PLATO’S PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION AND LIFE.
It is the calm judgment of history that, in artistic, literary, and philosophical development, the world shows, relatively, nothing comparable to the Golden Age of Greece. Attica was the Shakespeare of the Ancient World. As the Bard of Avon gathered the material of legend, romance, and history, and crowned the intellectual activity of the Elizabethan Age with results of enduring value, so the leading city of Greece centred in herself many influences of the Orient, and, in a period of great intellectual awakening under favorable conditions, became the genius that produced results of surpassing power and beauty. The Greeks created when European civilization was young, and as yet there was little of the ideal that, in the Attic Period, blossomed into the conceptions of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.
In any other period never has so great a master as Socrates found so great a pupil as Plato; never has so great a master as Plato encountered so great a pupil as Aristotle. Each pupil grasped and enlarged upon the mighty work of his instructor.
The world still wonders how any age could become so suddenly and highly creative. Like the century plant, the Greek race seemed to have been accumulating, through a long period, power for a quick and startling development. The thoughtful historian enumerates many favoring conditions. The Greeks as a race were active, eager for knowledge, and had a capacity for healthy ideal conceptions. The beneficent climate brought them in contact with nature, and the peculiar charm of their sky, air, mountains, and sea filled them with a sense of wonder and a sense of beauty. We may also mention the stimulus of their intercourse with their own colonies and with other peoples; their religion, which contained the germs of ethical and philosophical thought, and was favorable to freedom of view; the respect for law that sought for the rules of the state and for individual conduct a foundation in permanent principles.
Socrates is a more favorite theme than Plato, partly because he is the first of the three heroic figures that mark the beginning of philosophy. Then his name is surrounded with a halo that was constituted by the events of Athens’ greatest period of fame. He lived just after the glory of victory over the Persian invaders had stimulated the Greek pride and every activity that is born of pride and hope. He lived in the period of Athenian supremacy and was contemporary with Phidias, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Pericles.
Plato, on the contrary, beheld the beginning of the misfortunes of Attica and of the decay of Greece. It was the period of the Peloponnesian Wars, of the Spartan and the Theban Supremacy. It was the time of the Thirty Tyrants and of the restored Democracy. But while the time of Plato was not that of the greatest national glory, it permitted the free development of philosophical thought which later culminated in Aristotle.
Socrates, with earnestness of soul, with contempt for the extreme democratic spirit of his time and the growing disregard of divine and human law, with contempt for the Sophists, whose teachings were no higher than prudential preparation for practical life and cultivation of the morals and manners of a Lord Chesterfield, devoted himself to exposing the ignorance and false reasoning of the day and to the search for truth, setting up for his ideal the Supreme Good which included the True and the Beautiful. He, however, was practical in that he taught that all good was good for something; whatever was ideal was to be applied in real life, and he was a notable example of closely following ideals with practical action. “Know thyself” was his maxim, and, in knowing thyself, know the good and follow it.
Socrates is the practical man, Plato the idealist and literary man, Aristotle the scientific man. Socrates left us no writings, and, while Plato in his works uses Socrates as his chief interlocutor, the dialogues are to be regarded as expressing Socrates’ philosophy as changed and enlarged by the views of Plato. Xenophon’s “Memorabilia” is the source of more nearly accurate views of the life and teachings of Socrates.
Plato uses Socrates’ method of induction and exact definition to reach the truth aimed at. Many of the scenes are like plays, some of which would take on a stage setting, with characters that are very much alive and very human. Although in pursuit of the most serious subjects, a dramatic tone runs through the discussions. In the first book of the “Republic,” Thrasymachus in argument gets angry, grows red in the face, and fairly roars his views at Socrates, who pretends to be panic-stricken at his looks. Later Thrasymachus asks, “I want to know, Socrates, whether you have a nurse.” To Socrates’ look of astonished inquiry he more than intimates that the philosopher is too childish to go about unattended. Many of the dialogues are in part historical facts. The characters are the neighbors and friends or intellectual antagonists of the philosopher. The doctrines he combats are doctrines of the day, the scenes are real and in or about Athens. The tyranny he hates and the extreme democracy he satirizes are forms of government whose evils he has observed, and from which he has suffered. You read the dialogues, follow their thought, get into their spirit, and you are brought in touch with the great, throbbing life of the Athenian commonwealth. A few dialogues, carefully read, are worth a hundred volumes of the commentators.
It is related that at a certain time Socrates dreamed he saw a young swan perched on his knee. Soon it gained strength of wing and flew away, singing a sweet song. The next day Plato appeared and became the intimate pupil of Socrates. This is one of many myths, later invented to enlarge the halo of a great name. It was said that Plato was the son of Apollo and that the bees of Hymettus fed him with honey, giving him the power of sweet speech. Myths aside, the chance that made Plato the intimate friend and disciple of Socrates became of vast significance to the future history of philosophy. Plato was of aristocratic parentage; he showed in his youth a poetic temperament, which was later displayed in the dramatic art of his writings. After the death of Socrates in 399 B. C., he travelled and resided at various courts. At the age of forty he returned to Athens and opened his school in the Gymnasium of the Academy, where with one or two intervals he taught for a period of forty years. Aristotle was for twenty years his pupil, and there are many interesting accounts of the relation between pupil and master.
Plato had in him somewhat of the Puritan, while Aristotle was more a man of the world, and we may suppose that he often maintained his opinions with his customary sarcastic smile. He offended the more austere tastes of his master by nicety of dress, care of his shoes, display of finger rings, and a dudish cut of his hair. Contemporaries speak of Plato with admiration for his intellect and reverence for the beauty of his character, which was “elevated in Olympian cheerfulness above the world of change and decay.”
In our purpose to touch upon some points of Plato’s doctrines, we are treating of a transcendent genius whose work has profoundly affected the thought of the world. Platonism reappears as Neo-Platonism in the second and third centuries of our era; is largely adopted in its new form a century later by St. Augustine, the great expounder of Christianity and teacher of the Middle Ages; arises again in the seventeenth century proclaiming that moral law is written in fixed characters in every rational mind; culminates in the grand idealism of Schelling and Hegel; is transmitted to-day in the magnificent idealistic ethics of such men as Caird, Green, and Bradley; gives the cardinal virtues to Christianity; furnishes a broad and inspiring ethical code for the present; speaks with an inspiration that largely meets the approval of the Christian world; inspired the Utopia and the New Atlantis and all ideal schemes of government and society; was, following Socrates, the father of the inductive method; became the starting point for the scientific study of nature and psychology in the eleventh century; was a large element in the humanistic movement, which at the close of the middle ages created modern natural science; created conceptions which, developing down through the centuries in two diverging lines, indirectly found highest expression in the idealism of Hegel and the evolution of Spencer, and is likely to furnish in broad outlines, especially as presented by Aristotle, ground for the reconciliation of the opposite poles of philosophy in a spiritual evolution.
What was Plato’s central idea? It was the existence of fixed principles in the universe, principles realized in the consciousness of man, through pursuit of knowledge. Socrates aimed at a permanent ground for ethical wisdom in a time when the old foundations of conduct and of divine and human law were shaken. He was the progenitor of the inductive method, in that he sought in numerous instances and opinions the essential common ground or principle, and aimed at exact definition. The class concept, general notion, universal truth, was the object of his search. And we find him, for instance, in Plato, tracing through the ten books of the “Republic” the essential character of justice. Plato, following Socrates, sought a foundation for ethical conceptions in a metaphysical theory, the Doctrine of Ideas, a magnificent illustration of the truth that speculative philosophy grows out of man’s earnest desire to know why he is here, and what is the meaning of his moral nature.
It will help much any view in the field of philosophy to keep uppermost the thought of distinct classes, types, or kinds of things in nature; the thought of the corresponding class concepts, general notions or universals in the human mind; and the thought of original ideas in the mind of God, as constituting principles or laws or modes of action in nature. This is not a world of chaotic chance, it is a world of rational and progressive order, and we are compelled to seek for the architecture an architect and a plan embodying rational ideas. Plato’s ideas are eternal entities existing neither in nature nor in the mind of God, but nevertheless the archetypes, forms, or patterns after which every kind of things to which may be applied a common name was fashioned. Plato here held in an imperfect way the mighty truth of all philosophy, and the “Ideas” have reappeared in many guises,—as the forms or essences of Aristotle, existing only as realized in nature, as ideas in the mind of God, as the self-evolving categories of Hegel, as the perfecting principle and the fashioning laws in the doctrine of evolution.
Man in his preëxistent state dwelt in the region of immaterial ideas and gazed on the fulness of their truth. At his human birth he was made oblivious of his past existence, and growth in wisdom was a gradual realization in the consciousness of the eternal verities formerly known. As in Wordsworth, man’s birth was but a “sleep and a forgetting;” growth in knowledge was a remembering. “Trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home.” The truth in this metaphor of philosophy, we may believe, is that man is of divine origin, and hence may know the divine revelations in his own being and in the material world. Here was foreshadowed in rough outlines the spiritual idealism which in its fresh form appears to be gaining new ground to-day. God writes the book of nature; man is the son of God and reads and vaguely understands the meaning of the mighty volume.
Sensations are not knowledge, but the signs of knowledge, as words are the signs of thought, and the mind is innately active and rational, else there could be no interpretation of those signs. This appears to be the true explanation of the fact that we are educated by contact with nature. Without the signs, no communication of knowledge; without the native power of the reader, no reception of knowledge.
Plato held that the ideas were manifest in nature and were also innate in the mind; hence by self-examination and comparison with the copies of the ideas in nature, man arrived at essential truth which was the work of philosophy.
Plato identified the Idea of Ideas with Cause, Mind, the Good or God. God was a personality and supreme above the gods. He was named by his chief attribute, the Good, and of this the True and the Beautiful were qualities. Cousin says, “The True, the Beautiful, and the Good are only revelations of the same Being; that which reveals them to us is reason.” “If all perfection belongs to the perfect being, God will possess beauty in its plenitude. The father of the world, of its laws, of its ravishing harmonies, the author of forms, colors, and sounds, he is the principle of beauty in nature. It is he whom we adore without knowing it, under the name of the ideal, when our imagination, borne on from beauties to beauties, calls for a final beauty in which it may find repose.” This passage is thoroughly Platonic in spirit and throws much light on the meaning of these absolute ideas of Plato. With change of terms the same passage would apply to Truth and Goodness. We trace them as they appear in the conscious reason and disposition, as they are manifested in the relations of society or are suggested by the reality and beneficence of the world, and we are led to the conception of the perfect ideals whose truth exists in God.
Plato has four principles whose interrelation and process of the active elements determine the world, as the laws of modern evolution are conceived to work out the results discovered by science: (1) unlimited, unformed, or chaotic nature; (2) law, imposing limits and forms upon nature; (3) the resulting, definite types and ideas of a rational world; (4) the Cause which effects these results.
The Good is that which imparts truth to the object and knowledge to the perceiving subject, and is the cause of science and truth; hence, to know the Good is the ethical aim, for to know the Good is to act in harmony with it, and knowledge is virtue.
Plato was fully aware that the philosopher, then as to-day, was regarded by the many as a useless star-gazer, and in the celebrated Allegory of the Cave he shows the relation of true insight to the common view of life and the world. He imagines dwellers in a cave so placed that they see only the shadows of passing objects and hear only the echoes of sounds from the outer world. If released and brought to the full light of the sun they are dazzled and pained, and think they are in a world of false appearance, and believe the realities are the familiar shadows in the cave. After a while they become accustomed to the day and the real objects, and see their truth and beauty. And if they return to the cave, they are half blind and appear ridiculous to the dwellers there. He concludes, “Whether I am right or not, God only knows; but, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and lord of light in this world, and the source of truth and reason in the other: this is the first great cause which he, who would act rationally either in public or private life, must behold.”
To the Sophist, who follows the opinion of the many instead of regarding fixed principles of truth, he pays his respects with the searching satire of a Carlyle.
His theology, which is a part of his philosophy, has many striking features that have commanded the astonishment of the Christian world. “God the Creator changes not; He deceives not.” It is wrong to do good to friends and injure enemies, for the injury of another can be in no case just. If you have a quarrel with any one, become reconciled before you sleep. In heaven is the pattern of the perfect city. All things will work together for good to the just. He advocates the severest abstract piety that, as in the conduct of the sternest Roman or the severest Puritan, swerves not from duty. The myth of Er, the Armenian, reminds us in many points of the judgment day; and his exhortation to pursue the heavenly way that it may be well with us here and hereafter, may be our salvation if we are obedient, is one of the most striking in the history of religious belief.
In the fifth book of the “Laws” is an exhortation to right living that partakes of the spirit of the Christian philosophy. Every man is to honor his own soul with an honor that regards divine good, to value principle higher than life, to place virtue above all gold, to glory in following the better course, to count reverence in children a greater heritage than riches, to regard a contract as a holy thing, to avoid excess of self-love and to adhere to the truth as the beginning of every good. We need no further illustration of the fact that Platonism was naturally welcomed by the early Christian Church.
The ethical ideals of Plato are the most valuable phase of his writings. In the First Book of the “Republic,” Thrasymachus, in a dialogue with Socrates, defines justice to be Sublime Simplicity, and argues that the unjust are discreet and wise, as some may argue to-day that shrewd dishonesty is commendable. The ethics of Plato is the opposite pole of this philosophy, and as such stands for the rational and moral order of the world. His system is not hedonistic, but ideal. It aims at a good, but the good is attained by a life of virtue.
In a famous passage of the “Republic,” the transcendently just man is described. He is to be clothed in justice only. Being the best of men, he is to be esteemed the worst, and so continue to the hour of his death. He is to be bound, scourged, and suffer every kind of evil, and even be crucified; still he is to be just for righteousness’ sake. No wonder some Christian fathers believed this referred to Him who was to come, as described in the celebrated chapter of Isaiah. The best man is also the happiest, whether seen or unseen by gods and men. In the “Crito” Socrates will not escape from prison if it is not right, though he suffer death or any other calamity. “Virtue is the health and beauty and well-being of the soul, and vice is the disease and weakness and deformity of the soul.” He is a fool who laughs at aught but folly and vice. The possession of the whole world is of no value without the good. No pleasure except that of the wise is quite true and pure. “Is not the noble that which subjects the beast to the man, or rather to the god in man?” “How would a man profit if he received gold and silver on the condition that he was to enslave the noblest part of him to the worst?” “The Holy is loved of God because it is Holy.” Not pleasure, but wisdom and knowledge and right opinions and true reasonings are better, both now and forever. The good ruler considers not his own interest, but that of the state. The governing class are to be told that gold and silver they have from God; the divine metal is in them.
Any one who finds in these views a doctrine of pleasure must seek with a prejudiced eye. Plato, as usual, anticipates later ethical discussions, and points to the fact that there is a quality in pleasure; and quality in conduct is the very contention of absolute moralists. He speaks of the soul whose dye of good quality is washed out by pleasure. The attainment of genuine well-being, the development of divine qualities within men, was the aim, and the consciousness of this priceless possession of rational manhood was the incidental reward. His doctrine places before men abstract ideals of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, which invite the better nature by their supreme excellence.
Plato enumerates four virtues: Wisdom, Courage, Temperance, Justice. Professor Green interprets them in modern form, and maintains their fixed standard of excellence and universal application. Any modern analysis of the principles of conduct which contribute to health of soul and are favorable to success in life, would confirm the enumeration of the Greek virtues. Professor Green says: The Good Will is the will (1) to know what is true and to make what is beautiful; (2) to endure pain and fear; (3) to resist the allurements of pleasure; (4) to take for one’s self and to give to others, not what one is inclined to, but what is due. Not only does he enjoin the spirit of justice, but the cultivation of moral courage, and, as contrasted with lazy ignorance, the growth in wisdom which is realization of virtue.
Wisdom played a peculiar and important part in the Greek ethics. Vice was ignorance, because the wise man could but live according to his best knowledge. And the Greeks, properly interpreted, were right. Did we see virtue in all its truth and beauty, and vice in all its deformity, we could but choose the best. Growth in wisdom was a gradual realization in the soul of the heavenly ideas that were the true heritage of man, and in this development the soul was gradually perfected. This beautiful and satisfying philosophy reappears to-day in some of the most ennobling systems of ethics the world has produced. It makes individual and race progress an increase in consciousness of the knowledge of truth and virtue, a revelation of the divine within us.
The Jewish and the Christian conception of divine law as binding man to the performance of his moral obligations was not strongly characteristic of the Greek mind. But responsibility, without which conduct can have no ethical significance, was by no means foreign to Plato’s system. In the myth of Er the soul has its choice of the lot of life, and its condition at the end of the earthly career is a requital for the deeds done in the body. Throughout Plato’s writings the implications of personal merit or guilt are prominent.
It is a doctrine of virtue rather than of duty. He who sees the right and does not do it is a fool, but that is his matter. He is not bound by any moral law to be wise. If he is virtuous it is well; if not, so much the worse for him. Love of God is the essential of the Christian ethics; knowledge of the Good, of the Greek. To pursue the Good was virtue, and virtue he sets forth in world-wide contrast with vice. Plato’s conception of justice, or right, was so exalted that some have thought he attained in later years an insight into the nature of conscience, or the Moral Faculty.
The Greek idea of beauty must be touched in passing. The wise life was a beautiful life. The Beautiful was an attribute of the Deity. They had the love of Beauty which Goethe possessed when he had become fascinated with the study of Greek art, and exclaimed, “The Beautiful is greater than the Good, for it includes the Good, and adds something to it.” Plato calls the Beautiful the splendor of the True. The youth should learn to love beautiful forms, first a single form, then all beautiful forms and beauty wherever found; then he will turn to beauty of mind, of institutions and laws, and sciences, and he will gradually draw toward the great sea of beauty, and create and contemplate many fair thoughts, and he will become conscious of absolute beauty, and come near to God, who is transcendent beauty and goodness.
Plato’s philosophy makes education a process of developing the power and knowledge latent in the mind, rather than a process of teaching. The Socratic method of drawing out is one of time-honored use among pedagogues. Plato defines a good education as “That which gives to the body and to the soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable.” The ideal aim is the harmonious or symmetrical development of the physical, mental, and moral powers. Physical training is for the health of the soul, as well as for the strength and grace of the body. The training of the reason is of first importance. The æsthetic emotions are to be cultivated as a means of moral and religious education. Memory is little emphasized.
The artisans and laborers were simply to learn a trade; the warrior class were to be trained in gymnastics and music. The complete education of the highest class, or the magistrates, was to include music and literature, gymnastics, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, and finally philosophy. All this was to be supplemented by practical acquaintance with the details of civil and military functions.
Education is the foundation of the state, and in the “Laws” he would make it compulsory. The women are to receive the same training as the men. Children are to be taught to honor their parents and respect their elders. The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life. In early childhood education is to be made attractive, although to unduly honor the likings of children is to spoil them. The tales which children are permitted to hear must be models of virtuous thought. Harmful tales concerning the gods and heroes are prohibited, but noble traits and deeds of endurance are to be emphasized. Youth should imitate no baseness, but what is temperate, holy, free, and courageous; for “imitations, beginning in early youth, at last sink into the constitution and become a second nature.” Children must not be frightened with ghost stories and reference to the infernal world.
Excessive athletics makes men stupid and subject to disease. The kinds of music employed in education must inspire courage, reverence, freedom, and temperance. Art should present true beauty and grace, to draw the soul of childhood into harmony with the beauty of reason. “Rhythm and harmony find their way into the secret places of the soul, making the soul graceful of him who is rightly educated.” Good language and music and grace and rhythm depend on simplicity.
Arithmetic cultivates quickness, and teaches abstract number and necessary truth. Geometry deals with axiomatic knowledge and will draw the soul toward truth. Astronomy compels the mind to look upward. It is to be studied not so much for practical use, as in navigation, but because the mind is purified and illumined thereby. In this connection Plato maintains his position against those who carp at the so-called useless studies.
Plato’s ideal state offends the thought of conservative men more than all else in his writings, but it was conceived in view of the highest ideas of virtue and justice. It was simply bad psychology. He enumerates and describes five kinds of states and the corresponding five types of individual character. Indeed he studies justice first in the ideal state, and then in the individual. The three impulses of the soul are compared with the three classes of citizens in the state, and to each he ascribes its excellence, thus forming his list of virtues. But we cannot dwell upon this phase of Plato’s teachings. We may, however, refer to his caricature of extreme democracy; it has a useful modern application.
In this state the father descends to his son and fears him, and the son is on a level with his father and does not fear him. The alien is equal to the citizen, and the slave to the master. The master fears and flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters. The young man is on a level with the old, and old men, for fear of seeming morose and authoritative, condescend to the young and are full of pleasantry and gayety. Even the animals in the democracy show the spirit of equality, and the horses and asses march along the streets with all the rights and dignities of freemen, and will run at you if you do not get out of their way, and everything is just ready to burst with liberty. The citizens become sensitive and chafe at authority, and cease to care for the laws. Surely the statesman can turn to Plato for wisdom, for out of this condition grows tyranny.
And, correspondingly, the democratical young man, a kind of fin de siècle type, is described. Insolence he terms breeding, and anarchy liberty, and waste magnificence, and impudence courage.
No wonder Plato saw that his ideal state would not be realized until kings became philosophers, that is to say—never. Modern dreamers might profit by his wise predictions.
Plato’s doctrine is one of ideas and idealism as contrasted with sensations and sensationalism. It is spiritualism as contrasted with materialism. The higher produces the lower, instead of the lower the higher. It is the doctrine that recognizes the rational order of the world, the transcendent nature of conscious man, and his ethical aim. It places ideals before man, in the attaining of which he comes to realization of his true being. It is a doctrine of rational explanation of man’s existence. As such it has always strongly invited the adherence of philosophers and Christians. The founders of the church regarded Plato as directly inspired or as having derived inspiration from the Hebrew scriptures.
The doctrine of Universals may be taken with allowance, but we may believe that it represents the right side of philosophical thought. It matters not much whether we hold to the view of Plato’s ideas or native truths of the mind developed by experience or the creative activity of the mind in knowing the outer world or the doctrine of participation in the divine nature and divine thought or the power to generalize from the facts of subjective and objective nature, a power above, and not of, material nature—all these views imply man’s spiritual and ideal character. Behind man and behind nature is the same reality. In some sense (not the pantheistic, as commonly understood) both are manifestations of that reality. Hence the power of man to know the world, because it is a rational world, and manifestation answers to manifestation, thought to thought. He who claims that all knowledge is founded in sensation is partly right; for to know the outer realm is to realize the inner and to know, in part, the truth of the Universe.
Subjective ideas, in some form, must be retained in philosophy. Our world, as a world of evolution, is orderly and has a progressive plan; hence, according to all human conception, is the product of ideas worked out through what are called the laws of nature.
Men have always asked what is the use of philosophy, and to-day they repeat the question with emphasis. We appreciate the state of mind that rejoices in consciousness of standing on the solid earth, the courageous patience that works out with guarded induction scientific truth, the honesty that will not substitute hasty conjecture for fact, and the faith that works toward results to be fully realized only in the distant future. But many scientific men are coming to regard biological and psychological sciences as great laboratories for philosophy. We may believe the coming problems will be solved by the coöperation of philosophy and science. Science studies the objective side and philosophy the subjective side of the same reality.
Philosophy has a use as an attempt to satisfy the imperative need of men to ask the meaning of their being. It has a use as forming a rational hypothesis concerning a First Cause, and a Final Aim. It is a ground of belief in ideals. All speculative philosophy has been inspired more or less by Platonism, and has given the world the noblest, most hopeful, useful, and influential systems of ethics. Philosophical training gives the power to view comprehensively, connectedly, and logically any group of facts. It contains the presuppositions of science and of our very existence. The investigator in the forest learns many valuable details; if he ascends the mountains, he views the landscape as a whole, and, as it were, finds himself. Finally philosophy represents the supreme, the spiritual, interests of man and aims at essential truth.
Will it be relegated to the shelves of archæology? The signs of to-day appear to answer no. In the whole history of philosophy, the mind has never been able to rest permanently in any extreme or one-sided position or in any position that is inadequate to explain essential facts of existence. Hence it cannot rest permanently in materialism. A recent writer speaks of the history of philosophy as “preëminently a record of remarkable returns of the human intellect to ancient follies and dreams, long since outgrown and supposed to have been consigned to oblivion.” Well! It is strange indeed if nature has evolved a product whose needs, instincts, and native beliefs are a lie, a product without aim or rational ground for existence. If it is so, then pessimism is our philosophy and annihilation our best solution of the problem of conscious life. Most men are too respectful believers in evolution to ascribe to nature any such satanic irony.
At any rate one likes to take an excursion in this field; he feels benefited by the trip. Men still like to seek the great fountain head of philosophy, and take a dip in the Castalian spring—a mental bath of this sort is a good and useful thing. They like to sit in the shady groves of the Academy and listen to Plato or walk with Aristotle in the environs of the Gymnasium. The mighty minds of the past have marked out the broad outlines of truth; it is our work to fill in, to correct. The ethical conceptions were furnished by the ancients. The modern world has merely made them richer in content and broader in application. The deeper meaning of any philosophy or science is learned by the historic method, which gives us the trend of events.
The closing words of the “Republic” are an appropriate ending to the discussion of Plato: “And thus, Glaucon, the tale has been saved and has not perished, and may be our salvation, if we are obedient to the spoken word; and we shall pass safely over the river of Forgetfulness and our soul will not be defiled. Wherefore my counsel is that we hold fast to the heavenly way and follow after justice and virtue always, considering that the soul is immortal and able to endure every sort of good and every sort of evil. Thus shall we live, dear to one another and to the gods, both while remaining here and when, like conquerors in the games who go round to gather gifts, we receive our reward. And it shall be well with us both in this life and in the pilgrimage of a thousand years which we have been reciting.”
“Plato, thou reasonest well!—
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?
’Tis the divinity that stirs within us;
’Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.”
SECONDARY EDUCATION: A REVIEW.[1]
The manner of investigation of the Committee of Ten took a somewhat different turn from what was anticipated when the original report which led to the undertaking was made, but no one now doubts the wisdom of the plan finally adopted. It would be difficult to find groups of men in America better fitted than the members of the conferences appointed by the Committee to discuss the specific subjects assigned them; and their recommendations as to choice of matter for secondary schools, the time element, place of studies in the curriculum, and the best methods constitute a most valuable contribution to the educational literature of the period. In the main, they represent the best thought of practical educators.
We shall not enter into a discussion of the details of these conference reports; each report and, in many instances, each section of a report is in itself a large theme. The summary of results and the recommendations of the Committee of Ten will occupy the time allotted.
It was expected that the report as a whole would excite much discussion and invite extensive criticism; and if no other result is attained than the sharpening of wits in controversy, the existence of the report has sufficient warrant.
It is impossible to say of any opinions that they are final, and of any methods that they are the best. Some hold that the eternal verities are to be discovered in the consciousness of the few geniuses, and that obtaining a consensus of opinion is not the way to reach wise conclusions. If we are Hegelian in our philosophy of history, we shall hold to the law of development, shall believe that each stage of thought is a necessary one, that the best light is obtained by the historic method, and that the highest evolution of thought is to be found in the belief and practice of the advanced representatives of any line of investigation. The work of the conferences was to correlate the parts of each subject by the method of applying reason to history; it was the work of the committee proper to correlate these results by the same method. Whether the committee was large and varied enough to represent all sides is to be decided by the discussions of those best fitted to form opinions.
After a careful review of the work of our committee, I venture to make a formal list of opinions presented, most of which, I think, should be heartily indorsed, reserving till later the discussion of a few of them:
1. That work in many secondary-school studies should be begun earlier.
2. That each subject should be made to help every other, as, for example, history should contribute to the study of English, and natural history should be correlated with language, drawing, literature, and geography.
3. That every subject should be taught in the same way, whether in preparation for college or as part of a finishing course.
4. That more highly trained teachers are needed, especially for subjects that are receiving increased attention, as the various sciences and history.
5. That in all scientific subjects, laboratory work should be extended and improved.
6. That for some studies special instructors should be employed to guide the work of teachers in elementary and secondary schools.
7. That all pupils should pursue a given subject in the same way, and to the same extent, as long as they study it at all.
8. That every study should be made a serious subject of instruction, and should cultivate the pupil’s powers of observation, memory, expression, and reasoning.
9. That the choice between the classical course and the Latin-scientific course should be postponed as long as possible, until the taste and power of the pupil have been tested, and he has been able to determine his future aim.
10. That twenty periods per week should be adopted as the standard, providing that five of these periods be given to unprepared work.
11. That parallel programmes should be identical in as many of their parts as possible.
12. That drawing should be largely employed in connection with most of the studies.
13. The omission of industrial and commercial subjects. This is mentioned without comment.
14. That more field work should be required for certain sciences.
15. The desirability of uniformity. Not definitely recommended in the report.
16. That the function of the high schools should be to prepare for the duties of life as well as to fit for college.
17. That colleges and scientific schools should accept any one of the courses of study as preparation for admission.
18. That a good course in English should be required of all pupils entering college.
19. That many teachers should employ various means for better preparation, such as summer schools, special courses of instruction given by college professors, and instruction of school superintendents, principals of high schools, or specially equipped teachers.
20. That the colleges should take a larger interest in secondary and elementary schools.
21. That technological and professional schools should require for admission a complete secondary-school education.
22. That each study pursued should be given continuous time adequate to securing from it good results.
The points of the report which I should question are as follows:
1. That Latin should be begun much earlier than now. (This is a conference recommendation.)
2. That English should be given as much time as Latin. (Conference recommendation.)
3. The large number of science subjects recommended, with loss of adequate time for each.
4. The omission of a careful analysis of the value of each subject, absolute and relative, preparatory to tabulating courses.
5. The apparent implication that the multiplying of courses is advisable.
6. The implications that the choice of subjects by the pupils may be a matter of comparative indifference—the doctrine of equivalence of studies.
7. Some parts of the model programmes made by the committee.
An examination of tabulated results of the investigations of the conferences will show that in their opinion the following studies should be begun below the high school:
English literature.
German or French.
Elementary algebra and concrete geometry.
Natural phenomena.
Natural history.
Biography and mythology, civil government, and Greek and Roman history.
Physical geography.
There has been much discussion within a few years as to improvements in elementary courses of study, with a growing tendency toward important modifications. Rigid and mechanical methods and an exaggerated notion of thoroughness in every detail have often become a hindrance to the progress of the pupils in elementary schools. The mind of the child is susceptible of a more mature development at the age of fourteen than is usually attained. There are numerous examples of pupils in graded schools, who, with very limited school terms, prepare for the high school at the age of fourteen. Under the guidance of painstaking and intelligent parents or private tutors, children cover, in a very brief time, the studies of the grammar school. All have noted, under favoring conditions, a surprising development, at an early age, in understanding of history, literature, and common phenomena, a growth far beyond that reached at the same age in the schools. These facts simply show the possibilities of the period of elementary education. We understand that ultimately those best prepared to judge must determine the modifications, if any are needed, of the elementary courses. Some say the courses are already overcrowded, it is impossible to add anything. Is it not true, however, that by placing less stress upon a few things, by arousing mental activity through the stimulus of the scientific method, and by improving the skill of the teachers, the work suggested by these conferences may be easily accomplished? All these experiments are already old in many schools in the country.
Consider the logical order of studies. Each child, almost from the dawn of consciousness, recognizes relations of number and space, observes phenomena and draws crude inferences, records in his mind the daily deeds of his associates, and employs language to express his thought, often with large use of imagination. Already has begun the spontaneous development in mathematics, science, history, and literature. Nature points the way and we should follow the direction. These subjects in their various forms should be pursued from the first. Hill’s “True Order of Studies” shows that there are some five parallel, upward-running lines representing the divisions of knowledge, and that development may be compared to the encircling, onward movement of a spiral, which, at each turn, cuts off a portion of all the lines. If we accept this view, we must grant that geometry on its concrete side belongs to the earliest period of education; that the observation of natural phenomena with simple inferences will be a most attractive study to the child; that the importance of observation of objects of natural history is foreshadowed by the spontaneous interest taken in them before the school period; that tales of ancient heroes, and the pleasing myths of antiquity, together with the striking characters and incidents of Greek and Roman history, belong to the early period of historic knowledge; that the whole world of substance and phenomena that constitutes our environment should be the subject of study under the head of physiography or physical geography; that the thoughts of literature, ethical and imaginative, appeal readily to the child’s mind. We may add that the taste of children may be early cultivated, and that the glory which the child discovers in nature makes possible the art idea and the religious sentiment. The reason for beginning a foreign language early is somewhat independent, but all agree that early study of a living language is desirable.
Should we not reconsider our analysis of the elementary courses? Superintendents and teachers will find the necessary changes not impossible but easy. The sum of all that is recommended for the elementary schools by the conferences is not so formidable as at first appears.
In the conference reports to the Committee of Ten are some views that have a bearing upon the subject of the high-school period. The Latin Conference hopes for a modification of the grammar-school courses, that the high-school course may be begun earlier. The Greek Conference voted that the average age at which pupils enter college should be lowered. The Conference on English was of the opinion that English work during the last two years of the grammar-school course should be in the hands of a special teacher or teachers. The Conference on Modern Languages holds that whenever competent teachers can be secured the grammar school should have an elective course in French or German. The Physics Conference recommended that “Whenever it is possible, special science teachers or superintendents should be appointed to instruct teachers of elementary schools in the methods of teaching natural phenomena.” The History Conference thought it desirable that in all schools history should be taught by teachers who have a fondness for historical studies and have paid special attention to effective methods of imparting instruction. One member of the conference was almost ready to advise omitting history from school programmes because of so much rote, text-book teaching.
These opinions are additional evidence of need of modifications in grammar-school work, and some think that ultimately the best solution will be found in extending the high-school period downward to include part of the elementary period.
It was agreed in the Committee of Ten that their task would be less difficult did the high-school period begin, say two years earlier; and the reason why the recommendation of the conferences, that certain studies be introduced below the high school, was viewed with suspicion was the impossibility, with the present organization of the schools, of securing good instruction in these studies.
The following view of the high-school period is expressed by a prominent high-school principal: “My opinion is that it would be much better for our boys and girls to begin their preparation for college at least two years earlier than they now do. If our high schools could receive the pupils at eleven or twelve, instead of fourteen, preparation for college would be completed at sixteen instead of eighteen, as is now generally the case.”
The custom in European countries supports the view that high-school methods should reach down into the grades. In Prussia only three years of elementary work precede the gymnasium, and the pupil can enter the gymnasium at the age of nine. The gymnasium itself covers a period of nine years, extending five years below the period of our high schools. Examining the course of the Prussian gymnasium, we find in the first five years, or before the age of fourteen, Latin, Greek, French, history, geometry, natural history; and it is conceded by many educators that more is attained by the age of eighteen in Germany than in this country; that at the age of fourteen in Germany the development of the pupil is more mature, and that in essential features of education he has made more desirable progress.
If our high schools should be made equivalent in length and rank to the Prussian gymnasium, the change would involve the entire reconstruction of our school system, from the primary school to the end of the university. The high schools would become colleges, and the colleges would become high schools, and the graduates from them would enter the university prepared to take up professional or other special university work. That there are many leading educators who advocate these changes for the universities is well known, and there are some strong tendencies toward the German system. On the other hand, many deplore the possibility of losing the American college, which is an institution somewhat peculiar to this country. They think that its broad, general education and superior culture are worth retaining, and that specialization should begin at a late period.
One significant fact stares us in the face, namely, that the average American boy no longer will spend four years beyond the high school in general education, and then pass four years more at the professional school or three years in the graduate course. Somewhere the work must be shortened, in either the elementary school, the high school, or the college.
The whole subject is of great interest and importance, but at the present stage of inquiry no definite conclusions can be reached.
The relation of the mind to a study is determined by the nature of the mind and the nature of the study, and there seems to be no reason in psychology why a college-preparatory subject should be taught differently to one fitting for the duties of life. Besides, it is economy to make identical the work of different courses, as far as possible. There was perfect unanimity in the opinion that the same studies should be pursued by all in the same way, as far as taken.
Every one knows that many teachers are unskilled to present in the elementary schools the beginnings of geometry, science, history, or literature, and that the failures in this work are due to the mechanical efforts of those who have had no higher or special training. The demands of present methods are imperative for improved power in instruction. Science is not well taught in all schools. There is a school which teaches biology from a manual without specimen, microscope, or illustrations. It was a humiliating confession of the committee that the classical course is superior, for the reason that it is difficult to find enough instructors competent to teach modern subjects by modern methods.
A very important point, recognized by the committee, is the advantage of postponing as long as possible the necessity of making a final choice of courses. In this country we have no fixed conditions of rank, and the poor man’s son has the same privileges as the sons of position and wealth. Hence, the station in life is not determined by the differentiation in courses at an early period. Very few parents decide upon the final character of the child’s instruction much before the beginning of the college period.
For these reasons many would not agree with the conference recommendation to begin Latin at an earlier period. It would not be economy; there is enough else that belongs to the elementary stage of education, and no plan is feasible that is founded upon the foreign view of caste and fixed condition in life.
Uniformity in requirements for admission to college was the subject of the report that finally led to this investigation. Although uniformity is not prominently urged in the report of the Committee of Ten, doubtless the logical outcome of the latter report will be a tendency toward some kind of uniformity. There is a vigorous conflict of opinion to-day as to nationalism and individualism, with a strong tendency, especially in education, toward individualism. In the opinion of many there exists a harmful slavery of the high and preparatory schools to the erratic and varied demands of different colleges, and also a slavery to ignorance and caprice in some schools themselves, which would be removed by a general agreement to uniformity. Men are not enslaved, but are emancipated, by organization, and freedom of the individual is found in the good order of society and government. In a facetious criticism of the committee’s report, arguing for extreme individualism in choice of studies, appears the following query: “Please tell us if you and your colleagues on the conference considered any methods for the encouragement of cranks?” No; for the encouragement neither of cranks, nor of crankiness, but for the encouragement of the best kind of rational education. While there are a few wise, independent investigators who need no enforced uniformity, and will not be bound by the recommendations of others, many of the schools are largely imitators, or, worse, are working independently with limited insight, and these schools would be vastly improved by adopting courses and methods growing from a consensus of the best opinions of the country. The lowest would thereby tend to rise to the highest, and from that plane a new advance could be made. Meantime the original thinkers would be free to push forward toward higher results, to be generally adopted later. Through contact of various ideas some principles are settled, and the world is free to move on toward fresh discovery.
The selection of studies is to be determined largely by the nature of the mind and by the universal character of natural and civil environments, and this fact points toward the possibility of uniformity. The period of secondary education is not the period for specializing, and even if it were, there should be some uniformity in differentiation. In the United States there is, broadly speaking, uniformity of tradition, of government, of civilization, and the educated youth of San Francisco bears about the same relation to the world as the educated youth of Boston; hence, so far as elementary and secondary education is pursued, there is no reason why it should not be substantially the same in various schools—not in details belonging to the individual teacher, but in paper requirements and important features of methods.
Nothing in the whole report is more important than the proposed closer connection between high schools and colleges, and this is clearly and forcibly urged. Whatever course of study properly belongs to a secondary school is also a good preparation for higher education, else either secondary or higher education is seriously in error. Whenever a youth decides to take a college course, he should find himself on the road toward it. No one can doubt that in the coming years pupils having pursued properly arranged high-school courses must be admitted to corresponding courses in higher education. The divorcement between higher education and all lower grade work, except the classical, has been a fatal defect in the past. The entire course of education should be a practical interest of college professors, and there should be a hearty coöperation between them and school superintendents and principals in considering all educational problems.
It is a fact of significance that a committee, on which some leading institutions are represented, urges the professional schools of the country to place their standard of admission as high as that of the colleges; and we hope that aid will thus be given the institutions endeavoring to raise the requirements of law, medical, and divinity schools.
The reports of most of the conferences asked for continuous and adequate work for each subject, that it might become a source of discipline and of valuable insight. No doubt part of the work in high schools is too brief and fragmentary to gain from it the best results.
The aim should be to reduce the number of subjects taken by any pupil, and the number of topics under a subject. It is not necessary that the entire landscape be studied in all its parts and details, if a thorough knowledge of the most prominent features is gained.
In one important point I was constrained to differ from the reading of the report, as finally submitted, although the expressions to which exceptions were taken were due rather to the standpoint of the writer of the report than the resolutions of the committee. I refer to those paragraphs in which it is implied that the choice of studies in secondary schools may be a matter of comparative indifference, provided good training is obtained from the subjects chosen. This view makes education formal, without giving due regard to the content. Here are the world of nature and the world of mind. Nature, when its meaning is realized, has the same meaning for all, and in its various phases affects all in substantially the same way. The history of mankind, in its various kinds and degrees of development, has the same content for all. The nature of mind in generic characteristics, and the universal truths that belong to the spiritual world, are the same for all. Mind has the same powers in all human beings. We all know, feel, and will; all persons acquire through attention, retain in memory under the same conditions, obey the same laws of association, reason, so far as rightly, from the same principles, act from motives. Men may be classed crudely according to the motives that will appeal to them. While there are infinite variations in details of men’s natures, in power of insight, degree of development, methods of acquisition, predominant motives, in interests and tendencies, all persons in their growth obey the laws of human nature. Hence, we may argue that a science of education is possible; that it is possible to select studies with a view to their universal use in the primary development of the powers, and with the assurance of superior value as revealing to man his entire environment and the nature of his being.
Mere form, mere power, without content, mean nothing. Power is power through knowledge. The very world in which we are to use our power is the world which we must first understand in order to use it. The present is understood, not by the power to read history, but by what history contains. The laws of nature and deductions therefrom are not made available by mere power, but by the power which comes from the knowledge of them. Hence, the education which does not include something of all views of the world, and of the thinking subject, is lacking in data for the wise and effective use of power.
In view of this position, the committee might well analyze carefully the nature and importance of each leading subject, representing a part of the field of knowledge, to the end that a wise correlation of the work of the conferences might be made. The study of number in its concrete form and in its abstract relations, the study of space relations, as founded upon axiomatic truths, are necessary as a basis of many kinds of knowledge, as representing an essential view of the world, as a foundation for the possibilities of commerce and structures, and as furnishing important training in exact reasoning. Science includes many things; but chemistry and physics, which explain the manifestations of force in the material world, biology which reveals important laws of plant and animal life, and physiography, which acquaints us with our entire environment as to location, phenomena, and partial explanation—these are connected with the practical side of civilization and the welfare of humanity, and are a guard against superstition and error; they are indispensable for practice in induction, and they should be well represented in a course of study. History, in which man discovers the meaning of the present and gains wisdom for the future, which is a potent source of ethical thought, must not be omitted. English language, as the means of accurate, vigorous, and beautiful expression, and English literature, which is the treasury of much of the world’s best thought, are not subjects to leave to the election of the pupil.
In addition to the training in observation, memory, expression, and inductive reasoning which most studies offer, we must consider the development of imagination, right emotion, and right will. In other words, æsthetic and ethical training is most essential. Secondary schools need not employ formal courses of study to this end, but various means may be employed incidentally. There are a hundred ways in which taste may be cultivated, and literature is one of the best means for developing the art idea. Moral character is developed by right habit, by the right use of the powers in the process of education, by growth in knowledge of ethical principles, by growth of the spirit of reverence, and by the ethical code of religion. All of these means, except the formal use of the last, may be employed by the schools. And the ethical element is inherent in the very nature of right education. To educate rightly is to educate ethically. History, biography, and literature make direct contributions to ethical knowledge.
We now reach the study of foreign classical tongues. If there is nothing more than formal training, for instance, in Latin, the sooner we abandon its study the better. But we find in it also a valuable content. In the process of development some phases of human possibility seem to have been almost fully realized, while the world has continued to develop along other lines. In such cases we must go back and fill our minds with the concepts that belong to the remote period. The Greek and Latin classics give us an insight into the character of ancient peoples and their institutions, give us the concepts of their civilizations, the beauty of their literatures, and make a practical contribution to the knowledge of our own language. From the foreign modern tongues, German may be chosen because of its valuable literature, its contributions to science, its dignity, and its relation to the Anglo-Saxon element of our own language.
We have endeavored to show that the choice of studies is not a matter of indifference, that mathematics, science, history, language and literature, and art and ethics all belong to the period of secondary education; and we have tried to suggest the inference that all should be employed. The relative importance of each cannot be exactly measured, but experience and reason must guide us.