At this important point in our discussions, when we are passing into a new region—that of Europe, or “the West,” as contrasted with Asia as “the East”—we may sum up briefly the chief results before considering the special theme of this chapter.
Education in Egypt consisted, on the part of the common people, in learning to read and write the script alphabet derived from the hieroglyphics, the elements of arithmetic, and one’s trade or vocation. A higher system of education was reserved for the candidates for the priestly caste, including the branches of language, mathematics, astronomy, natural science, music and religion. There was also a secret doctrine taught to the illuminated ones who entered on the duties of the priestly caste.
In Egypt the State was as thoroughly subordinated to the priestly class as in Persia to the military caste, or in Phœnicia and Carthage to the mercantile caste. The aim of life was there to prepare for death, and the earthly hull of the body was to be carefully preserved as the soul would need its body again after 3,000 years; it was carefully embalmed and laid to rest in the tombs of the hills, or if royal was placed in a pyramid. The court in which the dead were tried and judgment pronounced upon their lives, decreeing the honors of burial or denying this privilege was the great national educational institution.
With the old Persians education according to Herodotus consisted chiefly in training its youth to bear arms and to tell the truth. To use the bow and arrow skilfully and to ride on horseback fitted him for duties in his warlike nation.
Theoretical education included the arts of reading, writing, and polite behavior, and was in the hands of the eighty thousand Magi, a carefully educated class, who divided their members into three grades: (a) the apprentices, or first initiated; (b) journeymen, those who had passed the second degree, and (c) masters, those who had reached the highest degree. The Persian mind set up the principles of light and darkness, which he further defined as good and evil. It was a point upon which great stress was laid by their teachers, to inculcate a practice of good and an abhorrence of evil. The public education lasted from the age of seven to that of twenty-four. Before the fifth year the child was not to be told “this is bad,” or “this is good,” but only told “do not do it again,” when he committed a fault. Before the age of seven years he was never to be whipped. The virtues of self-denial in matters of eating and drinking, of conquest over one’s appetites, and of obedience to what is prescribed, were especially inculcated.
Of the Phœnician education we know only that it laid great stress upon what is useful in the arts and trades. The Carthaginian colony taught their youth reading, writing, arithmetic, and religious duties, besides a special trade and the use of arms. Their moral instruction was of a questionable character, useful in their commerce perhaps, but admitting of deceit and violence. “Punic faith” became a by-word in surrounding nations for treachery. In Phœnicia we find a marked departure from the family training that formed so large a part of the instruction in other Oriental nations. Indifference toward family and one’s native land, and a passionate love for adventure and commercial gain were fostered necessarily in its system of education, because the State depended upon these qualities for its prosperity.
In Judea the education wore an oriental stamp. Religious history perhaps was the foremost of the branches of study. The arts of reading and writing were required in order that the youth might learn to read the written law which had been especially delivered to his nation from the most high to Moses on Mount Sinai. The law was impressed upon the memory of the child. Song and music were taught but gymnastics was neglected. The girls learned household employments—spinning, weaving, sewing, painting, cooking, dancing, and cymbal-playing. They were educated by their mothers in piety, cleanliness, and morality. A school of prophets seems to have been established by Samuel when music and religious poetry were cultivated. After the Babylonian exile rabbinical lore was prominent in the higher education.
The Mediterranean Sea is the center of all progressive civilization in modern history. Upon its shores the Orient and Occident have met and mingled. Phœnicia, Judea, Greece, Rome, Carthage,—these have played their parts in its history. The European states trace the first impulses of their culture to Asia. But Europe borrowed nothing without assimilating it to a new principle radically different from the Oriental principle. It is the principle of individuality—of personal development, of personal achievement, of personal freedom,—that we meet upon the shores of Europe, and education assumes at once a new interest to us when we come to Greece and Rome.
A wide chasm separates the European education from the Asiatic. The East celebrates the infinite as something not only without bounds and limits, but as something devoid of all distinction, and hence devoid of conscious personality; God is in his essence not revealable to man, is their doctrine. Europe, on the other hand, celebrates the distinctions within the personality. In Western Asia, and particularly in Egypt, there was an approach toward the recognition of personality in God, and in the Hebrew religion there was the complete attainment of this idea. The Hebrew idea finds its beginnings in Asia, but its development looks to Europe, whose peoples find in the religion derived from Judea their ideal.
Greece and Rome develop the idea of individuality in a very different manner from Persia and Egypt, and do not know anything of the Hebrew idea until their national career has been run. Greece does not reach the idea of one God as Jehovah, but it conceives the divine as beautiful individuality—the gods of Olympus, serene and graceful, but having the special character of human beings.