, doubtless, still under State surveillance. Just how they were trained during these years, we do not know. We can only guess that they underwent very much the same process as other Greek children, any difference being in the direction of rigor. As the details of Greek education generally will be dealt with under the head of Athens, they may be omitted here.

(b) Boyhood.—On completing his seventh year, the Spartan boy was transferred from his mother's house and care to a public barracks and the direct tuition of the State. Although the boys were in charge of a special officer (παιδονόμος), who divided them into squads and companies, and arranged their exercises for them, they were nevertheless taught to regard every grown man as a teacher, and every such man was expected to correct them promptly and rigorously, whenever he saw them doing wrong. At the same time, every boy was expected to form an intimate connection with some one man, who then, to a large extent, became responsible for his conduct; and, though the choice in this matter rested with the parties concerned, it was considered a disgrace in a man, no less than in a boy, to be without such connection. Though this arrangement, it is said, often led to lamentable abuses, there can be no doubt that it admirably served the purposes of Sparta. It furnished every boy with a tutor, who, under the circumstances, could hardly fail to treat him kindly, and who was interested in making him surpass all other boys in courage and endurance. This friendly influence of teacher on pupil was something in which the Greeks at all times strongly believed, and which formed an important force in all their education. In Sparta, as in Crete and Thebes, it was legally recognized. One of the duties of Spartan "inspirer" (εἰσπνήλας or εἴσπνηλος), as he was called, was to teach his young friend (ἀΐτας) to demean himself properly on all occasions, and to hold his tongue except when he had something very important to say. In this way it was that the young Spartans received their moral education, and acquired that effective brevity of speech which to this day we call "laconic."

The formal education of Spartan boys consisted mainly of gymnastics, music, choric dancing, and larceny. Their literary education was confined to a little reading, writing, and finger-arithmetic; everything beyond this was proscribed. And the reasons for this proscription are not difficult to discover. Sparta staked everything upon her political strength, and this involved two things, (1) equality among her free citizens, and (2) absolute devotion on their part to her interest, both of which the higher education would have rendered impossible. Education establishes among men distinctions of worth quite other than military, and gives them individual interests distinct from those of the State. It was the same reason that induced Rome, during the best period of her history, to exclude her citizens from all higher education, which is essentially individual and cosmopolitan.

The education of the Spartan boys was conducted mostly in the open air and in public, so that they were continually exposed to the cheers or scoffs of critical spectators, to whom their performances were a continual amusement of the nature of a cock-fight. Whether the different "inspirers" betted on their own boys may be doubtful; but they certainly used every effort to make them win in any and every contest, and the "inspirer" of a "winning" boy was an envied man. The result was that many boys lost their lives amid cheers, rather than incur the disgrace of being beaten. Inasmuch as the sole purpose of gymnastics was strength and endurance; of dancing, order; and of music, martial inspiration, it is easy to see what forms these studies necessarily assumed; and we need only stop to remark that Dorian music received the unqualified approbation of all the great educational writers of antiquity,—even of Aristotle, who had only words of condemnation for Spartan gymnastics.

There was only one branch of Spartan school-education that was not conducted in public, and that was larceny. The purpose of this curious discipline was to enable its subjects to act, on occasion, as detectives and assassins among the ever discontented and rebellious Helots. How successful it was, may be judged from the incident recorded on page 45. Larceny, when successfully carried out under difficult circumstances, was applauded; when discovered, it was severely punished. A story is told of a boy who, rather than betray himself, allowed a stolen fox, concealed under his clothes, to eat out his entrails.

In one respect Spartan education may claim superiority over that of most other Greek states: it was not confined to one sex. Spartan girls, though apparently permitted to live at home, were subjected to a course of training differing from that of their brothers only in being less severe. They had their own exercise-grounds, on which they learnt to leap, run, cast the javelin, throw the discus, play ball, wrestle, dance, and sing; and there is good evidence to show that their exercises had an admirable effect upon their physical constitution. That the breezy daughters of Sparta were handsomer and more attractive than the hot-house maidens of Athens, is a well-attested fact. Many Spartan women continued their athletic and musical exercises into ripe womanhood, learning even to ride spirited horses and drive chariots. If we may believe Aristotle, however, the effect of all this training upon their moral nature was anything but desirable. They were neither virtuous nor brave.

(c) Youth.—About the age of eighteen, Spartan boys passed into the class of epheboi, or cadets, and began their professional training for war. This was their business for the next twelve years, and no light business it was. For the first two years they were called melleirenes, and devoted themselves to learning the use of arms, and to light skirmishing. They were under the charge of special officers called bideoi, but had to undergo a rigid examination before the ephors every ten days (see [p. 41]). Their endurance was put to severe tests. Speaking of the altar of Artemis Orthia, Pausanias says: "An oracle commanded the people to imbrue the altar with human blood, and hence arose the custom of sacrificing on it a man chosen by lot. Lycurgus did away with this practice, and ordained that, instead, the cadets should be scourged before the altar, and thus the altar is covered with blood. While this is going on, a priestess stands by, holding, in her arms the wooden image (of Artemis). This image, being small, is, under ordinary circumstances, light; but, if at any time the scourgers deal too lightly with any youth, on account of his beauty or his rank, then the image becomes so heavy that the priestess cannot support it; whereupon she reproves the scourgers, and declares that she is burdened on their account. Thus the image that came from the sacrifices in the Crimea has always continued to enjoy human blood." This Artemis appears, with a bundle of twigs in her arm, next to Ares, among the Spartan divinities, on the frieze of the Parthenon. At twenty years of age, the young men became eirenes, and entered upon a course of study closely resembling actual warfare. They lived on the coarsest food, slept on reeds, and rarely bathed or walked. They exercised themselves in heavy arms, in shooting, riding, swimming, ball-playing, and in conflicts of the most brutal kind. They took part in complicated and exhausting dances, the most famous of which was the Pyrrhic, danced under arms. They manned fortresses, assassinated Helots, and, in cases of need, even took the field against an enemy.

(d) Manhood.—At the age of thirty, being supposed to have reached their majority, they fell into the ranks of full citizens, and took their share in all political functions. They were compelled to marry, but were allowed to visit their wives only rarely and by stealth. They sometimes had two or three children before they had ever seen their wives by daylight. When not engaged in actual war, they spent much of their time in watching the exercises of their juniors, and the rest in hunting wild boars and similar game in the mountains. Like Xenophon, they thought hunting the nearest approach to war.

Such was the education that Sparta gave her sons. That it produced strong warriors and patriotic citizens, there can be no doubt. But that is all: it produced no men. It was greatly admired by men like Xenophon and Plato, who were sick of Athenian democracy; but Aristotle estimated it at its true worth. He says: "As long as the Laconians were the only people who devoted themselves to violent exercises, they were superior to all others; but now they are inferior even in gymnastic contests and in war. Their former superiority, indeed, was not due to their training their young men in this way, but to the fact that they alone did so." And even Xenophon, at the end of a long panegyric on the Spartan constitution, is obliged to admit that already in his time it has fallen from its old worth into feebleness and corruption, and this in spite of the fact that he had his own sons educated at Sparta. When Sparta fell before the heroic and cultured Epaminondas, she fell unpitied, leaving to the world little or nothing but a warning example.

CHAPTER IV

PYTHAGORAS

Virtue and health and all good and God are a harmony.—Pythagoras.

One is the principle of all.—Philolaus the Pythagorean.

All things that are known have number.—Id.

The principles of all virtue are three, knowledge, power, and choice. Knowledge is like sight, whereby we contemplate and judge things; power is like bodily strength, whereby we endure and adhere to things; choice is like hands to the soul, whereby we stretch out and lay hold of things.—Theages the Pythagorean.

The Doric discipline, even in Sparta, where it could exhibit its character most freely, produced merely soldiers and not free citizens or cultivated men. It was, nevertheless, in its essential features, the Hellenic ideal, and numerous attempts were made to remedy its defects and to give it permanence, by connecting it with higher than mere local and aristocratic interests. One of the earliest and most noteworthy of these was made by Pythagoras.

This extraordinary personage appears to have been born in the island of Samos in the first quarter of the sixth century b.c. Though he was born among Ionians, his family appears to have been Achaian and, to some extent, Pelasgian (Tyrrhenian), having emigrated from Phlius in the Argolid. After distinguishing himself in Ionia, he emigrated in middle life to Magna Græcia, and took up his abode in the Achaian colony of Croton, then a rich and flourishing city. The cause of his emigration seems to have been the tyranny of Polycrates, which apparently imparted to him a prejudice against Ionic tendencies in general. Whether he derived any part of his famous learning from visits to Egypt, Phœnicia, Babylonia, etc., as was asserted in later times, is not clear. It is not improbable that he visited Egypt, and there is good reason for believing that he became acquainted with Phœnician theology through Pherecydes of Syros. That he was an omnivorous student is attested by his contemporary, Heraclitus. He was undoubtedly affected by the physical theories current in his time in Ionia, while he plainly drew his political and ethical ideas from Sparta or Crete.

Of his activity in Ionia we know little; but we may perhaps conclude that it was of the same nature as that which he afterwards displayed in Italy. Here he appeared in the triple capacity of theologian, ethical teacher, and scientist. His chief interest for us lies in the fact that he was apparently the first man in Greece, and, indeed, in the western world, who sought to establish an ethical institution apart from the State. In this respect he bears a strong resemblance to the prophet Isaiah, who may be said to have originated the idea of a Church (see [p. 133]). Pythagoras' aim seems to have been to gather round him a body of disciples who should endeavor to lead a perfect life, based upon certain theological or metaphysical notions, and guided by a rule of almost monastic strictness. Like other men who have found themselves in the midst of irreverence, selfishness, and democratic vulgarity and anarchy, he believed that his time demanded moral discipline, based upon respect for authority and character, with a firm belief in future retribution, and inculcated by a careful study of the order and harmony of nature; and such discipline he strove, with all his might, to impart. Having no faith in the capacity of the State to be an instrument for his purpose, he set to work independently of it, and seems to have met with very marked success, drawing to him many of the best men and women of Southern Italy. So numerous and powerful, indeed, did his followers become that they held the balance of power in several cities, and were able to use it for the enforcement of their own principles. As these were exceedingly undemocratic, and opposed to the tendencies of the time, they finally roused bitter opposition, so that the Pythagoreans were persecuted and attempts made to exterminate them with fire and sword. In this way their political influence was broken, and their assemblies suppressed; but the effect of Pythagoras' teaching was not lost. His followers, scattered abroad throughout the Hellenic world, carried his precepts and his life-ideal with them. In the following centuries they found many noble sympathizers—Pindar, Socrates, Plato, Epicharmus, etc.—and underwent many modifications, until they finally witnessed a resurrection, in the forms of Neo-Pythagoreanism and Neo-Platonism, after the Christian era. In these later guises, Pythagoreanism lost itself in mysticism and contemplation, turning its followers into inactive ascetics; but in its original form it seems to have been especially adapted to produce men of vigorous action and far-sighted practicality. Milo of Croton, the inimitable wrestler; Archytas of Tarentum, philosopher, mathematician, musician, inventor, engineer, general, statesman; and Epaminondas, the greatest and noblest of Theban generals, were professed Pythagoreans.

We might perhaps express the aim of Pythagoras' pedagogical efforts by the one word Harmony. Just as he found harmony everywhere in the physical world, so he strove to introduce the same into the constitution of the human individual, and into the relations of individuals with each other. He may perhaps be regarded as the originator of that view of the world, of men, and of society which makes all good consist in order and proportion, a view which recommends itself strongly to idealists, and has given birth to all those social Utopias, whose static perfection seems to relieve the individual from the burden of responsibility, and which have been dangled before the eyes of struggling humanity from his days to ours. According to this view, which had its roots in Greek thought generally, the aim of education is to find for each individual his true place and to make him efficient therein. Man is made for order, and not order for man. He is born into a world of order, as is shown by the fact that number and proportion are found in everything that is known. Pythagoras, in his enthusiasm for his principle, carried his doctrine of numbers to absurd lengths, identifying them with real things; but this enthusiasm was not without its valuable results, since it is to Pythagoras and his school that we owe the sciences of geometry and music. Moreover, experience must have taught him that it is one thing to propound a theory, another to make it effective in regulating human relations. In order to accomplish the latter object, he invoked the aid of divine authority and of the doctrines of metempsychosis and future retribution. Hence his educational system had a strong religious cast, which showed itself even outwardly in the dignified demeanor and quiet self-possession of his followers.

Harmony, then, to be attained by discipline, under religious sanctions, was the aim of Pythagoras' teaching. Believing, however, that only a limited number of persons were capable of such harmony, he selected his pupils with great care, and subjected them to a long novitiate, in which silence, self-examination, and absolute obedience played a prominent part. The aim of this was to enable them to overcome impulse, concentrate attention, and develop reverence, reflection, and thoughtfulness, the first conditions of all moral and intellectual excellence. While the first care was directed to their spiritual part, their bodies were by no means forgotten. Food, clothing, and exercise were all carefully regulated on hygienic and moral principles.

Regarding the details of Pythagoras' educational system we are not well informed; but the spirit and tendency of it have been embalmed for us in the so-called Golden Words, which, if not due to the pen of Pythagoras himself, certainly reach back to very near his time, and contain nothing at variance with what we otherwise know of his teaching. We insert a literal version.

The Golden Words.

Thy parents honor and thy nearest kin,
And from the rest choose friends on virtue's scale.
To gentle words and kindly deeds give way,
Nor hate thy friend for any slight offence.
Bear all thou canst; for Can dwells nigh to Must.
These things thus know.

What follow learn to rule:
The belly first, then sleep and lust and wrath.
Do nothing base with others or alone:
But most of all thyself in reverence hold.

Then practise justice both in deed and word,
Nor let thyself wax thoughtless about aught:
But know that death's the common lot of all.

Be not untimely wasteful of thy wealth,
Like vulgar men, nor yet illiberal.
In all things moderation answers best.

Do things that profit thee: think ere thou act.

Let never sleep thy drowsy eyelids greet,
Till thou hast pondered each act of the day:
"Wherein have I transgressed? What have I done?
What duty shunned?"—beginning from the first,
Unto the last. Then grieve and fear for what
Was basely done; but in the good rejoice.

These things perform; these meditate; these love.
These in the path of godlike excellence
Will place thee, yea, by Him who gave our souls
The number Four, perennial nature's spring!
But, ere thou act, crave from the gods success.

These precepts having mastered, thou shalt know
The system of the never-dying gods
And dying men, and how from all the rest
Each thing is sunder'd, and how held in one:
And thou shalt know, as it is right thou shouldst,
That nature everywhere is uniform,
And so shalt neither hope for things that lie
Beyond all hope, nor fail of any truth.

But from such food abstain as we have named,
And, while thou seek'st to purge and free thy soul,
Use judgment, and reflect on everything,
Setting o'er all best Thought as charioteer.

Be glad to gather goods, nor less to lose.

Of human ills that spring from spirit-powers
Endure thy part nor peevishly complain.
Cure what thou canst: 'tis well, and then reflect:
"Fate never lays too much upon the good."

Words many, brave and base, assail men's ears.
Let these not disconcert or trammel thee;
But when untruth is spoken, meekly yield.

What next I say in every act observe:
Let none by word or deed prevail on thee
To do or say what were not best for thee.
Think ere thou act, lest foolish things be done;—
For thoughtless deeds and words the caitiff mark;—
But strongly do what will not bring regret.
Do naught thou dost not know; but duly learn.
So shall thy life with happiness o'erflow.

Be not neglectful of thy body's health;
But measure use in drink, food, exercise—
I mean by 'measure' what brings no distress.

Follow a cleanly, simple mode of life,
And guard against such acts as envy breed.
Then, if, when thou the body leav'st, thou mount
To the free ether, deathless shalt thou be,
A god immortal,—mortal never more!

In this system six things are noteworthy: (1) Its comprehensiveness, in that it takes account of man's whole nature,—body, soul, and spirit; affections, intellect, and will, and of all his relations—to gods and men, to self and nature: (2) Its aimfulness, in that it promises happiness here and blessedness hereafter, as the reward of right living: (3) Its piety, in that it everywhere recognizes the need of divine assistance: (4) Its appreciation of science, as insight into the nature and grounds of multiplicity and unity: (5) Its stress laid on right doing, as the condition of right knowing: (6) Its belief in man's divinity and perfectibility. It is curious that the poem contains no reference to the doctrine of metempsychosis, which might apparently have been appealed to as a powerful moral sanction.

That a system like that of Pythagoras, combining the religious, the mystical, the scientific, the ethical, and the social tendencies of the Hellenic mind, should have exerted a deep and abiding influence, need not surprise us. We find profound traces of it, not only in all subsequent Greek thought, but even in foreign systems, such as Essenism, whose elements were Hebrew Nazarenism and Greek Pythagoreanism. The relations between Essenism and Christianity have not yet been determined. Of the effect of Pythagoras' teaching on Epaminondas I have already spoken.

CHAPTER V

IONIAN OR ATHENIAN EDUCATION

Let me now give an account of the Old Education, when I, uttering words of justice, was in my prime, and self-control was held in respect. In the first place, a child was not allowed to be heard uttering a grumble. Then all the boys of the quarter were obliged to march in a body, in an orderly way and with the scantest of clothing, along the streets to the music master's, and this they did even if it snowed like barley-groats. Then they were set to rehearse a song, without compressing their thighs,—either "Pallas, mighty city-stormer," or "A shout sounding far," putting energy into the melody which their fathers handed down. And, if any one attempted any fooling, or any of those trills like the difficult inflexions à la Phrynis now in vogue, he received a good threshing for his pains, as having insulted the Muses. Again, at the physical trainer's, the boys, while sitting, were obliged to keep their legs in front of them.... And at dinner they were not allowed to pick out the best radish-head, or to snatch away anise or celery from their elders, or to gourmandize on fish and field-fares, or to sit with their legs crossed.... Take courage, young man, and choose me, the Better Reason, and you shall know how to hate the public square, to avoid the bath-houses, to be ashamed of what is shameful, to show temper when any one addresses you in ribald language, to rise from your seat when your elders approach, and not to be a lubber to your own parents, or to do any other unseemly thing to mar the image of Modesty, or to rush to the house of the dancing-girl, and, while you are gaping at her performances, get struck with an apple by a wench and fall from your fair fame, or to talk back to your father, or, addressing him as Japhet, to revile the old age which made the nest for you.... Then, fresh and blooming, you will spend your time in the gymnasia, and not go about the public square, mouthing monstrous jokes, like the young men of to-day, or getting dragged into slippery, gumshon-bamboozling disputes, but, going down to the Academy, with some worthy companion of your own age, you will start a running-match, crowned with white reed, smelling of smilax, leisure and deciduous white poplar, rejoicing in the spring, when the plane-tree whispers to the maple. If you do the things which I enjoin, and give your mind to them, you will always have a well-developed chest, a clear complexion, broad shoulders, and a short tongue.—Aristophanes, Clouds (Speech of Right Reason).

In their systems of education, some states strive to impart a courageous habit to their people from their very childhood by a painful and laborious training, whereas we, though living in a free and natural way, are ready to meet them in a fair field with no favor.—Pericles' Funeral Oration (Thucydides).

I will never disgrace these sacred arms, nor desert my companion in the ranks. I will fight for temples and public property, both alone and with many. I will transmit my fatherland, not only not less, but greater and better, than it was transmitted to me. I will obey the magistrates who may at any time be in power. I will observe both the existing laws and those which the people may unanimously hereafter make, and, if any person seek to annul the laws or to set them at nought, I will do my best to prevent him, and will defend them both alone and with many (all?). I will honor the religion of my fathers. And I call to witness Aglauros, Enyalios, Ares, Zeus, Thallo, Auxo, and Hegemone.—Oath of the Athenian Epheboi.

Consider, Men of Athens, what careful provision was made by Solon, the ancient lawgiver, by Draco, and other lawgivers of that period, for the cultivation of good morals. In the first place, they made laws to secure a moral education for our children, and laid down, in plain terms, just what the free-born boy should study and how he should be nurtured; secondly, they made regulations regarding young men; and, thirdly, with regard to the other periods of life in their order, including both private persons and public speakers; and, having recorded these laws, they left them in your keeping, appointing you their guardians.—Æschines (against Timarchus).

If systems of education are to be classified according to their results—and these are perhaps the fairest test—then the "Old Education" of Athens must be assigned a very high place. The character which she displayed, and the exploits which she performed, in the early decades of the fifth century b.c., bear unequivocal testimony to the value of the training to which her citizens had previously been subjected. This training could perhaps hardly be better characterized than by the word "puritanical." The men who fought at Marathon, Salamis, and Platææ were puritans, trained, in a hard school, to fear the gods, to respect the laws, their neighbors, and themselves, to reverence the wisdom of experience, to despise comfort and vice, and to do honest work. They were not enfeebled by æsthetic culture, paralyzed by abstract thinking, or hardened by professional training. They were educated to be men, friends, and citizens, not to be mere thinkers, critics, soldiers, or money-makers. It was against a small band of such men that the hosts of Persia fought in vain.

It is natural that this "Old Education" of Athens should have a special interest for us, inasmuch as it seems, in great measure, to have solved the problem that must be uppermost with every true educator and friend of education, viz. How can strong, wise, and good men be produced? For this reason, as also because we are the better informed regarding the educational system of Athens than that of any other Greek state, it seems proper to devote special attention to it, treating it as preëminently Greek education. Indeed, whatever is permanently valuable in Greek education is to be found in that of Athens, other systems having mainly but an historical interest for us.

In comparing the education of Athens with that of Sparta, we are at once struck with two great distinctions: (1) While Spartan education is public, Athenian education is mainly private; (2) While Sparta educates for war, Athens educates for peace. As to the former of these, it is not a little remarkable that, while many of the first thinkers of Greece, including Plato and Aristotle, advocated an entirely public education, Athens never adopted it, or even took any steps in that direction. It seems as if the Athenians felt instinctively that socialistic education, by relieving parents of the responsibility of providing for the education of their own children, was removing a strong moral influence, undermining the family, and jeopardizing liberty. Perhaps the example of Sparta was not without its influence. No liberty-loving people, such as the Athenians were, would consent to merge the family in the State, or to sacrifice private life to public order. As to the second distinction, which was all-pervasive, it divides the two peoples by an impassable gulf and assigns them to two different grades of civilization. And it was one of which both peoples were entirely conscious. While Sparta represented her ideal by a chained Ares, Athens found hers in a Wingless Victory, a form of Athena, the divinity of political and industrial wisdom. As the aim of Sparta was strength, so that of Athens was Wisdom—the wise man in the wise state. By the "wise man," was meant he whose entire faculties of body, soul, and mind were proportionately and coördinately developed; by the "wise state," that in which each class of the population performed its proper function, and occupied its proper relation toward the rest, and this without any excessive exercise of authority. If the Spartan, like the artificially tamed barbarian, submitted to living by rule and command, the Athenian, like the naturally civilized man, delighted to live in a free and natural way (ἀνειμένως διαιτᾶσθαι) governed from within, and not from without. To make possible such life was the aim of Athenian education, which, instead of seeking to merge the man in the State, or to rend the two asunder, treated them as necessary correlates and strove to balance their claims.

The endeavor on the part of Athens to steer a middle course between socialism and individualism, is manifest in the fact that, though she had no public system of education, she took great care to see that her citizens were thoroughly educated in the spirit of her institutions, and, indeed, made such education a condition of citizenship, which was thus an academic degree, conferred only after careful examination. By a law of Solon's, parents who had failed to give their sons a proper education lost all claim upon them for support in their old age. Furthermore, Athens subjected all her male citizens to a systematic preparation for civil and military functions, before she allowed them to exercise these.

Athenian education comprised four grades corresponding to four institutions, (1) the family, (2) the school, (3) the gymnasium or college, (4) the State. We may consider these in their order.

(1) Family Education.

The birth of a child was regarded by the Athenians as a joyful event, as something calling for gratitude to the gods. This expressed itself in a family festival, called the Amphidromia, celebrated usually on the seventh day after the birth. On this occasion, the child was carried rapidly round the family altar and received its name. A sacrifice was then offered to the gods, the mother was purified, and christening presents were displayed. The child was now a member of the family and under the protection of its gods. For the next seven years, it was wholly in the hands of parents and nurses, the latter being usually slaves. During this time its body was the chief object of care, and everything seems to have been done to render it healthy and hardy. Cradles do not seem to have been in use, and the child was sung to sleep on the nurse's knee. While it was being weaned, it was fed on milk and soft food sweetened with honey. As soon as it was able to move about and direct attention to external objects, it received playthings, such as rattles, dolls of clay or wax, hobby-horses, etc., and was allowed to roll and dig in the sand. Such were the simple gymnastics of this early period. As to the other branch of education, it consisted mostly in being sung to and in listening to stories about gods and heroes, monsters and robbers, of which Greek mythology was full. By means of these the child's imagination was roused and developed, and certain æsthetic, ethical, and national prepossessions awakened. Though children were often frightened from certain acts and habits by threats of bogles coming to carry them off, yet the chief ethical agency employed was evidently strict discipline. To secure good behavior in his children was the first care of the Athenian parent. Though disinclined to harshness, he never doubted that "he who spareth the rod hateth the child." Children were never placed upon exhibition or applauded for their precocious or irreverent sayings. They were kept as much as possible out of the way of older people, and, when necessity brought them into the presence of these, they were taught to behave themselves quietly and modestly. No Greek author has preserved for us a collection of the smart sayings or roguish doings of Athenian children.

Though the Kindergarten did not exist in those old days, yet its place was, in great measure, filled by the numerous games in which the children engaged, in part at least under their nurses' superintendence. Games played so important a part in the whole life of the Greek people, and especially of the Athenians, that their importance in the education of children was fully recognized and much attention devoted to them. During play, character both displays itself more fully, and is more easily and deeply affected, than at any other time; and, since the whole of the waking life of the child in its earliest years is devoted to play, this is the time when character is formed, and therefore the time which calls for most sedulous care. In playing games, children not only exercise their bodies and their wits; they also learn to act with fairness, and come to feel something of the joy that arises from companionship and friendly rivalry in a common occupation. Moreover, as games have no end beyond themselves, they are admirable exercises in free, disinterested activity and a protection against selfish and sordid habits. Of all this the Athenians were fully aware.

There are probably few games played by children in our day that were not known in ancient Athens. It seems, however, that games were there conducted with more system, and a deeper sense of their pedagogical value, than they are with us. We hear of running, leaping, hopping, catching, hitting, and throwing games, gymnastic games, and games of chance. The ball, the top, the hoop, the swing, the see-saw, the skipping rope, the knuckle-bones were as much in use in ancient, as in modern, times. Cards, of course, there were not; and, indeed, games of chance, though well known, seem rarely to have been indulged in by children. It hardly seems necessary to remark that there were some games peculiar to boys and others to girls, and that the latter were less rude than the former. Doubtless, too, the games played in the city, where the children would have few chances of going beyond their homes, were different from those played in the country, where almost complete freedom to roam in the open air was enjoyed. We must always bear in mind that well-to-do Athenian families spent the greater part of the year at their country-houses, which, with few exceptions, were so near the city that they could be reached even on foot in a single day. This country life had a marked effect upon the education of Athenian children.

(2) School Education.

About the age of seven, the Athenian boy, after being entered on the roll of prospective citizens in the temple of Apollo Patroös, and made a member of a phratria, went to school, or, rather, he went to two schools, that of the music-master, and that of the physical trainer. He was always accompanied thither and back by a pedagogue, who was usually a slave, who carried his writing-materials, his lyre, etc. (there being no school-books to carry), and whom he was expected implicitly to obey. The boys of each quarter of the city collected every morning at some appointed place and walked to school, like little soldiers, in rank and file. They wore next to no clothing, even in the coldest weather, and were obliged to conduct themselves very demurely in the streets. The school hours were very long, beginning early in the morning and continuing till late in the evening. Solon found it necessary to introduce a law forbidding schoolmasters to have their schools open before sunrise or after sunset. It thus appears that boys, after the age of seven, spent their whole day at school, and were thus early withdrawn from the influence of their mothers and sisters, a fact which was not without its bearing upon morals.

There are several interesting points in connection with Athenian school life about which our information is so scanty that we are left in some doubt respecting them. For example, though it is quite plain that Athens had no system of public instruction, it is not so clear that she did not own the school buildings. Again, it is not certain whether music (including letters) and gymnastics were, or were not, taught in the same locality. Thirdly, there is some doubt about the number and order of the hours devoted to each of the two branches of study. In regard to these points I can state only what seems to me most probable.

As to school buildings, we are expressly told by the author of the fragmentary tract on The Athenian State, currently attributed to Xenophon, but probably written as early as b.c. 424, that "the people (δῆμος) builds itself many palæstras, dressing-rooms, baths, and the masses have more enjoyment of these than the few that are well-to-do." If we assume that some of these palæstras were for boys, as we apparently have a right to do, we must conclude that some, at least, if not all, of the schools for bodily training were public edifices, let out by the State to teachers. Like all the great gymnasia, some, and possibly all, of them were situated outside the city walls and had gardens attached to them. Whether the music-schools were so likewise, is doubtful, and this brings us to our second question—whether the two branches of education were taught in the same place. That they were not taught in the same room, or by the same person, is clear enough; but it does not follow from this that they were not taught in the same building, or at any rate in the same enclosed space. Though there seems to be no explicit statement in any ancient author on this point, I think there are sufficient reasons for concluding that, generally at least, they were so taught. If we find that Antisthenes, Plato, and Aristotle, who may be said to have introduced a systematic "higher education" into Athens, opened their schools in the great public gymnasia, frequented by youths and men, we may surely conclude that the lower mental education was not separated from the physical. In the Lysis of Plato, we find some young men coming out of a palæstra outside the city walls, and inviting Socrates to enter, telling him that their occupation (διατριβή) consists mostly in discussions (τὰ πολλὰ ἐν λόγοις), and that their teacher is a certain Miccus, an admirer of his. Socrates recognizes the man as a capable "sophist," a term never used of physical trainers. On entering, Socrates finds a number of boys and youths (νεανίσκοι) playing together, the former having just finished a sacrifice. It seems to follow directly from this that intellectual education was imparted in the palæstras. If this be true, we may, I think, conclude that in Athens the schools generally were outside the city walls, though the case was certainly different in some other cities.

In regard to our third question, it is clear that, if boys spent their whole day in one place, it would be more easy to divide it profitably between musical instruction and gymnastics than if they spent one part of it in one place, and another in another. Just how it was divided, we do not know, and I have little doubt that much depended upon the notions of parents and the tendencies of different periods. It is quite clear, from certain complaints of Aristotle's, that in Athens parents enjoyed great liberty in this matter. In any case, since, as we know, the institutions of education were open all day, it seems more than probable that one class of boys took their gymnastic lesson at one hour, another at another, and so with other branches of study. It cannot be that the physical training-schools were deserted when the music-schools were in session. I think there is sufficient reason for believing that, generally, the younger boys took their physical exercises in the morning, and their intellectual instruction in the afternoon, the order being reversed in the case of the older boys. How much of the time spent at school was given up to lessons and how much to play, is not at all clear; but I am inclined to think that the playtime was at least as long as the worktime. The schools were for boys what the agora and the gymnasium were for grown men—the place where their lives were spent.

Before we consider separately the two divisions of Athenian education, a few facts common to them may be mentioned. In the first place, they had a common end, which was, to produce men independent but respectful, freedom-loving but law-abiding, healthy in mind and body, clear in thought, ready in action, and devoted to their families, their fatherland, and their gods. Contrary to the practice of the Romans, the Athenians sought to prepare their sons for independent citizenship at as early an age as possible. In the second place, the motives employed in both divisions were the same, viz. fear of punishment and hope of reward. As we have seen, the Athenian boy, if he behaved badly, was not spared the rod. As an offset against this, when he did well, he received unstinted praise, not to speak of more substantial things. Education, like everything else in Greece, took the form of competition. The Homeric line (Il., vi, 208; xi, 784),

"See that thou ever be best, and above all others distinguished,"

was the motto of the Athenian in everything. In the third place, in both divisions the chief aim was the realization of capacity, not the furthering of acquisition. Mere learning and execution were almost universally despised in the old time, while intelligence and capacity were universally admired. In the fourth place, in both divisions the utmost care was directed to the conduct of the pupils, so that it might be gentle, dignified, and rational. In the fifth place, education in both its branches was intended to enable men to occupy worthily and sociably their leisure time, quite as much as to prepare them for what might be called their practical duties in family, society, and State. The fine arts, according to the Greeks, furnished the proper amusements for educated men (πεπαιδευμένοι).

(α) Musical (and Literary) Instruction.

Though the Greek word music (μουσική) came in later times to have an extended meaning, in the epoch of which we are treating, it included only music in our sense, and poetry, two things which were not then separated. Aristophanes, as late as b.c. 422, can still count upon an audience ready to laugh at the idea of giving instruction in astronomy and geometry, as things too remote from human interests (Clouds, vv 220 sqq.). The poetry consisted chiefly of the epics of Homer and Hesiod, the elegiacs of Tyrtæus, Solon, Theognis, etc., the iambics of Archilochus, Simonides, etc., and the songs of the numerous lyrists, Terpander, Arion, Alcæus, Alcman, Sappho, Simonides, etc. The music was simple, meant to "sweeten" (ἡδύνειν) the words and bring out their meaning. In fact, the music and the poetry were always composed together, so that the poet was necessarily also a musician. What we call "harmony" was unknown in Greek music at all times, and instrumental music was almost entirely confined to solo-playing.

In treating of Athenian, and, indeed, of all Greek, education, it is of the utmost importance to realize that the intellectual and moral part of it has music and poetry for its starting-point. This is the core round which everything else gathers; this is what determines its character, influence, and ideal. Culture, as distinguished from nature, is the material of Athenian intellectual and moral education; and by this is meant, not the history or theory of culture, as it might be set forth in prose, but culture itself, as embodied in the ideals and forms of music-wedded poetry, appealing to the emotions that stir the will, as well as to the intelligence that guides it.

By making the works of the great poets of the Greek people the material of their education, the Athenians attained a variety of objects difficult of attainment by any other one means. The fact is, the ancient poetry of Greece, with its finished form, its heroic tales and characters, its accounts of peoples far removed in time and space, its manliness and pathos, its directness and simplicity, its piety and wisdom, its respect for law and order, combined with its admiration for personal initiative and worth, furnished, in the hands of a careful and genial teacher, a material for a complete education such as could not well be matched even in our own day. What instruction in ethics, politics, social life, and manly bearing could not find a fitting vehicle in the Homeric poems, not to speak of the geography, the grammar, the literary criticism, and the history which the comprehension of them involved? Into what a wholesome, unsentimental, free world did these poems introduce the imaginative Greek boy! What splendid ideals of manhood and womanhood did they hold up for his admiration and imitation! From Hesiod he would learn all that he needed to know about his gods and their relation to him and his people. From the elegiac poets he would derive a fund of political and social wisdom, and an impetus to patriotism, which would go far to make him a good man and a good citizen. From the iambic poets he would learn to express with energy his indignation at meanness, feebleness, wrong, and tyranny, while from the lyric poets he would learn the language suitable to every genial feeling and impulse of the human heart. And in reciting or singing all these, how would his power of terse, idiomatic expression, his sense of poetic beauty and his ear for rhythm and music be developed! With what a treasure of examples of every virtue and vice, and with what a fund of epigrammatic expression would his memory be furnished! How familiar he would be with the character and ideals of his nation, how deeply in sympathy with them! And all this was possible even before the introduction of letters. With this event a new era in education begins. The boy now not only learns and declaims his Homer, and sings his Simonides or Sappho, he learns also to write down their verses from dictation, and so at once to read and to write. This, indeed, was the way in which these two (to us) fundamental arts were acquired. As soon as the boy could trace with his finger in sand, or scratch with a stylus on wax, the forms of the letters, and combine them into syllables and words, he began to write poetry from his master's dictation. The writing-lesson of to-day was the reading, recitation, or singing-lesson of to-morrow. Every boy made his own reading-book, and, if he found it illegible, and stumbled in reading, he had only himself to blame. The Greeks, and especially the Athenians, laid the greatest stress upon reading well, reciting well, and singing well, and the youth who could not do all the three was looked upon as uncultured. Nor could he hide his want of culture, since young men were continually called upon, both at home and at more or less public gatherings, to perform their part in the social entertainment.

The strictly musical instruction of this period was almost entirely confined to simple, strong Doric airs, sung to an accompaniment which was played on an instrument closely resembling the modern guitar (λύρα, κίθαρις). Complicated and wind instruments were unpopular, and the softer or more thrilling kinds of music, Lydian, Phrygian, etc., had not yet been introduced, at least into schools. Anything like the skill and execution demanded of professional players, who were usually slaves or foreigners, was considered altogether unworthy of a free man and a citizen, and was therefore not aimed at. Fond as the Athenians were of the fine arts, they always held professional skill in any of them, except poetry and musical composition, to be incompatible with that dignity and virtue which they demanded of the free citizen. A respectable Athenian would no more have allowed his son to be a professional musician than he would have allowed him to be a professional acrobat.

It is difficult for us to understand the way in which the Greeks regarded music. Inferior as their music was to ours in all technical ways, it exerted an influence upon their lives of which we can form but a faint conception. To them it was a dæmonic power, capable of rousing or assuaging the passions, and hence of being used for infinite good or evil. No wonder, then, that in their education they sought to employ those kinds which tended to "purgation" (κάθαρσις), and to avoid those that were exciting, sentimental, or effeminate! No wonder that they disapproved of divorcing music from the intellectual element contained in the words, and allowing it to degenerate into a mere emotional or sensual luxury! Music the Greeks regarded, not indeed as a moral force (a phrase that to them, who regarded morality as a matter of the will, would have conveyed no meaning), but as a force whose office it was, by purging and harmonizing the human being, to make him a fit subject for moral instruction. Music, they held, brought harmony, first into the human being himself, by putting an end to the conflict between his passions and his intelligent will, and then, as a consequence, into his relations with his fellows. Harmony within was held to be the condition of harmony without.

In the period of which I am speaking, no distinction was yet made between music and literature (γράμματα), both being taught by the citharist (κιθαριστής). Indeed, the term for teacher of literature (γραμματιστής) was not then invented. But the citharist not only taught literature: he also taught the elements of arithmetic, a matter of no small difficulty, considering the clumsy notation then in use. This was done by means of pebbles, a box of sand, or an abacus similar in principle to that now used by billiard players to keep count of their strokes.

As to the schoolrooms in ancient Athens, they were apparently simple in the extreme; indeed, rather porches open to sun and wind than rooms in the modern sense. They contained little or no furniture. The boys sat upon the ground or upon low benches, like steps (βάθρα), while the teacher occupied a high chair (θρόνος). The benches were washed, apparently every day, with sponges. The only decorations permitted in the schoolrooms, it seems, were statues or statuettes of the Muses and Apollo, and the school festivals or exhibitions were regarded as festivals in honor of these. Indeed, in Greece every sort of festival was regarded as an act of worship to some divinity. The chief school festival seems to have been the Musēa (μουσεῖα), at which the boys recited and sang.

(β) Gymnastics or Bodily Training.

Under the term Gymnastics (γυμναστική), the Greeks generally included everything relating to the culture of the body. The ends which the Athenians sought to reach through this branch of education were health, strength, adroitness, ease, self-possession, and firm, dignified bearing. A certain number of boys, intending to take part in the Olympic and other great games, were allowed to train as athletes under a gymnast (γυμναστής, ἀλείπτης) in the public gymnasia, and under the direction of the State; but these were exceptions. The athlete was not an ideal person at Athens, as he was at Thebes and Sparta.

Gymnastic exercises were conducted partly in the palæstras, or wrestling schools, partly on the race-courses, both of which were under the direction of professional trainers (παιδοτρίβαι). In early times, the palæstra and race-course were simply an open space covered with sand and probably connected with the school (διδασκαλεῖον), thus corresponding to our playground. Later, this space was partly covered over and furnished with dressing-rooms, a bath, seats for spectators, an altar for sacrifices, statues, etc. Of the five gymnastic exercises in which boys were trained, all except wrestling seem to have been conducted on the race-course, so that the palæstra was reserved for what its name implied. It is by no means certain that every palæstra had a race-course connected with it, at least in the time of which we are speaking, and possibly in many cases the boys took part of their exercises in the public race-course running from the agora to beyond the walls. Just as the schoolroom was decorated with images of Apollo and the Muses, so the palæstra was decorated with images of Hermes, Heracles, and Eros, symbolizing, respectively, adroitness, human strength, and youthful friendship. The special patron of the palæstra was Hermes, and the gymnastic exhibition took the form of a festival to him, the Hermæa, at which a sacrifice was offered and the boys were allowed the use of the building to play games in, the victors wearing crowns.

It would be impossible, in a work of this compass, to enter into a minute description of all the exercises of the Athenian palæstra. We must be content with a general statement, which may be prefaced with the remark that these exercises were at first light, increasing gradually in rigor and difficulty as the strength and skill of the growing child permitted.

The chief gymnastic exercises were five, named in this order in a famous line of Simonides: (1) leaping, (2) running, (3) discus-throwing, (4) javelin-casting, (5) wrestling (πάλη), which last gave the name to the palæstra. We shall not strictly follow this order, but begin with

(1) Running.—This was the simplest, lightest, most natural, and, therefore, the most easily taught of exercises. It was probably also the oldest. We find even Homer making his ideal Phæacians begin their games with it, and this practice seems to have been general throughout antiquity. In taking this exercise, the boys divested themselves of all clothing and had their bodies rubbed with oil. The running appears to have been of the simplest kind. Hurdle-races, sack-races, etc., were apparently excluded from education. At the same time, the running was rendered difficult by the soft sand with which the course was covered to the depth of several inches. The races were distinguished according to their length in furlongs or stadia: (1) the furlong-race, (2) the double-furlong race, (3) the horse (four-furlong) race, (4) the long race, whose length seems to have been twenty-four furlongs, or about three miles. The stadion was = 202¼ yards English. The shorter races called for brief concentration of energy, the longer for persistence and endurance; all were exercises in agility; all tended to develop lung-power.

(2) Leaping or Jumping.—This exercise seems, in the main, to have confined itself to the long leap. Though the high leap and the pole-jump can hardly have been unknown, we have no evidence that they were ever employed in the gymnastic training of boys. There may have been hygienic reasons which forbade their use. On the other hand, boys were taught to lengthen their leap by means of weights, somewhat similar to our dumb-bells, carried in their hands, and swung forward in the act of leaping. Such leaping would be an exercise for the arms, as well as for the legs and the rest of the body. But, just as there were two exercises intended chiefly for the legs, so there were two intended chiefly for the arms—discus-throwing and javelin-casting.

(3) Discus-throwing.—The modern world has been rendered very familiar with the method of this exercise by the copies of the discobolus of Myron, preserved in Rome and extensively engraved and photographed, and that of the discobolus of Alcamenes which now stands in the Vatican (see Overbeck, Griech. Plastik vol. i, p. 276). The discus was generally a flat, round piece of stone or metal, a sort of large quoit with no hole in the middle, which the user sought to throw as far as he could. The discobolus of Alcamenes shows us a youth balancing the discus in his left hand, and taking the measure of his throw with his eye; that of Myron shows us another in the act of throwing. He swings the discus backward in his right hand, and bends his body forward to balance it. His right foot, the toes contracted with effort, rests firmly on the ground; the left is slightly lifted; the whole body is like a bent bow. In the next instant the left foot will advance, the left hand, now resting on the right knee, will swing backwards, the body will resume its erect position, and the discus will be shot forward from the right hand like an arrow. Nothing could show more clearly than does this statue the perfect organization, symmetry, and balance which were the aim of Greek gymnastics. Not one limb could be moved without affecting all the rest,—which shows that the exercise extended to the whole body.

(4) Javelin-casting.—The aim of this exercise was to develop skill and precision of eye and hand, rather than strength of muscle. The instrument employed was a short dagger or lance, which was aimed at a mark. He who could hit the mark from the greatest distance was the most proficient scholar. The spear, before being thrown, was balanced in the right hand at the height of the ear.

(5) Wrestling.—This very complicated exercise was evidently the principal one in the gymnastic course, the one to which the others were merely preparatory. It was the only one which a boy could not practice by himself. It exercised not only the whole body, but the patience and temper as well. The aim of the wrestler was to throw (καταβλλειν) his antagonist. Those who took part in this exercise had their bodies rubbed with oil and strewn with fine sand. It seems that the wrestler was allowed to do anything he chose to his antagonist except to bite, strike, or kick him. Before he could claim the victory he had to throw him three times. After the contest the wrestlers scraped from their bodies, with a strigil, the oil and dust,[2] bathed, were again rubbed with oil, exposed their bodies to the sun, in order to dry and tan them, and dressed. The bathing was done in cold water, and both the bathing and the sunning were in part intended to inure the body to sudden cold and heat, which inurement was considered a very essential part of physical training.

Such were the chief exercises employed in the gymnastic training of the Athenians. Thus far, we have considered the two branches of education as conducted separately, and as not coming at any point in contact with each other. But it would have been very unlike the Greek, and especially the Athenian, to leave the two divisions of education unrelated and unharmonized. And, indeed, he did not so leave them, but brought them together in the most admirable way in what he called orchesis, a word for which we have no better equivalent than

(γ) Dancing (ὄρχησις, χορός).

"Dancers," says Aristotle, "by means of plastic rhythms (rhythms reproduced in plastic forms) imitate characters, feelings, and actions." Xenophon, in his Anabasis, describing a banquet that took place in the wilds of Paphlagonia, says: "After the treaty was ratified and the pæan sung, there first rose up two Thracians and danced in armor to the flute, leaping high and lightly, and using their swords. Finally one of them struck the other, so that everybody thought he had wounded him; but he fell in an artificial way. Then the Paphlagonians raised a shout; but the assailant, having despoiled the fallen man of his armor, went out singing the Sitalcas. Then others of the Thracians carried out the other as if he had been dead; but he was none the worse. Next, some Ænianes and Magnesians stood up and danced the so-called Carpæa in armor. The manner of the dance was this: one man, putting his arms within reach, sows and drives a team, frequently turning round as if afraid. Then a robber makes his appearance. As soon as the other espies him, he seizes his arms, advances to him, and fights in front of the team. And the two did this keeping time to the flute. Finally the robber, having bound the other, carries off both him and the team; sometimes, on the contrary, the ploughman binds the robber, in which case he yokes him, with his hands bound behind his back, to his oxen and drives off." Several other dances, performed by persons of different nationalities, follow; but enough has been quoted to show that the Greek ὄρχησις was something very different from our dancing. It was, indeed, a pantomimic ballet, interspersed with tableaux vivans.

In the dances here mentioned, the flute is the instrument employed, and this the player could not accompany with his voice. But in the Athenian schools, in the old time, the flute, and all music without words, were tabooed. There can be no doubt, therefore, that in these the orchestic performances were accompanied by the lyre, the player on which sang in words what the dancers danced. It is obvious that in such performances the musical (literary) and gymnastic branches of education came in for about equal shares. Dancing exercised the whole human being, body and soul, and exercised them in a completely harmonious way. It is this harmony, this rhythmic movement of the body in consonance with the emotions of the soul and the purposes of the intelligence, that is grace (χάρις). Hence, while the Greeks relied upon gymnastics to impart strength and firmness to the body, they looked to dancing for courtliness and grace. Plato places the two on the same footing, as parts of a single discipline.

The fact that the two divisions of education met in dancing seems to prove what I surmised above, viz. that they were conducted within the same precincts; in which case we may suppose that, while the dancing exercises took place in the palæstra, the music was supplied by the music master. We know that the chorus-leader was a public officer, appointed by the demos, and had to be over forty years old. In any case, it is curious enough to think that Athenian, and, generally, Greek, education culminated in dancing. But this was a perfectly logical result; for the chorus is the type of Greek social life, as we see most clearly in the Republic of Plato. It hardly needs to be pointed out that the supreme form of Greek art, the drama, was but a development of the Bacchic or Dionysiac chorus. This development consisted in the separation of the music from the pantomime, and the assignment of the former to the chorus, which no longer danced, but walked, and of the latter to the actors, who added the dialogue to it. Greek life was divided into three parts—civil, military, religious. Music and letters were a preparation for the first, gymnastics for the second, and dancing for the third. Dancing formed a prominent part in Greek worship, and it may be doubted whether free Athenians ever danced except "before the gods "—ἐν ταῖς πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς προσόδοις, as Xenophon says.

Two things still remain to be considered with regard to Athenian schools, (1) grading, (2) holidays. With respect to the former, the practice probably differed at different times; but we seem to be justified in assuming that, at the time of which I am speaking, there were but two grades, boys (παῖδες) and youths (νεανίσκοι). These are mentioned by Plato, in the Lysis, as celebrating the Hermæa together in a palæstra. The first grade would include the boys from seven to eleven years of age; the second, those from eleven to fifteen. As to holidays, they seem to have been simply the feast-days of the greater gods, when business of every sort was suspended. Such days amounted to about ninety annually.

(3) College Education.

About the time when he was blossoming into manhood, that is, some time between his fourteenth and his sixteenth year, the Athenian boy of the olden time was transferred from the private school and palæstra, which belonged to the family side of life, to the gymnasium, which belonged to the State, and in which he received the education calculated to fit him for the duties of a citizen. Having, in the family and the school, been trained to be a gentleman (καλοκἀγαθός), he must now be trained to be a citizen, capable of exercising legislative, judicial, and military functions. The State saw to it that he received this training, if his parents chose and could afford it.

In the time of Solon, about b.c. 590, two great gymnasia, the Academy and Cynosarges, were erected in the midst of extensive groves outside the city walls. These groves were afterwards surrounded with high walls, furnished with seats and other conveniences, and turned into city parks. The Academy, which lay to the northwest of the city, in the valley of the Cephisus, and was under the patronage of Athena, was the resort of the full-blooded citizens, while Cynosarges, situated to the east of the city, near the foot of Lycabettus, was assigned to those who had foreign blood in their veins, that is, who had only one parent of pure Athenian stock. This gymnasium was under the patronage of Heracles, whose worship always implies the presence of a foreign and vanquished element. These were the only two gymnasia belonging to Athens before the time of Pericles. They were, probably, destroyed by the Persians in 480, and had afterwards to be rebuilt, and the groves replanted.

While the children of nearly all the free citizens of Athens attended the school and the palæstra, it is clear that only the youth of the wealthier classes attended the gymnasium. One result of this was that the government and offices of the State fell exclusively into the hands of those classes; and it was perhaps just in order to make this division, without introducing any class-law, that the shrewd Solon established the gymnasia, which thus became a bulwark against democracy.

As soon as the Athenian youth was transferred to the gymnasium, he passed from under the charge of the pedagogue, who represented the family, and came under the direct surveillance of the State. He was now free to go where he would, to frequent the agora and the street, to attend the theatre, in which he had his appointed place, and to make himself directly acquainted with all the details of public life. In the gymnasium he passed into the hands of a gymnast or scientific trainer, and for the next two or three years was subjected to the severer exercises, wrestling, boxing, etc. No special provision, beyond the fact that he had to learn the laws, was made for his intellectual and moral instruction. He was expected to acquire this from contact with the older citizens whom he met in the agora, the street, or the public park. Thus, at what is justly regarded as the most critical age, he was almost compelled to live a free, breezy, outdoor life, full of activity and stirring incident, his thoughts and feelings directed outwards into acts of will, and not turned back upon himself or his own states. At the same time he was acquiring just that practical knowledge of ethical laws and of real life which could best fit him for active citizenship. He now learnt to ride, to drive, to row, to swim, to attend banquets, to sustain a conversation, to discuss the weightiest questions of statesmanship, to sing and dance in public choruses, and to ride or walk in public processions. If he abused his liberty and behaved in a lawless or unseemly way, he was called to account by the severe Court of the Areopagus, which attended to public morals. He saw little of girls of his own age, except his sisters, unless it was at public festivals, when there was little opportunity of becoming acquainted with them. His affectionate nature therefore expressed itself mostly in the form of devoted friendships to other youths of his own, or nearly his own, age, a fact which enables us to understand why friendship fills so large a space, not only in the life, but also in the ethical treatises of the Greeks,—Plato, Aristotle, etc.,—and why love, in the modern sense, plays so insignificant a part. The truth is that, even in Athens, the State encroached upon the family. Plato's Republic was only the logical carrying out of principles that were latent long before in the social life of the Athenian people.

It would be impossible to treat in detail the exercises to which the Athenian youth was subjected during the years in which he attended the public gymnasium as a pupil. The old exercises of the palæstra were continued, running and wrestling especially; but the former was now done in armor, and the latter became more violent, and was supplemented by boxing. In fact, the physical exercises were now systematized into the pentathlon—running, leaping, discus-throwing, wrestling, boxing—which formed the programme of nearly all gymnastic exhibitions. During these years, the youth was still regarded as a minor, and his father or guardian was responsible for his good behavior. But when he reached the age of eighteen, a change took place, and he passed under the direct control of the State. His father now brought him before the reeve of his demos (ward or village), as a candidate for independent citizenship. If he proved to be the lawful child of free citizens, and came up to the moral and physical requirements of the law, his name was entered upon the register of the demos, and he became a member of it. He was now prepared to be presented to the whole people, and to pass the State examination. He shore his long hair for the first time, and donned the black garment of the citizen. In this guise he presented himself to the king-archon of the State, who, at a public assembly, introduced him, along with others, to the whole people. He was then and there armed with spear and shield (supplied by the State if his father had fallen in war), and thence proceeded to the shrine of Aglauros, where, looking down on the agora, the city, and the Attic plain, he took the Solonian oath of citizenship (see [p. 61]). He was now technically an ephēbos, cadet, or citizen-novice, ready to undergo those two years of severe discipline which at once formed his introduction to practical affairs, and constituted the State examination. During the first year he remained in the neighborhood of Athens, drilling in arms, and acquiring a knowledge of military tactics. His life was now the hard life of a soldier. He slept in the open air, or in the guard-houses (φρούρια) that surrounded the city, and was liable to be called upon at any time by the government to give aid in an emergency. He also took part in the public festivals. At the end of the year, all the ephēboi of one year's standing passed an examination in military drill before the assembled people (ἀπεδείξαντο τῷ δήμῳ περὶ τὰς τάξεις[3]), after which they were employed as militia to man the frontier guard-houses, and as rural gendarmerie (περίπολοι), scouring the country in all directions. They now lived like soldiers in war-time, and learnt two important things, (1) the topography of Attica, its roads, passes, brooks, springs, etc., (2) the art of enforcing law and order. Their life, indeed, closely resembled that of the Alpine corps (Alpini) of the Italian army at the present day. These spend the summer in making themselves acquainted with every height, valley, pass, stream, and covert in the Italian Alps, often bivouacking for days together at great heights. That during this time the ephēboi should have taken any part in the legislative or judicial duties of citizens, seems in the highest degree improbable. At the end of their second year, however, they passed a second examination, called the citizenship or manhood examination (δοκιμασία εἰς ἄνδρας), after which they were full members of the State.

(4) University Education.

The Greek university was the State, and the Greek State was a university—a Cultur-Staat, as the Germans say. That the State is a school of virtue, was a view generally entertained in the ancient world, which, until it began to decay, completely identified the man with the citizen. The influence of this view upon the attitude of the individual to the State, and of the State to the individual, can hardly be overestimated. The State claimed, and the individual accorded to it, a disciplinary right which extended to every sphere and action of life. Thus the sphere of morality coincided exactly with the sphere of legality, or, to put it the other way, the sphere of legality extended to the whole sphere of morality, and this was considered true, whatever form the State or government might assume—monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, etc.

To give a full account of the university education of old Athens would be to write her social and political history up to the time of the Persian Wars. This is, of course, out of the question. All I can do is to point out those elements in the State which enabled it to produce that splendid array of noble men, and accomplish those great deeds and works, which make her brief career seem the brightest spot in the world's history.

The chief of these elements, and the one which included all the rest, was the Greek ideal of harmony. Athens was great as a State and as a school so long as she embodied that ideal, so long as she distributed power and honor in accordance with worth (ἀρετή) intellectual, moral, practical; in a word, so long as the State was governed by the best citizens (ἄριστοι), and the rest acknowledged their right to do so. Notwithstanding the contention of Grote and others, it is strictly true that Athens was great because, and so long as, she was aristocratic (in the ancient sense), and perished when she abandoned her fundamental ideal by becoming democratic. This assertion must not be construed as any slur upon democracy as such, or as denying that Athens in perishing paved the way for a higher ideal than her own. It simply states a fact, which may be easily generalized without losing its truth: An institution perishes when it abandons the principle on which it was founded and built up. Unless we bear this in mind, we shall utterly fail to understand the lesson of Athenian history. If it be maintained that some of Athens' noblest work was done under the democracy, the sufficient answer is, that it was nearly all done by men who retained the spirit of the old aristocracy, and bitterly opposed the democracy. We need name only Æschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes.

Part II

THE "NEW EDUCATION" (b.c. 480-338)

CHAPTER I

INDIVIDUALISM AND PHILOSOPHY

Homer ought to be driven from the lists and whipt, and Archilochus likewise.—Heraclitus.

Thou needs must have knowledge of all things,
First of the steadfast core of the Truth that forceth conviction,
Then of the notions of mortals, where true conviction abides not.
—Parmenides.

All things were undistinguished: then Intellect came and brought them into order.—Anaxagoras.

Man is the measure of all things.

In regard to the Gods, I am unable to know whether they are or are not.—Protagoras.

Strepsiades. Don't you see what a good thing it is to have learning? There isn't any Zeus, Phidippides!

Phidippides. Who is there then?

Streps. Vortex rules, having dethroned Zeus.

Phid. Pshaw! what nonsense!

Streps. You may count it true, all the same.

Phid. Who says so?

Streps. Socrates the Melian, and Chærephon, who knows the footprints of fleas.—Aristophanes, Clouds.

There is an old-fashioned saw, current of yore among mortals, that a man's happiness, when full-grown, gives birth and dies not childless, and that from Fortune there springs insatiate woe for all his race. But I, dissenting from all others, am alone of different mind. It is the Irreverent Deed that begets after it more of its kind. For to righteous homes belongs a fair-childrened lot forever; but old Irreverence is sure to beget Irreverence, springing up fresh among evil men, when the numbered hour arrives. And the new Irreverence begets Surfeit of Wealth, and a power beyond all battle, beyond all war, unholy Daring, twin curses, black to homes, like to their parents. But Justice shines in smoky homes, and honors the righteous life, and, leaving, with averted eyes, foundations gilded with impurity of hands, she draws nigh to holy things, honoring not the power of wealth, with its counterfeit stamp of praise. And her will is done.—Æschylus.

From the time they are children to the day of their death, we teach them and admonish them. As soon as the child understands what is said to him, his nurse and his mother and his pedagogue and even his father vie with each other in trying to make the best of him that can be made, at every word and deed instructing him and warning him, "This is right," "This is wrong," "This is beautiful," "This is ugly," "This is righteous," "This is sinful," "Do this," "Don't do that." And if the child readily obeys, well and good; if he does not, then they treat him like a bent and twisted stick, straightening him out with threats and blows. Later on, they send him to school, and then they lay their injunctions upon the masters to pay much more attention to the good behavior of their sons than to their letters and music (κιθάρισις); and the teachers act upon these injunctions. Later yet, when they have learnt to read, and are proceeding to understand the meaning of what is written, just as formerly they understood what was said to them, they put before them on the benches to read the works of good poets, and insist upon their learning them by heart—works which contain many admonitions, and many narratives, noble deeds, and eulogies of the worthy men of old—their purpose being to awaken the boy's ambition, so that he may imitate these men and strive to be worthy likewise. The music-teachers also, pursuing the same line, try to inculcate self-control (σωφροσύνη) and to prevent the boys from falling into mischief. In addition to this, when they have learnt to play on the lyre, their masters teach them other poems, written by great lyric poets, making them sing them and play the accompaniments to them, and compelling them to work into their souls the rhythms and melodies of them, so that they may grow in gentleness, and, having their natures timed and tuned, may be fitted to speak and act. The truth is, the whole life of man needs timing and tuning. Furthermore, in addition to all this, parents send their sons to the physical trainer, in order that their bodies may be improved and rendered capable of seconding a noble intent, and they themselves not be forced, from physical deterioration, to play the coward in war or other (serious) matters. And those who can best afford to give this education, give most of it, and these are the richest people. Their sons go earliest to school and leave it latest. And when the boys leave school, the State insists that they shall learn the laws and live according to them, and not according to their own caprice ... And if any one transgresses these laws, the State punishes him ... Seeing that so much attention is devoted to virtue, both in the family and in the State, do you wonder, Socrates, and question whether virtue be something that can be taught? Surely you ought not to wonder at this, but rather to wonder if it could not be taught.—Plato, Protagoras (words of Protagoras).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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