CHAPTER VII

EDUCATION AFTER TWENTY-ONE

Be assured that happiness has its source, not in extensive possessions, but in a right disposition of the soul. Even in the case of the body, no one would call it fortunate for being arrayed in splendid garments; but one would do so, if it had health, and were nobly developed, even without such appendages. In the same manner, we ought to ascribe happiness to the soul only when it is cultivated, and to call a man happy only if he possesses such a soul, not if he is splendidly attired outwardly, but has no worth of his own.... For those whose souls are ill-conditioned, neither wealth, nor power, nor beauty is a blessing; on the contrary, the more excessive these conditions are, the more widely and deeply do they injure their possessors, being unaccompanied with right-mindedness.—Aristotle.Zeno used to tell a story about Crates, to this effect: One day Crates was sitting in a shoemaker's shop, reading aloud Aristotle'sExhortation(to Philosophy), addressed to Themison, king of the Cyprians, in which the king is reminded that he possesses, in an exceptional degree, all the conditions of philosophy, superabundant wealth, and high position. As he was reading, the shoemaker, without interrupting his sewing, listened to him, until at last Crates said: "Philiscus, I think I will write anExhortationfor you; for I see you have more of the conditions of philosophy than Aristotle has enumerated."—Teles.

Zeno used to tell a story about Crates, to this effect: One day Crates was sitting in a shoemaker's shop, reading aloud Aristotle'sExhortation(to Philosophy), addressed to Themison, king of the Cyprians, in which the king is reminded that he possesses, in an exceptional degree, all the conditions of philosophy, superabundant wealth, and high position. As he was reading, the shoemaker, without interrupting his sewing, listened to him, until at last Crates said: "Philiscus, I think I will write anExhortationfor you; for I see you have more of the conditions of philosophy than Aristotle has enumerated."—Teles.

Atthe age of twenty-one, those young men who have successfully completed the State system of training become citizens or politicians, and begin to exercise the functions of such. These are of two kinds, (1) active, practical, or executive, and (2) deliberative, theoretical, or legislative. As action must, onthe one hand, be vigorous, and, on the other, guided by deliberation, which requires large experience, the functions of the State must be so arranged that the active duties fall to the young and robust, the deliberative to the elderly and mature. The distinguishing virtue of the former is fortitude, with endurance or patience; that of the latter philosophy. Both equally have self-control and justice. In this way does Aristotle distribute Plato's four cardinal virtues.

When young men first become citizens, they are assigned to posts of active service, civil and military, and thus study practical philosophy—Ethics and Politics—in a practical way. As they grow older, they gradually rise to posts demanding less practice and more thought, until at last they are admitted to the deliberative body, or council, when their active duties cease, and they are able to devote themselves to Speculative Philosophy or Theoretics. These men have now reached the end of life, as far as this world is concerned. They spend their days in cultured leisure, and the contemplation of divine things (θεωρία). The very oldest of them, those who are most conversant with divine things, are chosen as priests, so that they may, as it were, live with the gods, and these be worthily served. Thus gradually, almost insensibly, they pass from the world of time to that of eternity; from the imperfect activity of practice, whose end is beyond itself, to the perfect energy of contemplation, which is self-sufficient and the life of God. In this way Aristotle settles the vexed question with regard to the compatibility and relative value of the practical and the contemplative life.They are necessary complements of each other. Practice is the realization of what contemplation discovers in the pure energy of God, revealing itself in the world. Thus the practical life of man glides gradually into the contemplative life of God.

Such is the highest view of man's destiny, and the way thither, that the Greeks ever reached, and it is in many ways a most attractive and inspiring one. Its defects are the defects of all that is Greek. They are two: (1) its ideal is intellectual and æsthetic,—a coördinated, harmonious whole, whereof the individual is but a part: not moral or religious—a self-surrender of the individual to the supreme will; consequently, (2) it does not provide for every human being, as such, but only for a small, select number, the fruit of the whole. Its ethics are institutional not personal, and, indeed, the Greek never arrived at a distant conception of personality, that being possible only through the moral consciousness, which is its core. It seeks to find happiness in a correlation and balancing of individual selves, not in the independent conformity of each self to a supreme self. Hence it was that, with all its marvellous grasp and manly prudence, the ideal of Aristotle proved powerless to restore the moral unity of man, until it was absorbed in a higher.

BOOK IV

THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD(b.c.338-a.d.313)

FROM ETHNIC TO COSMOPOLITAN LIFE

'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more.—Byron.

Most glorious of all the Undying, many-named, girt round with awe!Jove, author of Nature, applying to all things the rudder of law—Hail! Hail! for it justly rejoices the races whose life is a spanTo lift unto Thee their voices—the Author and Framer of Man.For we are Thy sons; Thou didst give us the symbols of speech at our birth,Alone of the things that live, and mortal move upon earth.Wherefore Thou shalt find me extolling and ever singing Thy praise;Since Thee the great Universe, rolling on its path round the world, obeys:—Obeys Thee, wherever Thou guidest, and gladly is bound in Thy bands,So great is the power Thou confidest, with strong, invincible hands,To Thy mighty, ministering servant, the bolt of the thunder, that flies,Two-edged, like a sword and fervent, that is living and never dies.All nature, in fear and dismay, doth quake in the path of its stroke,What time Thou preparest the way for the one Word Thy lips have spoke,Which blends with lights smaller and greater, which pervadeth and thrilleth all things,So great is Thy power and Thy nature—in the Universe Highest of Kings!On earth, of all deeds that are done, O God! there is none without Thee.In the holy æther not one, nor one on the face of the sea;Save the deeds that evil men, driven by their own blind folly, have planned;But things that have grown uneven are made even again by Thy hand;And things unseemly grow seemly, the unfriendly are friendly to Thee;For so good and evil supremely Thou hast blended in one by decree.For all Thy decree is one ever—a Word that endureth for aye,Which mortals, rebellious, endeavor to flee from and shun to obey—Ill-fated, that, worn with proneness for the lordship of goodly things,Neither hear nor behold, in its Oneness, the law that divinity brings;Which men with reason obeying, might attain unto glorious life,No longer aimlessly straying in the paths of ignoble strife.There are men with a zeal unblest, that are wearied with following of fame,And men, with a baser quest, that are turned to lucre and shame.There are men, too, that pamper and pleasure the flesh with delicate stings:All these desire beyond measure to be other than all these things.Great Jove, all-giver, dark-clouded, great Lord of the thunderbolt's breath!Deliver the men that are shrouded in ignorance, dismal as death.O Father! dispel from their souls the darkness, and grant them the lightOf Reason, Thy stay, when the whole wide world Thou rulest with might,That we, being honored, may honor Thy name with the music of hymns,Extolling the deeds of the Donor, unceasing, as rightly beseemsMankind; for no worthier trust is awarded to God or to manThan forever to glory with justice in the law that endures and is One.—Cleanthes.

Thedistinguishing characteristics of Hellenic education were unity, comprehensiveness, proportion, and aimfulness. It extended to the whole human being, striving to bring the various elements of his nature into complete harmony in view of an end. This end was the State, in which the individual citizen was expected to find a field for all his activities. We have seen how, while conservative Sparta clungto this ideal to the last, and rigorously excluded those influences which tended to undermine it, Athens, by freely admitting these, gradually broke down the fair proportion between bodily and mental education, in an excessive devotion to the latter, and so came to make a distinction between the man and the citizen. The result was an epidemic of individualism which threatened the existence of all that was Hellenic. Against this destructive power the noblest men in the nation, an Æschylus, an Aristophanes, a Pericles, a Socrates, a Xenophon, a Plato, an Aristotle, fought with all the might of worth and intellect. Some of them sought once more to remerge the man in the citizen by means of a despotism and the suppression of all intellectual pursuits; others, seeing clearly the impossibility of this, tried so to define the sphere of the individual that it should not encroach upon that of the citizen, but stand in harmonious relation to it. They did this by placing the sphere of the individual above that of the State, and, inasmuch as the former was a purely intellectual sphere, they found themselves driven to conclude, and to lay down, that the contemplative life is the end and consummation of the practical, that the citizen and the State exist only for the sake of the individual. They were very far indeed from seeing all the implications of this conclusion: these showed themselves only in the sequel; but the fact is, that the principle of the separation between the man and the citizen, and the assignment of the place of honor to the former, proved at once the destroying angel of Hellenism and the animating spirit of the civilization which took its place. If welook closely at the schemes of Plato and Aristotle, we shall see that they try to render innocuous the spirit of individualism by exhausting its activities in intellectual relations to the divine, offering it heaven, if it will only consent to relinquish to the political spirit its earthly claims. They practically said: Man, in all his relations to his fellow-men here below, is a citizen; only in relation to God is he an individual. The history of the last two thousand years is but a commentary on this text. From the day when the master-mind of the Greek world credited man's nature with a divine element having a supreme activity of its own, European thought and life have been agitated by three questions, and largely shaped by the answers given to them: (1) What is the nature of the divine element in man? (2) In what form or institution shall that element find expression and realization? (3) How shall that institution relate itself to the State? And they have not yet been definitely answered.

Principles that are to move the world are never the result of mere abstract thought, but always of a crisis or epoch in human affairs. And so it was in the present case. The separation between the man and the citizen was accomplished in fact, before it was formulated in theory. On the other hand, the theory received emphasis from the events which accompanied and followed its promulgation. The battle of Chæronea, which took place sixteen years before Aristotle's death, by putting an end forever to the free civic life of Greece, removed the very conditions under which the old ideal could realize itself, and forcedmen to seek a sphere of activity, and to form associations, outside of the State. The State, indeed, still maintained a semblance of life, and the old education, with its literature, gymnastics, and music still continued; but the spirit of both was gone. The State was gradually replaced by the philosophic schools, while intellectual training tended more and more to concentrate itself upon rhetoric, that art which enables the individual to shine before his fellows, and to gain wealth or public preferment. From this time on, the spiritual life of Greece found expression in the pretentious, empty individualism of the rhetorician, the lineal descendant of the sophists, and in the philosophical sects, which embodied the spirit of Socrates, their opponent.

The founder of the rhetorical schools may be said to have been Isocrates, who, after being a pupil of Socrates', turned against the philosophic tendency, and championed elegant philistinism. The aim of these schools was to turn out clever men of the world, thoroughly acquainted with popular opinions and motives, and capable of expressing themselves glibly, sententiously, and persuasively on any and every subject. They usually made no profession of imparting profound learning or eliciting philosophic thought: indeed, they despised both; but they did seek to impart such an amount of ordinary knowledge as to place their pupils in the chief current of the popular thought of their time. They thus became the bearers of practical education among a people who, having lost their political life without finding any higher, sought to obtain satisfaction in social intercourse.For hundreds of years they exerted an enormous influence, and, indeed, at certain times and places were formidable rivals of the philosophic schools.

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

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

We have already seen that, as Greek civic life lost the conditions of its existence, the thoughtful portion of the people came more and more to seek for life-principles in the supersensible world of intellect. The nature of this world Plato and Aristotle had done their best to reveal. But the event proved that neither an ordered host of ideas commanded by the Good, nor a Supreme Intelligence served by a host of lower intelligences, could yield the principles which the life of the time demanded; and thus we find the philosophers of Alexandria striving to people their intelligible world with forms drawn from all the religions of the East, including Judaism. Thus there grew up the various forms of Alexandrine philosophy, compounds of Greek thought and Oriental religion. On the basis of these again were organized, at the same time, various forms of social life, all tending more or less to religious communism. Hence came the Essenes (seep. 59), the Therapeuts, the Neopythagoreans, and the Neoplatonists, all of whom, notwithstanding certain shortcomings, did much to purify life, and to pave the way for a higher civilization.

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

QUINTILIAN AND RHETORICAL EDUCATION

Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic. Both have for their subjects those things which, in a certain way, are matters of common knowledge, and belong to no definite science. Hence everybody, in some degree, is gifted with them; for everybody, to some extent, tries to examine and sustain an argument, to defend himself, and to accuse others.—Aristotle.There is a certain political theory which is made up of many great things. A large and important part of it is artificial eloquence, which they call rhetoric.—Cicero.Every duty which tends to preserve human relations and human society must be assigned a higher place than any that stops short with knowledge and science.—Id.Zeno, having pressed his fingers together and closed his fist, said that was like Dialectic; having spread them out and opened his hand, he said Eloquence was like his palm there.—Id.To act considerately is of more moment than to think wisely.—Id.I pass to the pleasure of oratorical eloquence, the delight of which one enjoys not at any one moment, but almost every day and every hour.—Tacitus.Grammar is an experimental knowledge of the usages of language as generally current among poets and prose writers. It is divided into six parts, (1) trained reading with due regard to prosody [i.e.aspiration, accentuation, quantity, emphasis, metre, etc.], (2) exposition according to poetic figures [literary criticism], (3) ready statement of dialectical peculiarities and allusions [philology, geography, history, mythology], (4) discovery of etymologies, (5) accurate account of analogies [accidence and syntax], (6) criticism of poetical productions, which is the noblest part of the grammatic art [ethics, politics, strategy, etc.].—Dionysius Thrax.

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

Every duty which tends to preserve human relations and human society must be assigned a higher place than any that stops short with knowledge and science.—Id.

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

To act considerately is of more moment than to think wisely.—Id.

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

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

Reading is the rendering of poetic or prose productions without stumbling or hesitancy. It must be done with due regard to expression, prosody, and pauses. From the expression we learn the merit of the piece, from the prosody the art of the reader, and from the pauses the meaning intended to be conveyed. In this way we read tragedy heroically, comedy conversationally, elegiacs thrillingly, epics sustainedly, lyrics musically, and dirges softly and plaintively. Any reading done without due observance of these rules degrades the merits of the poets and makes the habits of readers ridiculous.—Id.Some arts are common, others liberal.... The liberal arts, which some call the logical arts, are astronomy, geometry, music, philosophy, medicine, grammar, rhetoric.—Scholia to Dionysius Thrax.It is obvious that man excels the other animals in worth and speech: Why may we not hold that his worth consists as much in eloquence as in reason?—Quintilian.The civil man, and he who is truly wise, who does not devote himself to idle disputes, but to the administration of the commonwealth (from which those folks who are called philosophers have farthest withdrawn themselves), will be glad to employ every available oratorical means to reach his ends, having previously settled in his own mind what ends are honorable.—Id.If we count over all the epochs of life, we shall find its pains far more numerous than its pleasures.... The first, that of babyhood, is trying. The baby is hungry; the nurse sends it to sleep: it is thirsty; she washes it: it wants to go to sleep; she takes a rattle and makes a noise. When the child has escaped from the nurse, it is taken hold of by the pedagogue, the physical trainer, the grammar-master, the music-master, the drawing-master. In process of time, there are added the arithmetic-master, the geometer, the horse-breaker; he rises early; he has no chance for leisure. He becomes a cadet; again he has to fear the drill-master, the physical trainer, the fencing-master, the gymnasiarch. By all these he is whipt, watched, throttled. He graduates from the cadets at twenty; again he dreads and watches captain and general, etc.—Telesthe Stoic (b.c.260).The palmy period in the history of Rome is the period when she had no literature. It was only when the Roman nationality beganto break up, and cosmopolitan Greek tendencies to lay hold upon the people, that a literature began to appear. For this reason, Roman literature from its very inception is, from absolute necessity, filled with the Greek spirit, and stands in the most direct opposition to the national spirit of the people.—Mommsen.

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

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

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

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

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

Quintiliane, vagæ moderator summe juventæ,Gloria Romanæ, Quintiliane, togæ.—Martial.

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

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

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

The first care of the parent, after the birth of achild, should be to procure for it a nurse of good moral character and of cultivated speech. A child that early learns bad habits in acting and speaking, rarely, if ever, gets cured of them afterwards. Great care ought to be taken with regard to the child's youthful companions, and to his pedagogue, who ought to be of good character and well-informed. Its first language ought to be Greek; but Latin ought to be begun early, and both to be carefully cultivated. There is no need to follow the ordinary custom of not allowing the child to learn to read or write before the close of its seventh year. Much can very profitably be done by play long before that. It is a mistake to teach children to repeat the alphabet before they know the forms of the letters. These they may learn from tablets or blocks. As soon as the letters are recognized, they ought to be written. Following with a pen the forms of letters engraved on ivory tablets is a good thing. After letters, syllables must be learnt—all the possible syllables in both languages. After syllables come words, and after words, sentences. In all this process, it is of the utmost importance to secure thoroughness by avoiding haste. The child must not attempt words till he can read and write all the syllables, nor sentences till he is perfectly familiar with words. In reading sentences, he must learn to run ahead, so that, while he is pronouncing one word with his lips, he is recognizing others with his eye. The writing lesson should be utilized in order to make the child acquainted with rare words and good poetry. At this stage, his memory ought to be well exercised, andmade to lay up large stores of good literature for future use. At the same time, his organs of speech should be well trained, by being made to pronounce rapidly verses containing difficult combinations of sound.[5]

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

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

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

Grammar consists of two parts, (1)Methodics, or the art of correct speaking, (2)Historics(GermanRealien), the interpretation of poets, historians, philosophers, etc.Methodics—grammar in the modern sense—should aim at enabling a boy to speak and write with correctness, clearness, and elegance. All barbarisms (i.e.foreign words and idioms), solecisms, affectations, and careless pronunciations are to be avoided. In the use of language, four things are to be taken into account, (1) reason, (2) antiquity, (3) authority, (4) custom. In reading, the boy must be taught "where to draw his breath, where to divide a verse, where the sense is complete, where it begins, where the voice is to be raised, where lowered, what inflections to use, what is to be uttered slowly, what rapidly,what forcibly, what gently." "That he may be able to do all this, he mustunderstand. Reading must above all be manly and grave, with a certain sweetness." Poetry must not be read either as prose, nor yet in a sing-song way. All theatrical personification, and all gesticulation smacking of the comedian, are to be avoided.

ForHistoriesthe teacher must be very careful in his selection of texts. Homer and Virgil are best to begin with. Though their full import cannot be understood by youth, they awake enthusiasm for what is noble and spirited, and will often be read in later life. "Tragedies are useful. There is nourishment in the lyric poets"; but they must be used with caution and in selections, from which everything relating to love must be excluded. Even Horace must be expurgated. Satire and comedy, though of the utmost value for the orator, must be deferred till the moral character is sufficiently established not to be injured by them. Passages from the poets ought to be committed to memory. In all reading, the utmost care ought to be taken to promote purity and manliness (sanctitas et virilitas).

After reading a piece of poetry, boys must be made to analyze and scan it, to point out peculiarities of language and rhythm, to enumerate the different meanings of words, to name and explain the various figures of speech. But far more important than all this it is, that the teacher should impress on their minds the importance of systematic arrangement and propriety of description, "showing what is suitable for each rôle, what is commendable in thought, what in expression,where diffuseness is proper, and where brevity." In giving collateral information, whether in history, mythology, or geography, he should keep within bounds, giving only what is necessary and rests on respectable authority. "It is one of the virtues of a schoolmaster to be ignorant of some things."

As regards lessons in composition, the teacher should begin by making his pupils write out from memory theFablesof Æsop, in pure, simple, direct, and unadorned language. He should then call upon them to turn poetry into prose, and to paraphrase it, either briefly or diffusely. He should then make them write out proverbs, apophthegms, aphorisms, short, brilliant anecdotes, etc. Famous stories related by the poets may be used as subjects for composition, but chiefly for the sake of information. Beyond this the schoolmaster should not go in the matter of composition. The rest should be left to the rhetorician.

It is of great importance in youthful education that several subjects should be studied at the same time. Boys like and need variety, and, when they get it, it is truly astonishing how much they can accomplish. "There is not the slightest reason for fearing that boys will shrink from the labor of study. No age is less easily fatigued." ... "Boys are naturally more inclined to hard work than young men."

Such, in brief, is Quintilian's school-programme. It has no place for physical science (except Astronomy), for manual training, or for physical exercise. Play is, indeed, permitted as a necessary recreation, and gymnastics and physical training (παιδοτρίβεια) are recommended in so far as they are necessary to enablethe budding orator to move and to gesticulate gracefully; but that is all. "Nothing can please that is not becoming."

As soon as he is ready, the young aspirant for oratorical fame passes into the hands of the rhetorician, under whom he learns all the arts, and acquires all that knowledge, necessary to fit him for his profession. No kind of knowledge, and no moral excellence ought to be foreign to the orator. Quintilian is very severe upon the philosophers for claiming, in their title, to be, in an exceptional way, lovers of wisdom, and maintains that the true orator is the truly wise and good man. He is surely superior to the philosopher, who turns his back upon the world and manifests no interest in human affairs. Moreover, "philosophy may be simulated; eloquence cannot."

The closing chapter of the last book of Quintilian's work treats of the orator after his retirement from public life. He is to devote himself to writing and to the study of art, science, and philosophy. The picture is charming; but it ends with death, and there is nothing beyond. God may be defined for oratorical purposes; but his existence is a matter of conjecture.

In Quintilian we have the highest type of the civic man living under a cosmopolitan despotism. His defects—his pedantry, his servility, his externality, his worldliness—are only such as are natural to a good man placed in this position, without any outlook upon a higher existence.

PLOTINUS AND PHILOSOPHIC EDUCATION

The material body, which is subject to motion, change, dissolution, and division, requires an immaterial principle to hold and bind it together in unity. This principle of unity is the soul. If it were material, it would require another principle of unity, and so onad infinitum, till an immaterial first were reached, which would then be the true soul.—Ammonius Saccas.Intelligible things, when they are united with other things, are not changed, as corporeal things are when they are united with each other, but remain as they are, and what they are. Soul and body are intimately united, but not mixed. The soul can separate and withdraw itself from the body, not only in sleep, but also in thought. As the sun illuminates and yet remains itself a separate light, so is the soul in its relation to the body. It is not in the body as in place; rather the body is in it and of it.—Id.One's duty is to become first man, then God.—Hierocles.Neither Schelling nor Baader nor Hegel has refuted Plotinus: in many ways he soars above them.—Arthur Richter.What is loved by us here is mortal and hurtful. Our love is love for an image, that often turns into its opposite, because what we loved was not truly worthy of love, nor the good which we sought. God alone is the true object of our love.—Plotinus.

Intelligible things, when they are united with other things, are not changed, as corporeal things are when they are united with each other, but remain as they are, and what they are. Soul and body are intimately united, but not mixed. The soul can separate and withdraw itself from the body, not only in sleep, but also in thought. As the sun illuminates and yet remains itself a separate light, so is the soul in its relation to the body. It is not in the body as in place; rather the body is in it and of it.—Id.

One's duty is to become first man, then God.—Hierocles.

Neither Schelling nor Baader nor Hegel has refuted Plotinus: in many ways he soars above them.—Arthur Richter.

What is loved by us here is mortal and hurtful. Our love is love for an image, that often turns into its opposite, because what we loved was not truly worthy of love, nor the good which we sought. God alone is the true object of our love.—Plotinus.

Thepractical and the contemplative lives, which Plato and Aristotle had labored so hard to combine and correlate, in order to save human worth and Greek civilization, fell asunder, despite all their efforts—greatly, of course, to the detriment of both. In the terrible picture which Quintilian draws of Roman lifein the first century of our era, we see one side of the result of this divorce: in the cruel satires of Lucian, written less than a century later, we may find depicted the other. But, just as, in the midst of the moral corruption and brutality, there arose from time to time worthy men like Quintilian and Tacitus, so amid the philosophical charlatanry and pretence, there still survived a few earnest thinkers, who aspired with all the power that was in them to divine truth, and strove to find in the eternal world that reality which was so miserably wanting in this. By far the greater number of these men were neither Greeks nor Romans, but Orientals, men whose thinking combined Greek philosophy with some earnest form of Eastern mysticism. To such men this life was merely an opportunity of preparing for a higher, in which lay all beauty, all good, and all blessedness. It is not difficult to see what sort of education would follow from this view of life. It may best be characterized by the one word "ascetic." It no longer seeks to train harmoniously all the faculties of body and mind with a view to a worthy social life, but to enable the soul to die to the body and to social life, and so rise to union and consubstantiality with God. In no sect was this tendency more marked than in the Neoplatonic, or, as it might equally well be called, the Neoaristotelian or Neopythagorean, the greatest name in which is Plotinus.

Plotinus was born in Egypt abouta.d.205. His nationality is unknown. He received his education in Alexandria—grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy,—and adopted the teaching of the last as a profession.He sought in vain, however, for a system that could satisfy him, till he met with Ammonius "the Sack-bearer," whom he at once recognized as his master. This Ammonius had been reared as a Christian, but had apostatized on becoming acquainted with philosophy. His Christian education, however, had not been altogether lost on him; for he had carried over into philosophy a religious spirit, and not a few of the esoteric ideas then current in certain Christian sects. It was this, apparently, that enabled him to give a new direction to philosophy, and to found a new school, whose influence upon subsequent, even Christian, thought, it would be difficult to overestimate. His school was the Neoplatonic, which, more than any other, united profound thought with mystic theosophy (θεωρία).

Plotinus listened to Ammonius for eleven years, and, on the death of the latter, paid a visit to Persia, with the view of studying the religion of that country. He shortly returned, however, and, after a brief sojourn at Antioch, betook himself, in his fortieth year (a.d.244), to Rome, where he spent the remainder of his life as a teacher of philosophy. His saintly character and his deep, religious thought drew round him a considerable number of earnest men and women, including even members of the imperial family. He made some attempt to found in Campania a Platonopolis, so that his principles might be realized in a social life, in a theosophic community; but this was never carried out. He died ina.d.270. Plotinus was the only truly great, original ancient thinker after Aristotle.

While Plato and Aristotle had sought to rise to the intelligible world from, and by means of, the sensible, Plotinus, believing that he has attained a direct, intuitional knowledge of the former, sets out from it and thence tries to reach the other. At the summit of being he finds the supreme Platonic principle, the One or the Good, absolutely transcendent and self-sufficient; next below this, the supreme Aristotelian principle, Intelligence or Absolute Knowing, thelocusof all ideas; and third, the supreme principle of the Stoics, Soul, Life, or Zeus, the animating principle of the world. Good, Intelligence, Life—these are Plotinus' divine trinity, evolved by a process of abstraction from theNousof Aristotle (seep. 161). The members of this trinity are neither personal, conscious, nor equal. Each lower is caused by, but does not emanate from, the next above it; and this causation is due, not to any act of free will, but to an inner necessity. Thus the trinity of Plotinus is a mere energy, acting according to necessary laws. The third member of it turns toward matter, which is mere poverty and hunger for being, and, in so doing, produces a world of gods, dæmons, and mundane beings, the highest of which last is man. All that has matter has multiplicity.

It is easy enough to see what kind of ethics and education will spring from such a system as this. Inasmuch as the good means self-sufficiency, freedom from multiplicity and matter, evil means dependence, multiplicity, materiality. Whatever evil there is in man is due to his connection with matter, for which he is in no sense responsible. His sole business, ifhe desires blessedness, is to free himself from matter and multiplicity, and return to the unity of the Supreme Good. The steps by which this may be accomplished are, (1) Music or Art, (2) Love, (3) Philosophy or Dialectic: through all these he rises above multiplicity into unity. In all this there is, obviously, neither moral evil nor moral good, and, indeed, the world of Plotinus contains no moral element, for the simple reason that it contains nothing personal, either in God or man. Evil is the product of necessity, and consciousness, implying as it does, multiplicity, is part of it. The unethical character of Plotinus' teaching comes out very clearly in his reversal of the positions of instruction and purgation in the scheme of education. According to the old view, purgation was a mere medical process, preparatory to ethical training (seep. 7). According to the Neoplatonic view, ethical training and the "political virtues" are a mere preparation for purgation and the intellectual virtues. And this is perfectly logical; for evil, being physical, must be cured by physical means. And the means which Plotinus recommends are magical, rather than moral; rites and prayers, rather than heroic deeds; the suppression of the will, rather than its exercise.

Plotinus is too much of a Greek to accept, or even see, all the consequences of his own theory, which makes moral life consist in an attempt to escape from the world and to quench consciousness and personality. Accordingly, though he has a poor opinion of civic life (a thing excusable enough in those days), he believes that the civic virtues ought to be cultivated,as a means toward the higher, and has apparently nothing to say against the ordinary grammatical, rhetorical, and musical education of his time. He has a good deal to say in favor of Mathematics, as a preparation for what to him is the supreme branch of education, Dialectics. But the tendency of his teaching is only too obvious, and the conclusions which he did not draw, time and succeeding generations drew for him. The effect of Neoplatonism was, in the long run, to make the super-civic part of man the whole man, to discredit political life and political effort, and to pave the way for the mystic, the ascetic, and the hermit. Nor were the tendencies of the other philosophical schools in any marked degree different. Thus philosophy, instead of contributing to harmonize man and society, and to restore moral life, came to be one of the strongest agencies in bringing about confusion and dissolution, by ignoring moral life altogether, embracing superstition, and turning man into a mere plaything of blind necessity and magical forces. And thus ancient civilization fell to pieces, because man himself had fallen to pieces, and each piece tried to set itself up for the whole. The civic fragment finds its highest expression in Quintilian, the super-civic in Plotinus. Ere the fragments can be united into a truly moral being, a member of a truly moral society, a new combining force, unknown to either rhetorician or philosopher, must arise.

CONCLUSION

Truly it was an old world, and even Cæsar's patriotic genius was not enough to make it young again. The dawn does not return till the night has fully set in.—Mommsen.My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.—Isaiah.Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.—Jesus.Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and to God the things that are God's.—Id.Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings? and not one of them is forgotten in the sight of God. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.—Id.We love because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar.—John.By one intelligible form, which is the divine Essence, and one conscious intention, which is the divine Word, things may be known in their multiplicity by God.—Thomas Aquinas.If God acts in all things, and such action in no way derogates from his dignity, but even belongs to his universal and supreme power, he cannot consider it below him, nor does it stain his dignity, if he extend his providence to the individual things of this world.—Id.Une immense espérance a passé sur la terre.—Alfred de Musset.

Truly it was an old world, and even Cæsar's patriotic genius was not enough to make it young again. The dawn does not return till the night has fully set in.—Mommsen.

My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.—Isaiah.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.—Jesus.

Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and to God the things that are God's.—Id.

Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings? and not one of them is forgotten in the sight of God. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.—Id.

We love because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar.—John.

By one intelligible form, which is the divine Essence, and one conscious intention, which is the divine Word, things may be known in their multiplicity by God.—Thomas Aquinas.

If God acts in all things, and such action in no way derogates from his dignity, but even belongs to his universal and supreme power, he cannot consider it below him, nor does it stain his dignity, if he extend his providence to the individual things of this world.—Id.

Une immense espérance a passé sur la terre.—Alfred de Musset.

Wehave seen that the Greek ideal of life rested upon the complete identification of the man with the citizen. We have seen also how this ideal was paralyzed by the growth of individualism; how the wisest men thought to render this innocuous and even beneficent, by providing for it a sphere of contemplation, superior to that of practice, but organically related to it, and, finally how, with the failure of this attempt, the two sides of human nature, divorced from each other, degenerated, the one into selfish worldliness, the other into equally selfish other-worldliness, both conditions equally destitute of moral significance.

This sad result was mainly due to three causes, (1) that the remedies proposed for individualism were not sufficient, (2) that the best remedy was set aside, (3) that the conditions for which the remedies were offered soon ceased to exist. Both Plato and Aristotle wrote for the small Greek polities, which lost their autonomy through the Macedonian conquest. If it may be doubted whether even the proposals of the latter would have redeemed these polities, had they continued free, it is certain that they would have been ineffective under the changed circumstances. At all events, they were never adopted, and even for the super-civic man the teaching of Plato was preferred to his.

As the new cosmopolitanism deepened the gulf between the citizen and the individual, and immeasurably widened the sphere of the latter, in the same proportion did the teaching of Plato fail to bridge over that gulf, and provide activity for that sphere. To tell the super-civic man now that his function was to contemplate divine things and oracularly deliver laws for the guidance of the world, would have argued an absence of humor not common in those days. Besides, thosepersons who claimed to have contemplated divine things showed no such fitness for legislation as to induce practical men to accept their guidance. The sober fact was, that the contemplation of divine things, which more and more absorbed the energy of Greek thought, was, except for Aristotle, a mere vague asperation without moral value, and became ever more a sort of mystic ecstasy, in which the individual, instead of acquiring insight and power to live worthily and beneficently in the world, was thrown back upon himself, with his will paralyzed. Nor could this be otherwise, seeing the nature of the divine things, the contemplation of which was reckoned so important. Instead of being personal attributes, or a person imposing a moral law seen to be binding, they were mere abstractions, increasing in emptiness the higher they were in the series, the highest being absolute vacancy. In vain had Aristotle protested that all reality is individual: the Platonic theory, that all knowledge is of ideas or universals, prevailed, with the result that the highest knowledge was held to be knowledge of that which is absolutely universal, viz. indeterminate being or, as Plotinus held, something lacking even the determination of being—the Supreme Good. That the super-civic man should find satisfaction in gazing into vacancy, or be any more valuable in the world after he had done so, no matter how spotless his life and ecstatic his look, is inconceivable.

But while, in the Greek world, the sphere of activity of the super-civic man was vanishing into nothingness, among a small and obscure band of restored exiles of Semitic race, that sphere had come to claimthe entire man and all his relations, practical and spiritual. Isaiah's little band of faithful followers (seep. 133) had grown into a nation, living by no law save that of Jehovah, a very real, very awful, and very holy personality, whom the heaven of heavens could not contain, but who yet watched the rising up and the sitting down of every son of man. Long before Quintilian wrote his elegant treatise on rhetoric, or Plotinus his pantheistic Enneads, there had sprung from the bosom of this people a man who, bursting, at the expense of his life, the narrow bounds of his nationally, elevated the theocracy of his people into a Kingdom of Heaven, which he had bade proclaim to all the world. It was proclaimed, and then (though to some it seemed a stumbling-block, and to others foolishness) the super-civic man, who for hundreds of years had been wandering in darkness, in search of his fatherland, suddenly became aware that he had found it in the Church of Christ. He now no longer tries to escape from the visible world into the emptiness of an abstract first principle; but, in the service of a First Principle who is the most concrete of realities, and who numbers the very hairs of his head, he goes down into the most loathsome depths of the material world to elevate and redeem the meanest of the sons of men. There is no question of bond or free, ruler or ruled, now. In the Kingdom of Heaven there are no such relations. The only greatness recognized there is greatness in service; the only law, the Law of Love. Love! yes, the whole secret is in that one word. By adding love to the conception of the God of his people, by exemplifying it in his own life, and demandingit of his followers, Jesus accomplished what had baffled all the wisdom of the Greek sages. He restored the moral unity of man, abolished the old world, and made a new heaven and a new earth. In vain have the advocates of an indeterminate, self-evolving first principle, whether calling themselves Neoplatonists, mystics, materialists, evolutionists, Hegelians, or Theosophists, striven to bring back the old world with its class distinctions and institutional ethics; in vain have they sought to sink the individual God and man of reality in the universal ideas of thought. The Law of Love, which is the ground of individuality, as well as of true society, has bidden, and will bid them, defiance.

APPENDIX

THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS

TheGreeks originally recognized two branches of liberal education[6](1) Gymnastics, for the body, and (2) Music, for the soul. Out of music grew, in process of time, not only the so-called Liberal Arts, that is, the arts that go to constitute the education of every freeman, but also what was regarded as a superfluous luxury (περιττή), Philosophy. It is the purpose of this appendix to trace, as far as possible, this gradual development.

In doing so, one must bear in mind that originally the term "Music" covered, not only what we call music, but also poetry, and that poetry was the vehicle of all the science that then was. The Homericaoidosknows the "works of gods and men." Strictly speaking, therefore, it was out of music and poetry that all the arts and sciences grew. The first step in this direction was taken when Letters were introduced, that is, about the first Olympiad.[7]But it was long before Letters were regarded as a separate branch of education; they were simply a means of recording poetry. Even as late as the time of Plato, Letters are still usually included under Music. In Aristotle, they are recognized as a separate branch. It followsfrom this that, when we find Greek writers confining soul-education to Music, or Music and Letters, we must not conclude that these signify only playing and singing, reading and writing. Socrates was saying nothing new or paradoxical, when he affirmed that Philosophy was the "highest music." The Pythagoreans had said the same thing before him, and there can be no doubt that Pythagoras himself included under Music (1) Letters, (2) Arithmetic, (3) Geometry, (4) Astronomy, (5) Music, in our sense, and (6) Philosophy (a term invented by him). Plato did the same thing. He speaks of "the true Muse that is accompanied with truth (λόγων) and philosophy." But in his time "Music" was used in two senses, a broad one, in which it included the whole of intellectual education, and a narrow one, in which it is confined to music in the modern sense. It is in this latter sense that it is used by Aristotle, when he makes the intellectual branches of school education (1) Letters, (2) Music, and (3) Drawing. Philosophy he places in a higher grade. Having distinguished Letters from Music, it is natural enough that he should assign to the former the branches which Pythagoras had included under the latter. His literary scheme appears to be (1) Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Dialectic, (4) Arithmetic, (5) Geometry, (6) Astronomy. Add Music, and we have exactly the Seven Liberal Arts; but, as Drawing must also be added, it is clear that there was, as yet, no thought of fixing definitely the number seven. That Drawing was for a long time part of the school curriculum, is rendered clear by a passage in a work of Teles (b.c.260) quoted by Stobæus (xcviii, 72), in which it is said that boys study (1) Letters, (2) Music, (3) Drawing; young men, (4) Arithmetic, and (5) Geometry. The last two branches are here already distinguished from Letters; but we cannot be sure that the list is intended to be exhaustive. What is especially noticeable in the list of Teles is, that it draws a clear distinction between the lower and higher studies, adistinction which foreshadows theTriviumandQuadriviumof later times.[8]

Philosophy, or the highest education, Aristotle divided into (1) Theory and (2) Practice. Theory he subdivided into (a) Theology, First Philosophy, or Wisdom, called later Metaphysics, the science of the Unchangeable, and (b) Physics, the science of the Changeable; Practice into (a) Ethics, including Politics and Œconomics, and (b) Poetics or Æsthetics.

After Teles we hear little of the Greek school-curriculum until about the Christian era. Meanwhile, the Romans, having acquired a smattering of Greek learning, began to draw up a scheme of studies suitable for themselves. It is noticeable that in this scheme there is no such distinction as the Greeks drew between liberal (ἐλευθέριαι, ἐγκύκλιοι, λογικαί) and illiberal (βάναυσοι) arts.[9]As early as the first half of the second centuryb.c., Cato the Censor wrote a series of manuals for his son on (1) Ethics, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Medicine, (4) Military Science, (5) Farming, (6) Law. It is very significant that the only Greek school-study which appears here is Rhetoric; this the Romans, and notably Cato himself, always studied with great care for practical purposes. It seems that Cato, in order to resist the inroads of Greek education and manners, which he felt to be demoralizing, tried to draw up a characteristically Roman curriculum. Greece, however, in great measure, prevailed, and half a century later we find Varro writing upon most of the subjects in the Greek curriculum: Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic,Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, Music, Philosophy, besides many others. He wrote a treatise in nine books, calledDisciplinarum Libri. Ritschl, in hisQuæstiones Varronianæ,[10]tried to show that these "Disciplinæ" were the Seven Liberal Arts,plusArchitecture and Medicine, and Mommsen, in hisRoman History, has followed him; but Ritschl himself later changed his opinion. There seems no doubt that (1) Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Dialectic, (4) Music, (5) Geometry, and (6) Architecture were treated in the work: what the rest were we can only guess.[11]There is no ground for the assertion that the Seven Liberal Arts were obtained by dropping Architecture and Medicine from Varro's list. It must have been about the time of Varro, if not earlier, that Roman education came to be divided into three grades, called respectively (1) Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, and (3) Philosophy, the last falling to the lot of but few persons. Of course "Grammar" now came to have a very extensive meaning, as we can see from the definition of it given by Dionysius Thrax, in his grammar, prepared apparently for Roman use (b.c.90). In the Scholia to that work (I am unable to fix their date), we find the Liberal Arts enumerated as (1) Astronomy, (2) Geometry, (3) Music, (4) Philosophy, (5) Medicine, (6) Grammar, (7) Rhetoric.[12]

But to return to the Greeks. In the works of Philo Judæus, a contemporary of Jesus, we find the Encyclic Arts frequently referred to, and distinguished from Philosophy. The former, he says, are represented by the Egyptian slave Hagar, the latter by Sarah, the lawful wife. One must associate with the Arts before he can find Philosophy fruitful. In no one passage does Philo give a list of the Encyclic Arts. In one place we find enumerated (1) Grammar, (2) Geometry, (3) Music, (4) Rhetoric (De Cherub., § 30); in another(1) Grammar, (2) Geometry, (3) "the entire music of encyclic instruction" (De Agricult., § 4); in another (1) Grammar, (2) Music, (3) Geometry, (4) Rhetoric, (5) Dialectic (De Congressu Quær. Erud. Grat., § 5); in another, (1) Grammar, (2) Arithmetic, (3) Geometry, (4) Music, (5) Rhetoric (De Somniis, § 35), etc.

It would seem that the Encyclic Arts, according to Philo, were (1) Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Dialectic, (4) Arithmetic, (5) Geometry, (6) Music. Astronomy appears in none of the lists. Philosophy is divided into (1) Physics, (2) Logic, (3) Ethics (De Mutat. Nom., § 10), a division that was long current.

From what has been adduced, I think we may fairly conclude that at the Christian era no definite number had been fixed for the liberal arts either at Athens, Alexandria, or Rome. The list apparently differed in different places. Clearly the Roman programme was quite different from the Greek. Shortly after this era, we find Seneca (who dieda.d.65) giving the liberal arts,liberalia studia, as (1) Grammar, (2) Music, (3) Geometry, (4) Arithmetic, (5) Astronomy (Epist., 88). He divides Philosophy into (1) Moral, (2) Natural, (3) Rational, and the last he subdivides into (a) Dialectic and (b) Rhetoric. Above all he places Wisdom, "Sapientia perfectum bonum est mentis humanæ" (Epist., 89). Here we see that two of the Seven Liberal Arts are classed under Philosophy. A little later, Quintilian divides all education into (1) Grammar, and (2) Rhetoric, but condescends to allow his young orator to study a little Music, Geometry, and Astronomy.

Turning to the Greeks, we find Sextus Empiricus, who seems to have flourished in Athens and Alexandria toward the end of the second century, writing a great work against the dogmatists or "mathematicians," of whom he finds nine classes, corresponding to six arts, and three sciences of philosophy. The arts are (1) Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Geometry, (4) Arithmetic, (5) Astronomy, (6) Music: the sciences, (1) Logic, (2) Physics, (3) Ethics. We are nownot far from the Seven Liberal Arts; still we have not reached them.

There is not, I think, any noteworthy list of the liberal arts to be found in any ancient author after Sextus, till we come to St. Augustine. In hisRetractiones, written about 425, he tells us (I, 6) that in his youth he undertook to writeDisciplinarum Libri(the exact title of Varro's work!), that he finished the book on (1) Grammar, wrote six volumes on (2) Music, and made a beginning withother fivedisciplines, (3) Dialectic, (4) Rhetoric, (5) Geometry, (6) Arithmetic, (7) Philosophy. It has frequently been assumed that we have here, for the first time, the Seven Liberal Arts definitely fixed; but there is nothing whatever in the passage to justify this assumption. The author does not say "theother five disciplines," but merely "other five." Among these five, moreover, is named Philosophy, which, though certainly a "discipline," was never, so far as I can discover, called an art, liberal or otherwise. There is not the smallest reason for tracing back the Seven Liberal Arts to St. Augustine, who surely was incapable of any such playing with numbers. He does not, indeed, recognize the "Seven."

It is in the fantastic and superficial work of Martianus Capella, a heathen contemporary of Augustine's, that they first make their appearance, and even there no stress is laid upon their number. They are (1) Grammar, (2) Dialectic, (3) Rhetoric, (4) Geometry, (5) Arithmetic, (6) Astronomy, (7) Music. These, no doubt, were the branches taught in the better schools of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries, when, on the whole, the Greek liberal curriculum had supplanted the Roman rhetorical one. There is not the slightest ground for supposing that Capella had anything to do with fixing the curriculum which he celebrates. His work is a wretched production, sufficiently characterized by its title,The Wedding of Mercury and Philology. He wrote about seven arts because he found seven to write about.Attention was first called to thenumberof the arts, and a mystical meaning attached to it, by the Christian senator, Cassiodorus (480-575) in hisDe Artibus et Disciplinis Liberalium Litterarum. He finds it written in Prov. ix, 1, that "Wisdom hath builded her house. She hath hewn out her seven pillars." He concludes that the Seven Liberal Arts are the seven pillars of the house of Wisdom. They correspond also to the days of the week, which are also seven. It is to be observed that he distinguishes the "Arts" from the "Disciplines," or, as they said later, theTriviumfrom theQuadrivium. The pious notion of Cassiodorus was worked out by Isidore of Seville (died 636) in hisEtymologiæ, and by Alcuin (died 804) in hisGrammatica. Of course, as soon as the number of the arts came to be regarded as fixed by Scripture authority, it became as familiar a fact as the number of the planets or of the days of the week, or indeed, as the number of the elements. Abouta.d.820 Hrabanus Maurus (776-856), a pupil of Alcuin's, wrote a work,De Clericorum Institutione, in which the phraseSeptem Liberales Artesis said to occur for the first time. About the same date Theodulfus wrote his allegorical poemDe Septem Liberalibus in quadam Pictura Descriptis.[13]

The Liberal Studies after St. Augustine did not include Philosophy, which rested upon the Seven Arts, as upon "seven pillars," and was usually divided into (1) Physical, (2) Logical, (3) Ethical.[14]After a time Philosophy came to be an all-embracing term. In a commentary on theTimæusof Plato, assigned by Cousin to the twelfth century, we find the following scheme:—

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