64. The Function of Poetry in Education.—In the essay entitled How a Young Man Ought to Hear Poems, Plutarch has given his opinion as to the extent to which poetry should be made an element in education. More just than Plato, he does not condemn the reading of the poets. He simply demands that this reading should be done with discretion, by choosing those who, in their compositions, mingle moral inspiration with poetic inspiration. “Lycurgus,” he says, “did not act like a man of sound reason in the course which he took to reform his people that were much inclined to drunkenness, by traveling up and down to destroy all the vines in the country; whereas he should have ordered that every vine should have a well of water near it, that (as Plato saith) the drunken deity might be reduced to temperance by a sober one.”[54]
65. The Teaching of Morals.—Plutarch is above all else a moralist. If he adds nothing in the way of theory to the lofty doctrines of the Greek philosophers from whom he catches his inspiration, at least he enters more profoundly into the study of practical methods which insure the efficacy of fine precepts and exalted doctrines. “That contemplation which is dissociated from practice,” he says, “is of no utility.” He would have young men come from lectures on morals, not only better instructed, but more virtuous. Of what consequence are beautiful maxims unless they are embodied in action? The young man, then, shall early accustom himself to self-government, to reflection upon his own conduct, and to taking counsel of his own reason. Moreover, Plutarch gives him a director of conscience, a philosopher, whom he will go to consult in his doubts, and to whom he will entrust the keeping of his soul. But that which is of most consequence in his eyes is personal effort, reflection always on the alert, and that inward effort which causes our soul to assimilate the moral lessons which we have received, and which causes them to enter into the very structure and fibre of our personality.
“As it would be with a man who, going to his neighbor’s to borrow fire, and finding there a great and bright fire, should sit down to warm himself and forget to go home; so is it with the one who comes to another to learn, if he does not think himself obliged to kindle his own fire within, and influence his own mind, but continues sitting by his master as if he were enchanted, delighted by hearing.”[55]
So are those who are not striving to have a personal morality, but who, incapable of self-direction, are always in need of the tutorship of another.
The great preoccupation of Plutarch—and by this trait he has a legitimate place among the great educators of the world—was to awaken, to excite, the interior forces of the conscience, and to stimulate the intelligence to a high state of activity. When he wrote this famous maxim, “The soul is not a vase to be filled, but is rather a hearth which is to be made to glow,”[56] he was not thinking alone of moral education, but also of a false intellectual education which, instead of training the mind, is content with accumulating in the memory a mass of indigested materials.[57]
66. Marcus Aurelius.—The wisest of the Roman emperors, the author of the book entitled To Myself, better known as Meditations, Marcus Aurelius deserves mention in the history of pedagogy. He is perhaps the most perfect representative of Stoic morality, which is itself the highest expression of ancient morality. He is the most finished type of what can be effected in the way of soul-culture by the influence of home-training and the personal effort of the conscience. His teacher of rhetoric was the celebrated Fronto, of whose character we may judge from this one characteristic: “I toiled hard yesterday,” he wrote to his pupil; “I composed a few figures of speech, with which I am pleased.” On the other hand, Marcus Aurelius found examples for imitation in his own family. “My uncle,” he says reverently, “taught me patience.... From my father I inherited modesty.... To my mother I owe my feelings of piety.” Notwithstanding the modesty that led him to attribute to others the whole of his moral worth, it is especially to himself, to a persistent effort of his own will, and to a ceaseless examination of his own conscience, that he is indebted for becoming the most virtuous of men, and the wisest and purest, next to Socrates, of the moralists of antiquity. His Meditations show us in action that self-education which in our time has suggested such beautiful reflections to Channing.
67. Conclusion.—Finally, it must be admitted that Roman literature is poor in material for educational study. Some passages, scattered here and there in the classical authors, nevertheless prove that they were not absolutely strangers to pedagogical questions.
Thus Horace professed independence of mind; he declares that he is not obliged to swear by the “words of any master.”[58] On the other hand, Juvenal defined the ideal purpose of life and of education when he said that the desirable thing above all others is “a sound mind in a sound body.”[59] Finally, Pliny the Younger, in three words, multum, non multa, “much, not many things,” fixes one essential point in educational method, and recommends the thorough study of one single subject in preference to a superficial study which extends over too many subjects.
While by their taste, their accuracy of thought, and the perfection of their style, the Latin writers are worthy of being placed by the side of the Greeks as proficients in education of the literary type, they at the same time deserve to be regarded as reputable guides in moral education. At Rome, as at Athens, that which formed the basis of instruction was the search after virtue. That which preoccupied Cicero as well as Plato, Seneca as well as Aristotle, was not so much the extension of knowledge and the development of instruction as the progress of manners and the moral perfection of man.
[68. Analytical Summary.—1. In contrast with Greek education, the chief characteristic of which was intellectual discipline or culture, Roman education may be called practical. Greece and Rome have thus furnished the world with two distinct types of education, and their modern representatives are seen in our classical and scientific courses respectively.