Plato's chief purpose, in writing upon education, had been to suggest a remedy for the social and moral conditions of his native Athens. Aristotle has no such purpose. He is, in a very deep sense, a cosmopolitan, and writes in the interest of science and universal utility. His range of vision is not confined to Athens, or even to Greece (though he is very proud of being a Greek), but ranges over the whole known world in time and space. Unlike Plato, too, who had been familiar mainly with institutions of the past in Egypt and Greece, Aristotle is deeply affected by the tendencies of the future, and, though no one lays greater stress than he upon the necessity of a knowledge of the past for him who would construct a sound social theory, he nevertheless declares that the whole of the past is shaped by something which is in the future, by the ultimate realization. This view comes out in a paradoxical way in his famous saying that "the State is prior to the individual," by which he means that it is man's political nature working in him that makes him an individual, and at the same time realizes itself in a State. And this brings us to Aristotle's conception of the State, which we must consider before taking up his theory of education, for the reason that to him, as to all the ancient world, education is a function of the State, and is conducted, primarily at least, for the ends of the State.
Before venturing upon a theory of the State, Aristotle, true to his inductive principles, wrote the Constitutional Histories of over two hundred and fifty different states. One of these, the Constitutional History of Athens, has recently been discovered and published (see [p. 96]). He held that it was only by means of a broad induction, thus rendered possible, that he could discover the idea of the State, that is, its self-realizing form. Employing this method, then, he came to the conclusion that the State is that highest social institution which secures the highest good or happiness of man. Having, in a previous treatise, satisfied himself that this good is Worth (ἀρετή), and worth being in every case the full exercise of characteristic or differentiating faculty, he concludes that, since man's distinguishing faculty is reason, the State is the institution which secures to man the fullest and freëst exercise of this. It follows directly that the State is, simply and solely, the supreme educational institution, the university to which all other institutions are but preparatory. And two more conclusions follow: (1) that states will differ in constitution with the different educational needs of the peoples among whom they exist, and (2) that, since all education is but a preparation for some worthy activity, political education, the life of man as a citizen, is but a preparation for the highest activity, which, because it is highest, must necessarily be an end in itself. This activity, Aristotle argues, can be none other than contemplation, the Vision of the Divine (θεωρία).
Results which have moved the world followed logically from this doctrine. Whereas Plato had made provision for a small and select body of super-civic men, and so paved the way for religious monasticism and asceticism, Aristotle maintains that in every civilized man, as such, there is a super-civic part, in fact, a superhuman and divine part, for the complete realization of which all the other parts, and the State wherein they find expression, are but means. Here we have, in embryo, the whole of Dante's theory of the relation of Church and State, a theory which lies at the basis of all modern political effort, however little the fact may be recognized. Here, indeed, we have the whole framework of the Divine Comedy; here too we have the doctrine of the Beatific Vision, which for ages shaped and, to a large extent, still shapes, the life of Christendom. Well might Dante claim Aristotle as his master (see [p. 153])! Well might the great doctors of the Church speak of him as "The Philosopher," and as the "Forerunner of Christ in Things Natural." In vain did Peter Ramus and Luther and Bruno and Bacon depreciate or anathematize him! He is more powerful to-day in thought and life than at any time for the last twenty-two centuries.
It may be asked how far, and in what form, Aristotle conceives the divine life to be possible for man on earth. He answers that, though it cannot be perfectly or continuously realized here, it is in some degree and for certain times attainable (see [p. 161]). In so far as it is a social life, it is the life of friendship or spiritual love (φιλία), to which he has devoted almost two books of his Ethics, books which give us a loftier idea of his personal purity and worth than any other of his extant writings. He insists that friendship is the supreme blessing (see [p. 166]), and that "whatever a man's being is, or whatever he chooses to live for, in that he wishes to spend his life in the company of his friends." It is even said that Aristotle, while teaching in the Lyceum, gathered about him a knot of noble youths and earnest students, and formed them into a kind of community, with a view to leading a truly spiritual social life.
CHAPTER IV
ARISTOTLE'S PEDAGOGICAL STATE
Nature is the beginning of everything.—Aristotle.
Life is more than meat, and the body than raiment.—Jesus.
The forces of the human passions in us, when completely repressed, become more vehement; but when they are called into action for short time and in the right degree, they enjoy a measured delight, are soothed, and, thence being purged away, cease in a kindly, instead of a violent, way. For this reason, in tragedy and comedy, through being spectators of the passions of others, we still our own passions, render them more moderate, and purge them away; and so, likewise, in the temples, by seeing and hearing base things, we are freed from the injury that would come from the actual practice of them.—Jamblichus.
Care for the body must precede care for the soul; next to care for the body must come care for the appetites; and, last of all, care for the intelligence. We train the appetites for the sake of the intelligence, and the body for the sake of the soul.—Aristotle.
The practice of abortion was one to which few persons in antiquity attached any deep feeling of condemnation.... The physiological theory that the fœtus did not become a living creature till the hour of birth had some influence on the judgments passed upon this practice. The death of an unborn child does not appeal very powerfully to the feeling of compassion, and men who had not yet attained any strong sense of the sanctity of human life, who believed that they might regulate their conduct on these matters by utilitarian views, according to the general interest of the community, might very readily conclude that prevention of birth was in many cases an act of mercy. In Greece, Aristotle not only countenanced the practice, but even desired that it should be enforced by law, when population had exceeded certain assigned limits. No law in Greece, or in the Roman Republic, or during the greater part of the Empire, condemned it.... The language of the Christians from the very beginning was very different. With unwavering consistency and with the strongest emphasis, they denounced the practice, not simply as inhuman, but as definitely murder.—Lecky, European Morals.
Aristotle clearly saw that the strong tendency of the human race to increase, unless corrected by strict and positive laws, was absolutely fatal to every system founded on equality of property; and there cannot surely be a stronger argument against any system of this kind than the necessity of such laws as Aristotle himself proposes.... He seems to be fully aware that to encourage the birth of children, without providing properly for their support, is to obtain a very small accession to the population of a country, at the expense of a very great accession of misery.—Malthus, Essay on Population.
Considering Aristotle's views with regard to man, his end, and the function of the State, we can have little difficulty in divining the character and method of his educational system. Man is a being endowed with reason; his end is the full realization of this, his sovereign and distinguishing faculty; the State is the means whereby this is accomplished.