3. Ideals
Ἐν οὐρανᾥ ἴσως παράδειγμα ἀνάκειται τῷ βουλομένῳ ὁρᾶν, καὶ ὁρῶντι ἑαυτὸν κατοικίζειν.
Plato, Republic 592 B.
The rhetorical system of education, much praised and universally accepted, had many points in its favour. It seemed to be the only method, backed as it was by a great tradition. It was regular and well organized and stable by reason of its imperial support. It had produced many great men in the past and had the blessing of mighty names. That was enough for the fourth-century Gaul, who did not trouble to make distinctions. For the voices of protest had long died down, and this was the time of ‘Rhetorica triumphans’.
It was also undoubtedly a necessary means of training men for public speaking, popular because the emperor so substantially encouraged the imperial orator. The service of the State was a laudable aspiration. Moreover, the rhetorical exercises produced ingenuity and nimbleness of wit. They were very laudable, also, for creating lucidity of thought, by insisting-on clear-cut arrangement in every theme. The ‘Panegyrici Latini’ are an example of this. To themselves they could have applied the saying of Voltaire: ‘nous sommes comme les petits ruisseaux: sommes clairs parce que nous sommes peu profonds’.[1369] They have neither the formlessness of the Fathers nor the complexity of Sidonius. Further, there was a good side to all the concentration on form that is so prominent in this period. It kept the language pure at a time when it was feared that Latin would be utterly barbarized.[1370] It preserved the grammar, and did much to preserve the form. When we find Rome tenaciously keeping for herself the teaching of law, and standardizing education by connecting the teachers directly with the emperor, it is because she realizes that the Latin language is the medium through which she rules, and that uniform obedience depends on her subjects uniformly understanding her commands.
There was also a physical aspect. Proper exercise of the organs of speech is regarded by medical opinion as comparable to walking and swimming. In modern times we lay stress on the exercise of all parts of the body, but tend to neglect the proper cultivation of elocution. If we developed it more we might hear less of such prevalent things as ‘minister’s’ and ‘schoolmaster’s’ sore throat. Medical evidence goes to show that better exercise of the vocal organs is far more effective than surgical remedies.
More important was the aesthetic side. We to-day have largely lost the sense of beauty in speech. Language has become to us for the most part a matter of the written word. We have ceased to feel as vividly as Isocrates did in his letter to Philip[1371] the need of the living voice to express the soul of which the letters are the body. The artistic joy which is found in the form and arrangement of words, in the sound given to them by a dramatic speaker, in the gestures of an accomplished orator—this joy has largely disappeared. Yet we feel that it was there in the Latin panegyrists. We may say that theirs is ‘a tale of little meaning’, but we must admit that ‘the words are strong’—strong and beautiful. To read their productions is like looking on a piece of mediaeval art, a stained-glass window, where the figures are grotesque and the fable futile, but the richly blended colours bind us by their beauty. They knew and lived for the inner loveliness of words. And perhaps they would say to us: ‘You who read so widely and know so much, you think you understand. But in order really to understand you must hear the word pronounced so that its sound as well as its form calls up a picture to the mind. It is only when you conceive of the study of a language as artistic both in sound and in form that it becomes the key to poetry. Do you not sometimes neglect the sound in your studies?’
They might also have said that there was an inarticulateness in modern times which led to misunderstanding: that if men had been taught to express their thoughts better there would be less strife and less dumb agony. And to a certain extent they would have been right.
But against them we can urge serious charges. The simplest and most fundamental objection to the rhetorical system is that it neglected the search for truth. It thought too much of means and too little of ends. Lessing stated in his Laocoon the eternal aim of science. ‘The ultimate object of the sciences is truth. Truth is necessary to the soul, and in the satisfaction of this essential need it is tyranny to employ even the slightest check.’[1372] The words apply to the education of our period. For the teachers of that time did not make truth their chief end, and how much tyranny there resulted for the soul of man we have had some opportunity of seeing.
The ancients felt this themselves. They recognized the force of Seneca’s dictum: ‘Scholae non vitae discimus’. Tacitus had criticized the system in his Dialogue, and Petronius is very outspoken in his condemnation. He considers that the school produces in its pupils not wisdom but folly, seeing that what they hear or see there has no bearing on practical life. ‘It is for ever pirates standing in chains on the beach, tyrants writing edicts in which they order sons to cut off their fathers’ heads, oracles to avert a pestilence demanding the sacrifice of three or more virgins, verbal honey-balls, all words and acts sprinkled, as it were, with poppy seed and sesame. Children brought up in these surroundings can no more be sensible than those who live in a kitchen can be fragrant.’[1373]
The school-exercises which Aphthonius prescribed clearly illustrate these objections. The artificiality of obeying all the rules at all times for a certain type of subject is apparent even in the models. In a little essay on ‘Poverty’, introduced by two verses of Theognis, the poet, under the heading ἐγκωμιαστικόν, is praised at length for seeing what an exaggerated emphasis poets lay on myths, and turning to serious moral teaching.[1374] He is also praised for observing metrical rules, which is at any rate less harmful than the sentiment expressed in the text that it is better to die than to be poor. Under the heading ‘cause’ it is alleged that poverty is incompatible with virtue. Those who are rid of poverty grow up fine men and do glorious deeds and entertain the poor. Look at Irus, the beggar (under the heading παραδείγματα)—he was so poor that he had even to change his name: for formerly he was called Arnaeus. And think of all the woes of Ulysses himself when he came home in the disguise of a beggar. How terrible it is to be poor! For all this a verse must be found from some poet (under the heading μαρτυρία παλαιῶν) in order to give the seal of respectability. This quotation is generally chosen quite irrespective of the main theme, Euripides being quoted on this occasion to the effect that poverty cannot change nobility of birth.
Truth is made to consist in the nature of the charge brought, and not sought in the human facts of the case. Thus, in the stock example of a speech against a tyrant,[1375] we have a ‘conjectural attack on the man’s past life’, and an ‘exclusion of pity’ worked up with the utmost artificiality. Ingenuity, not truth, is the object. And the same can be said of the ‘Encomium’, in which we find the germ of the panegyric. Of all these exercises those which fall under the heading of ‘Description’[1376] are the only ones which possess any kind of naturalness.
The reflection of this unnaturalness is abundantly seen in the literature of the day. Almost any work of Ausonius could be taken as an illustration. He consciously opposes grace to strength, and the result is disappointing. ‘Si qua tibi in his versiculis videbuntur ... fucatius concinnata quam verius, et plus coloris quam suci habere, ipse sciens fluere permisi, venustula ut essent magis quam forticula.’[1377] He takes nineteen lines to express the number six,[1378] and fourteen lines to say that there were thirty oysters.[1379] Such a ‘numerum doctis involutum ambagibus’ seems to have been a common way of expending ‘poetic’ energy. Then, as if this were not enough, he goes on to expound the ‘doctae ambages’ in the baldest possible way (Septenis quater adde et unum et unum, etc.) in twelve more lines. Similar examples could be indefinitely multiplied. Nor were they just the whim of an idle humour. We meet them everywhere. Bishop Sidonius at the age of fifty says, in a serious estimate of a man’s poetic abilities, that he was good at ‘echoing’ and ‘recurrent’ verses, and at ‘anadiplosis’[1380] (i.e. resuming a verse with the end phrase of the previous one). Asked by a correspondent as to recurrent verses, he gives a stock example (antiquum), which shows that the literary practice was of some standing. The point of such a verse was that it could be read backwards letter for letter without altering the sense:
Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor,
while in a ‘versus echoicus’ the first part of the first verse was the same as the second part of the second. He adds another kind which he had composed while delayed by a swollen river, and here the merit was that the words could be read backwards retaining the order of the letters in each word, without prejudice to the sense:
Praecipiti modo quod decurrit tramite flumen
tempore consumptum iam cito deficiet.[1381]
His appreciation of Remigius’s declamations show the same emphasis on formal and external merits.[1382] The point is not so much that responsible poets went in for writing verses of the kind quoted, but that they attached so much importance to them.
It is striking how many of Ausonius’s poems have to do with the dead[1383] or the unreal.[1384] Even his letters are full of artificialities. In the same way Sidonius and Avitus of Vienne are always writing epitaphs. Their interest is with the past, of which they are the conscious imitators;[1385] and if Ausonius was genuinely interested in the living present when he wrote the Mosella, that is his one poem which has commended itself to readers of every age. In general, we may say that the ‘litterati’ of this time imitated the past in style and language to a degree that destroyed individuality. Though Sidonius criticizes Titianus for copying people not of his age,[1386] his own writings abound in archaisms.[1387] He praises Claudianus Mamertus[1388] and Leo, the minister of Euric,[1389] for their imitation of antiquity. Claudianus Mamertus recommends as models of style Naevius, Plautus, Cato, Varro, Gracchus, and ‘Chryssiphus’, Fronto and Cicero, adding that even the modern writers of note did not read the moderns: attention must therefore be concentrated on the ancients, for they are the source of modern merit.[1390] Nor was this merely theoretical advice. How extensive the worship of the ancients was, from the scrupulous imitation of Cicero in Eumenius and the panegyrists[1391] to the plagiarism of Vergil by everybody, has been fully demonstrated by the various editors.[1392] All this meant a turning away from the living language, the creation of a scholastic tongue, the intellectualization of education. So, when Greek literature lost its vitality, we find a rigid and senseless Atticism appearing in Dionysius of Halicarnassus during the first century B.C.; the dual was brought up from the underworld; and language, instead of developing its resources, was stretched on the Procrustes-bed of a standard that had ceased to be natural.[1393] So, too, when the living genius of Petrarch and Dante arose, it broke away from the half-dead Latin and turned to Italian. The problem here involved arises to-day in many countries. In Holland the growing Flemish Movement headed by Stijn Streuvels and others has compelled recognition; in Norway there is a similar movement; and in South Africa the Education Department is increasingly recognizing the use of Afrikaans in the schools. For the more education disregards the form of the language that lives in the hearts of the people, the less will it understand and be able to teach them effectively. In other words, an undue archaism means artificiality, means a wandering from the truth.
The result was (as we may judge from the complaints of the critics) that the product of the rhetorical system often found himself in the position of a fire-brigade without a fire. He had all the machinery, and had used it all in mock alarms, but had missed that contact with reality which makes for understanding. He had come to look on facility of speech (to which the Gauls were particularly prone)[1394] as an end in itself. He had been taught to think that everything was a matter of rule,[1395] and often found too late that life demanded a different and a deeper method.
Why was it that the rhetorical system, with all its virtues, failed in this way? To put it quite shortly, we should say that it failed because it did not aim at the best. Ennodius indicates its aims in two brief sentences. ‘Nos vitae maculas tergimus artis ope’[1396]—polish, style, external refinement; ‘Qui nostris servit studiis, mox imperat orbi’—imperial service. These were the two main objects, both of them good and desirable in themselves, but not the highest. And it was because the abuse of these two aims led to a conflict between them and the highest aim, truth, because the rhetorical system was content with a second best[1397] which could not remain uncorrupted except in connexion with the best, it was for this reason that, ultimately, failure inevitably ensued. Other and more material causes may easily be argued, but this is the inherent and fundamental cause.
How far did the Christian ideal prove a truer inspiration to education? It has been remarked that paganism had no idea of progress. The note of pessimism in Roman literature is typified in such passages as Horace’s:
Aetas parentum peior avis tulit
nos nequiores, mox daturos
progeniem vitiosiorem.
But with the Gospels, when the watchword of ‘Estote perfecti’ turned men’s backward glances forward to the light, the doctrine of progress began to establish itself more firmly.[1398]
Now progress depends on the truth and the vividness of the ideal in view, and there can be no doubt that the Christians of our period felt their ideal as a much more living and constant inspiration than the pagans felt theirs. Paulinus of Pella illustrates this. His poem is alive with sincere devotion, and the usual dryness of the author draws a vigour and an inspiration from religious emotion which makes the work, in spite of its lack of literary formalities, compare favourably with the Panegyrists or the semi-Christian writers.[1399] His ardour and singleness of purpose[1400] are also seen in the De Providentia and the Ad Uxorem. In spite of all the sufferings of the ten-years’ slaughter (caedes decennis), there is the clear-eyed calmness of one who sees an ideal whose brightness and steadiness are undimmed by the storm.
Iniusti tumeant, et tuta pace suorum
laetentur scelerum; nonque illos vinea fallat,
non ager: et noceant illaesi, et crimine crescant:
nos quibus in Christo sunt omnia non capiant res
occiduae.[1401]
Nor is the result of this a sighing resignation: the ideal inspires vigorous action:
Sed si quis superest animi vigor, excutiamus
peccati servile iugum, ruptisque catenis,
in libertatem et patriae redeamus honorem;[1402]
and again
Nec quia procidimus fusi certamine primo,
stare et conflictum vereamur inire secundum;[1403]
and throughout there is the note of joyful confidence, the certainty of ultimate victory:
... omnem
vincendi nobis vim de victore petamus
... sine quo non stant qui stare videntur.
All this is found again in the Ad Uxorem. In spite of fire, torture, chains, the final note is a cry of joy:
Semper agam grates Christo, dabo semper honorem:
laus Domini semper vivet in ore meo.[1404]
There can be no doubt that these men were genuine. We feel without being told that the verses are
sincerum vivo de fonte liquorem.
The ideal was deeply felt and widely spread. Even Sidonius could say of Lupus: ‘tota illi actionum suarum intentio ... Christus est’.[1405] There was a conscious strength in the idealism of these men which counted for much. ‘The Roman world crashes into ruin’, wrote Jerome, in another connexion, ‘yet our heads are upright and unbowed.’[1406]
This ideal had its effect on oratory. When Augustine wrote the Christian theory of eloquence,[1407] though he bases the technical part of it entirely on Cicero and though his sermons abound in parallelism, homoioteleuta, and even word-play, yet he made a great advance in declaring that eloquence was not dependent on rhetorical rules but based, rather, on genuine knowledge and true wisdom.[1408] He felt keenly the lack of truth in the rhetorical system. Of its teachers he says that truth was found constantly on their lips but never in their lives: ‘Dicebant Veritas et Veritas, et multum eam dicebant mihi, et nusquam erat in eis, et falsa loquebantur.’[1409] And he laid down his professorship of rhetoric so that he should not be guilty of selling material for the madness of the youths who studied the foolish falsehoods and practised the quibbling disputations of the rhetorical system.[1410] In the Principia Rhetorices he lays stress on understanding the case,[1411] and maintains that the end of oratory is not merely ‘bene aut vere dicere’ (as the later rhetoricians certainly thought), but ‘persuadere’.[1412] Thus he brings out the Christian conception of the essential relation of oratory to man—an ideal which Isocrates and Cicero had preached, but which had gradually been lost.
Similarly, in his theory of Christian education, the influence of the ideal is seen. In his scheme of learning, philosophy must make us understand ‘the order of things’, and help us to distinguish two worlds and Him who is the Father of the Universe.[1413] The whole perspective is determined by the Divine. Everything is related to it. And it is not a mere philosophical abstraction but a real and life-giving centre.
Jung, having described the barrenness of pagan studies, says: ‘Studia eadem in scholis clericorum’,[1414] and proves from Isidore and Gregory that the old Roman scheme of education was accepted throughout by the Christians. But there is something more to be said. The Christian schools, in so far as they did not fall into utter formlessness, accepted the scheme of Martianus Capella and of pagan education. But, in many cases at any rate, there was a change for the better in method and spirit. The Christians used their rhetoric in a living cause, their dialectic to probe questions crowded with contemporary interest; their Livy and Sallust to develop a philosophy of history, their literature to understand and spread the cause of truth for which they had been martyred. The pagans, on the other hand, used their rhetoric for fictitious cases (falsas lites), their dialectic for ingenious trifling, their history as the handmaid of rhetoric, their literature to imitate Cicero or Fronto or Pliny, to write freakish verses, or to flatter the emperor. A sign of the advance made by the Christians in the search for truth is that criticism begins to awake in a world on which traditional ideas had lain
Heavy as frost, and deep, almost, as life.
Vigilantius in Gaul criticizes the rites of the Church and Pelagianism, Priscillianism, the questions about the spirituality of the soul—all point to a new stimulation of the intellect.
Yet Christian education also failed in its search for truth. As we have seen, the exigencies of the time drove its exponents to a zealous narrowness whose watchword was stated by Claudianus Mamertus, when, in his Contra vanos poetas, he said that the divine alone must be studied:
Incipe divinis tantum dare pectora rebus.
By limiting the meaning of ‘divina’ to dogma, the Church imposed fetters on the seeker after truth which, though not very prominent in our period, became exceedingly galling in the times that followed. Eucherius (to take a final example) writes to Valerian appealing to him to lay aside the love of the world and the study of worldly philosophy, to turn to the study of true piety and true philosophy.[1415] The key-note of the letter is: ‘Quid enim prodest homini si mundum universum lucretur, animae vero suae detrimentum patiatur?’ with a special connotation of ‘mundum’. The incompatibility between secular and sacred literature is emphasized, and illustrated by edifying stories about Clement, Gregory, and Paulinus of Nola. The conclusion is: ‘Quin tu, repudiatis illis philosophorum praeceptis ... ad imbibenda Christiana dogmatis studia animum adicis?... In illis namque eorum praeceptis vel adumbrata virtus vel falsa sapientia....’ The position is not that the philosophers should be read and then rejected, but that they should not be read at all.
Thus, the leaders of Christian education in Gaul, however excusable their attitude at the time, established that regrettable dichotomy between secular and sacred knowledge which has been the bane of succeeding ages. While, on the one hand, they made an advance towards truth by stimulating thought and criticism, on the other, they did not, perhaps could not, succeed in recognizing that truth is one and indivisible, and that her seekers know of no such divisions.
And so we are forced back on our ever-recurring problem: how is man, his emotions and environment being what they are, to attain to the scientific attitude of mind? Socrates long ago saw the difficulty of having a body which fills us with ‘passions and desires and fears and all sorts of fancies and foolishness’, and makes it impossible for us to be single-minded in our pursuit of the truth.[1416] Yet he, and the great teachers of mankind throughout the ages, have insisted with an earnestness that reached to martyrdom, that such an unswerving and disinterested quest is the one result in education that truly matters, that it is the condition of progress and the criterion of culture. And if the way is long and the battle fierce, we must choose the dust and heat rather than lose sight of the ideal. καλὸν γὰρ τὸ ἆθλον καὶ ἡ ἐλπὶς μεγάλη.