§ 217. The truth of the solution of the beautiful individuality is the
promise of the activity conformable to its purpose [i.e. teleological
activity], which on the one hand considers carefully end and means, and
on the other hand seeks to realize the end through the corresponding
means, and in this deed subjects mere beauty of form. The practical
individuality is therefore externally conditioned, since it is not its
own end like the Beautiful, whether Stoical or Epicurean, but has an
end, and finds its satisfaction not so much in this after it is attained
as in the striving for its attainment.
§ 218. The education of this system begins with very great simplicity.
But after it has attained its object, it abandons itself to using the
results of æsthetic culture as a recreation without any specific object.
What was to the Greeks a real delight in the Beautiful became therefore
with the Romans simply an æsthetic amusement, and as such must finally
be wearisome. The earnestness of individuality made itself in mysticism
into a new aim, which was distinguished from the original one in that it
concealed in itself a mystery and exacted a theoretically æsthetic
practice.
§ 219. (1) The first epoch of Roman education, as properly Roman, was
the juristic-military education of the republic. The end and aim of the
Roman was Rome; and Rome, as from the beginning an eclectic state, could
endure only while its laws and external politics were conformable to
some end. It bore the same contradiction within itself as in its
external attitude. This forced it into robbery, and the plebeians were
related to the patricians in the same way, for they robbed them
gradually of all their privileges. On this account education directed
itself partly to giving a knowledge of the Law, partly to communicating
a capacity for war. The boys were obliged to commit to memory and recite
the laws of the twelve tables, and all the youths were subject to
military service. The Roman possessed no individuality of native growth,
but one mediated through the intermingling of various fugitives, which
developed a very great energy. Hence from the first he was attentive to
himself, he watched jealously over the limits of his rights and the
rights of others, measured his strength, moderated himself, and
constantly guarded himself. In contrast with the careless cheerfulness
of the Greeks, he therefore appears gloomy.
--The Latin tongue is crowded with expressions which paint presence of
mind, effort at reflection, a critical attitude of mind, the importance
of personal control: as _gravitas morum, sui compos esse, sibi constare,
austeritas, vir strenuus, vir probus, vitam honestam gerere, sibimet
ipse imperare_, &c. The Etruscan element imparted to this earnestness an
especially solemn character. The Roman was no more, like the Greek,
unembarrassed at naturalness. He was ashamed of nakedness; _verecundia,
pudor_, were genuinely Roman. _Vitam præferre pudori_ was shameful. On
the contrary, the Greek gave to Greeks a festival in exhibiting the
splendor of his naked body, and the inhabitants of Crotona erected a
statue to Philip only because he was so perfectly beautiful. Simply to
be beautiful, only beautiful, was enough for the Greek. But a Roman, in
order to be recognized, must have done something for Rome: _se bene de
republica mereri_.--
§ 220. In the first education of children the agency of the mother is
especially influential, so that woman with the Romans took generally a
more moral, a higher, and a freer position. It is worthy of remark that
while, as the beautiful, she set the Greeks at variance, among the
Romans, through her ethical authority, she acted as reconciler.
§ 221. The mother of the Roman helped to form his character; the father
undertook the work of instruction. When in his fifteenth year the boy
exchanged the _toga prætextata_ for the _toga virilis_, he was usually
sent to some relative, or to some jurist, as his guardian, to learn
thoroughly, under his guidance, of the laws and of the state; with the
seventeenth began military service. All education was for a long time
entirely a private affair. On account of the necessity of a mechanical
unity in work which war demands, the greatest stress was laid upon
obedience. In its restricted sense education comprised Reading, Writing,
and Arithmetic; the last being, on account of its usefulness, more
esteemed by the Romans than by the Greeks, who gave more time to
Geometry. The schools, very characteristically, were called _Ludi_,
because their work was, in distinction from other practice, regarded
simply as a recreation, as play.
--The Roman recognized with pride this distinction between the Greek and
himself; Cicero's Introduction to his Essay on Oratory expresses it. To
be practical was always the effort of the reflective character of the
Romans, which was always placing new ends and seeking the means for
their attainment; which loved moderation, not to secure beauty thereby,
but respected it as a means for a happy success (_medium tenuere
beati_); which did not possess serene self-limitation, or [Greek:
sôphrosynê], but calculation _quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent_;
but which, in general, went far beyond the Greeks in persistency of
will, in _constantia animi_. The schools were at first held publicly in
shops; hence the name _trivium_. Very significant for the Roman is the
predicate which he conferred upon theoretical subjects when he called
them _artes bonæ_, _optimæ_, _liberales_, _ingenuæ_, &c., and brought
forth the practical element in them.--
§ 222. (2) But the practical education could no longer keep its ground
after it had become acquainted with the æsthetic. The conquest of
Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, made necessary, in a practical point of
view, the acquisition of the Grecian tongue, so that these lands, so
permeated with Grecian culture, might be thoroughly ruled. The Roman of
family and property, therefore, took into his service Greek nurses and
teachers who should give to his children, from their earliest years,
Greek culture. It is, in the history of education, a great evil when a
nation undertakes to teach a foreign tongue to its youth. Then the
necessity of trade with the Greeks caused the study of Rhetoric, so that
not only in the deliberations of the senate and people, but in law, the
ends might be better attained. Whatever effort the Roman government made
to prevent the invasion of the Greek rhetorician was all in vain. The
Roman youth sought for this knowledge, which was so necessary to them in
foreign lands, e.g. in the flourishing school of rhetoric on the island
of Rhodes. At last, even the study of Philosophy commended itself to the
practical Roman, in order that he might recover for himself confidence
amid the disappointments of life. When his practical life did not bring
him any result, he devoted himself in his poverty to abstract
contemplation. The Greeks would have Philosophy for its own sake; the
ataraxy of the Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics even, desired the result
of a necessary principle; but the Roman, on the contrary, wished to lift
himself by philosophemes above trouble and misfortune.
--This direction which Philosophy took is noteworthy, not alone in
Cicero and Seneca, but at the fall of the Roman empire, when Boethius
wrote in his prison his immortal work on the consolations of
Philosophy.--
§ 223. The earnestness which sought a definite end degenerated in the
very opposite of activity with him who had no definite aim. The idleness
of the wealthy Roman, who felt himself to be the lord of a limitless
world, devoted itself to dissipation and desire for enjoyment, which, in
its entire want of moderation, abused nature. The finest form of the
extant education was that in _belles-lettres_, which also for the first
time came to belong to the sphere of Pedagogics. There had been a
degeneration of art in India and Greece, and also an artistic trifling.
But in Rome there arose a pursuit of art in order to win a certain
consideration in social position, and to create for one's self a
recreation in the emptiness of a soul satiated with sensual debauchery.
Such a seizing of art is frivolous, for it no longer recognizes its
absoluteness, and subordinates it as a means to subjective egotism.
Literary _salons_ then appear.
--In the introduction to his _Cataline_, Sallust has painted
excellently this complete revolution in the Roman education. The younger
Pliny in his letters furnishes ample material to illustrate to us this
pursuit of _belles-lettres_. In Nero it became idiotic. We should
transgress our prescribed limits did we enter here into particulars. An
analysis would show the perversion of the æsthetic into the practical,
the æsthetic losing thereby its proper nature. But the Roman could not
avoid this perversion, because, according to his original aim, he could
not move except towards the _utile et honestum_.--
§ 224. (3) But this pursuit of fine art, this aimless parade, must at
last weary the Roman. He sought for himself again an object to which he
could vigorously devote himself. His sovereignty was assured, and
conquest as an object could no more charm him. The national religion had
fallen with the destruction of the national individuality. The soul
looked out over its historical life into an empty void. It sought to
establish a relation between itself and the next world by means of
dæmonic forces, and in place of the depreciated nationality and its
religion we find the eclecticism of the mystic society. There were, it
is true, in national religions certain secret signs, rites, words, and
meanings; but now, for the first time in the history of the world, there
appeared mysteries as pedagogical societies, which concerned themselves
only with private things and were indifferent to nationality. Everything
was profaned by the roughness of violence. Man believed no longer in the
old gods, and the superstitious faith in ghosts became only a thing fit
to frighten children with. Thus man took refuge in secrecy, which had
for his satiety a piquant charm.
§ 225. The education of the mysteries was twofold, theoretical and
practical. In the theoretical we find a regular gradation of symbols and
symbolical acts through which one seemed gradually to attain to the
revelation of the secret; the practical contained a regular gradation of
ascetic actions alternating with an abandonment to wild orgies. Both
raised one from the rank of the novice to that of the initiated. In the
higher orders they formed an ethical code of laws, and this form
Pedagogics has retained in all such secret culture, _mutatis mutandis_,
down to the Illuminati.
--In the Roman empire, its Persian element was the worship of Mithras;
its Egyptian, that of Isis; its Grecian, the Pythagorean doctrines. All
these three, however, were much mingled with each other. The Roman
legions, who really no longer had any native country, bore these
artificial religions throughout the whole world. The confusion of
excitement led often to Somnambulism, which was not yet understood, and
to belief in miracles. Apollonius of Tyana, the messiah of Ethnicism, is
the principal figure in this group; and, in comparison with him,
Jamblichus appears only as an enthusiast and Alexander of Abonoteichos
as an impostor.--