CHAPTER VII.
SCHOOLS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS AND SOPHISTS.
Having thus drawn as complete a picture as the plan of our work would permit, of the physical training of the Greeks in all its branches, comprehending Gymnastics properly so called, together with those other exercises which under the name of field-sports were enjoyed rather than studied under the lead of no master but experience, we now return to that mental discipline, which for the most part exerted its influence in the developement of the intellectual faculties at the same time that the foregoing bodily discipline brought forth all the energies of the frame. We shall thus have traversed the whole circle of Hellenic education, when we shall have exhibited the youth passing through the schools of the philosophers and sophists into the world.[[794]]
Their mode of teaching differed very materially from ours. It scarcely seemed an object with them to devour large quantities of learning, but going leisurely again and again over the same ground they appeared to give the lessons they received time to sink like gentle rain into their minds. Some advantage, too, arose from their method of teaching, as far as possible, orally. The master was to them instead of a library. A book has but one set of phrases for all. But the living teacher, if he found his pupils could not rise to his language, could lower it to meet them half-way, could be brief or expansive, or general or minute, as the necessities of the moment required. There was a familiarity, too, in the relation, scarcely compatible with our manners. The youth forgot he was learning, and rather supposed himself to be searching in the company of a friend for truths equally unknown to both. This appears to have been more particularly the case in their moral studies,[[795]] at least in the Socratic schools, where all the pomp of wisdom was laid aside that it might be the more popular.
It has been already remarked that the first lessons in morals were learned from the poets, whom, in my opinion, Plato wrongs most egregiously when he arraigns their fables as so many sources of immorality.[[796]] He appears, in fact, wilfully to confound them with those impostors, the purificators and diviners, who furnished the Popes with the original hint of penitences and indulgencies, and expiating crimes by proxy. But this is unjust. It is visiting the sins of low and sensual versifiers upon the divine heads of bards whom heaven itself had inspired. However this may be, upon the Greeks young and old no teachers exercised so powerful an influence as the poets, who, from Homer down to Callistratos,[[797]] whether in epic or after-dinner song, wielded the empire of their feelings despotically, prompting them to actions pregnant with renown. And the avidity with which their lessons were imbibed, is compared to that of a swarm of bees alighting (ἐπιπτομένοι)[[798]] on a bed of spring flowers. In fact, what Jason of Pheræ said of himself,—that he was devoured by the love of empire[[799]]—appears to have been true of the Athenian youth, in their irrepressible thirst after knowledge. Such of them, at least, as were εὐφυεῖς καὶ ἱκανοὶ[ἱκανοὶ], are said to have hungered fiercely after philosophy, and that not for any particular part but for the whole. And Socrates declares that he who while young is fastidious in his studies, rejecting this, disliking that, before mature reason has taught him which is useful and which is not, may consider himself what he pleases, but can never be great in learning or philosophy. To excel in these it is necessary insatiably to covet every kind of instruction, and joyfully to enter on the acquisition of it. He says, indeed, that they resemble sight-seers, greedy of every spectacle; or musical people, who are led by the ear wherever fiddling and singing are going forward; except that, with the latter pleasure is the sole motive, with the former an exalted passion for truth.[[800]] But what truths are the object of philosophy? Those which have regard to the nature and attributes of goodness, from which, as from a fountain, flow all the usefulness and advantages of virtue. Philosophy in Greece comprehended religion, and to be religious was to act justly, benevolently, mercifully towards men, humbly and piously towards God. To live thus, that is, to be virtuous, they considered it necessary to possess a knowledge of the whole theory of ethics, since virtue, in their opinion, is incompatible with ignorance. But man, besides being a moral being, accountable to God, is a political being, accountable to the laws of his country. He has duties also to perform towards that country. To perform these properly he must comprehend the nature of a state, and the relations subsisting between the state and the individuals who compose it; that is, he must be acquainted with the science of politics. Again in all free states, reasoning and persuasion, not blind will and brute force, are the instruments of government. The citizen must, therefore, be versed in logic and eloquence,[[801]] that he may think correctly and explain clearly and forcibly to others the convictions which determine his own judgment. We have thus a cycle of Greek studies with the reasons on which they were founded.
With regard to their religious education, which commenced in the nursery and was interwoven with every other study, it may be observed that without it no person at Athens could rise to any eminence, or command, even in private life, the respect of his fellow-citizens. To be in favour with them a man must be supposed to stand well with the gods. They conceived, in fact, that while conscience remained unstifled, there would be a sense of religion, and that when this went, probity, for the most part, and honour fled along with it. For regarding the deity in the light of a parent,—"we are all his offspring,"—irreligion appeared to them something like a disposition to parricide, a compound of injustice with the basest and most atrocious ingratitude. Arrived at this pitch, a man to compass his ends would scruple at nothing. They, therefore, regarded every symptom of impiety as a blow aimed at the democracy, of which Zeus was king. He who tramples on his country’s religion, which is the basis of all its laws, will infallibly, if it be in his power, trample next on those laws themselves, and next on his fellow-citizens whom the laws protect. Hence the terror, the vengeance, and, indeed, the cruelty arising out of the mutilation of the Hermæ, and the profanation of the mysteries, and the prosecution which followed, of Alcibiades, Andocides, and the rest. An attempt had been made to break down that enclosure of reverential sanctity which surrounded the commonwealth, and commended it to the protection of heaven. They considered the act a formal renouncing of the Almighty, and feared,—so imperfect were their notions,—lest the impiety of the few should redound to the detriment of the whole.
The remark is common in the mouths[[802]] of men that the education of the people should be conformable to the spirit of their institutions. But this is a mere truism, and means no more than this,—that men should not be enjoined one thing by their laws and political constitution, and another by the habits and maxims taught in youth. The grand difficulty, however, always has been to make them so to harmonise in practice that they should be but two parts of the same system.
In monarchies[[803]] a spirit of exclusion, something like that on which the system of castes is built, must pervade the whole business of education. The nobility must have schools to themselves, or, if wealthy plebeians be suffered to mingle with them, superior honour and consideration must be yielded to the former. The masters must look up to them and to their families, not to the people for preferment and advancement; and the plebeians, though superior in number, must be weak in influence, and be taught to borrow their tone from the privileged students.
In an oligarchy, properly so called, there should be no mingling of the classes at all. Schools must be established expressly for the governors, and others for the governed. The basis of education should be the notion that some men were born for rule and others for subjection; that the happiness of individuals depends on uninquiring submission to authority; that their rulers are wise and they unwise; that all they have to do with the laws is to obey them; and all teachers must be made to feel that their admission among the great depends on the faithful advocacy of such notions.
In free states, again, the contrary course will best promote the ends of government; the schools must be strictly public, and not merely theoretically but practically open to all. There should be no compulsion to attend them, but ignorance of the things there taught should involve a forfeiture of civil rights as much as being of unsound mind; for in truth, an ignorant man is not of sound mind, any more than one unable to use all his limbs is of sound body. Here the discipline must be very severe. A spirit rigidly puritanical must pervade the studies and preside over the amusements. Every tendency irreligious, immoral, ungentlemanly, as unworthy the dignity of freedom, should be nipped in the bud. The students must be taught to despise all other distinctions but those of virtue and genius, in other words the power to serve the community. They should be taught to contemplate humanity as in other respects wholly on the same level, with nothing above it but the laws. The teachers must be dependent on the people alone, and owe their success to their own abilities and popular manners. And this last in a great measure was the spirit of Athenian education.[[804]]