BOOK II.

EDUCATION.

CHAPTER I.

THEORY OF EDUCATION.-BIRTH OF children.-INFANTICIDE.

WHETHER on education the Greeks thought more wisely than we do or not,' they certainly contemplated the subject from a more elevated point of view. They regarded it as the matrix in which future generations are fashioned, and receive that peculiar temperament and character belonging to the institutions that presided at their birth. Their theories were so large as to comprehend the whole developement of individual existence, from the moment when the human germ is quickened into life until the grave closes the scene, and in many cases looked still further; for the rites of initiation and a great part of their ethics had reference to another world. On this account we find their legislators possessed by extreme solicitude respecting the character of those teachers into whose

1 Dion Chrysostom tells a curious story respecting a blunder of the Athenians on this subject. Apollo once commanding them, if they desired to become good citizens, to put whatever was most beautiful in the ears of their sons, they bored one of the lobes, and inserted a gold earring, not comprehending the meaning of the God. But this ornament would better have suited their daughters

or the sons of Lydians or Phrygians; but for the offspring of Greeks, nothing could have been intended by the God but education and reason, the possessors of which would probably become good men, and the preservers of their country. Orat. xxxii. t. i. p. 653. sqq.-The popular maxim that knowledge is power may be traced to Plato.-De Rep.v. t. vi. p. 268.

hands the souls of the people were to be placed, to receive the first principles of good or evil, to be invigorated, raised, and purified by the former, or by the latter to be perverted, or precipitated down the slopes of vice and effeminacy, by which nations sink from freedom to servitude. Among them, moreover, it was never matter of doubt, whether the light of knowledge should be allowed to stream upon the summits of society only, or be suffered to descend into its lower depths and visit the cottages of the poor. Whatever education had to impart was, in most states, imparted to all the citizens, as far as their leisure or their capacity would permit them to receive it. The whole object, indeed, of education among the Greeks was to create good citizens, from which it has by some been inferred that they confined their views to the delivering of secular instruction. But this is to take a narrow and ignorant view of the subject, since religion was not only an element of education but regarded as of more importance than all its other elements taken together. For it had not escaped the Hellenic legislators, that in many circumstances of life man is placed beyond the reach and scrutiny of laws and public opinion, where he must be free to act according to the dictates of conscience, which, if not rightly trained, purified, and rendered clearsighted by religion, will often dictate amiss. It is of the utmost moment, therefore, that in these retired situations man should not consider himself placed beyond the range of every eye, and so be tempted to lay the foundation of habits which, begun in secrecy, may soon acquire boldness to endure the light and set the laws themselves at defiance. Accordingly over those retired moments in which man at first sight appears to commune with himself alone, religion was called in to teach that there were invisible inspectors, who registered, not only the evil deeds and evil words they witnessed, but even the evil thoughts and emotions of the heart, the first impulses to crime in the lowest abysses of the mind. Consistently with this view of

the subject, we discover everywhere in Greek history and literature traces of an almost puritanical scrupulousness in whatever appeared to belong to religion, so that in addressing the Athenians St. Paul himself was induced to reproach them with the excesses of their devotional spirit, which degenerated too frequently into superstition. But the original design with which this spirit was cultivated was wise and good, its intention being to rescue men from the sway of their inferior passions,-from envy, from avarice, from selfishness, and to inspire them with faith in their own natural dignity by representing their actions as of sufficient importance to excite the notice, provoke the anger, or conciliate the favour of the immor tal gods. This religion, which base and sordid minds regard as humiliating to humanity, was by Grecian lawgivers and founders of states contemplated as a kind of holy leaven designed by God himself, to pervade, quicken, and expand society to its utmost dimensions.

The question which commands so much attention in modern states, viz. whether education should be national and uniform, likewise much occupied the thoughts of ancient statesmen, and it is known that in most cases they decided in the affirmative. It may however be laid down as an axiom, that among a phlegmatic and passive-minded people, where the government has not yet acquired its proper form and developement, the establishment of a national system of education, complete in all its parts and extending to the whole body of the citizens, must be infallibly pernicious. For such as the government is at the commencement such very nearly will it continue, as was proved by the example of Crete and Sparta. For the Cretan legislators, arresting the progress of society at a certain point by the establishment of an iron system of education, before the popular mind had acquired its full growth and expansion, dwarfed the Cretan people completely, and by preventing their keeping pace with their countrymen

rendered them in historical times inferior to all their neighbours. In Sparta, again, the form of polity given to the state by Lycurgus, wonderful for the age in which it was framed, obtained perpetuity solely by the operation of his pædonomical institutions. The imperfection, however, of the system arose from this circumstance, that the Spartan government was framed too early in the career of civilisation. Had its lawgiver lived a century or two later, he would have established his institutions on a broader and more elevated basis, so that they would have remained longer nearly on a level with the progressive institutions of neighbouring states. But he fixed the form of the Spartan commonwealth when the general mind of Greece had scarcely emerged from barbarism; and as the rigid and unyielding nature of his laws forbade any great improvement, Sparta continued to bear about her in the most refined ages of Greece innumerable marks of the rude period in which she had risen. From this circumstance flowed many of her crimes and misfortunes. Forbidden to keep pace with her neighbours in knowledge and refinement, which by rendering them inventive, enterprising, and experienced, elevated them to power, she was compelled, in order to maintain her ground, to have recourse to astuteness, stratagem, and often to perfidy.

The Spartan system, it is well known, made at first, and for some ages, little or no use of books. But this, at certain stages of society, was scarcely an evil;1 for knowledge can be imparted, virtues implanted and cherished, and great minds ripened to maturity without their aid. The teacher, in this case, rendered wise by meditation and experience, takes the place of a book, and by oral communication, by precept, and by example, instructs, and disciplines, and moulds his pupil into what he would have him be. By this

1 Montagne relates, in his Travels (t. iii. p. 51), an instance of how the mind may be cultivated, particularly in poetry, by persons

pro

ignorant of the art of reading and writing. His Lucchese improvisatrice may be regarded as a match for the ancient rhapsodists.

cess both are benefited. The preceptor's mind, kept in constant activity, acquires daily new force and expansion; and the pupil's in like manner. In a state, therefore, like that of Sparta, in the age of Lycurgus, it was possible to acquire all necessary knowledge without books, of which indeed very few existed. But afterwards, when the Ionian republics began to be refined and elevated by philosophy and literature, Sparta, unable to accompany them, fell into the background: still preserving, however, her warlike habits she was enabled on many occasions to overawe and subdue them.

Among the Athenians,' though knowledge was universally diffused, there existed, properly speaking, no system of national education. The people, like their state, were in perpetual progress, aiming at perfection, and sometimes approaching it; but precipitated by the excess of their intellectual and physical energies into numerous and constantly recurring errors. While Sparta, as we have seen, remained content with the wisdom indigenous to her soil, scanty and imperfect as it was, Athens converted herself into one vast mart, whither every man who had anything new to communicate hastened eagerly, and found the sure reward of his ingenuity. Philosophers, sophists, geometricians, astronomers, artists, musicians, actors, from all parts of Greece and her most distant colonies, flocked to Athens to obtain from its quick-sighted, versatile, impartial, and most generous people that approbation which in the ancient world constituted fame. Therefore, although the laws regulated the material circumstances of the schools and gymnasia, prescribed the hours at which they should be opened and closed, and watched earnestly over the morals both of preceptors and pupils, there was a constant indraught of fresh science, a perpetually increasing experience and knowledge of the world, and, consequent thereupon, a deeprooted conviction of their superiority over their neigh

1 Cf. Plat. De Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 1.