5. The great teaching instrument was dialectic, i.e., discussion, resolution, or analysis. Its use assumed that the subject-matter of instruction was already in the pupil’s possession, and that the highest office of the teacher was to liberate the thought which had been formed by the active energies of the pupil’s own mind. This is the maieutic art of Socrates.
6. The mode of mental activity which was chiefly brought into requisition was the reason; in a secondary degree the imagination and the emotions; and in a still lower degree, the memory.
7. The large place assigned to music by Plato and Aristotle shows that the culture of the emotions was an important element in Greek education. Æsthetic training was not only an end in itself, but was regarded as the basis of moral and religious culture.
8. In the writings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, we see the first attempt to formulate a body of educational doctrine; we have the germs of a science of education based on psychology, ethics, and politics.
9. In the Republic, we see the theory of compulsion in both its phases: the State must provide an education suitable for State needs; and the young must accept this education because the State has ordained it. For the first time in the history of thought, the State appears distinctly and avowedly as an educator.
10. Practically, education was administered on the basis of caste; though in the construction of his ideal State, Plato made it possible for talent, industry, and worth, to find their proper level.]
FOOTNOTES:
[22] Upon this subject consult the excellent study of Alexander Martin, entitled Les Doctrines Pédagogiques des Grecs. Paris, 1881.
[23] Montaigne, Essais, I. I. chap. XXIV.
[24] The palestra was the school of gymnastics for children; the gymnasium was set apart for adults and grown men.