THE GREEK THEORISTS ON EDUCATION--PLATO AND ARISTOTLE.
§ 62. It is usual in books on Greek education to give a very large
space to the discussion of the “Republic” and “Laws” of Plato and the
“Politics” of Aristotle, because they contain elaborate and systematic
recommendations as to the training of youth. But the states of both
philosophers are ideal, Aristotle’s not less than Plato’s; and, though
the educational portion of Aristotle’s work seems fragmentary and
unfinished, we cannot hold that any further developments would have
brought it within the range of practical politics. Plato’s notions
were confessedly theoretical, and are discussed as such by all his
commentators; but some scholars have given themselves endless trouble
to find out how much of his system, especially in the tamer and less
extravagant “Laws,” was borrowed from real life, and from actual
states, as opposed to the creations of his own fancy. But in nearly
every detail the distinction is purely conjectural. It is really for
want of positive evidence that these theories have assumed such
undue importance. To the philosophical theorist and the educational
reformer the speculations of such splendid intellects in the early
post-meridian of the glorious day of Greece must ever be most
attractive and suggestive; but it is idle to transfer to a practical
book, or to an historical account, what has never been realized.[53]
These speculations, however, may fairly find a limited space here as
showing what general effect the practical education already described
had produced upon the most advanced thinkers of the day.
Unfortunately, we have here again only the aristocratic side, and
that which would assert the State to be paramount and all-interfering
through individual and private life. If we had the speculations of
Lycophron and his school, who held, with truly democratical instinct,
that laws were only useful to repress crime, and that the rest of the
citizen’s life was to be left free and uncontrolled, our notions about
the theories of Greek education might be considerably modified. But, on
the other hand, we have preserved to us the Hellene of the Hellenes;
the school of Lycophron might only have recommended to us what we know
by practical experience in modern society.
From the very outset Plato and Aristotle adopt quite definite
principles. They assume that the State is to interfere everywhere and
control the whole life of man. Thus the splendid Athenian democracy
in which Plato lived had no power to wean him from his somewhat
narrow prejudices. He despised the goods he possessed, and longed for
a Spartan ideal, though its defects were plain enough before his
eyes.[54] Still worse, the wide vista opened by Alexander into a
larger fusion of ideas, and into widely various forms of society, had
no power to emancipate the intellect of Aristotle from its ingrained
Hellenic narrowness. It is necessary to make this strong protest at
the outset, on account of the chorus of admiration sung by the pedants
and pedagogues of modern days over these thoroughly unpractical and
retrograde theories. One fact will speak volumes to the modern reader.
Both of them look upon a small number of citizens, and, indeed, a
small limit of territory, as essential to their schemes, no accurate
or perpetual supervision by State police and direction being possible
either in a great city or a large territory.[55] This will in itself
show how antiquated they must have seemed even in the next century,
when the Greeks woke to the ambition of ruling over kingdoms in the
East.
§ 63. And yet there were some points on which these thinkers,
especially Plato, were far more thoroughgoing than we are, chiefly
from a total absence of that sentiment or sentimentality which infects
modern life. For Plato, both in the “Republic” and the “Laws,” insists
that education will be of little avail if children are brought into
the world deformed in body and warped in mind by the bad physical and
mental condition of their parents. On some of these cases Greek society
was agreed with him. In most states a deformed child was exposed
either to die or to be picked up by some one who might run the risk
of bringing it up to make a household slave.[56] For in most states,
and certainly at Sparta, it would have been held a crime to propagate
hereditary disease; and men were spared the disgusting spectacle of
the scrofulous or deaf-and-dumb heir to a great name being courted in
matrimony to perpetuate the miseries or the vices of his progenitors.
But Plato went further, and held that the production of the most
important animal, man, should be regulated with even more care than
that of the lower animals, in which such striking results have been
obtained by artificial selection. He therefore recommended, in his
ideal State, not community of wives--Heaven forbid that we should
follow Aristotle in repeating this gross libel!--but a careful State
selection of suitable pairs, and their solemn union, under the guise of
a direction from Providence by an appeal to the lot. These marriages
were to take place at a fixed season, and all the children born of them
within the year to be regarded the common children of all: here the
word _community_ may fairly apply. He has nowhere told us whether in
successive years the same parents were to remain united, and hence we
do not know whether his marriages were meant to be temporary or not.
I fancy the point was of little importance to him. If the offspring
turned out well, there would be no change; if badly, of course the
guardians of the State would not sanction the continuance of an
unwholesome union. Thus, though Plato was willing to allow sentiment
its sentimental place, and to bring forward the decision of the
rulers of the State as the will of Providence, marriages professedly
arranged in heaven were to be permitted only with a strict view to the
improvement of the race.
The objection that such an arrangement would destroy the sanctity
and the influence of the family, and thus abolish our most powerful
engine of early education, was no objection to Plato. He wished to
abolish separate families, and rescue children from the tyranny, the
indulgence, and incompetence of individual parents, so as to put them
under state discipline. And the State was absolutely nothing but one
huge family, as far as the higher classes were concerned. To us who
live in large kingdoms, who know that the family gives the law for
individuals in ordinary life, and that schemes of public education
cannot replace it, all systems which abolish the sanctity of the home
are inadmissible.
§ 64. No point in Plato’s scheme excites more sympathy nowadays with
advanced thinkers than that of equalizing the sexes in education, and
subjecting women to the same training and duties as men. For he held
that, though nature had not made women as strong as men, and that
their important functions in the production of the race put them
under some inconveniences and disabilities, there was, nevertheless,
no reason to assume any permanent difference in kind. If such a theory
is thought revolutionary by most people in modern society, what must
it have been in the days and among the people of Plato’s age! Here,
again, what guided him was an exaggerated estimate of the liberty
and importance of Spartan women, who, when young, were encouraged
to exercise in public; and who, when married, maintained over their
husbands an influence far exceeding that of women in other Greek
households. But then we must not forget the small culture of the men,
their devotion to military training, and the consequent necessity for
women to use their own judgment in the management of their homes.
§ 65. On the other hand, if we may digress for a moment on account of
the interest and importance of the subject, there is no valid reason
why the physical production of the race should not receive infinitely
more attention than it does within the bounds of our present social
arrangements. In the first place, though the sentimental reasons
for marrying are still put in the foreground, and though at wedding
speeches and in amatory correspondences some divine predestination,
or the sentimental compulsion called falling in love, is assumed
the only efficient cause of marriages, we know that many reasonable
considerations intervene and are the real motives of action. These
motives--the acquisition of wealth or position or connection, the
desire of home comforts and of a life independent of external
amusements, a calm mutual respect--are commonly enough confessed even
by the very people who parade sentimental reasons; and whenever a
marriage appears suitable from rational considerations, no trouble is
spared by match-makers to induce young people to imagine themselves
drawn together by some subtle and sentimental affinity--like Plato’s
guardians, who were to pretend the providential lot as their guide.
If, then, such be the case; if even now there are civilized countries
and classes of people who openly profess prudential reasons as the
best for marrying, it will only require a better education of public
opinion to enable men to advance to the position that the physical and
mental vigor of the resulting children is a motive to be consciously
considered in the selection. We may first reach the stage of avoiding
an hereditary taint as people now fly an infectious disease. Such
avoidance would ultimately stamp out or reduce to a minimum this evil,
and the race would escape a great part of the direst and most hopeless
of its physical miseries. Then the systematic and deliberate desire
that there should be healthy children will discover many conditions
now unknown, when so many of our unions are the result of chance or
avarice, or, still worse, of passion. Men of science will begin to make
observations on the difference of physical antecedents which cause such
curious differences in children of the same house. And the day will
come when, from a body of such observations, valuable practical rules
may be deduced. We may thus improve our race as the Spartans did in old
Greece; and they, we know, were perfectly successful in obtaining what
they sought--a high average of physical strength and beauty.
All this, we may hope, will only be the introduction to a far more
important, but far more difficult, problem--the determining of the
conditions which produce genius. There is no reason to doubt that these
conditions are mainly transient, for genius is no fixed heritage,
the most splendid instances coming from obscure and ordinary parents.
Nor does the mere combination of the suitable parents work its effect
uniformly without other more limited conditions. For we find the great
leaders of the world sometimes the only child, sometimes eldest,
sometimes youngest, or in the middle of a family of brothers and
sisters as obscure as their parents. The careful observation, then,
not only of the parents, but of the particular passage in their life
which produced an intellectually splendid offspring, is one upon which
we cannot expect light for a long time, and until people have become
accustomed to regard the general improvement of the race of far greater
importance than they now do. If such results could be obtained even
approximately--if, even in one case out of ten, intellectual excellence
could be produced as we reproduce physical perfections--then, indeed,
the perfectibility of mankind would no longer be a vague dream, but
would show some signs of a partial fulfilment.
Are we to hope that such an advance in ideas will take place in our
own day? We have perhaps advanced beyond the stage when men regard
genius as distinctly heaven-born, and the direct gift of the gods,
apart from any natural conditions. If it is indeed heaven-born, it is
now conceded to be such through the combination of natural causes. But,
on the other hand, our best and most refined people will recoil with
deep aversion from making a scientific analysis of such conditions;
they will exclaim that the possible advantages are as nothing compared
with the desecration of that mystery which has been hallowed by the
sacraments of the Church, and protected from profane inquiry by a cloud
of delicate sentiment. To reduce the holy estate of marriage to the
deliberate and scientific production of conditioned offspring will
destroy, say they, all the sanctity of the relation, and with it the
purity and dignity of our homes.
These weighty and respectable objections are to be met by observing
that it would be idle and wrong to attempt any reform in opposition to
the unanimous sentiment of the very people who alone could carry it
out--our most sober and refined classes. Until this sentiment can be
gradually changed by argument, and come to be looked on as a venerable
and amiable superstition, nothing will be accomplished. But it is a
matter of history that the most respectable and hallowed sentiments,
if irrational, can be gradually removed by a progress in what Mr.
Lecky calls _rationalism_, or intellectual enlightenment. We can even
now point to the important fact, that in those countries and those
ages where marriages had been confessedly arranged from prudential
reasons, they have not been less sacred, nor has home life been less
pure, than where vague and irrational sentiments have been brought
into the foreground. The lower-class Irish are as faithful and happy
in their homes, and the marriage-tie is a sacred and honored as it is
anywhere in the world; and yet among them a love-match is rare. It is
a matter of cows and of pigs, of the succession to a farm--nay, often
of arrangement by the landlord for reasons of his own; and yet these
marriages are as happy and as pure as if they had been the outcome of a
great mutual passion. The same thing may be said of married life in the
country parts of France, where a thrifty and provident race accommodate
their unions to their circumstances, and leave the extravagances of
great passion to poets and Parisians.
The history of Greece offers a more notable instance. If we ask where
in Greece the home enjoyed the greatest honor and sanctity, where the
house-mother stood highest in reverence and social importance, and
where violations of fidelity were rarest, no one would hesitate to
answer, At Sparta. Yet at Sparta all the sentiment, all the delicacy,
of the marriage-tie was sacrificed to the duty of producing healthy
children for the State. Plutarch tells us of a state of things which
modern people would think wholly subversive of all purity--of old men
ceding their rights of temporary unions and exchanges for the sake of
desirable offspring. The Spartan men and women were not wanting in
sentiment about marriage, in advocating the honor and sanctity of the
marriage-tie; but their sentiment led them to regard a fine offspring
as the noblest outcome of marriage, and one to which all other
considerations were secondary. Hence it was in accordance with their
sentiment that they adopted the same kind of precautions as regards
physical perfection which a later and wiser age may adopt as regards
intellectual and moral perfection.
This possibility of improving intellect by careful selection was
beyond Plato’s vision; he only thought of physical qualities in the
arrangement of his unions. But it is one of the most remarkable points
in his exclusive and aristocratic society that he makes provision for
the adopting of any particularly bright child of the operative class
among his guardians, so that they might benefit by the accident. The
degradation of poor or unhealthy children of the higher class is also
contemplated.
His arrangement of the years of education is as follows: It is divided
into three parts. Beginning with the learning of proper myths and
tales, it proceeds to easy gymnastic, followed by music and poetry,
with reading, writing, arithmetic, and some elementary mathematics,
all of which occupy from the seventh to the eighteenth year, and thus
correspond to our schooling. Then comes military training up to the
twentieth year--a division to which we, who have no conscription, have
no analogy, as the Germans have. Next follows the second division of
higher studies in pure and applied mathematics for ten years, and the
third in metaphysic for five years. These are, of course, quite wide of
any practical scheme, and are intended to form those philosophic rulers
who will regard their whole life here as a preparation for a higher
sphere.
§ 66. His views on the details of music and gymnastic were not
materially different from those of the practical educators which we
have discussed, save that he proposes to train his guardian class with
more detail and circumstance than were possible for any ordinary public.
He is unpractical, and even absurd, in his curious prudery about the
tales and legends which children are to learn. He objects to Homer,
to the tragedies, still more to the comedies, and, no doubt, to the
folk-lore of the day, as inculcating base and immoral views of the gods
and their relations to men. Fairy tales are always to represent God as
one and as perfectly good. He even goes so far--but here he can hardly
be in earnest--as to recommend that children shall learn by heart
his laws instead of poetry and myths![57] Throughout all his remarks
on this subject, he evidently ignores the culture of the imagination
as such, which we recognize as so important that we even tolerate or
overlook immoralities or manifest fictions in aiming at this kind of
amusement and culture of children. Indeed, it is certain that when
children are taught fairy tales _as such_, the immoral acts of real
life, such as robbery and murder, are only accessories to the imaginary
life, in which there is generally some rude justice.
Even apart from this particular question, we find all through Plato’s
theory of education a very mischievous dislike of any liberty of
opinion, or liberty of life, in the youth of his State. He goes so
far in the “Laws” as to make heresy of opinion penal, and to punish
with imprisonment those who will not conform to the doctrines of the
lawgiver. If there be anything which would tempt us to reject the
“Laws,” as not the genuine work of Socrates’ disciple, it is this
strange narrowness of view, which makes Grote argue that the actual
Athens of Plato’s day was superior to the ideal he constructed. But
doctrinaires of all ages hate human liberty. Nor do the Greeks ever
seem to have been forced by the pressure of circumstances to mark off
the close of formal education by a fixed period, like our graduation
at a university, when the young man is expected to strike out into the
world and henceforth educate himself in practical life.
§ 67. The educational book of Aristotle’s “Politics” (VII. in the now
received order) is a mere fragment, which suggests many problems, and
solves but few. Even with the help of some important corrections from
the “Ethics,” we find it the narrow and old-fashioned scheme of a
pedant Greek, written with admiration for the artificial discipline of
Sparta, and unable to understand even the far more splendid Hellenic
ideal sketched by Thucydides in his speech of Pericles. We know,
however, from the “Ethics” that he felt the essential importance of
family ties between husband and wife, between parents and children.
Hence he rejects Plato’s proposal of abolishing the family, and insists
that the ideal State must consist of households in the strict sense.
But, on the other hand, he quite agrees with Plato’s view that the
social and moral aspects of marriage are by no means inconsistent with
a strict supervision of the producing of healthy children by the State.
He foreshadowed the state of things anticipated above, when husband
and wife will still feel the deep sanctity and thorough loyalty of
their relation, and yet not leave to mere accident the most important
product, nay, the only product, so far as the State is concerned, of
their union. He is just as careful as Plato in recommending care of
unborn children by attention to their mothers’ air and exercise. He is
still more ruthless in advocating the destruction, either before or
after birth, of illegitimate offspring. Neither can he, any more than
Plato, imagine an ideal state capable of such expansion as to contain
a great people, nor can he dispense with disabilities for most of its
members, such as slaves and operatives.
He does not contemplate the very long and elaborate after-training of
Plato’s guardians, for he does not conceive this world as a preparation
for another, but as an end in itself. And it is probably for this
reason that he is so superior to Plato in analyzing the function
of refined recreation, and the ennoblement of leisure by æsthetic
pleasures. Thus he sees that music is to be utilized as a recreation
for youth, as well as for a moral engine of education. He has explained
in his “Poetic” that dramatic poetry is not mere fiction, to be
banished from the ideal State as teaching falsehood or depicting crime,
but a representation of human life deeper and more philosophic than
history, inasmuch as history only widens the intellect, while the drama
also purifies the emotions of the spectator. It may even be argued
that history widens the intellect only so far as it is conceived as a
drama--a development of human character--and not as a mere recitation
of facts.
While he does not enounce so clearly as Plato that gymnastics are
mainly a training for the character, he sets his face against that
physical training which studies nothing but the development of muscle,
on the ground that, if at all excessive, it defeats its own object by
engendering an unhealthy state; and that, as we cannot work the body
and the mind together with any severity, it must generally coincide
with ignorance or with an illiterate life. Even the Spartan military
training, which was opposed by them to athletic training, falls under
his censure.
He will not concede, with Plato, the equality in kind of the sexes,
but thinks the functions of women are distinct in kind from those of
men, and therefore not to be perfected by adopting the same training.
Thus he is, on the whole, tamer and more conservative, but also less
suggestive, than his great master.
§ 68. The main value of his fragment on education is that it shows
how thoroughly the subject had been discussed in his day. Thus, after
determining that the civic side of the citizen is all-important,
and that, therefore, all education must be public and the same for
all, as in Sparta, he proceeds thus with his argument:[58] “What,
then, is education, and how are we to educate? For there is as yet
no agreement on the point; all men are not of the same opinion as to
what the young should learn either with a view to perfection or to
the best life; nor is it agreed whether education is to aim at the
development of the intellect or the moral character. Nay, more; from
the ordinary standpoint the matter is quite confused, and it is not
clear to anybody whether we are to train in what leads to virtue, in
what is useful for ordinary life, or in abstract science. All these
alternatives have their advocates. Again, as regards what leads to
virtue, there is no general consent, for since men do not agree in what
they honor as such, of course they cannot agree about the training
to obtain it. As regards what is useful for life, it is obvious that
there are certain indispensable things which must be taught, and it is
equally clear that there are others which must not. All occupations
are divided into those which a free man should practise and those
which he should not, and, therefore, this affords us a limitation in
the learning of useful arts.” He goes on to show that no trade is
gentlemanly if it injuriously affects the body, or enslaves the mind by
being practised for hire. Even the fine arts, if studied in this way,
or professionally, are to him an unworthy occupation, and are only to
be pursued in youth as a recreation or æsthetic training; so that in
middle life men may be competent judges of such productions, and either
better able to enjoy them (as in music), or less likely to be deceived
(as in the purchase of works of art). Having applied these principles
to athletics, about which he says little save in recommendation of
moderation, and against any professional training, he turns to the
question of music, on which we have already given the views which he
held in common with the most serious Greek educators. On this subject,
too, there was controversy. He has before him three theories: is it
mere _amusement_ (παιδία), or an engine of _education_ (παιδεία), or
an æsthetic _pleasure_ (διαγωγή)?[59] Perhaps we have dwelt too long on
these theories, but it seemed desirable to give the reader the _locus
classicus_ on the Hellenic theory of music, which was discussed above
(§ 43), and which, in spite of all our studies of Greek life, is still
quite strange and incredible to modern theorists in education.
§ 69. There is yet another scheme of education left us by the classical
age of Greece, Xenophon’s “Education of Cyrus,” which, in the form of
a very tedious novel on the life of the Persian king, gives a theory
of the education of a prince and his surroundings which may deserve a
very few words in concluding this chapter.[60] He shares with Plato and
Aristotle the belief that private education, with mere prohibitive laws
to guide the citizen, is quite insufficient. All the theorists were
agreed that there must be one public education, and they imagined that
crime would be to a great extent precluded by such effective training.
Xenophon, dividing his period of education into boyhood up to
sixteen, and _youth_ (ἐφηβεία) up to twenty-six, provides a regular
public-school education for the boys, keeping them all together in
a sort of polity of their own, where their teaching is performed by
special State masters, and their quarrels and delinquencies settled
by tribunals of their own. To the elder youth is assigned all the
police and patrol duty, as well as the accompanying of the king in
hunting, especially of beasts of prey. This sort of exercise Xenophon
had learned to know in the East, and he recognized its superiority
over ordinary gymnastics. But the musical education, on which Plato
and Aristotle lay such stress, he omits altogether, without giving his
reasons. Perhaps he found from experience that the great Aryan nobles
were men of refinement, and understood the harmony of life no less
than the more theoretical Greeks. He also differs from them in alone
recognizing the importance of a system which will control not one
limited city, but an empire of various peoples and languages. Yet his
education is, in consequence, only the expensive and exclusive training
of a dominant aristocracy, and is not supposed to be compulsory for the
ordinary citizen. In his State all higher official position is only to
be attained by this training.
There are no other ideas in the scheme which make it worthy of any
special consideration. The Spartan system blinded the vision of all
these speculators, and kept them from understanding the true character
of a free and various development of individual genius.
FOOTNOTES:
[53] Few people have ever heard of the attempt to found a Platonopolis
in Italy in the Renaissance times.
[54] Of course, he saw and admitted these defects; but it is obvious
that he thought them only defects of detail, which could be remedied
by better arrangement; whereas the Athenian democracy appeared to
him radically unsound. And yet could Sparta ever have produced such
a splendid passage of history as the conduct of the Athenian army at
Samos when the news came (411 B.C.) that the constitution of their
city had been overthrown and an oligarchy established? Let the reader
consult Grote’s chapter on this.
[55] Plato even insists upon a fixed number, 11,080 men and the same
number of women, all excess being guarded against either by exposing of
infants or transporting adults into colonies.
[56] The critics have shown that Plato gradually softened his
recommendations on this point. In the “Timæus” he speaks as if he had
never recommended exposal, but only a relegation of the children of
unhealthy parents into his third grade of society. In the “Laws” (if
it be, indeed, his work) he lets the whole matter drop, though it was
to be expected that he should discuss it. Whether this arose from a
gradual advance of humanity in Plato himself, or from the adverse
criticism of the day, we cannot tell. The German critics (Zeller,
Susemihl, etc.) hold the former; I am disposed to the latter, even
though his successor, Aristotle, as they remark, is even more inhuman.
[57] This is in the “Laws,” of which the genuineness is not without
doubt.
[58] vii. 2.
[59] viii. 5, §§ 3-10: Περὶ δὲ μουσικῆς ἔνια μὲν διηπορήκαμεν τῷ λόγῳ
καὶ πρότερον, καλῶς δ’ ἔχει καὶ νῦν ἀναλαβόντας αὐτὰ προαγαγεῖν, ἵνα
ὥσπερ ἐνδόσιμον γένηται τοῖς λόγοις, οὓς ἄν τις εἴποι ἀποφαινόμενος
περὶ αὐτῆς. Οὔτε γὰρ τίνα ἔχει δύναμιν, ῥᾴδιον περὶ αὐτῆς διελεῖν,
οὔτε τίνος δεῖ χάριν μετέχειν αὐτῆς, πότερον παιδιᾶς ἕνεκα καὶ
ἀναπαύσεως, καθάπερ ὕπνου καὶ μέθης· ταῦτα γὰρ καθ’ αὑτὰ μὲν οὔτε τῶν
σπουδαίων, ἀλλ’ ἡδέα καὶ ἅμα παύει μέριμναν, ὥς φησιν Εὐριπίδης· διὸ
καὶ τάττουσιν αὐτὴν καὶ χρῶνται πᾶσι τούτοις ὁμοίως οἴνῳ καὶ μέθῃ καὶ
μουσικῇ· τιθέασι δὲ καὶ τὴν ὄρχησιν ἐν τούτοις. Ἢ μᾶλλον οἰητέον πρὸς
ἀρετήν τι τείνειν τὴν μουσικὴν, ὡς δυναμένην, καθάπερ ἡ γυμναστικὴ τὸ
σῶμα ποιόν τι παρασκευάζει, καὶ τὴν μουσικὴν τὸ ἦθος ποιόν τι ποιεῖν,
ἐθίζουσαν δύνασθαι χαίρειν ὀρθῶς· ἢ πρὸς διαγωγήν τι συμβάλλεται καὶ
πρὸς φρόνησιν; καὶ γὰρ τοῦτο τρίτον θετέον τῶν εἰρημένων. Ὅτι μὲν οὖν
δεῖ τοὺς νέους μὴ παιδιᾶς ἕνεκα παιδεύειν, οὐκ ἄδηλον· οὐ γὰρ παίζουσι
μανθάνοντες· μετὰ λύπης γὰρ ἡ μάθησις· ἀλλὰ μὴν οὐδὲ διαγωγήν τε παισὶν
ἁρμόττει καὶ ταῖς ἡλικίαις ἀποδιδόναι ταῖς τοιαύταις· οὐθενὶ γὰρ ἀτελεῖ
προσήκει τέλος. Ἀλλ’ ἴσως ἂν δόξειεν ἡ τῶν παίδων σπουδὴ παιδιᾶς
εἶναι χάριν ἀνδράσι γενομένοις καὶ τελειωθεῖσιν. Ἀλλ’ εἰ τοῦτ’ ἐστὶ
τοιοῦτον, τίνος ἂν ἕνεκα δέοι μανθάνειν αὐτοὺς, ἀλλὰ μὴ, καθάπερ οἱ
τῶν Περσῶν καὶ Μήδων βασιλεῖς, δι’ ἄλλων αὐτὸ ποιούντων μεταλαμβάνειν
τῆς ἡδονῆς καὶ τῆς μαθήσεως; καὶ γὰρ ἀναγκαῖον βέλτιον ἀπεργάζεσθαι
τοὺς αὐτὸ τοῦτο πεποιημένους ἔργον καὶ τέχνην τῶν τοσοῦτον χρόνον
ἐπιμελουμένων, ὅσον πρὸς μάθησιν μόνον. Εἰ δὲ δεῖ τὰ τοιαῦτα διαπονεῖν
αὐτοὺς, καὶ περὶ τὴν τῶν ὄψων πραγματείαν αὐτοὺς ἂν δέοι παρασκευάζειν·
ἀλλ’ ἄτοπον. Τὴν δ’ αὐτὴν ἀπορίαν ἔχει καὶ εἰ δύναται τὰ ἤθη βελτίω
ποιεῖν· ταῦτα γὰρ τί δεῖ μανθάνειν αὐτοὺς ἀλλ’ οὐχ ἑτέρων ἀκούοντας
ὀρθῶς τε χαίρειν καὶ δύνασθαι κρίνειν; ὥσπερ οἱ Λάκωνες· ἐκεῖνοι γὰρ οὐ
μανθάνοντες ὅμως δύνανται κρίνειν ὀρθῶς, ὥς φασι, τὰ χρηστὰ καὶ τὰ μὴ
χρηστὰ τῶν μελῶν. Ὁ δ’ αὐτὸς λόγος κἂν εἰ πρὸς εὐημερίαν, καὶ διαγωγὴν
ἐλευθέριον χρηστέον αὐτῇ· τί γὰρ δεῖ μανθάνειν αὐτοὺς, ἀλλ’ οὐχ ἑτέρων
χρωμένων ἀπολαύειν; Σκοπεῖν δ’ ἔξεστι τὴν ὑπόληψιν ἣν ἔχομεν περὶ τῶν
θεῶν·
οὐ [δὲ] γὰρ ὁ Ζεὺς αὐτὸς ἀείδει καὶ κιθαρίζει
τοῖς ποιηταῖς· ἀλλὰ καὶ βαναύσους καλοῦμεν τοὺς τοιούτους, καὶ τὸ
πράττειν οὐκ ἀνδρὸς μὴ μεθύοντος ἢ παίζοντος.
[60] The second chapter of his first book gives a general description
of the education among the Persians, which is, of course, a fancy
sketch, accommodated to his own theories.