Alexander Bain, Channing, and Horace Mann 535-570
APPENDIX 571-575
INDEX 577-598
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.
The two considerations that have chiefly influenced me in making
this translation are the following:--
1. Of the three phases of educational study, the practical, the
theoretical, and the historical, the last, as proved by the number
of works written on the subject, has received but very little
attention from English and American teachers; and yet, if we allow
that a teacher should first of all be a man of culture, and that
an invaluable factor in his professional education is a knowledge
of what has hitherto been done within his field of activity, there
are the best of reasons why the claims of this study should be
urged upon the teaching profession. For giving breadth of view,
judicial candor, and steadiness of purpose, nothing more helpful
can be commended to the teacher than a critical survey of the
manifold experiments and experiences in educational practice. The
acutest thinkers of all the ages have worked at the solution of the
educational problem, and the educating art has been practised under
every variety of conditions, civil, social, religious, philosophic,
and ethnic. Is it not time for us to review these experiments, as
the very best condition for advancing surely and steadily?
2. The almost complete neglect of this study among us has been due,
in great measure, to the fact that there have been no books on the
subject at all adapted to the ends to be attained. A dry, scrappy,
and incomplete narration of facts can end only in bewilderment and
in blunting the taste for this species of inquiry. The desirable
thing has been a book that is comprehensive without being tedious,
whose treatment is articulate and clear, and that is pervaded by
a critical insight at once catholic and accurate. Some years ago
I read with the keenest admiration, the _Histoire Critique des
Doctrines de l’Éducation en France depuis le Seizième Siècle_,
by Gabriel Compayré (Paris, 1879); and it seemed to me a model,
in matter and method, for a general history of education. Within
a recent period Monsieur Compayré has transformed this _Histoire
Critique_ into such a general history of education, under the title
_Histoire de la Pédagogie_. In this book all the characteristics of
the earlier work have been preserved, and it represents to my own
mind very nearly the ideal of the treatise that is needed by the
teaching profession of this country.
The reader will observe the distinction made by Monsieur Compayré
between _Pedagogy_ and _Education_. Though our nomenclature does
not sanction this distinction, and though I prefer to give to the
term _Pedagogy_ a different connotation, I have felt bound on moral
grounds to preserve Monsieur Compayré’s use of these terms wherever
the context would sanction it.
It seems mere squeamishness to object to the use of the word
_Pedagogy_ on account of historical associations. The fact that
this term is in reputable use in German, French, and Italian
educational literature, is a sufficient guaranty that we may use it
without danger. With us, the term _Pedagogics_ seems to be employed
as a synonym for _Pedagogy_. It would seem to me better to follow
continental usage, and restrict the term _Pedagogy_ to the art or
practice of education, and _Pedagogics_ to the correlative science.
I feel under special obligations to Monsieur Compayré, and to his
publisher, Monsieur Paul Delaplane, for their courteous permission
to publish this translation. I am also greatly indebted to my
friend, Mr. C. E. Lowrey, Ph.D., for material aid in important
details of my work.
W. H. PAYNE.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN,
Jan. 4, 1886.
The issue of a second edition has permitted a careful revision of
the translation and the correction of several verbal errors. In
subsequent editions, no effort will be spared by the translator and
his publishers to make this volume worthy of the favor with which
it has been received by the educational public.
W. H. P.
AUG. 1, 1886.
INTRODUCTION.
WHAT A COMPLETE HISTORY OF EDUCATION WOULD BE.--In writing an
elementary history of pedagogy, I do not pretend to write a history
of education. Pedagogy and education, like logic and science, or
like rhetoric and eloquence, are different though analogous things.
What would a complete history of education not include? It would
embrace, in its vast developments, the entire record of the
intellectual and moral culture of mankind at all periods and in
all countries. It would be a _résumé_ of the life of humanity in
its diverse manifestations, literary and scientific, religious
and political. It would determine the causes, so numerous and
so diverse, which act upon the characters of men, and which,
modifying a common endowment, produce beings as different as are a
contemporary of Pericles and a modern European, a Frenchman of the
middle ages and a Frenchman subsequent to the Revolution.
In fact, there is not only an education, properly so called, that
which is given in schools and which proceeds from the direct action
of teachers, but there is a natural education, which we receive
without our knowledge or will, through the influence of the
social environment in which we live. There are what a philosopher
of the day has ingeniously called the _occult coadjutors_ of
education,--climate, race, manners, social condition, political
institutions, religious beliefs. If a man of the nineteenth century
is very unlike a man of the seventeenth century, it is not merely
because the first was educated in a Lycée of the University and
the other in a college of the Jesuits; it is also because in the
atmosphere in which they have been enveloped they have contracted
different habits of mind and heart; it is because they have grown
up under different laws, under a different social and political
_régime_; because they have been nurtured by a different philosophy
and a different religion. Upon that delicate and variable
composition known as the human soul, how many forces which we
do not suspect have left their imprint! How many unobserved and
latent causes are involved in our virtues and in our faults! The
conscious and determined influence of the teacher is not, perhaps,
the most potent. In conjunction with him are at work, obscurely but
effectively, innumerable agents, besides personal effort and what
is produced by the original energy of the individual.
We see what a history of education would be: a sort of philosophy
of history, to which nothing would be foreign, and which would
scrutinize in its most varied and most trifling causes, as well as
in its most profound sources, the moral life of humanity.
WHAT AN ELEMENTARY HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY SHOULD BE.--Wholly different
is the limited and modest purpose of a history of pedagogy, which
proposes merely to set forth the doctrines and the methods of
educators properly so called. In this more limited sense, education
is reduced to the premeditated action which the will of one man
exercises over other men in order to instruct them and train them.
It is the reflective auxiliary of the natural development of the
human soul. To what can be done by nature and by the blind and
fatal influences which sport with human destiny, education adds
the concurrence of art, that is, of the reason, attentive and
self-possessed, which voluntarily and consciously applies to the
training of the soul principles whose truth has been recognized,
and methods whose efficiency has been tested by experience.
Even thus limited, the history of pedagogy still presents to our
inquiry a vast field to be explored. There is scarcely a subject
that has provoked to the same degree as education the best efforts
of human thinking. Note the catalogue of educational works
published in French, which Buisson has recently prepared.[1] Though
incomplete, this list contains not less than two thousand titles;
and probably educational activity has been more fruitful, and has
been given a still greater extension in Germany than in France.
This activity is due to the fact, first of all, that educational
questions, brought into fresh notice with each generation, exercise
over the minds of men an irresistible and perennial attraction;
and also to the fact that parenthood inspires a taste for such
inquiries, and, a thing that is not always fortunate, leads to
the assumption of some competence in such matters; and finally
to the very nature of educational problems, which are not to be
solved by abstract and independent reasoning, after the fashion of
mathematical problems, but which, vitally related to the nature
and the destiny of man, change and vary with the fluctuations of
the psychological and the moral doctrines of which they are but
the consequences. To different systems of psychology correspond
different systems of education. An idealist, like Malebranche, will
not reason upon education after the manner of a sensationalist
like Locke. In the same way there is in every system of morals
the germ of a characteristic and original system of education. A
mystic, like Gerson, will not assign to education the same end as
a practical and positive writer like Herbert Spencer. Hence a very
great diversity in systems, or at least an infinite variety in the
shades of educational opinion.
Still farther, educational activity may manifest itself in
different ways, either in doctrines and theories or in methods and
practical applications. The historian of pedagogy has not merely
to make known the general conceptions which the philosophers of
education have in turn submitted to the approbation of men. If he
wishes to make his work complete, he must give a detailed account
of what has been accomplished, and make an actual study of the
educational establishments which have been founded at different
periods by those who have organized instruction.
Pedagogy is a complex affair, and there are many ways of writing
its history. One of these which has been too little considered,
and which would surely be neither the least interesting nor the
least fruitful, would consist in studying, not the great writers
on education and their doctrines, not the great teachers and their
methods, but pupils themselves. If it were possible to relate
in minute detail, supposing that history would furnish us the
necessary information on this point, the manner in which a great or
a good man has been educated; if an analysis could be made of the
different influences which have been involved in the formation of
talent or in the development of virtue in the case of remarkable
individuals; if it were possible, in a word, to reproduce through
exact and personal biographies the toil, the slow elaboration
whence have issued at different periods solidity of character,
rectitude of purpose, and minds endowed with judicial fairness; the
result would be a useful and eminently practical work, something
analogous to what a history of logic would be, in which there
should be set forth not the abstract rules and the formal laws for
the search after truth, but the successful experiments and the
brilliant discoveries which have little by little constituted the
patrimony of science. This perhaps would be the best of logics
because it is real and in action; and also the best of treatises
on pedagogy, since there might be learned from it, not general
truths, which are often of difficult application and of uncertain
utility, but practical means and living methods whose happy and
efficient applications would be seen in actual use.
We have just traced the imaginary plan of a history of pedagogy
rather than the exact outline of the series of lessons which this
book contains. However, we have approached this ideal as nearly
as we have been able, by attempting to group about the principal
philosophical and moral ideas the systems of education which they
have inspired; by endeavoring to retain whatever is essential; by
adding to the first rapid sketches studied and elaborate portraits;
by ever mingling with the expositions of doctrines and the
analysis of important works the study of practical methods and the
examination of actual institutions; and, finally, by penetrating
the thought of the great educators, to learn from them how they
became such, and by following them, as they have united practice
with theory, in the particular systems of education which they have
directed with success.[2]
DIVISION OF THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.--The abundance and the variety
of pedagogical questions, the great number of thinkers who have
written upon education, in a word, the complexity of the subject,
might inspire the historian of pedagogy with the idea of dividing
his work, and of distributing his studies into several series. For
example, it would be possible to write the history of education
in general by itself, and then the history of instruction, which
is but an element of education. As education itself comprises
three parts, physical education, intellectual education, and moral
education, there would be an opportunity for three series of
distinct studies on these different subjects. But these divisions
would present grave inconveniences. In general, the opinions of an
educator are not susceptible of division; there is a connection
between his manner of regarding the matter of instruction and
the solution he gives to educational questions proper. One mode
of thinking pervades his theories or his practice in the matter
of moral discipline, and his ideas on intellectual education. It
is, then, necessary to consider each of the different systems of
education as a whole.
Perhaps a better order of division would be that which, without
regard to chronological order, should distinguish all pedagogical
doctrines and applications into a certain number of schools, and
connect all educators with certain general tendencies: as the
ascetic tendency, that of the fathers of the church, for example,
and of the middle ages; the utilitarian tendency of Locke, and
of a great number of moderns; the pessimism of Port Royal, the
optimism of Fénelon; the literary school of the humanists of the
Renaissance, and the scientific school of Diderot and of Condorcet.
Such a mode of procedure would have its interest, because in the
manifestations of educational thought so apparently different it
would sharply distinguish certain uniform principles which reappear
at all periods of history; but this would be rather a philosophy of
the history of education than a simple history of pedagogy.
The best we can do, then, is to follow the chronological order
and to study in turn the educators of antiquity, those of the
middle ages, of the Renaissance, and of modern times. We shall
interrogate in succession those who have become eminent as teachers
and educators, and ask of each how he has solved for himself the
various portions of the problems of education. Besides being more
simple and more natural, this order has the advantage of showing
us the progress of education as it has gradually risen from
instinct to reflection, from nature to art, and after long periods
of groping and many halts, ascending from humble beginnings to a
complete and definite organization. This plan also exhibits to
us the beautiful spectacle of a humanity in a state of ceaseless
growth. At first, instruction comprised but few subjects, at the
same time that only a select few participated in it. Then there was
a simultaneous though gradual extension of the domain of knowledge
which must be acquired, of the moral qualities demanded by the
struggle for existence, and of the number of men who are called to
be instructed and educated,--the ideal being, as Comenius has said,
that all may learn and that everything may be taught.
UTILITY OF THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.--The history of pedagogy is
henceforth to form a part of the course of study for the primary
normal schools of France. It has been included in the prescribed
list of subjects for the third year, under this title: _History of
Pedagogy,--Principal educators and their doctrines; Analysis of the
most important works._[3]
Is argument necessary to justify the place which has been assigned
to this study? In the first place, the history of pedagogy
possesses great interest from the fact that it is closely connected
with the general history of thought and also with the philosophic
explication of human actions. Certainly, pedagogical doctrines are
neither fortuitous opinions nor events without significance. On the
one hand, they have their causes and their principles in moral,
religious, and political beliefs, of which they are the faithful
image; on the other, they are instrumental in the training of mind
and in the formation of manners. Back of the _Ratio Studiorum_ of
the Jesuits, back of the _Émile_ of Rousseau, there distinctly
appears a complete religion, a complete philosophy. In the
classical studies organized by the humanists of the Renaissance we
see the dawn of that literary brilliancy which distinguished the
century of Louis XIV., and so in the scientific studies preached
a hundred years ago by Diderot and by Condorcet there was a
preparation for the positive spirit of our time. The education of
the people is at once the consequence of all that it believes and
the source of all that it is destined to be.
But there are other reasons which recommend the study of educators
and the reading of their works. The history of pedagogy is a
necessary introduction to pedagogy itself. It should be studied,
not for purposes of erudition or for mere curiosity, but with a
practical purpose for the sake of finding in it the permanent
truths which are the essentials of a definite theory of education.
The desirable thing just now is not perhaps so much to find new
ideas, as properly to comprehend those which are already current;
to choose from among them, and, a choice once having been made,
to make a resolute effort to apply them to use. When we consider
with impartiality all that has been conceived or practised
previous to the nineteenth century, or when we see clearly what
our predecessors have left us to do in the way of consequences
to deduce, of incomplete or obscure ideas to generalize or to
illustrate, and especially of opposing tendencies to reconcile, we
may well inquire what they have really left us to discover.
It is profitable to study even the chimeras and the educational
errors of our predecessors. In fact, these are so many marked
experiments which contribute to the progress of our methods by
warning us of the rocks which we should shun. A thorough analysis
of the paradoxes of Rousseau, and of the absurd consequences to
which the abuse of the principle of nature leads us, is no less
instructive than meditation on the wisest precepts of Montaigne or
of Port Royal.
In truth, for him who has an exact knowledge of the educators of
past centuries, the work of constructing a system of education is
more than half done. It remains only to co-ordinate the scattered
truths which have been collected from their works by assimilating
them through personal reflection, and by making them fruitful
through psychological analysis and moral faith.
Let it be observed that as studied by the men who first conceived
and practised them, pedagogical methods present themselves to
our examination with a sharpness of outline that is surprising.
Innovators lend to whatever they invent a personal emphasis,
something life-like and occasionally extravagant; but it is exactly
this which permits us the better to comprehend their thought, and
the more completely to discover its truth or its falsity.
However, it is not alone the intellectual advantage which
recommends the history of pedagogy; it is also the moral stimulus
which will be derived from the study. For the sake of encouraging
to noble efforts the men and women who are our teachers, is it of
no moment to present to them the names of Comenius, Rollin, and
Pestalozzi as men who have attained such high excellence in their
profession? Will not the teacher who each day resumes his heavy
burden be revived and sustained? Will he not enter his class-room,
where so many difficulties and toils await him, a better and a
stronger man if his imagination teems with articulate memories of
those who, in the past, have opened for him the way, and shown him
by their example how to walk in it? By the marvellous agency of
electricity we are now able to transport material and mechanical
power, and to cause its transfer across space without regard to
distance. But by reading and by meditation we are able to do
something analogous to this in the moral world; we are able to
borrow from the ancients, across the centuries, something of the
moral energy that inspired them, and to make live again in our own
hearts some of their virtues of devotion and faith. Doubtless a
brief history of pedagogy could not, from this point of view, serve
as a substitute for the actual reading of the authors in question;
but it is a preparation for this work and inspires a taste for it.
We are warranted in saying, then, that the utility of the history
of pedagogy blends with the utility of pedagogy itself. To-day it
is no longer necessary for us to offer any proof on this point.
Pedagogy, long neglected even in our country, has regained its
standing; nay more, it has become the fashion. “France is becoming
addicted to pedagogy” was a remark recently made by one of the
men who, of our day, will have contributed most to excite and
also to direct the taste for pedagogical studies.[4] The words
_pedagogue_, _pedagogy_, have encountered dangers in the history
of our language. Littré tells us that the word _pedagogue_ “is most
often used in a bad sense.” On the other hand, we shall see, if we
consult his dictionary, that several years ago the sense of the
word _pedagogy_ was not yet fixed, since it is there defined as
“the moral education of children.” To-day, not only in language,
but in facts and in institutions, the fate of pedagogy is settled.
Of course we must neither underrate it nor attribute to it a
sovereign and omnipotent efficiency that it does not have. We might
freely say of pedagogy what Sainte-Beuve said of logic: The best is
that which does not argue in its own favor; which is not enamoured
of itself, but which modestly recognizes the limits of its power.
The best is that which we make for ourselves, not that which we
learn from books.
Even with this reserve, the teaching of pedagogy is destined to
render important services to the cause of education, and education,
let us be assured, is in the way of acquiring a fresh importance
day by day. This is due to the fact, first, that under a liberal
government, and in a republican society, it is more and more
necessary that the citizens shall be instructed and enlightened.
Liberty is a dangerous thing unless it has instruction for a
counterpoise. Moreover, we must recollect that in our day, among
those _occult coadjutors_ of which we have spoken, and which at all
times add their action to that of education proper, some have lost
their influence, while others, so far from co-operating in this
movement, oppose it and compromise it. On the one hand, religion
has seen her influence curtailed. She is no longer, as she once
was, the tutelary power under whose shadow the rising generations
peacefully matured. It is necessary that education, through the
progress of the reason and through the reflective development of
morality, should compensate for the waning influence of religion.
On the other hand, social conditions, the very progress of civil
and political liberty, the growing independence accorded the child
in the family, the multiplication of books, good and bad, all these
collateral agents of education are not always compliant and useful
aids. They would prove the accomplices of a moral decadence did
not our teachers make an effort as much more vigorous to affect
the will and the heart, as well as the mind, in order to establish
character, and thus assure the recuperation of our country.
A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF GABRIEL COMPAYRÉ.[5]
Gabriel Compayré was born Jan. 2, 1843, at Albi, a city of Southern
France, containing about fifteen thousand inhabitants, and the
capital of the province of Tarn. His early education was received
from his father, a man of sterling character, and the author of a
book entitled, _Historical Studies Concerning the Albigenses_.
He passed from his father’s care to the _collège_ of Castres,
then to the _lycée_ of Toulouse, and finally to the _lycée
Louis-le-Grand_ at Paris. His fellow-pupils recall with pleasure
his triumphs at these institutions of learning. His brilliant
intellectual powers, his vivid imagination, his well-stored memory,
and his unwearied industry, marked him as destined to render signal
services to his race.
He entered the _École Normale Supérieure_ in 1862. His tastes led
him to philosophical studies; indeed, he had already manifested
a strong tendency to moral and intellectual science. Yet his
intensely practical nature could not long remain satisfied with
metaphysical subtleties where he found no sure foot-hold. He became
a warm advocate of experimental methods, and of the Baconian
philosophy. He set himself to a study of man as he appears in
society and in the family; to the analysis of his emotions and his
acts, and to the deduction, from these analyses, of those rules
which ought to preside over his conduct and his intellectual and
moral development.
He graduated from the normal school in 1865, and was immediately
appointed professor of philosophy at the _lycée_ of Pau. A lecture
upon Rousseau, which he delivered here, brought upon him the severe
condemnation of the ultramontane party, and involved him in a
controversy which has continued to the present time.
In 1868, having been made a fellow of the University, he was
sent to the _lycée_ of Poitiers. At this place he manifested his
sympathy for the common people by a course of lectures to workmen
on moral subjects. About this time he received honorable mention
from the Academy for an eloquent eulogy upon Rousseau, in which he
carefully portrayed the influence of Rousseau upon the government
of his country and upon methods of school instruction, giving him
full credit for the reform in both.
From this time forward Compayré’s life has been filled with labors
and with honors. In addition to his professional duties and
philosophical writings, he has made careful study of the social and
political questions of his country.
Promoted from one post of honor to another, on the 14th of July,
1880, he was appointed Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
In 1874 he presented his theme for his doctor’s degree upon the
_Philosophy of David Hume_, a work of the highest philosophical
thought and language, which received a prize from the Academy.
Between 1874 and 1880 his lectures were largely devoted to the
subjects most closely connected with modern thought. _A Study of
Darwinism_, _The Psychology of a Child_, _Educational Principles_,
are subjects that indicate the sweep of his investigations. The
brilliancy of his style, the liberality of his opinions, and the
extent of his learning have exposed him to bitter attacks from
those who envy his powers and disbelieve his doctrines; yet his
popularity has continually increased, and the young professor has
become a great power in the party of the republic, to whose cause
he early devoted himself.
The works which he published during this period were numerous. He
translated with great care, adding valuable matter of his own:
Bain’s _Inductive and Deductive Logic_, Huxley’s _Hume, His Life
and Philosophy_, and Locke’s _Thoughts on Education_. His most
considerable work is his _History of the Doctrine of Education
in France since the Sixteenth Century_, a work of two volumes,
published in 1879, which reached its fourth edition in France
in 1883, has been translated entire into German, and from which
numerous extracts have been made for the educational journals
of England and America. If we add to these labors his work upon
the _Revue Philosophique_, and the _Dictionnaire de Pédagogie_,
we shall understand why he was called to Paris in 1881, by the
Minister of Public Instruction, to aid in founding the _École
Normale Supérieure des Institutrices, de Fontenay-aux-Roses_. He
successfully arranged the course of instruction for this school. In
the same year he assisted in the organization of a new school at
Sèvres, which prepares young teachers for the course of instruction
in the normal schools.
In 1880 he published his _Manual of Civil and Moral Instruction_,
in two courses, or parts. This book has had a remarkable career. In
less than three years more than three hundred thousand copies of
the first part, and over five hundred thousand of the second part,
were sold.
In 1882, in conjunction with a friend, M. A. Delplan, an author
of merit, he published his _Civil and Moral Lectures_. In 1883 he
published a _Course of Civil Instruction_ for normal schools.
Compayré entered political life in 1881, having been elected
deputy from the arrondissement of Lavaur in Tarn. He occupies a
distinguished position among the men of to-day; his character, his
talents, his popularity, and his devotion to the cause of civil and
intellectual freedom, give him the assurance of a place no less
important among the men of the future.
In his personal appearance Compayré combines the scholar and the
man of the world. His dark hair, parted in the middle, is combed
back from a forehead very high and very broad. His eye is bright
and piercing, and his face, clean shaven except upon the upper lip,
bears the impress of both his ingenuousness and his indomitable
perseverance.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See the _Dictionnaire de Pédagogie_, by F. Buisson, Article
_Bibliographie_.
[2] The book now offered to the public was taught before it was
written. It is the result of the lectures given for three years
past, either at the higher normal school of Fontenay-aux-Roses, or
in the normal courses for men at Sèvres and at Saint Cloud.
[3] Resolution of Aug. 3, 1881.
[4] See the Article of M. Pécaut in the _Revue Pédagogique_, No. 2,
1882.
[5] Furnished by Mr. Geo. E. Gay, Principal of the Malden High
School.
THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.
THE
HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.
CHAPTER I.
EDUCATION IN ANTIQUITY.
PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS; EDUCATION AMONG THE HINDOOS;
POLITICAL CASTE AND RELIGIOUS PANTHEISM; EFFECTS ON
EDUCATION; BUDDHISTIC REFORM; CONVERSATION OF BUDDHA AND
PURNA; EDUCATIONAL USAGES; EDUCATION AMONG THE ISRAELITES;
PRIMITIVE PERIOD; RELIGIOUS AND NATIONAL EDUCATION; PROGRESS
OF POPULAR INSTRUCTION; ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOLS; RESPECT FOR
TEACHERS; METHODS AND DISCIPLINE; EXCLUSIVE AND JEALOUS SPIRIT;
EDUCATION AMONG THE CHINESE; FORMALISM; LÂO-TSZE AND KHUNG-TSZE
(CONFUCIUS); EDUCATION AMONG OTHER PEOPLE OF THE EAST; THE
EGYPTIANS AND THE PERSIANS; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
1. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS.--A German historian of philosophy
begins his work by asking this question: “Was Adam a philosopher?”
In the same way certain historians of pedagogy begin by learned
researches upon the education of savages. We shall not carry our
investigations so far back. Doubtless from the day when a human
family began its existence, from the day when a father and a
mother began to love their children, education had an existence.
But there is very little practical interest in studying these
obscure beginnings of pedagogy. It is a matter of erudition and
curiosity.[6] Besides the difficulty of gathering up the faint
traces of primitive education, there would be but little profit in
painfully following the slow gropings of primeval man. In truth,
the history of pedagogy dates but from the period relatively
recent, when human thought, in the matter of education, substituted
reflection for instinct, art for blind nature. So we shall hasten
to begin the study of pedagogy among the classical peoples, the
Greeks and the Romans, after having thrown a rapid glance over some
Eastern nations considered either in their birthplace and remote
origin, or in their more recent development.
2. THE PEDAGOGY OF THE HINDOOS.--It would not be worth our while to
enter into details respecting a civilization so different from our
own as that of the Hindoos. But we should not forget that we are
in part the descendants of that people, and that we belong to the
same ethnic group, and that the European languages are derived from
theirs.
3. POLITICAL CASTE AND RELIGIOUS PANTHEISM.--The spirit of caste,
from the social point of view, and pantheism, from the religious
point of view, are the characteristics of Hindoo society. The
Indian castes constituted hereditary classes where social rank and
special vocation were determined, not by free choice, but by the
accident of birth. The consequence of this was an endless routine,
with no care either for the individuality, or the personal talents,
or the inclination of children, and without the possibility of
rising by personal effort above one’s rank in life.[7] On the other
hand, religious ideas came to restrict, within the limits where it
was already imprisoned, the activity of the young Hindoo. God is
everywhere present; he manifests himself in all the phenomena of
heaven and earth, in the sun and in the stars, in the Himalayas
and in the Ganges; he penetrates and animates everything; the
things of sense are but the changing and ephemeral vestments of
the unchangeable being. “With this pantheistic conception of the
world and of life, the thought and the will of the Hindoo perished
in the mystic contemplation of the soul. To become master of one’s
inclinations; to abandon every terrestrial thought; after this
life to lose one’s identity, and to be annihilated by absorption
in the divine nature; to prepare one’s self by macerations and
expiations for complete submersion in the original principle of
all being,--this is the highest wisdom, the true happiness of the
Hindoo, the ideal of all serious education.”[8]
4. EFFECTS ON EDUCATION.--It is easy to predict what education
would become under the weight of these double chains, social and
religious. While the ideal in our modern societies is more and
more to enfranchise the individual, and to create for him personal
freedom and self-consciousness, the effort of the Hindoo Brahmins
consisted above all in crushing out all spontaneity, in abolishing
individual predilections, by preaching the doctrine of absolute
self-renunciation, of voluntary abasement, and of contempt for
life. Man was thus born doubly a slave,--by his social condition,
which predestinated him to the routine apprenticeship of his
ancestral caste, and by his mysterious dependence on the divine
being who absorbed in himself all real activity, and left to human
beings only the deceptive and frail appearance of it.
5. BUDDHIST REFORM.--The Buddhist reform, which so profoundly
affected Brahmanism at about the sixth century B.C., did not
sensibly modify, from the educational point of view, the ideas of
the Hindoos. Buddha also taught that the cause of evil resides in
the passions of men, and that in order to attain moral peace, there
is no other means to be employed than that of self-abnegation and
of the renouncement of everything selfish and personal.
6. CONVERSATION OF BUDDHA AND PURNA.--One of the traditions which
permit us the better to appreciate the original character, at once
affecting and ingenuous, of Indian thought, is the conversation of
Buddha with his disciple Purna about a journey the latter was going
to undertake to the barbarians for the purpose of teaching them the
new religion:--
“They are men,” said Buddha, “who are fiery in temper, passionate,
cruel, furious, insolent. If they openly address you in words
which are malicious and coarse, and become angry with you, what
will you think?”
“If they address me to my face in coarse and insolent terms, this
is what I shall think: they are certainly good men who openly
address me in malicious terms, but they will neither strike me with
their hands nor stone me.”
“But should they strike you with their hands and stone you, what
will you think?”
“I shall think that they are good men, gentle men, who strike me
with their hands and stone me, but do not beat me with a club nor
with a sword.”
“But if they beat you with a club and with a sword?”
“They are good men, gentle men, who beat me with a club and with a
sword, but they do not completely kill me.”
“But if they were really to kill you?”
“They are good men, gentle men, who deliver me with so little pain
from this body encumbered with defilements.”
“Very good, Purna! You may live in the country of those barbarians.
Go, Purna! Being liberated, liberate; being consoled, console;
having reached Nirvâna thus made perfect, cause others to go
there.”[9]
Whatever there is to admire in such a strange system of morals
should not blind us to the vices which resulted from its practical
consequences: such as the abuse of passive resignation, the
complete absence of the idea of right and of justice, and no active
virtues.
7. EFFECTS ON EDUCATION.--Little is known of the actual state of
educational practice among the Hindoos. It may be said, however,
that the Brahmins, the priests, had the exclusive charge of
education. Woman, in absolute subjection to man, had no share
whatever in instruction.
As to boys, it seems that in India there were always schools for
their benefit; schools which were held in the open country under
the shade of trees, or, in case of bad weather, under sheds.
Mutual instruction has been practised in India from the remotest
antiquity; it is from here, in fact, that Andrew Bell, at the
close of the eighteenth century, borrowed the idea of this mode
of instruction. Exercises in writing were performed first upon
the sand with a stick, then upon palm leaves with an iron style,
and finally upon the dry leaves of the plane-tree with ink. In
discipline there was a resort to corporal punishment; besides
the rod the teacher employed other original means of correction;
for example, he threw cold water on the offender. The teacher,
moreover, was treated with a religious respect; the child must
respect him as he would Buddha himself.
The higher studies were reserved for the priestly class, who, long
before the Christian era, successfully cultivated rhetoric and
logic, astronomy and the mathematics.
8. EDUCATION AMONG THE ISRAELITES.--“If ever a people has
demonstrated the power of education, it is the people of
Israel.”[10] In fact, what a singular spectacle is offered us by
that people, which, dispossessed of its own country for eighteen
hundred years, has been dispersed among the nations without
losing its identity, and has maintained its existence without a
country, without a government, and without a ruler, preserving
with perennial energy its habits, its manners, and its faith!
Without losing sight of the part of that extraordinary vitality of
the Jewish people, which is due to the natural endowments of the
race, its tenacity of temperament, and its wonderful activity of
intelligence, it is just to attribute another part of it to the
sound education, at once religious and national, which the ancient
Hebrews have transmitted by tradition to their descendants.
9. EDUCATION, RELIGIOUS AND NATIONAL, DURING THE PRIMITIVE
PERIOD.--The chief characteristic of the education of the Hebrews
in the earliest period of their history is that it was essentially
domestic. During the whole Biblical period there is no trace of
public schools, at least for young children. Family life is the
origin of that primitive society where the notion of the state is
almost unknown, and where God is the real king.
The child was to become the faithful servant of Jehovah. To this
end it was not needful that he should be learned. It was only
necessary that he should learn through language and the instructive
example of his parents the moral precepts and the religious beliefs
of the nation. It has been very justly said[11] that “among all
nations the direction impressed on education depends on the
idea which they form of the perfect man. Among the Romans it is
the brave soldier, inured to fatigue, and readily yielding to
discipline; among the Athenians it is the man who unites in himself
the happy harmony of moral and physical perfection; among the
Hebrews the perfect man is the pious, virtuous man, who is capable
of attaining the ideal traced by God himself in these terms: ‘Ye
shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy!’”[12]
The discipline was harsh, as is proved by many passages in the
Bible: “He that spareth his rod, hateth his son,” say the Proverbs;
“but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.”[13] “Withhold
not correction from the child, for if thou beatest him with the
rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt
deliver his soul from hell.”[14] And still more significant:
“Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare
for his crying.”[15]
Only boys, it seems, learned to read and write. As to girls, they
were taught to spin, to weave, to prepare food for the table, to
superintend the work of the household, and also to sing and to
dance.
In a word, intellectual culture was but an incident in the
primitive education of the Hebrews; the great thing, in their eyes,
was moral and religious instruction, and education in love of
country. Fathers taught their children the nation’s history, and
the great events that had marked the destiny of the people of God.
That series of events celebrated by the great feasts which were
often renewed, and in which the children participated, served at
once to fill their hearts with gratitude to God and with love for
their country.
10. PROGRESS OF POPULAR INSTRUCTION.--It is not easy to conceive
to what extent the zeal for instruction was developed among the
ancient Jews in the years that followed the advent of Christianity.
From being domestic, as it had been up to that time, Jewish
education became public. Besides, it was no longer sufficient to
indoctrinate children with good principles and wholesome moral
habits; they must also be instructed. From the first centuries of
the Christian era, the Israelites approached our modern ideal,
with respect to making education obligatory and universal. Like
every brave nation that has been vanquished, whose energy has
survived defeat, like the Prussians after Jena, or the French after
1870, the Jews sought to defend themselves against the effects of
conquest by a great intellectual effort, and to regain their lost
ground by the development of popular instruction.
11. ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOLS.--In the year 64, the high priest,
Joshua Ben Gamala, imposed on each town, under pain of
excommunication, the obligation to support a school. If the town
is cut in two by a river, and there is no means of transit by a
safe bridge, a school must be established on each side. Even to-day
we are far from having realized, as regards the number of schools
and of teachers, this rule stated in the Talmud: If the number of
children does not exceed twenty-five, the school shall be conducted
by a single teacher; for more than twenty-five, the town shall
employ an assistant; if the number exceeds forty, there shall be
two masters.
12. RESPECT FOR TEACHERS.--In that ancient time, what an exalted
and noble conception men had of teachers, “those true guardians of
the city”! Even then, how exacting were the requirements made of
them! But, on the other hand, how they were esteemed and respected!
The Rabbins required that the schoolmaster should be married;
they mistrusted teachers who were not at the same time heads of
families. Is it possible to enforce the advantages of maturity and
experience more delicately than in this beautiful language? “He who
learns of a young master is like a man who eats green grapes, and
drinks wine fresh from the press; but he who has a master of mature
years is like a man who eats ripe and delicious grapes, and drinks
old wine.” Mildness, patience, and unselfishness were recommended
as the ruling virtues of the teacher. “If your teacher and your
father,” says the Talmud, “have need of your assistance, help your
teacher before helping your father, for the latter has given you
only the life of this world, while the former has secured for you
the life of the world to come.”[16]
13. METHOD AND DISCIPLINE.--The child entered school at the age of
six. “If a child below the age of six is brought to your school,”
says the Talmud, “you need not receive him”; and to indicate that
after that age it is proper to regain the lost time, the Talmud
adds, “After the age of six, receive the child, and _load him like
an ox_.” On the contrary, other authorities of the same period,
more judicious and far-seeing, recommend moderation in tasks, and
say that it is necessary to treat “the young according to their
strength, and the grown-up according to theirs.”
There was taught in the Jewish schools, along with reading and
writing,[17] a little of natural history, and a great deal of
geometry and astronomy. Naturally, the Bible was the first book put
in the hands of children. The master interspersed moral lessons
with the teaching of reading. He made a special effort to secure
a correct pronunciation, and multiplied his explanations in order
to make sure of being understood, repeating his comments even to
the _four-hundredth time_ if it were necessary. It seems that
the methods were suggestive and attractive, and the discipline
relatively mild. There were but few marks of the proverbial
severity of the ancient times. “Children,” says the Talmud, “should
be punished with one hand, and caressed with two.” The Christian
spirit, the spirit of him who had said “suffer the little children
to come unto me,” had affected the Jews themselves. However,
corporal punishment was tolerated to a certain extent, but, strange
to say, only for children above the age of eleven. In case of
disobedience, a pupil above that age might be deprived of food, and
even struck with a strap of shoe-leather.
14. EXCLUSIVE AND JEALOUS SPIRIT.--Some reservation must accompany
the encomiums justly due Jewish education. With respect to the
rest of the human race, the Jewish spirit was mean, narrow, and
malevolent. The Israelites of this day have retained something of
these jealous and exclusive tendencies. At the beginning of the
Christian era, the fierce and haughty patriotism of the Jews led
them to proscribe whatever was of Gentile origin, whatever had
not the sanction of the national tradition. Nothing of Greek or
Roman culture penetrated this closed world.[18] The Jewish doctors
covered with the same contempt him who raises hogs and him who
teaches his son Greek science.
15. EDUCATION AMONG THE CHINESE.--We have attempted to throw into
relief the educational practices of two Eastern nations to which
the civilization of the West is most intimately related. A few
words will suffice for the other primitive societies whose history
is too little known, and whose civilization is too remote from our
own, to make their plans of education anything more than an object
of curiosity.
China has been civilized from time immemorial, and at every period
of her long history she has preserved her national characteristics.
For more than three thousand years an absolute uniformity has
characterized this immobile people. Everything is regulated by
tradition. Education is mechanical and formal. The preoccupation of
teachers is to cause their pupils to acquire a mechanical ability,
a regular and sure routine. They care more for appearances, for
a decorous manner of conduct, than for a searching and profound
morality. Life is but a ceremonial, minutely determined and
punctually followed. There is no liberty, no glow of spontaneity.
Their art is characterized by conventional refinement and by a
prettiness that seems mean; there is nothing of the grand and
imposing. By their formalism, the Chinese educators are the Jesuits
of the East.
16. LÂO-TSZE AND KHUNG-TSZE.--Towards the sixth century B.C.
two reformers appeared in China, Lâo-tsze and Khung-tsze. The
first represents the spirit of emancipation, of progress, of the
pursuit of the ideal, of protest against routine. He failed. The
second, on the contrary, who became celebrated under the name of
Confucius, and to whom tradition ascribes more than three thousand
personal disciples, secured the triumph of his ideas of practical,
utilitarian morality, founded upon the authority of the State and
that of the family, as well as upon the interest of the individual.
A quotation from Lâo-tsze will prove that human thought, in the
sixth century B.C., had reached a high mark in China:--
“Certain bad rulers would have us believe that the heart and the
spirit of man should be left empty, but that instead his stomach
should be filled; that his bones should be strengthened rather than
the power of his will; that we should always desire to have the
people remain in a state of ignorance, for then their demands would
be few. It is difficult, they say, to govern a people that are too
wise.
“These doctrines are directly opposed to what is due to humanity.
Those in authority should come to the aid of the people by means
of oral and written instruction; so far from oppressing them and
treating them as slaves, they should do them good in every possible
way.”
In other words, it is by enlightening the people, and by an honest
devotion to their interests, that one becomes worthy to govern them.
If the Chinese have not fully profited by these wise and exalted
counsels, it appears that at least they have attempted to make
instruction general. Hue, a Chinese missionary, boldly declares
that China is the country of all countries where primary
instruction is most widely diffused. To the same effect, a German
writer affirms that in China there is not a village so miserable,
nor a hamlet so unpretending, as not to be provided with a school
of some kind.[19] In a country of tradition, like China, we
can infer what once existed from what exists to-day. But that
instruction which is so widely diffused is wholly superficial
and tends merely to an exterior culture. As Dittes says, the
educational method of the Chinese consists, not in _developing_,
but in _communicating_.[20]
17. EDUCATION AMONG THE OTHER NATIONS OF THE EAST.--Of all the
oriental nations, Egypt is the one in which intellectual culture
seems to have reached the highest point, but only among men of a
privileged class. Here, as in India, the priestly class monopolized
the learning of the day; it jealously guarded the depository of
mysterious knowledge which it communicated only to the kings. The
common people, divided into working classes, which were destined
from father to son to the same social status, learned scarcely more
than was necessary in order to practise their hereditary trades and
to be initiated into the religious beliefs.
In the more military but less theocratic nation, the Persian,
efforts were made in favor of a general education. The religious
dualism which distinguished Ormuzd, the principle of good, from
Ahriman, the principle of evil, and which promised the victory to
the former, made it the duty of each man to contribute to this
final victory by devoting himself to a life of virtue. Hence
arose noble efforts to attain physical and moral perfection. The
education of the Persians in temperance and frugality has excited
the admiration of certain Greek writers, especially Xenophon, and
there will be found in his _Cyropædia_ a thrilling picture of the
brave and noble manners of the ancient Persians.[21]
On the whole, the history of pedagogy among the people of the East
offers us but few examples to follow. That which, in different
degrees, characterizes primitive education is that it is the
privilege of certain classes; that woman is most generally excluded
from its benefits; that in respect of the common people it is
scarcely more than the question of an apprenticeship to a trade,
or of the art of war, or of a preparation for the future life;
that no appeal is made to the free energy of individuals, but that
the great masses of the people in antiquity have generally lived
under the harassing oppression of religious conceptions, of fixed
traditions, and of political despotism.
[18. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--Speaking generally, the education
of the primitive nations of the East had the following
characteristics:--
1. It was administered by the hieratic class. This was due to
the fact that the priests were the only men of learning, and
consequently the only men who could teach.
2. The knowledge communicated was in the main religious, ethical,
and prudential, and the final purpose of instruction was good
conduct.
3. As the matter of instruction was knowledge bearing the
sanction of authority, the learner was debarred from free
inquiry, and the general tendency was towards immobility.
4. As the knowledge of the day was embodied in language, the
process of learning consisted in the interpretation of speech,
and so involved a large and constant use of the memory; and
this literal memorizing of the principles and rules of conduct
promoted stability of character.
5. As the purpose of instruction was guidance, there was no
appearance of the conception that one main purpose of education
is discipline or culture.
6. The conception of education as a means of national
regeneration had a distinct appearance among the Jews; and among
this people we find one form of compulsion,--the obligation
placed on towns to support schools.
7. In Persia, the State appears for the first time as a distinct
agency in promoting education.
8. In China, from time immemorial, scholarship has been made
the condition for obtaining places in the civil service, and in
consequence education has been made subordinate to examinations.
9. Save to a limited extent among the Jews, woman was debarred
from the privileges of education.
10. In the main, education was administered so as to perpetuate
class distinctions. There was no appearance of the conception
that education is a universal right and a universal good.]
FOOTNOTES:
[6] A knowledge of the mental and moral condition of savages serves
the invaluable purpose of showing what education has accomplished
for the human race. There would be much less grumbling at the
tax-gatherer if men could clearly conceive the condition of
societies where no taxes are levied. To know what education has
actually done we need to know the condition of societies unaffected
by systematic education. Such a book as Lubbock’s _Origin of
Civilization_ is a helpful introduction to the history of
education. Whoever reads such a book carefully will be confronted
with this problem: How is it that intellectual inertness, amounting
almost to stupidity, is frequently the concomitant of an acute and
persistent sense-training? Besides, savage tribes are historical
illustrations of what has been produced on a large scale by
“following Nature.” (P.)
[7] There is an argument for caste in the modern fiction of a
“beautiful economy of Nature,” which plants human beings in society
as it does trees in the earth, and thus makes education consist
in the action of environment upon man and in the reaction of man
upon his environment. To support existence, man needs certain
endowments; but the force of circumstances creates these very
endowments. One man is predestined to be a Red Indian, another a
Bushman, and still another an accountant; and in each case the
function of education is to adapt the man to the place where Nature
has fixed him. This modern justification of caste is adroitly
worked out by Mr. Spencer in the first chapter of his _Education_.
(P.)
[8] Dittes, _Histoire de l’éducation et de l’instruction_,
translated by Redolfi, 1880, p. 38.
[9] Burnouf, _Introduction à l’histoire du Bouddhisme_, p. 252.
[10] Dittes, p. 49.
[11] _L’éducation et l’instruction chez les anciens Juifs_, by J.
Simon, Paris, 1879, p. 16.
[12] Levit. xix. 2.
[13] Prov. xiii. 24.
[14] Prov. xxiii. 13, 14.
[15] Prov. xix. 18.
[16] On similar grounds, Alexander declared that he owed more to
Aristotle his teacher, than to Philip his father. (P.)
[17] What were the methods followed in teaching reading and
writing? We are told by Renan in his _Vie de Jésus_ that “Jesus
doubtless learned to read and write according to the method of the
East, which consists in putting into the hands of the child a book
which he repeats in concert with his comrades till he knows it by
heart.”
[18] This statement needs qualifying. “In nearly all the families
of high rank,” says the _Dictionnaire de Pédagogie_ (1^{ere}
Partie, Article JUIFS), “the daughters spoke Greek. The Rabbins
did not look with any favor upon the study of profane philosophy;
but notwithstanding their protests, there were many devoted
readers of Plato and Aristotle. It is said that among the pupils
of the celebrated Gamaliel there were five hundred who studied the
philosophy and the literature of Greece.” (P.)
[19] For a series of interesting documents on the actual state
of education in China, consult the article CHINE, in Buisson’s
_Dictionnaire de Pédagogie_.
[20] Dittes, _op. cit._, p. 32.
[21] On a recent occasion Archdeacon Farrar referred to Persian
education as follows: “We boast of our educational ideal. Is it
nearly as high in some essentials as that even of some ancient
and heathen nations long centuries before Christ came? The
ancient Persians were worshippers of fire and of the sun; most of
their children would have been probably unable to pass the most
elementary examination in physiology, but assuredly the Persian
ideal might be worthy of our study. At the age of fourteen--the
age when we turn our children adrift from school, and do nothing
more for them--the Persians gave their young nobles the four
best masters whom they could find to teach their boys wisdom,
justice, temperance, and courage--wisdom including worship, justice
including the duty of unswerving truthfulness through life,
temperance including mastery over sensual temptations, courage
including a free mind opposed to all things coupled with guilt.”
(P.)
CHAPTER II.
EDUCATION AMONG THE GREEKS.
GREEK PEDAGOGY; ATHENIAN AND SPARTAN EDUCATION; THE SCHOOLS OF
ATHENS; SCHOOLS OF GRAMMAR; SCHOOLS OF GYMNASTICS; THE PALESTRA;
SCHOOLS OF MUSIC; THE SCHOOLS OF RHETORIC AND OF PHILOSOPHY;
SOCRATES AND THE SOCRATIC METHOD; SOCRATIC IRONY; MAIEUTICS,
OR THE ART OF GIVING BIRTH TO IDEAS; EXAMPLES OF IRONY AND OF
MAIEUTICS BORROWED FROM THE MEMORABILIA OF XENOPHON; PLATO AND
THE REPUBLIC; THE EDUCATION OF WARRIORS AND MAGISTRATES; MUSIC
AND GYMNASTICS; RELIGION AND ART IN EDUCATION; THE BEAUTIFUL
AND THE GOOD; HIGH INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION; THE LAWS; DEFINITION
OF EDUCATION; DETAILED PRECEPTS; XENOPHON; THE ECONOMICS AND
THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN; THE CYROPÆDIA; PROTESTS OF XENOPHON
AGAINST THE DEGENERATE MANNERS OF THE GREEKS; ARISTOTLE; GENERAL
CHARACTER OF HIS PLAN OF EDUCATION; PUBLIC EDUCATION; PROGRESSIVE
DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN NATURE; PHYSICAL EDUCATION; INTELLECTUAL AND
MORAL EDUCATION; DEFECTS IN THE PEDAGOGY OF ARISTOTLE, AND IN
GREEK PEDAGOGY IN GENERAL; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
19. GREEK PEDAGOGY.--Upon that privileged soil of Greece, in that
brilliant Athens abounding in artists, poets, historians, and
philosophers, in that rude Sparta celebrated for its discipline
and manly virtues, education was rather the spontaneous fruit of
nature, the natural product of diverse manners, characters, and
races, than the premeditated result of a reflective movement of the
human will. Greece, however, had its pedagogy, because it had its
legislators and its philosophers, the first directing education
in its practical details, the second making theoretical inquiries
into the essential principles underlying the development of the
human soul. In respect of education, as of everything else, the
higher spiritual life of modern nations has been developed under
the influence of Grecian antiquity.[22]
20. ATHENIAN AND SPARTAN EDUCATION.--In the spectacle presented
to us by ancient Greece, the first fact that strikes us by its
contrast with the immobility and unity of the primitive societies
of the East, is a freer unfolding of the human faculties, and
consequently a diversity in tendencies and manners. Doubtless,
in the Greek republics, the individual is always subordinate to
the State. Even in Athens, little regard is paid to the essential
dignity of the human person. But the Athenian State differs
profoundly from the Spartan, and consequently the individual life
is differently understood and differently directed in these two
great cities. At Athens, while not neglecting the body, the chief
preoccupation is the training of the mind; intellectual culture
is pushed to an extreme, even to over-refinement; there is such
a taste for fine speaking that it develops an abuse of language
and reasoning which merits the disreputable name of sophistry. At
Sparta, mind is sacrificed to body; physical strength and military
skill are the qualities most desired; the sole care is the training
of athletes and soldiers. Sobriety and courage are the results
of this one-sided education, but so are ignorance and brutality.
Montaigne has thrown into relief, not without some partiality for
Sparta, these two contrasted plans of education.
“Men went to the other cities of Greece,” he says, “to find
rhetoricians, painters, and musicians, but to Lacedæmon for
legislators, magistrates, and captains; at Athens fine speaking
was taught; but here, brave acting; there, one learned to unravel
a sophistical argument and to abate the imposture of insidiously
twisted words; here, to extricate one’s self from the enticements
of pleasure and to overcome the menaces of fortune and death by
a manly courage. The Athenians busied themselves with words, but
the Spartans with things; with the former, there was a continual
activity of the tongue; with the latter, a continual activity of
the soul.”[23]
The last remark is not just. The daily exercises of the young
Spartans,--jumping, running, wrestling, playing with lances and at
quoits,--could not be regarded as intellectual occupations. On the
other hand, in learning to talk, the young Athenians learned also
to feel and to think.
21. THE SCHOOLS OF ATHENS.--The Athenian legislator, Solon, had
placed physical and intellectual training upon the same footing.
Children, he said, ought, above everything else, to learn “to swim
and to read.” It seems that the education of the body was the chief
preoccupation of the Athenian republic. While the organization of
schools for grammar and music was left to private enterprise, the
State took a part in the direction of the gymnasia. The director
of the gymnasium, or the gymnasiarch, was elected each year by the
assembly of the people. Nevertheless, Athenian education became
more and more a course in literary training, especially towards the
sixth century B.C.
The Athenian child remained in the charge of a nurse and an
attendant up to his sixth or seventh year. At the age of seven, a
pedagogue, that is, a “conductor of children,” usually a slave,
was charged with the oversight of the child. Conducted by his
pedagogue, the pupil attended by turns the school for grammar,
the _palestra_,[24] or school for gymnastics, and the school
for music. The grammarian, who sometimes gave his lessons in
the open air, in the streets and on the public squares, taught
reading, writing, and mythology. Homer was the boy’s reading-book.
Instruction in gymnastics was given in connection with instruction
in grammar. It was begun in the palestra and continued in the
gymnasium. Instruction in music succeeded the training in grammar
and gymnastics. The music-master, or _citharist_, first taught his
pupils to sing, and then to play upon the stringed instruments, the
lyre and the cithara. We know what value the Athenians attributed
to music. Plato and Aristotle agree in thinking that the rhythm
and harmony of music inspire the soul with the love of order,
with harmoniousness, regularity, and a soothing of the passions.
We must recollect, moreover, that music held a large place in the
actual life of the Greeks. The laws were promulgated in song. It
was necessary to sing in order to fulfil one’s religious duties.
It was held that the education of Themistocles had been neglected
because he had not learned music. “We must regard the Greeks,”
says Montesquieu, “as a race of athletes and fighters. Now those
exercises, so proper to make men hardy and fierce, had need of
being tempered by others which could soften the manners. Music,
which affected the soul through the organs of the body, was exactly
adapted to this purpose.”[25]
In the elementary schools of Athens, at least at the first,
the current discipline was severe. Aristophanes, bewailing the
degeneracy of his time, recalls in these terms the good order that
reigned in the olden school:[26]--
“I will relate what was the ancient education in the happy time
when I taught (it is Justice who speaks) and when modesty was the
rule. Then the boys came out of each street with bare heads and
feet, and, regardless of rain and snow, went together in the most
perfect order towards the school for music. There they were seated
quietly and modestly. They were not permitted to cross their legs,
and they learned some good songs. The master sang the song for them
slowly and with gravity. If some one took a notion to sing with
soft and studied inflections, he was severely flogged.”
22. THE SCHOOLS OF RHETORIC AND PHILOSOPHY.--Grammar, gymnastics,
and music proper, represented the elementary instruction of the
young Athenian. But this instruction was reserved for citizens
in easy circumstances. The poor, according to the intentions of
Solon, were to learn only _reading_, _swimming_, and a trade. The
privilege of instruction became still more exclusive in the case of
the schools of rhetoric and philosophy frequented by those of adult
years.
It would be beside our purpose to speak in this place of the
courses in literature, or to make known the methods of those
teachers of rhetoric who taught eloquence to all who presented
themselves for instruction, either in the public squares or in
the gymnasia. The sophists, those itinerant philosophers who went
from city to city offering courses at high rates of tuition, and
teaching the art of speaking on every subject, and of making a plea
for error and injustice just as skilfully as for justice and truth,
at the same time made illustrious and disgraceful the teaching of
eloquence.[27] The philosophers were more worthy of their task.
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were illustrious professors of
ethics. Socrates had no regular school, but he grouped about him
distinguished young men and initiated them into learning and
virtue. The _Academy_ of Plato and the _Lyceum_ of Aristotle were
great schools of philosophy, real private universities, each
directed by a single man. The teaching given in these schools has
traversed the ages, and has been preserved in imperishable books.
Moreover, those illustrious spirits of Greece have transmitted to
us either methods or general ideas which the history of pedagogy
should reverently collect, as the first serious efforts of human
reflection on the art of education.
23. SOCRATES: THE SOCRATIC METHOD.--Socrates spent his life in
teaching, and in teaching according to an original method, which
has preserved his name. He had the genius of interrogation. To
question all whom he met, either at the gymnasium or in the
streets; to question the sophists in order to convince them of
their errors and to confound their arrogance, and presumptuous
young men in order to teach them the truth of which they were
ignorant; to question great and small, statesmen and masons, now
Pericles and now a shopkeeper; to question always and everywhere
in order to compel every one to form clear ideas; such was the
constant occupation and passion of his life. When he allowed
himself to dream of the future life, he said smilingly that he
hoped to continue in the Elysian Fields the habits of the Athenian
Agora, and still to interrogate the shades of the mighty dead. With
Socrates, conversation became an art, and the dialogue a method.
He scarcely ever employed the didactic form, or that of direct
teaching. He addressed himself to his interlocutor, urged him to
set forth his ideas, harassed him with questions often somewhat
subtile, skilfully led him to recognize the truth which he himself
had in mind, or the rather permitted him to go off on a false
route in order finally to discover to him his error and to sport
with his confusion; and all this with an art of wonderful analysis,
with a subtilty of reasoning pushed almost to an extreme, and also
with a great simplicity of language, and with examples borrowed
from common life, such as we are accustomed to call intuitive
examples.
24. THE SOCRATIC IRONY.--To form an intelligible account of the
Socratic method, it is necessary to distinguish its two essential
phases. Socrates followed a double method and sought a double end.
In the first case, he wished to make war against error and to
refute false opinions. Then he resorted to what has been called
the Socratic _irony_.[28] He raised a question as one who simply
desired to be instructed. If there was the statement of an error in
the reply of the respondent, Socrates made no objection to it, but
pretended to espouse the ideas and sentiments of his interlocutor.
Then, by questions which were adroit and sometimes insidious, he
forced him to develop his opinions, and to display, so to speak,
the whole extent of his folly, and the next instant slyly brought
him face to face with the consequences, which were so absurd and
contradictory that he ended in losing confidence, in becoming
involved in his conclusions, and finally in making confession of
his errors.
25. MAIEUTICS, OR THE ART OF GIVING BIRTH TO IDEAS.--Analogous
processes constituted the other part of the Socratic method, that
which he himself called _maieutics_, or the art of giving birth to
ideas.
Socrates was convinced that the human mind in its normal condition
discovers certain truths through its own energies, provided one
knows how to lead it and stimulate it; and so he here appealed to
the spontaneity of his auditor, to his innate powers, and thus
gently led him on his way by easy transitions to the opinion which
he wished to make him admit. However, he applied this method
only to the search for truths which could either be suggested by
the intuitions of reason and common sense, or determined by a
natural induction, that is, psychological, ethical, and religious
truths.[29]
26. EXAMPLES OF IRONY AND MAIEUTICS.--We can best give an exact
idea of the Socratic method by means of examples. These examples
are to be found in the writings of the disciples of Socrates, as in
the _Dialogues_ of Plato, such as the _Gorgias_, the _Euthydemus_,
etc., and still better in the _Memorabilia_ of Xenophon, where
the thought of the master and his manner of teaching are more
faithfully reproduced than in the bold and original compositions of
Plato. While recognizing the insufficiency of these extracts, we
shall here make two quotations, in which is displayed either his
incisive, critical spirit, or his suggestive and fruitful method:
“The thirty tyrants had put many of the most distinguished citizens
to death, and had encouraged others to acts of injustice. ‘It would
surprise me,’ said Socrates one day, ‘if the keeper of a flock, who
had killed one part of it and had made the other part poor, would
not confess that he was a bad herdsman; but it would surprise me
still more if a man standing at the head of his fellow-citizens
should destroy a part of them and corrupt the rest, and were not to
blush at his conduct and confess himself a bad magistrate.’ This
remark having come to the ears of the Thirty, Critias and Charicles
sent for Socrates, showed him the law, and forbade him to hold
conversation with the young.
“Socrates inquired of them if he might be permitted to ask
questions touching what might seem obscure to him in this
prohibition. Upon their granting this permission: ‘I am prepared,’
he said, ‘to obey the laws, but that I may not violate them through
ignorance, I would have you clearly inform me whether you interdict
the art of speaking because it belongs to the number of things
which are good, or because it belongs to the number of things which
are bad. In the first case, one ought henceforth to abstain from
speaking what is good; in the second, it is clear that the effort
should be to speak what is right.’
“Thereupon Charicles became angry, and said: ‘Since you do not
understand us, we will give you something easier to comprehend:
we forbid you absolutely to hold conversation with the young.’
‘In order that it may be clearly seen,’ said Socrates, ‘whether I
depart from what is enjoined, tell me at what age a youth becomes
a man.’ ‘At the time when he is eligible to the senate, for he has
not acquired prudence till then; so do not speak to young men who
are below the age of thirty.’
“‘But if I wish to buy something of a merchant who is below the age
of thirty, may I ask him at what price he sells it?’
“‘Certainly you may ask such a question; but you are accustomed to
raise inquiries about multitudes of things which are perfectly
well known to you; it is this which is forbidden.’
“‘So I must not reply to a young man who asks me where Charicles
lives, or where Critias is.’ ‘You may reply to such questions,’
said Charicles. ‘But recollect, Socrates,’ added Critias, ‘you must
let alone the shoemakers, and smiths, and other artisans, for I
think they must already be very much worn out by being so often in
your mouth.’
“‘I must, therefore,’ said Socrates, ‘forego the illustrations I
draw from these occupations relative to justice, piety, and all the
virtues.’”[30]
In the final passage of this cutting dialogue, observe the
elevation of tone and the gravity of thought. So Socrates had
marvellous skill in allying enthusiasm with irony.
Here is an extract in which Socrates applies the maieutic art to
the establishment of a moral truth, the belief in God:
“I will mention a conversation he once had in my presence with
Aristodemus, surnamed the Little, concerning the gods. He knew
that Aristodemus neither sacrificed to the gods, nor consulted
the oracles, but ridiculed those who took part in these religious
observances. ‘Tell me, Aristodemus,’ said he, ‘are there men whose
talents you admire?’ ‘There are,’ he replied. ‘Then tell us their
names,’ said Socrates. ‘In epic poetry I especially admire Homer;
in dithyrambic, Melanippides; in tragedy, Sophocles; in statuary,
Polycletus; in painting, Zeuxis.’ ‘But what artists do you think
most worthy of admiration, those who form images destitute of
sense and movement, or those who produce animated beings, endowed
with the faculty of thinking and acting?’ ‘Those who form animated
beings, for these are the work of intelligence and not of chance.’
‘And which do you regard as the creation of intelligence, and
which the product of chance, those works whose purpose cannot be
recognized, or those whose utility is manifest?’ ‘It is reasonable
to attribute to an intelligence the works which have some useful
purpose.’”[31]
Socrates then points out to Aristodemus how admirably the different
organs of the human body are adapted to the functions of life and
to the use of man. And so proceeding from example to example, from
induction to induction, always keeping the mind of his auditor
alert by the questions he raises, and the answers that he suggests,
forcing him to do his share of the work, and giving him an equal
share in the train of reasoning, he finally brings him to the goal
which is to make him recognize the existence of God.
27. THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO.--“Would you form,” said J. J. Rousseau,
“an idea of public education? read the _Republic_ of Plato. It is
the finest treatise on education ever written.” For truth’s sake we
must discount the enthusiasm of Rousseau. The _Republic_ doubtless
contains some elements of a wise and practical scheme of education;
but, on the whole, it is but an ideal creation, a compound of
paradoxes and chimeras. In Plato’s ideal commonwealth, the
individual and the family itself are sacrificed to the State. Woman
becomes so much like man as to be subjected to the same gymnastic
exercises; she too must be a soldier as he is. Children know
neither father nor mother. From the day of their birth they are
given in charge of common nurses, veritable public functionaries.
In that common fold, “care shall be taken that no mother recognize
her offspring.” We may guess that in making this pompous eulogy
of the _Republic_, the paradoxical author of the _Émile_ hoped to
prepare the reader for giving a complaisant welcome to his own
dreams.
28. THE EDUCATION OF WARRIORS AND MAGISTRATES.--Plato, by some
unexplained recollection of the social constitution of the
Hindoos, established three castes in his ideal State,--laborers
and artisans, warriors, and magistrates. There was no education
for laborers and artisans; it was sufficient for men of this caste
to learn a trade. In politics, Plato is an aristocrat; he feels
a disdain for the people, “that robust and indocile animal.” It
should be observed, however, that the barriers which he set up
between these three social orders are not insuperable. If a child
of the inferior class gives evidence of exceptional qualities, he
must be admitted to the superior class; and so if the son of a
warrior or of a magistrate is notably incompetent and unworthy of
his rank, he must suffer forfeiture, and become artisan or laborer.
As to the education which he designs for the warriors and the
magistrates, Plato is minutely careful in regulating it. The
education of the warriors comprises two parts,--music and
gymnastics. The education of the magistrates consists of a training
in philosophy of a high grade; they are initiated into all the
sciences and into metaphysics. Plato’s statesmen must be, not
priests, as in the East, but scholars and philosophers.
29. MUSIC AND GYMNASTICS.--Although Plato attaches a high value
to gymnastics, he gives precedence to music. Before forming the
body, Plato, the idealist, would form the soul, because it is the
soul, according to him, which, by its own virtue, gives to the
body all the perfection of which it is capable. Even in physical
exercises, the purpose should be to give increased vigor to the
soul: “In the training of the body, our young men shall aim, above
everything else, at augmenting moral power.” Note this striking
picture of the man who trains only his body: “Let a man apply
himself to gymnastics, and become trained, and eat much, and wholly
neglect music and philosophy, and at first his body will become
strengthened; but if he does nothing else, and holds no converse
with the Muses, though his soul have some natural inclination to
learn, yet if it remains uncultivated by acquiring knowledge, by
inquiry, by discourse, in a word, by some department of music,
that is, by intellectual education, it will insensibly become
weak, deaf, and blind. Like a wild beast, such a man will live
in ignorance and rudeness, with neither grace nor politeness.”
However, Plato is far from despising health and physical strength.
On the contrary, it is a reproach to him that he has imposed on
the citizens of his Republic the obligation of being physically
sound, and of having excluded from it all those whose infirmities
and feeble constitution condemn them to “drag out a dying life.”
The right to live, in Plato’s city, as in the most of ancient
societies, belonged only to men of robust health. The weak, the
ailing, the wretched, all who are of infirm constitution,--Plato
does not go so far as ordering such to be killed, but, what amounts
almost to the same thing,--“they shall be exposed,” that is, left
to die. The good of the State demands that every man be sacrificed
whose health renders him unfit for civil duties. This cruel and
implacable doctrine shocks us in the case of him whom Montaigne
calls the divine Plato, and shocks us even more when we discover it
among contemporary philosophers, whom the inspirations of Christian
charity or the feeling of human fraternity should have preserved
from such rank heartlessness. Is it not Herbert Spencer who blames
modern societies for nourishing the diseased and assisting the
infirm?
30. RELIGION AND ART IN EDUCATION.--Plato had formed a high ideal
of the function of art in education, but this did not prevent
him from being severe against certain forms of art, particularly
comedy and tragedy, and poetry in general. He would have the poets
expelled from the city and conducted to the frontier, though paying
them homage with perfumes which will continue to be shed upon their
heads, and with flowers with which they will ever be crowned. He
admits no other poetry than that which reproduces the manners and
discourse of a good man, and celebrates the brave deeds of the
gods, or chants their glory. As a severe moralist and worshipper
of the divine goodness, he condemns the poets of his time, either
because they attribute to the divinity the vices and passions of
men, or because they invest the imagination with base fears as they
speak of Cocytus and the Styx, and portray a frightful hell and
gods always mad with desire to persecute the human race. Elsewhere,
in the _Laws_, Plato explains his conception of religion. He says
that the religious books placed in the hands of children should
be selected with as much care as the milk of a nurse. God is an
infinite goodness who watches over men, and he should be honored,
not by sacrifices and vain ceremonies, but by lives of justice and
virtue.
For making men moral, Plato counts more upon art than upon
religious feeling. To love letters, to hold converse with the
Muses, to cultivate music and dancing, such, in the opinion of
the noble spirits of Athens, is the natural route towards moral
perfection. In their view, moral education is above all an
education in art. The soul rises to the good through the beautiful.
“Beautiful and good” (καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός) are two words constantly
associated in the speech of the Greeks. Even to-day we have much
to learn from reflections like these: “We ought,” says Plato, “to
seek out artists who by the power of genius can trace out the
nature of the fair and the graceful, that our young men, dwelling,
as it were, in a healthful region, may drink in good from every
quarter, whence any emanation from noble works may strike upon
their eye or their ear, like a gale wafting health from salubrious
lands, and win them imperceptibly from their earliest years into
resemblance, love, and harmony with the true beauty of reason.
“Is it not, then, on these accounts that we attach such supreme
importance to a musical education, because rhythm and harmony sink
most deeply into the recesses of the soul, bringing gracefulness in
their train, and making a man graceful if he be rightly nurtured;
but if not, the reverse? and also because he that has been duly
nurtured therein will have the keenest eye for defects, whether in
the failures of art, or in the misgrowths of nature; and feeling
a most just disdain for them, will commend beautiful objects, and
gladly receive them into his soul, and feed upon them, and grow to
be noble and good; whereas he will rightly censure and hate all
repulsive objects, even in his childhood, before he is able to be
reasoned with; and when reason comes, he will welcome her most
cordially who can recognize her by the instinct of relationship,
and because he has been thus nurtured?”[32]
31. HIGH INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION.--In the _Republic_ of Plato the
intellectual education of the warrior class remains exclusively
literary and æsthetic. In addition to this, the education of the
ruling class is to be scientific and philosophic. The future
magistrate, after having received the ordinary instruction up to
the age of twenty, is to be initiated into the abstract sciences,
mathematics, geometry, and astronomy. To this scientific
education, which is to continue for ten years, there will succeed
for five years the study of dialectics,[33] or philosophy, which
develops the highest faculty of man, the reason, and teaches him to
discover, through and beyond the fleeting appearances of the world
of sense, the eternal verities and the essence of things. But Plato
prolongs the education of his magistrates still further. After
having given them the nurture of reason and intellectual insight,
he sends them back to the cavern[34] at the age of thirty-five,
that is, calls them back to public life, and makes them pass
through all kinds of civil and military employments, until finally,
at the age of fifty, in possession of all the endowments assured
by consummate experience superadded to profound knowledge, they
are fitted to be charged with the burdens of office. In the
_Republic_ of Plato statesmen are not improvised. And yet in this
elaborate system of instruction Plato omits two subjects of great
importance. On the one hand, he entirely omits the physical and
natural sciences, because, in his mystic idealism, things of sense
are delusive and unreal images, and so did not appear to him worthy
of arresting the attention of the mind; and on the other, though
coming after Herodotus, and though a contemporary of Thucydides,
he makes no mention of history, doubtless through a contempt for
tradition and the past.
32. THE LAWS.--In the _Laws_, the work of his old age, Plato
disavows in part the chimeras of the _Republic_, and qualifies the
radicalism of that earlier work. The philosopher descends to the
earth and really condescends to the actual state of humanity. He
renounces the distinction of social castes, and his very practical
and very minute precepts are applied without distinction to
children of all classes.[35]
First note this excellent definition of the end of education: “A
good education is that which gives to the body and to the soul all
the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable.” As
to methods, it seems that Plato hesitates between the doctrine of
effort and the doctrine of attractive toil. In fact, he says on the
one hand that education is a very skilful discipline which, _by way
of amusement_,[36] leads the mind of the child to love that which
is to make it finished. On the other hand, he protests against
the weakness of those parents who seek to spare their children
every trouble and every pain. “I am persuaded,” he says, “that the
inclination to humor the likings of children is the surest of all
ways to spoil them. We should not make too much haste in our search
after what is pleasurable, especially as we shall never be wholly
exempt from what is painful.”
Let us add this definition of a good education: “I call education
the virtue which is shown by children when the feelings of joy or
of sorrow, of love or of hate, which arise in their souls, are made
conformable to order.”
With the statement of these principles, Plato enters into details.
For children up to the age of six, he recommends the use of
swaddling-clothes. The habit of rocking, the natural plays which
children find out for themselves, the separation of the sexes;
swimming, the bow, and the javelin, for boys; wrestling for giving
bodily vigor, and dancing, for graceful movement; reading and
writing reserved till the tenth year and learned for three years.
It would require too much time to follow the philosopher to the
end. In the rules he proposes, he makes a near approach to the
practices followed by the Athenians of his day. The _Republic_
was a work of pure imagination. The _Laws_ are scarcely more than
a commentary on the actual state of practice. But here we still
find what was nearest the soul of Plato, the constant search for a
higher morality.
33. XENOPHON.--As an educator, Xenophon obeyed two different
influences. His master, Socrates, was his good genius. That
graceful and charming book, the _Economics_, was written under the
benign and tempered inspiration of the great Athenian sage. But
Xenophon also had his evil genius,--the immoderate enthusiasm which
he felt for Sparta, her institutions and her laws. The first book
of the _Cyropædia_, which relates the rules of Persian education,
is an unfortunate imitation of the laws of Lycurgus.
34. THE ECONOMICS, AND THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN.--All should read the
_Economics_, that charming sketch of the education of woman. We
may say of this little work what Renan has said of the writings of
Plutarch on the same subject: “Where shall we find a more charming
ideal of family life? What good nature! What sweetness of manners!
What chaste and lovable simplicity!” Before her marriage, the
Athenian maiden has learned only to spin wool, to be discreet, and
to ask no questions,--virtues purely negative. Xenophon assigns
to her husband the duty of training her mind and of teaching her
the positive duties of family life,--order, economy, kindness to
slaves, and tender care of children. As a matter of fact, the
Athenian woman was still held in a position of inferiority. Shut up
in her own apartments, it was an exception that she learned to read
and write; it was very rare that she was instructed in the arts and
sciences. The idea of human dignity and of the value of the human
person had not yet appeared. Man had value only in proportion to
the services which he could render the State, or commonwealth, and
woman formed no part of the commonwealth. Xenophon has the merit
of rising above the prejudices of his time, and of approaching the
ideal of the modern family, in calling woman to participate more
intimately in the affairs of the house and in the occupations of
the husband.[37]
35. THE CYROPÆDIA.--The _Cyropædia_ is not worthy of the same
commendation. Under the pretext of describing the organization of
the Persian State, Xenophon here traces, after his manner, the
plan of an education absolutely uniform and exclusively military.
There is no domestic education, no individual liberty, no interest
in letters and arts. When the period of infancy is over, the young
Persian is made subject to military duty, and must not leave the
encampment, even at night. The state is but a camp, and human
existence a perpetual military parade. Montaigne praises Xenophon
for having said that the Persians taught their children virtue “as
other nations do letters.” But it is difficult to form an estimate
of the methods which were followed in these schools of justice and
temperance, and we may be allowed to suspect the efficiency of the
means proposed by Xenophon; for example, that which consisted in
transforming the petty quarrels of the scholars into regular trials
which were followed by sentences, acquittals, or convictions. The
author of the _Cyropædia_ is on surer ground when, recollecting
his own studies, he recommends the study of history to those who
would become just. He teaches temperance by practice rather than by
precept; his pupils have only bread for their food, only cresses
for seasoning, and only water for their drink.
Whatever may be the faults and the fancies of the _Cyropædia_, we
must recollect, as a partial excuse for them, that the purpose
of the writer in tracing this picture of a simple, frugal, and
courageous life, was to induce a reaction against the excesses of
the fashionable and formal life of the Athenians. As Rousseau, in
the middle of the eighteenth century, protested against the license
and the artificial manners of his time by advising an imaginary
return to nature, so Xenophon, a contemporary of the sophists,
held forth the sturdy virtues of the Persians in opposition to the
degenerate manners of the Greeks and the refinements of an advanced
civilization.
36. ARISTOTLE: GENERAL CHARACTER OF HIS PLAN OF EDUCATION.--By
his vast attainments, by his encyclopædic knowledge, by the
experimental nature of his researches, and by the positive and
practical tendencies of his genius, Aristotle was enabled to
excel Plato in clearness of insight into pedagogical questions.
He had another advantage over Plato in having known and enjoyed
the delights of family life, and in having loved and trained his
own children, of whom he said, “parents love their children as a
part of themselves.” Let us add, finally, that he was a practical
teacher, since he was the preceptor of Alexander from 343 to 340
B.C. Such opportunities, superadded to the force of the most mighty
genius the world has ever seen, give promise of a competent and
clear-sighted educator. Unfortunately, we have lost the treatise,
_On Education_ (περὶ παιδείας), which on the authority of Diogenes
Laërtius, Aristotle is said to have composed; and to form some
conception of his ideas on education, we have at our disposal only
some imperfect sketches, some portions, and those in an imperfect
state, of his treatises on ethics and politics.[38]
Whoever labors to give stability to the family, and to tighten its
bond of union, labors also for the promotion of education. Even in
this respect, education is under great obligations to Aristotle. In
him the communism of Plato finds an able critic. That feeling of
affection which we of to-day would call charity or fraternity, he
declared to be the guaranty and the foundation of social life. Now,
communism weakens this feeling by diluting it, just as a little
honey dropped into a large quantity of water thereby loses all its
sweetness. “There are two things which materially contribute to the
rise of interest and attachment in the hearts of men,--property
and the feeling of affection.” It was thus in the name of good
sense, and in opposition to the distempered fancies of Plato, that
Aristotle vindicated the rights of the family and the individual.
37. PUBLIC EDUCATION.--But Aristotle does not go so far as his
premises would seem to lead him, and relinquish to parents the
care of educating their children. In accordance with the general
tendencies of antiquity, he declares himself the partisan of an
education that is public and common. He commends the Spartans for
having ordained that “education should be the same for all.” “As
there is one end in view in every city,” he says, “it is evident
that education ought to be one and the same in all, and that this
should be a common care, and not of each individual.... It is
the duty of the legislator to regulate this interest for all the
citizens.” There must, therefore, be the intervention of the State,
not from the day of birth, as Plato would have it, for the nursing
of infants, but only at the age of seven, for instructing and
training them in the habits of virtue.
What, then, should be the training of the child, and upon what
subjects would Aristotle direct his studies?
38. THE PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN NATURE.--An essential and
incontrovertible distinction is taken by the Greek philosopher
as his starting-point. There are, he says, three moments, three
stages, in human development: first, there is the physical life of
the body; then, instinct and sensibility, or the irrational part
of the soul; and finally, the intelligence, or the reason. From
this, Aristotle concludes that the course of discipline and study
should be graduated according to these three degrees of life. “The
first care should necessarily be given to the body rather than to
the mind; and then to that part of the spiritual nature which is
the seat of the desires.” But he adds this important observation,
which is a refutation of Rousseau in advance: “In the care which
we give to the sensibilities, we must not leave out of account the
intelligence; and in our care of the body, we must not forget the
soul.”
39. PHYSICAL EDUCATION.--The son of a physician of the Macedonian
court, and well versed in the natural sciences, Aristotle is very
happy in his treatment of physical education. It begins before the
child is born, even before it has been conceived. Consequently he
enjoins a legal regulation of marriages, interdicts unions that
are too early or too late, indicates the climatic conditions most
favorable for marriage, and gives mothers wise counsels on matters
of hygiene, recommending them to nurse their own children, and
prescribing cold baths. Such, in outline, is a plan which a modern
hygienist would not disavow.
40. INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL EDUCATION.--It was the opinion of
Aristotle that intellectual education should not begin before the
age of five. But, in accordance with the principle stated above,
this period of waiting should not be the occasion of loss to the
intelligence of the child; even his play should be a preparation
for the work to which he will apply himself at a later period. On
the other hand, Aristotle strongly insists on the necessity of
shielding the child from all pernicious influences, such as those
which come from association with slaves, or from immoral plays.
In accord with all his contemporaries, Aristotle includes grammar,
gymnastics, and music, among the elements of instruction. To these
he adds drawing. But he is chiefly preoccupied with music, by
reason of the moral influence which he attributes to it. He shared
the prepossession which caused the Greeks to say, that to relax or
to reform the manners of a people, it suffices to add a string to
the lyre or to take one from it.[39]
Aristotle was strongly preoccupied with moral education. Like
Plato, he insists on the greatest care in forming the moral habits
of early life. In his different writings on ethics he has discussed
different human virtues in a spirit at once wise, practical, and
liberal. No one has better sung the praises of justice, of which
he says, “Neither the evening nor the morning star inspires as much
respect as justice.”
It would do Aristotle injustice to seek for a complete expression
of his thoughts on education in the incomplete and curtailed
statements of theory which are found in his _Politics_. In
connection with these, we should recall the admirable instruction
which he himself gave in the Lyceum, and which embraced almost
all the sciences in its vast programme. He excluded from it only
the sciences and the arts which have a mechanical and utilitarian
character. Enslaved on this point to the prejudices of antiquity,
he regarded as servile and unworthy of a free man whatever has a
direct bearing on the practical and material utilities of life. He
recommended to his hearers only studies of the intellectual type,
those whose sole purpose is to elevate the mind and to fill it with
noble thoughts.[40]
41. FAULTS IN THE PEDAGOGY OF ARISTOTLE, AND IN GREEK PEDAGOGY IN
GENERAL.--It must be said in conclusion, that whatever admiration
we may feel for the pedagogy of Aristotle, it was wrong, like that
of all the Greek writers, in being but an aristocratic system of
education. The education of which Plato and Aristotle dreamed was
restricted to a small minority, and was even made possible only
because the majority was excluded from it. The slaves, charged with
the duty of providing for the sustenance of their superiors, and
of creating for them the leisure claimed by Aristotle, had no more
participation in education than in liberty or in property. In the
century of Pericles, at the most glorious period of the Athenian
republic, let us not forget that there were at Athens nearly four
hundred thousand slaves to do the bidding of twenty thousand free
citizens. To indulge in an easy admiration for Greek pedagogy, we
must detach it from its setting, and consider it in itself, apart
from the narrow plan on which the Greek states were constructed,
and apart from that social _régime_ which assured the education of
some, only by perpetuating the oppression of the many.
[42. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. A leading conception in Greek
education is that of symmetry, or harmony; the ideal man,
in Plato’s phrase, must be “harmoniously constituted”; all
opposing tendencies must be reconciled; and while the physical,
the intellectual, and the moral must each be made the subject
of systematic training, there must be no disproportionate
development in either direction.
2. The preoccupation of the Greek teacher was discipline or
culture, rather than the communication of useful knowledge; and
the final aim was a life of contemplation, rather than a life of
action; ethical rather than practical; “good conduct” rather than
mastery over what is material.
3. Physical training received great emphasis, not as an end in
itself, but as a means towards mental and spiritual health; and
knowledge was valued chiefly as the means for attaining moral
excellence.
4. The staple of instruction was _wisdom_, _i.e._, ethical and
prudential knowledge, which was the basis of right action; and
teaching, especially according to the Socratic conception of it,
consisted in causing the pupil’s mind to react on the materials
supplied by his own mind. Socrates, says Lewes, “believed that
in each man lay the germs of wisdom. He believed that no science
could be _taught_; only _drawn out_.”
5. The great teaching instrument was dialectic, _i.e._,
discussion, resolution, or analysis. Its use assumed that
the subject-matter of instruction was already in the pupil’s
possession, and that the highest office of the teacher was to
liberate the thought which had been formed by the active energies
of the pupil’s own mind. This is the maieutic art of Socrates.
6. The mode of mental activity which was chiefly brought into
requisition was the reason; in a secondary degree the imagination
and the emotions; and in a still lower degree, the memory.
7. The large place assigned to music by Plato and Aristotle shows
that the culture of the emotions was an important element in
Greek education. Æsthetic training was not only an end in itself,
but was regarded as the basis of moral and religious culture.
8. In the writings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, we see the
first attempt to formulate a body of educational doctrine; we
have the germs of a science of education based on psychology,
ethics, and politics.
9. In the _Republic_, we see the theory of compulsion in both its
phases: the State must provide an education suitable for State
needs; and the young must accept this education because the State
has ordained it. For the first time in the history of thought,
the State appears distinctly and avowedly as an educator.
10. Practically, education was administered on the basis of
caste; though in the construction of his ideal State, Plato made
it possible for talent, industry, and worth, to find their proper
level.]
FOOTNOTES:
[22] Upon this subject consult the excellent study of Alexander
Martin, entitled _Les Doctrines Pédagogiques des Grecs_. Paris,
1881.
[23] Montaigne, _Essais_, I. I. chap. XXIV.
[24] The _palestra_ was the school of gymnastics for children; the
_gymnasium_ was set apart for adults and grown men.
[25] Montesquieu, _Esprit des lois_, I. IV. chap. VIII.
[26] Aristophanes, _Clouds_.
[27] The reputation of the sophists has been considerably raised by
Mr. Grote (_History of Greece_, vol. VIII.). For an entertaining
account of a sophist of a later age, see Pliny’s _Letters_,
Melmoth’s translation, Book II., Letter III. See also Blackie’s
_Four Phases of Morals_, and Ferrier’s _Greek Philosophy_. (P.)
[28] The primitive meaning of the Greek word εἰρωνεία, irony,
is interrogation. Socrates gave a jeering, ironical turn to his
questions, and in consequence this word lost its primary meaning,
and took the one which we give it at this time.
[29] The Socratic method for the discovery of truth can be employed
only in those cases where the pupil has the crude materials of
the new knowledge actually in store. Psychology, logic, ethics,
mathematics, and perhaps grammar and rhetoric, fall within the
sphere of the Socratic method; but to apply this method of
instruction to geography, history, geology, and, in general,
to subjects where the material is inaccessible, is palpably
absurd. The Socratic dialogue, in its negative phase, is aimed
at presumption, arrogance, and pretentious ignorance; but it is
sometimes misused to badger and bewilder an honest and docile
pupil. (P.)
[30] _Memorabilia_, I. II.
[31] _Memorabilia_, I. IV.
[32] _Republic_, 401, 402. I have quoted from the version of
Vaughan and Davies. (P.)
[33] Dialectic, as used in the _Republic_, is neither philosophy
nor logic. I doubt whether it can be considered a subject of
instruction at all. It is rather a method or an exercise, the
purpose of which is to subject received opinions, formulated
knowledge, current beliefs, etc., to a sifting or analysis for the
purpose of distinguishing the real from the apparent, the true from
the false. The Socratic dialogues are examples of the dialectic
method. Dialectic might be defined as the _method of thought
proper_ or the _discursive reason in act_. (P.)
[34] See the allegory of the cavern, _Republic_, Book VII. ‘In
Plato’s scheme of education, knowing is to precede doing,’ thus
following Socrates (_Memorabilia_, IV. chap. II.) and Bias (Γνῶθι
καὶ τότε πράττε), and anticipating Bacon (“studies perfect nature,
and are perfected by experience”). (P.)
[35] See especially Book VII. of the _Laws_.
[36] Compare also this quotation: “A free mind ought to learn
nothing as a slave. The lesson that is made to enter the mind
by force, will not remain there. Then use no violence towards
children; the rather, cause them to learn while playing.”
[37] See particularly Chaps. VII. and VIII.
[38] See especially the _Politics_, Books IV., V.
[39] It seems impossible to comprehend the almost sovereign power
which the Greeks ascribed to music, unless we conceive that the
Greek was endowed with peculiar and extreme sensitiveness. Perhaps
there is special significance in the story of Orpheus and his lyre.
(P.)
[40] I think it may be doubted whether the disfavor shown by Plato
and Aristotle to practical studies was merely a mean prejudice.
Preoccupied as they were with the disciplinary value of studies,
they may have seen that the culture aim and the utilitarian aim are
in some sort antagonistic. (P.)
CHAPTER III.
EDUCATION AT ROME.
TWO PERIODS IN ROMAN EDUCATION; EDUCATION OF THE PRIMITIVE
ROMANS; PHYSICAL AND MILITARY EDUCATION; ROME AT SCHOOL IN
GREECE; WHY THE ROMANS HAD NO GREAT EDUCATORS; VARRO; CICERO;
QUINTILIAN; THE INSTITUTES OF ORATORY; GENERAL PLAN OF EDUCATION;
THE CHILD’S FIRST EDUCATION; READING AND WRITING; PUBLIC
EDUCATION; THE DUTIES OF TEACHERS; GRAMMAR AND RHETORIC; THE
SIMULTANEOUS STUDY OF THE SCIENCES; SCHOOLS FOR PHILOSOPHY;
SENECA; PLUTARCH; THE LIVES OF ILLUSTRIOUS MEN; THE TREATISE ON
THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN; A CHARMING PICTURE OF FAMILY LIFE;
THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN; THE FUNCTION OF POETRY IN EDUCATION;
THE TEACHING OF MORALS; MARCUS AURELIUS AND PERSONAL EDUCATION;
CONCLUSION; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
43. TWO PERIODS IN ROMAN EDUCATION.--In Greece, as we have seen,
there were two essentially different systems of education in
use: at Sparta, a one-sided education, wholly military, with no
regard for intellectual culture; at Athens, a complete education,
which brought into happy harmony the training of the body and the
development of the mind, and by means of which, as Thucydides
observed, “men philosophized without becoming effeminate.”
Rome, in the long course of her history, followed these two
systems in succession. Under the Republic, down to the conquest of
Greece, preference was given to education after the Spartan type;
while under the emperors, Athenian education was dominant, with a
very marked tendency to give the first place to an education in
literature and oratory.
44. THE EDUCATION OF THE EARLY ROMANS.--The first schools were not
opened at Rome till towards the end of the third century B.C. Till
then, the Romans had no teachers save their parents and nature.
Education was almost exclusively physical and moral, or rather,
military and religious. On the one hand, there were the gymnastic
exercises on the Campus Martius, and on the other, the recitation
of the Salian hymns, a sort of catechism containing the names of
the gods and goddesses. Besides this, there was the study of the
Twelve Tables, that is, of the Roman Law. Men the most robust, the
most courageous, the best disciplined, and the most patriotic that
ever lived, were the fruit of this natural education. Rome was the
great school of the civic and military virtues. The Romans did
not imitate the Athenians in a disinterested pursuit of a perfect
physical and intellectual development. Rome worked for practical
ends; she was guided only by considerations of utility; she had no
regard for ideals; her purpose was simply the education of soldiers
and citizens who should be obedient and devoted. She did not know
man in the abstract; she knew only the Roman citizen.
These high qualities of the early Romans were marred by a sort of
brutal insensibility and a contempt for the graces of intellect and
heart; and leaving out of account the circumstances of environment
and race, their practical virtues may be ascribed to three or four
principal causes. First among these was a firm family discipline.
The authority of the father was absolute, and answering to this
excessive power, there was blind obedience. Another cause was the
position of the mother in the family. At Rome, woman was held in
higher esteem than at Athens. She became almost the equal of man.
She was the guardian of the family circle and the teacher of her
children. The very name _matron_ inspires respect. Coriolanus, who
took up arms against his country, could not withstand the tears
of his mother Veturia. The noble Cornelia was the teacher of her
sons, the Gracchi, whom she was accustomed to call “her fairest
jewels.” Besides, the influence of religion was made to supplement
the active efforts of the family. The Roman lived surrounded by
deities. When a child was weaned, tradition would have it that one
goddess taught him to eat, and another to drink. Later on, four
goddesses guided his first steps and held his two hands. All these
superstitions imposed regularity and exactness on the most ordinary
acts of daily life. Men breathed, as it were, a divine atmosphere.
Finally, the young Roman learned to read in the laws of the Twelve
Tables, that is, in the civil code of his country. He was thus
accustomed from infancy to consider the law as something natural,
inviolable, and sacred.
45. ROME AT SCHOOL IN GREECE.--The primitive state of manners
did not last. Under Greek influence, Roman simplicity suffered a
change, and, as Horace says, Greece, in being conquered, conquered
in turn her rude victor. The taste for letters and arts was
introduced at Rome towards the close of the third century B.C.,
and transformed the austere and rude education of the primitive
era. The Romans, in their turn, acquired a liking for fine phrases
and subtile dialectics. Schools were opened, and the rhetoricians
and philosophers took up the business of education. Parents no
longer charged themselves with the instruction of their children.
Following the fashion at Athens, they entrusted them to slaves,
without troubling themselves about the faults or even the vices of
these common _pedagogues_.
“For if any of their servants,” says Plutarch, “be better than
the rest, they dispose some of them to follow husbandry, some to
navigation, some to merchandise, some to be stewards in their
houses, and some, lastly, to put out their money to use for them.
But if they find any slave that is a drunkard or a glutton, and
unfit for any other business, to him they assign the government of
their children; whereas, a good pedagogue ought to be such a one in
his disposition as Phœnix, tutor to Achilles, was.”[41]
46. WHY ROME HAD NO GREAT EDUCATORS.--In the age of Augustus, when
Latin literature was in all its glory, we are astonished not to
find, as in the century of Pericles, some great thinker like Plato
or Aristotle, who presents general views on education, and makes
himself famous by a remarkable work on pedagogy. This is due to
the fact that the Romans never formed a taste for disinterested
science and speculative inquiry. They reached distinction only in
the practical sciences; in the law, for example, in which they
excelled. Now pedagogy, while in one sense a practical science,
nevertheless reposes upon philosophical principles, upon a
knowledge of human nature, and upon a theoretical conception of
human destiny,--questions which had no living interest for the
Roman mind, and which even Cicero has noticed only in passing,
in the course of his translation of Plato, made with his usual
magnificence of literary style.
It is to be noted, moreover, that the Romans seem never to have
considered education as a national undertaking, as an affair of the
State. The Law of the Twelve Tables is silent upon the education of
children. Up to the time of Quintilian there were at Rome no public
schools, no professional teachers. In the age of Augustus each
teacher had his own method. “Our ancestors,” says Cicero, “did not
wish that children should be educated by fixed rules, determined by
the laws, publicly promulgated and made uniform for all.”[42] And
he does not seem to disapprove of this neglect, even while noting
the fact that Polybius saw in this an important defect in Roman
institutions.
47. CICERO.--In all Cicero’s works we find scarcely a line relative
to education. And yet the great orator exclaims: “What better,
what greater service can we of to-day render the Republic than to
instruct and train the young?”[43] But he was content with writing
fine discourses on philosophy for his country, abounding more in
eloquence than in originality.
48. VARRO.--A less celebrated writer, Varro, seems to have had some
pedagogic instinct. He wrote real educational works on grammar,
rhetoric, history, and geometry. Most of these have been lost; but
if we may trust his contemporaries, they were instrumental in the
education of several generations.
49. QUINTILIAN (35-95 A.D.).--After the age of Augustus, education
became more and more an affair of oratory. The chief effort
in the way of education was a preparation for a career in the
Forum. But from these vulgar rhetoricians, occupied with the
exterior artifices of style, these “traffickers in words,” as
Saint Augustine called them, we must distinguish a rhetorician
of a higher order, who does not separate rhetoric from a general
culture of the intelligence. This is Quintilian, the author of the
_Institutes of Oratory_.
Appointed at the age of twenty-six to a chair of eloquence, the
first that was established by the Roman state, and called at a
later period by the Emperor Domitian to direct the education of
his grand-nephews, Quintilian was practically acquainted with both
public and private instruction.
50. THE INSTITUTES OF ORATORY.--This work, under the form of a
treatise on rhetoric, is in parts a real treatise on education.
The author, in fact, begins the training of the future orator from
the cradle; he gives counsel to its nurse, and “not blushing to
descend to petty details,” he follows step by step the education of
his pupil. Let us add, that in the noble ideal which he conceives,
eloquence never being considered apart from wisdom, Quintilian was
led by his very subject to treat of moral education.
51. HIS GENERAL PLAN OF EDUCATION.--The first book entire is
devoted to education in general, and its teachings might be applied
indifferently to all children, whether destined or not to the
practice of oratory.
“Has a son been born to you? From the first conceive the highest
hopes of him.” Thus Quintilian begins. He thinks that we cannot
have too high an opinion of human nature, nor propose for it too
high a purpose. Minds that rebel against all instruction are
unnatural. Most often it is the training which is at fault; it is
not nature that is to blame.
52. THE EARLY EDUCATION OF THE CHILD.--The child’s nurses should be
virtuous and prudent. Quintilian does not demand that they shall be
learned, as the stoic Chrysippus would have them; but he requires
that their language shall be irreproachable. The first impressions
of the child are very durable: “New vases preserve the taste of the
first liquor that is put into them; and wool, once colored, never
regains its primitive whiteness.”
By an illusion analogous to that of the literary men of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who would have the little
French boy first learn Latin, Quintilian teaches his pupil Greek
before making him study his native tongue.
Studies, moreover, should begin betimes: “Turn to account the
child’s first years, especially as the elements of learning demand
only memory, and the memory of children is very tenacious.”
We seem to be listening to a modern teacher when Quintilian
recommends the avoidance of whatever might ruffle the spirits
of the child. “Let study be to him a play; ask him questions;
commend him when he does well; and sometimes let him enjoy the
consciousness of his little gains in wisdom.”
53. READING AND WRITING.--The passage relative to reading deserves
to be quoted in full. It is wrong, says Quintilian, to teach
children the names of the letters, and their respective places in
the alphabet, before they know their shapes. He recommends the use
of letters in ivory, which children take pleasure in handling,
seeing, and naming.
As to writing, Quintilian recommends, for the purpose of
strengthening the child’s hand, and of preventing it from making
false movements, that he should practise on wooden tablets on
which the letters have been traced by cutting.[44] Later on, the
copies shall contain, “not senseless maxims, but moral truths.”
The Roman teacher did not counsel haste in any case. “We can
scarcely believe,” he says, “how progress in reading is retarded by
attempting to go too fast.”
54. PUBLIC EDUCATION.--Quintilian has made an unsurpassed plea for
public education and its advantages, which Rollin has reproduced
almost entire.[45] From this we shall quote only the following
passage, which proves how far the contemporaries of Quintilian
had already departed from the manly habits of the early ages; and
the truth which is herein expressed will always be applicable to
parents who are inclined to be over-indulgent: “Would that we
ourselves did not corrupt the morals of our children! We enervate
their very infancy with luxuries. That delicacy of education,
which we call fondness, weakens all the powers, both of body and
mind.... We form the palate of our children before we form their
pronunciation. They grow up in sedan chairs; if they touch the
ground, they hang by the hands of attendants supporting them on
each side. We are delighted if they utter anything immodest.
Expressions which would hot be tolerated even from effeminate
youths, we hear from them with a smile and a kiss. Need we be
astonished at this behavior? We ourselves have taught them.”[46]
55. DUTIES OF TEACHERS.--There was at Rome, in the first century
of the Christian era, a high conception of the duties of a
teacher: “His first care should be to ascertain with all possible
thoroughness the mind and the character of the child.” Judicious
reflections on the memory, on the faculty of imitation, and on the
dangers of precocious mental development, are proofs of the fine
psychological discernment of Quintilian. His insight is no less
accurate when he sketches the rules for moral discipline. “Fear,”
he says, “restrains some and unmans others.... For my part, I
prefer a pupil who is sensitive to praise, whom glory animates, and
from whom defeat draws tears.”
Quintilian expresses himself decidedly against the use of the rod,
“although custom authorizes it,” he says, “and Chrysippus does not
disapprove of it.”