Oligarchical reasoners in modern times employ the bad part of Aristotle’s principle without the good. They represent the rich and great as alone capable of reaching a degree of virtue consistent with the full enjoyment of political privileges: but then they take no precautions, as Aristotle does, that the men so preferred shall really answer to this exalted character. They leave the rich and great to their own self-indulgence and indolent propensities, without training them by any systematic process to habits of superior virtue. So that the select citizens on this plan are at the least no better, if indeed they are not worse, than the remaining community, while their unbounded indulgences excite either undue envy or undue admiration, among the excluded multitude. The select citizens of Aristotle are both better and wiser than the rest of their community: while they are at the same time so hemmed in and circumscribed by severe regulations, that nothing except the perfection of their character can appear worthy either of envy or admiration. Though therefore these oligarchical reasoners concur with Aristotle in sacrificing the bulk of the community to the pre-eminence of a narrow class, they fail of accomplishing the end for which alone he pretends to justify such a sacrifice — the formation of a few citizens of complete and unrivalled virtue.
The arrangements made by Aristotle for the good government of his aristocratical citizens among themselves, are founded upon principles of the most perfect equality. He would have them only limited in number, for in his opinion, personal and familiar acquaintance among them all is essentially requisite to good government (vii. 4. 7). The principal offices of the State are all to be held by the aged citizens: the military duties are to be fulfilled by the younger citizens. The city altogether, with the territory appertaining to it, must be large enough to be αὐτάρκης: but it must not be so extensive as to destroy personal intimacy among the citizens. A very large body are, in Aristotle’s view, incapable of discipline or regularity.
To produce a virtuous citizen, nature, habit, and reason must coincide. They ought to be endued with virtues qualifying them both for occupation and for leisure: with courage, self-denial (καρτερία), and fortitude, to maintain their independence: with justice and temperance, to restrain them from abusing the means of enjoyment provided for them: and with philosophy or the love of contemplative wisdom and science, in order to banish ennui, and render the hours of leisure agreeable to them (vii. 13. 17). They are to be taught that their hours of leisure are of greater worth and dignity than their hours of occupation. Occupation is to be submitted to for the sake of the quiet enjoyment of leisure, just as war is made for the sake of procuring peace, and useful and necessary employments undertaken for the sake of those which are honourable (vii. 13. 8). Aristotle greatly censures (see vii. 2. 5) (as indeed Plato had done before him) the institutions of Lacedæmon, as being directed exclusively to create excellent warriors, and to enable the nation to rule over foreigners. This (he says) is not only not the right end, but is an end absolutely pernicious and culpable. To maintain a forcible sovereignty over free and equal foreigners, is unjust and immoral: and if the minds of the citizens be corrupted with this collective ambition and love of power, it is probable that some individual citizen, taught by the education of the State to consider power as the first of all earthly ends, will find an opportunity to aggrandize himself by force or fraud, and to establish a tyranny over his countrymen themselves (viii. 13. 13). The Lacedæmonians conducted themselves well and flourished under their institutions, so long as they were carrying on war for the enlargement of their dominion: but they were incapable of tasting or profiting by peace: they were not educated by their legislator so as to be able to turn leisure to account (αἴτιος δ’ ὁ νομοθέτης, οὐ παιδεύσας δύνασθαι σχολάζειν — vii. 13. 15).
The education of the citizen is to commence with the body: next the irrational portion of the soul is to be brought under discipline — that is, the will and the appetites, the concupiscent and irascible passions: thirdly, the rational portion of the soul is to be cultivated and developed. The habitual desires are to be so moulded and tutored as to prepare them for the sovereignty of reason, when the time shall arrive for bringing reason into action (vii. 13. 23). They are to learn nothing until five years old (vii. 15. 4), their diversions are to be carefully prepared and presented to them, consisting generally of a mimicry of subsequent serious occupations (vii. 15. 15): and all the fables and tales which they hear recited are to be such as to pave the way for moral discipline (ib.); all under the superintendence of the Pædonom. No obscene or licentious talk is to be tolerated in the city (vii. 15. 7), nor any indecent painting or statue, except in the temples of some particular Deities. No youth is permitted to witness the recitation either of iambics or of comedy (vii. 15. 9), until he attains the age which qualifies him to sit at the public tables. Immense stress is laid by the philosopher on the turn of ideas to which the tender minds of youth become accustomed, and on the earliest combinations of sounds or of visible objects which meet their senses (vii. 15. 10). Πρὸς πάσας δυνάμεις καὶ τέχνας ἐστιν ἃ δεῖ προπαιδεύεσθαι καὶ προεθίζεσθαι πρὸς τὰς ἑκάστων ἐργασίας, ὥστε δῆλον ὅτι καὶ πρὸς τὰς τῆς ἀρετῆς πράξεις (viii. 1. 2).
All the citizens in Aristotle’s republic are to be educated according to one common system: each being regarded as belonging to the commonwealth more than to his own parents. This was the practice at Lacedæmon, and Aristotle greatly eulogizes it (viii. 1. 3).
Aristotle does not approve of extreme and violent bodily training, such as would bring the body into the condition of an athlete: nor does he even sanction the gymnastic labours imposed by the Lacedæmonian system, which had the effect of rendering the Spartans “brutal of soul,â€� for the purpose of exalting their courage (οἱ Λάκωνες — θηριώδεις ἀπεργάζονται τοῖς πόνοις, ὡς τοῦτο μάλιστα πρὸς ἀνδρείαν σύμφερον). He remarks, first, that courage is not the single or exclusive end to be aimed at in a civil education: next, that a savage and brutal soul is less compatible with exalted courage than a gentle soul, trained so as to be exquisitely sensible to the feelings of shame and honour (viii. 3. 3-5). The most sanguinary and unfeeling among the barbarous tribes, he remarks, were very far from being the most courageous. A man trained on the Lacedæmonian system, in bodily exercises alone, destitute even of the most indispensable mental culture (see below), was a real βάναυσος — useful only for one branch of political duties, and even for that less useful than if he had been trained in a different manner.
Up to the age of 14, Aristotle prescribes (ἥβη means 14 years of age — see vii. 15. 11) that boys shall be trained in gentle and regular exercises, without any severe or forced labour. From 14 to 17 they are to be instructed in various branches of knowledge: after 17, they are to be put to harder bodily labour and to be nourished with a special and peculiar diet (ἀναγκοφαγίαις). For how long this is to continue, is not stated. But Aristotle insists on the necessity of not giving them at the same time intellectual instruction and bodily training, for the one of these, he says, counteracts and frustrates the other (viii. 4. 2-3).
The Lacedæmonians made music no part of their education: Isocrat. Panathen. Or. xii. p. 375, B.; they did not even learn ‘letters’ (γράμματα), but they are said to have been good judges of music (viii. 4. 6). Aristotle himself however seems to think it next to impossible that men who have not learned music can be good judges (viii. 6. 1).
Aristotle admits that music may be usefully learnt as an innocent pleasure and relaxation: but he chiefly considers it as desirable on account of its moral effects, on the dispositions and affections. A right turn of the pleasurable and painful emotions is, in his opinion, essential to virtue: particular strains and particular rhythms are naturally associated with particular dispositions of mind: by early teaching, those strains and those rhythms which are associated with temperate and laudable dispositions may be made more agreeable to a youth than any others. He will like best those which he hears earliest, and which he finds universally commended and relished by those about him. A relish for the ὁμοιώματα of virtuous dispositions will tend to increase in him the love of virtue itself (viii. 6. 5. 8).
Aristotle enjoins that the youth be taught to execute music instrumentally and vocally, because it is only in this way that they can acquire a good taste or judgment in music: besides which, it is necessary to furnish boys with some occupation, to absorb their restless energies, and there is none more suitable than music. Some persons alleged that the teaching music as a manual art was banausic and degrading, lowering the citizen down to the station of a hired professional singer. Aristotle meets this objection by providing that youths shall be instructed in the musical art, but only with the view of correcting and cultivating their taste: they are to be forbidden from making any use of their musical acquisitions, in riper years, in actual playing or singing (viii. 6. 3). Aristotle observes, that music more difficult of execution had been recently introduced into the agones, and had found its way from the agones into the ordinary education. He decidedly disapproves and excludes it (viii. 6. 4). He forbids both the flute and the harp, and every other instrument requiring much art to play upon it: especially the flute, which he considers as not ethical, but orgiastical — calculated to excite violent and momentary emotions. The flute obtained a footing in Greece after the Persian invasion; in Athens at that time it became especially fashionable; but was discontinued afterwards (Plutarch alleges, through the influence of Alcibiades).