[21] On a recent occasion Archdeacon Farrar referred to Persian education as follows: “We boast of our educational ideal. Is it nearly as high in some essentials as that even of some ancient and heathen nations long centuries before Christ came? The ancient Persians were worshippers of fire and of the sun; most of their children would have been probably unable to pass the most elementary examination in physiology, but assuredly the Persian ideal might be worthy of our study. At the age of fourteen—the age when we turn our children adrift from school, and do nothing more for them—the Persians gave their young nobles the four best masters whom they could find to teach their boys wisdom, justice, temperance, and courage—wisdom including worship, justice including the duty of unswerving truthfulness through life, temperance including mastery over sensual temptations, courage including a free mind opposed to all things coupled with guilt.” (P.)
[CHAPTER II.]
EDUCATION AMONG THE GREEKS.
GREEK PEDAGOGY; ATHENIAN AND SPARTAN EDUCATION; THE SCHOOLS OF ATHENS; SCHOOLS OF GRAMMAR; SCHOOLS OF GYMNASTICS; THE PALESTRA; SCHOOLS OF MUSIC; THE SCHOOLS OF RHETORIC AND OF PHILOSOPHY; SOCRATES AND THE SOCRATIC METHOD; SOCRATIC IRONY; MAIEUTICS, OR THE ART OF GIVING BIRTH TO IDEAS; EXAMPLES OF IRONY AND OF MAIEUTICS BORROWED FROM THE MEMORABILIA OF XENOPHON; PLATO AND THE REPUBLIC; THE EDUCATION OF WARRIORS AND MAGISTRATES; MUSIC AND GYMNASTICS; RELIGION AND ART IN EDUCATION; THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE GOOD; HIGH INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION; THE LAWS; DEFINITION OF EDUCATION; DETAILED PRECEPTS; XENOPHON; THE ECONOMICS AND THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN; THE CYROPÆDIA; PROTESTS OF XENOPHON AGAINST THE DEGENERATE MANNERS OF THE GREEKS; ARISTOTLE; GENERAL CHARACTER OF HIS PLAN OF EDUCATION; PUBLIC EDUCATION; PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN NATURE; PHYSICAL EDUCATION; INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL EDUCATION; DEFECTS IN THE PEDAGOGY OF ARISTOTLE, AND IN GREEK PEDAGOGY IN GENERAL; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
19. Greek Pedagogy.—Upon that privileged soil of Greece, in that brilliant Athens abounding in artists, poets, historians, and philosophers, in that rude Sparta celebrated for its discipline and manly virtues, education was rather the spontaneous fruit of nature, the natural product of diverse manners, characters, and races, than the premeditated result of a reflective movement of the human will. Greece, however, had its pedagogy, because it had its legislators and its philosophers, the first directing education in its practical details, the second making theoretical inquiries into the essential principles underlying the development of the human soul. In respect of education, as of everything else, the higher spiritual life of modern nations has been developed under the influence of Grecian antiquity.[22]
20. Athenian and Spartan Education.—In the spectacle presented to us by ancient Greece, the first fact that strikes us by its contrast with the immobility and unity of the primitive societies of the East, is a freer unfolding of the human faculties, and consequently a diversity in tendencies and manners. Doubtless, in the Greek republics, the individual is always subordinate to the State. Even in Athens, little regard is paid to the essential dignity of the human person. But the Athenian State differs profoundly from the Spartan, and consequently the individual life is differently understood and differently directed in these two great cities. At Athens, while not neglecting the body, the chief preoccupation is the training of the mind; intellectual culture is pushed to an extreme, even to over-refinement; there is such a taste for fine speaking that it develops an abuse of language and reasoning which merits the disreputable name of sophistry. At Sparta, mind is sacrificed to body; physical strength and military skill are the qualities most desired; the sole care is the training of athletes and soldiers. Sobriety and courage are the results of this one-sided education, but so are ignorance and brutality. Montaigne has thrown into relief, not without some partiality for Sparta, these two contrasted plans of education.
“Men went to the other cities of Greece,” he says, “to find rhetoricians, painters, and musicians, but to Lacedæmon for legislators, magistrates, and captains; at Athens fine speaking was taught; but here, brave acting; there, one learned to unravel a sophistical argument and to abate the imposture of insidiously twisted words; here, to extricate one’s self from the enticements of pleasure and to overcome the menaces of fortune and death by a manly courage. The Athenians busied themselves with words, but the Spartans with things; with the former, there was a continual activity of the tongue; with the latter, a continual activity of the soul.”[23]
The last remark is not just. The daily exercises of the young Spartans,—jumping, running, wrestling, playing with lances and at quoits,—could not be regarded as intellectual occupations. On the other hand, in learning to talk, the young Athenians learned also to feel and to think.