EDUCATION AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM--HISTORIC.
_ROME._
Vigor of the Early Romans -- their Virtues and Vices; their Rigorous
Laws; their Defective Education; their Contempt of Labor. -- Slavery:
its Horrors and Brutalizing Influence. -- Education Confined to the
Arts of Politics and War; it transformed Courage into Cruelty, and
Fortitude into Stoicism. -- Robbery and Bribery. -- The Vices of
Greece and Carthage imported into Rome. -- Slaves construct all the
great Public Works; they Revolt, and the Legions Slaughter them. --
The Gothic Invasion. -- Rome Falls. -- False Philosophy and
Superficial Education promoted Selfishness. -- Deification of
Abstractions, and Scorn of Men and Things. -- Universal Moral
Degradation. -- Neglect of Honest Men and Promotion of Demagogues. --
The Decline of Morals and Growth of Literature. -- Darwin’s Law of
Reversion, through Selfishness, to Savagery. -- Contest between the
Rich and the Poor. -- Logic, Rhetoric, and Ruin.
In the city of the Seven Hills there was no statue to Pity, as at
Athens. In the long line of Roman conquerors there was no one possessing
the title to fame, of which, on his death-bed, Pericles boasted, namely,
that “no Athenian had ever worn mourning on his account.”
The dominion of Rome was logical. In the legend of Romulus and Remus,
suckled by the she-wolf, there is a hint of the rugged vigor which
characterized the Roman people, and distinguished them from the earlier
nationalities. In all the civilizations anterior to that of Rome there
was an element of pliability or softness which belongs to the youth of
man. But from the day on which Romulus, with the brazen ploughshare,
drew a furrow around the Palatine, both the sinews and the souls of his
followers hardened into maturity. The rising walls of the city, so the
legend runs, were moistened with the life-drops of Remus, whose derisive
remark and act cost him his life, his slayer exclaiming, haughtily, “So
perish all who dare to climb these ramparts.” The rape of the Sabines,
the conflicts which ensued with that outraged people, their
incorporation with the conquerors, their subsequent joint conquests, and
the shrewdness displayed in the conservation of the fruits of
victory--these events show that man had attained his majority. Under the
shadow of the walls of the Eternal City all the great races were
associated and mingled--Latins, Trojans, Greeks, Sabines, and Etruscans.
The Roman civilization was the product of all that had gone before, as
it was destined to be the father of all that should follow it. The Roman
had no peer either in courage or fortitude. Aspiring to universal
dominion, he toughened himself to achieve it. Dooming his enemy to death
or slavery, he was not less self-exacting, his own life, through the cup
of poison, the sword, or the opened vein, becoming the forfeit equally
of misfortune and shame. The tragic fate of Lucretia, the resulting
revolution, the banishment of the Tarquins, and the abolition of the
kingly government show the swiftness of Roman retribution and the
terrible force of Roman resolution. Roman persistence in the path of
conquest for many centuries is typified by Cato in his invocation of
destruction upon Carthage. The masculine character of the Roman vices
finds illustration in the struggle of Appius, the Decemvir, to possess
the person of Virginia by wresting the law from its true purpose, the
conservation of justice, and converting it into a shield for lust; and
the vigor of Roman virtue is exemplified in the act of Virginius
plunging the knife into the heart of his beloved daughter to save her
honor. The rigorous laws of Rome testify to the stamina of her people.
The father to whom a deformed son was born must cause the child to be
put to death, and any citizen might kill the man who betrayed the design
of becoming king.
A scientific system of education would have conserved and developed the
noble and eliminated the ignoble traits of Roman character. But neither
Roman education, philosophy, nor ethics inculcated either respect for
labor or reverence for human rights; and hence the laborer was reduced
to slavery, and the slave made the victim of every known atrocity.
Slavery became the corner-stone of the Roman State, and slavery and
labor were synonymous terms. The Roman supply of laborers was maintained
by depopulating conquered countries. In the train of the legions,
returning to Rome in triumph, there were not only statues, paintings,
and other works of art, but thousands of men, women, and children
destined to slavery. And the laws in regard to slaves were terrible, as
laws touching slavery must always be--for a state of slavery is a state
of war. It was a law of Rome that if a slave murdered his master the
whole family of slaves should be put to death; and Tacitus relates an
instance of the execution of four hundred slaves for the murder of a
citizen, their master. In the course of the servile rebellion in Sicily
a million slaves were killed; and it should be borne in mind that they
were valuable laborers--many of them skilled artisans. Vast numbers of
them were exposed to wild beasts in the arena, for the popular
amusement. The rebellion of the gladiators was put down only by a resort
to awful atrocities, among which was the crucifixion of prisoners. The
revolt of the allies was quelled at the cost of half a million lives.
But slaves were plenty, for Rome had her bloody hand at the throat of
all mankind, and her hoarse cry was, “Your life or your liberty!”
Every Roman freeman was a soldier, and the cultivation of the land,
manufactures, and all the pursuits of industry, were carried on by
slaves. Slave labor was cheaper than the labor of animals; cattle were
taken from the plough and slaughtered for beef that slaves--men--might
take their places. Labor fell to the lowest degree of contempt, and the
laborer was a thing to be spurned--for the free citizen to labor with
his hands was more disgraceful than to die of starvation. Hence there
was a class of citizen paupers to whom largesses of corn were doled out
by the demagogues of the Senate and the army. Ultimately these
citizen-paupers became so vile and filthy that they engendered leprosy
and other loathsome diseases, as they dragged their palsied limbs
through the streets of the city, crying, “Bread and circuses! bread and
circuses!”
Roman education was confined almost exclusively to the training of the
sons of rich citizens in the arts of politics and war; and in a State
where labor was despised, and whose corner-stone was slavery, and whose
shibboleth was conquest, the baseness of these arts may be imagined but
hardly described. It promoted selfishness, and in the course of
centuries selfishness transformed Roman courage into cruelty, and Roman
fortitude into brutal stoicism. The Roman sense of justice was swallowed
up in Roman lust of power. Rome became the great robber nation of the
world. She was on the land what Greece had once been on the sea--a
pirate. She made the streets of the cities she conquered run with
blood. Thousands of captives she doomed to death; other thousands graced
the triumphs of her generals, and the spoil saved from the fury of the
flames, and the more ungovernable fury of the licentious soldiery, was
carried home to the Eternal City, there to fall into the hands of the
most cunning among the demagogues, for use in the bribery of courts,
senators, and the populace.
Tacitus deplored the decline of public virtue. He declared, mournfully,
that “Nothing was sacred, nothing safe from the hand of rapacity.” His
environment blinded him to the true cause of the depravity he so
eloquently deplored--selfishness. Had he been familiar with the
inductive method he would have found in a defective system of education
the cause of Roman venality and corruption. He might thus have realized
the weakness of a community of men who wanted the necessary force and
virtue to depose a Tiberius and elevate to his place a Germanicus; or to
dethrone a Domitian and crown in his stead an Agricola.
Education in Rome deified selfishness, and hence realized its last
analysis--total depravity. Of course nothing was sacred in a community
where men were ruthlessly trampled underfoot! Of course nothing was
“safe from the hand of rapacity” where the laborer was degraded to a
place in the social scale below the leprous pauper whose filthy person
provoked disgust, and whose poisonous breath, as he cried for bread,
spread abroad disease and death!
It was inevitable that the nation that grew rich through plunder should
grow poor in public and private virtue. And such was the fact. The
eagles that protected robbers abroad, spread their sheltering wings over
defaulters, bribers, and thieves at home. There had been a time in Rome
when bribery was punishable with death, but now candidates for office
sat at tables in the streets near the polling-places and openly paid the
citizens for their votes. The change in the habits of the people was as
pronounced as the change in the laws. The early triumphs of the Romans
were industrial--flocks and herds; their trophies, obtained in single
combat, consisted of spears and helmets. When Cincinnatus was sent for
to assume the dictatorship he was found in his field following the
plough. Valerius, four times consul, and by Livy characterized as the
first man of his time, died so poor that he had to be buried at the
public charge. But with the fall of Greece and Carthage, and the
reduction of Asia, there was a great social change at Rome. The Roman
legions not only carried home the wealth of the countries they conquered
but the vices of the peoples they subdued. An ancient writer summarizes
the situation in the following graphic sentence: “The only fashionable
principles were to acquire wealth by every means of avarice and
injustice, and to dissipate it by every method of luxury and profusion.”
The end is not far off. The story of Persia, of Egypt, and of Greece is
the story equally of Rome. Avarice and injustice, luxury and profusion
do their sure work. The Roman civilization is more than a thousand years
old. Asiatic wealth, the luxury and false philosophy of Greece, and a
vicious system of education, promoting selfishness, have united to sap
its foundations. Society is divided into three classes--an aristocracy
based solely upon wealth, cruel and profligate, a mob of free citizens,
otherwise paupers, who live by beggary and the sale of their votes, and
laborers who are slaves.
On the occasion of the presentation of spectacles, among a variety of
presents slaves (laborers) are thrown into the arena to be scrambled for
by the free citizens! But men are cheap. In Asia they sell for sixpence
apiece, and Rome has only to send an army there to get them for nothing.
To this class, to these slaves, however, the Roman people are indebted
for all the arts which make life agreeable. They construct all the great
public works. They build the splendid roads over which the Roman legions
follow their generals in triumph home to Rome. They make the aqueducts,
dig the canals, and construct the buildings, public and private, whose
remains still attest their magnificence--the Forum, the amphitheatres,
and the golden house of the Cæsars. They build the villas overlooking
the Bay of Naples, in which the nobles live in riot and wantonness; they
cook the dinners given in those villas; they make the clothes the nobles
wear, and the jewels that adorn their persons. They cultivate the
fields, follow the plough, train and trim the vine, and gather in the
harvest. They raise the corn that is distributed by the nobles among the
soldiery, and given as a bribe to the diseased and debauched free
citizens for their votes. They feel deeply the injustice of their lot,
and, like men, strike for liberty. But the Roman legions are set on them
like blood-hounds, and hundreds of thousands of them are slaughtered and
made food for birds of prey, and other thousands are thrown into the
arena to be torn by wild beasts, and still others are bestowed as gifts
upon the populace at the games.
The contest between the rich and the poor is at an end; the rich are
millionaires, the poor are beggars. It is the story of Dives and Lazarus
over again. The rich are clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare
sumptuously every day; the poor are full of sores, and live upon the
crumbs that fall from the tables of the rich. Rome topples to her fall.
The Gothic invader is at her gates, and there is no army to defend them.
The barbarian demands a ransom. To obtain it the statues are despoiled
of their ornaments and precious stones, and the gods of gold and silver
are melted in the fire. The ransom is given, and Alaric retires. But he
returns, and this time to pillage. The city is sacked; rich and poor,
bond and free, are whelmed in one common ruin. At last the diabolic wish
of the infamous Caligula is realized. The Roman people have but one
neck, and the Goth puts his foot upon it. Rome falls, the victim of her
own crimes, strangled by her own gluttony. Thus ends the first period of
the world’s manhood--ends in exhaustion, and a syncope which is destined
to last a thousand years.
Long before the fall of the republic Rome had become the seat of all the
world’s learning. In robbing conquered countries she not only took their
gold and silver, a share of their people for slaves, and their works of
art, but their libraries, their philosophy, and their literature. But
neither the Greek nor the Roman philosophy contributed in the least to a
solution of the pressing social problems of the time. The wise men of
Rome were powerless to help either themselves or their fellow-men,
because their philosophy was false. It was purely speculative; it had no
body of facts to rest upon.
The Roman educators and philosophers were almost as ignorant of
physiology as Plato was hundreds of years before, hence they were unable
to study the mind in the sole way in which it is intelligently
approachable, namely, through its bodily manifestations. In studying the
mind as an independent entity there could be no general rules of
investigation. The metaphysical philosopher did not study the mind of
man; he explored his own mind merely--consulted his own inner
consciousness. Hence there were, in Rome, as many systems of philosophy,
more or less clearly defined and distinct, as there were philosophers.
But they were merely metaphysical speculations, dreams, dependent upon
purely subjective processes; and those processes were in turn dependent
upon the ever-changing states of mind of each philosopher.
It is obvious that these systems of philosophy could exert no influence
upon the community at large, for the community formed no part of the
subject matter of their speculations. But they did exert an influence,
and a very pernicious one, upon the philosophers themselves, and indeed
upon all the cultured men of Rome; for they were thereby made thoroughly
selfish, and so rendered incapable of forming a just judgment of public
affairs. In considering the mind apart from the body, the body naturally
fell into utter contempt. This was the great crime of speculative
philosophy; for in engendering a feeling of contempt for the human body
it furnished an excuse for slavery. And this contempt logically included
manual labor, for the only manual laborer was a slave; and it also
extended to the useful arts, for all those arts were the work of slaves.
Hence the laborer, being a slave, was placed lower in the social scale
than the pauper who sold his vote for a glass of wine. And thus it came
about that a factitious right--the right of suffrage--was more highly
esteemed by the public than the cardinal virtue of industry, upon which
alone the perpetuity of the social compact depends.
And, again, the wretched state of public morals may be inferred from the
fact that the right of suffrage, through which the idle, leprous pauper
was elevated above the industrious laborer and above the useful arts,
was notoriously the subject of open traffic in the streets of Rome on
every election day. Thus Roman philosophy landed the Roman people in the
last ditch, for it led to the deification of abstract ideas and to scorn
of things. That this utter perversion of the truth and wreck of justice
was the cause of the decline of the Roman Empire there is no doubt.
It is equally plain that the noted men of Rome were utterly ignorant of
the cause of the disorders which afflicted the body politic. There is no
evidence, either in their lives or their works, that they brought to the
consideration of the great social problems of the time any practical
philosophy whatever. Suetonius, with a graphic pen, portrays the
cruelties of the Cæsars, but hints at no cause therefor inherent in the
social system. Cicero forecasts the doom of the republic, but has no
remedy to propose except that of the elevation of Pompey rather than
Cæsar. Livy and Tacitus deplore the decay of public and private virtue,
but are silent on the subject of the infamy of slavery and on the shame
of degrading labor. The moral sentiments of Seneca and Aurelius are of
the most elevated character, but the fact that they ignore slavery, the
slave, the laborer, and the useful arts, shows either that they never
thought upon those fundamental social questions, or that their thoughts
ran in the popular channel; in a word, that their philosophy was so
shallow as to render them callous to the great crimes upon which the
Roman State rested.
That the subjective philosophy and the defective educational system of
the Romans rendered them selfish, and hence corrupt, there is abundant
evidence. Cicero professed the most lofty patriotism, but he was
without moral courage. It was he who congratulated the public men of
Rome, after the usurpation of Cæsar, upon the privilege of remaining
“totally silent!” He regarded Pompey as “the greatest man the world had
ever produced,” but deserted him in his extremity, which was equally the
extremity of his country. He denounced Cæsar as the cause of the
culminating misfortunes of Rome, but went down upon his knees to him,
and rose to his feet only to exhaust all the resources of his matchless
eloquence in fulsome adulation of the destroyer of the Republic.
Seneca’s moral precepts are sublime, but his political maxims are
atrocious. Witness this pretence of an all-embracing love for
man--“Whenever thou seest a fellow-creature in distress know that thou
seest a human being.” Contrast with this exalted sentiment of the great
stoic his political maxim--“Terror is the safeguard of a kingdom”--and
reflect that he lived under the reigns of Claudius and Nero. The
millions of slaves in the Roman dominions were “human beings,” but
Seneca had no practical regard for them as “fellow-creatures in
distress.” His beautiful humanitarian sentiment was a barren
ideality--it bore no fruit; but his brutal political maxim caused him to
thrive. Under the favor of Claudius he amassed a vast fortune. His
palace in the city was sumptuously furnished, his country-seats were
splendidly appointed, and he possessed abundance of ready money. “There
can be no happiness without virtue,” exclaims this prosperous Roman
citizen. But while he pens this lofty sentiment he is accused of
avarice, usury, and extortion, charged with complicity in the Piso
conspiracy, and banished for the crime of adultery.
The debasing influence of the Greek philosophy, upon the Roman people,
is shown by contrasting the characters of the distinguished men who were
honored by the public at widely separated periods of time. Thus, during
the period 400-350 B.C., Camillus, noted above all his contemporaries
for the purity of his public life, was uninterruptedly honored with the
highest offices in the State, and loved and respected by all classes of
the community. But three hundred years later Cæsar, who involved the
country in civil war to compass his ambition, and in which struggle
liberty perished--he was preferred, in all the political struggles
preliminary to his assumption of supreme power, to Cato, whose
patriotism was unquestioned, and whose rigid virtue was proverbial
throughout the Roman Empire. So also of a still later period, Agricola
and Germanicus were renowned for the possession of the highest qualities
of true manhood, joined to the practice in public life of the most
austere and self-sacrificing virtue. Both served the State with courage,
ability, and zeal; but the one, after a brilliant career in the West,
was forced into retirement, and the other, after splendid services in
the East, was exiled and poisoned.
Previous to the introduction of the Greek philosophy, and the Greek
education and social habits, the Roman people were worthy of their
noblest representative--Camillus. At that early period of their history
they rewarded virtue and punished vice. But during the Empire, after the
invasion of Greek manners, they were unworthy of their best
representatives--Cato, Germanicus, and Agricola. To those great and good
men they preferred Cæsar, Caligula, and Nero: they rewarded vice and
punished virtue. There is in this circumstance unquestionable evidence
of a great declension in character. But the remarkable fact in regard to
this period of Roman history is that the declension in character was
accompanied by a species of great mental growth or power.
During this period a literature was created which has ever since been
famous, and which still exerts a considerable influence upon man.
Cæsar’s Commentaries, the Orations of Cicero, the Annals of Tacitus,
Livy’s History, the Odes and Satires of Horace, the Meditations of
Aurelius, and the Morals of Seneca are in all the world’s libraries,
and, in the universities, are placed in the hands of the most favored
youth of all the civilized countries of the world, as models of style
and exponents of a civilization whence all modern civilizations sprung.
But this literature possessed no saving quality, because in so far as it
was elevated in morals it did not represent the Roman people, not even
the authors themselves generally, as has been shown. As a matter of
fact, during the period of the creation of the great literature of Rome,
Darwin’s law of “reversion” was in active operation. There was a “black
sheep” in every noble Roman family. Bad men appeared, not now and then,
at long intervals, as in all civilizations, but every day and
everywhere; and these men were political and social leaders. They
moulded the policy of the State and set the fashion in society. Under
their direction the Roman people retrograded towards a state of
savagery, and savagery is but another name for selfishness. Selfishness
in its worst estate is the essence of human depravity, and to that
condition the Roman people fell, at the time when their moralists were
inditing those sublime sentiments which still challenge the admiration
of all great and good men.
That the Roman people were as dead to the influence of high moral
sentiments as the Britons were when first encountered by Cæsar, shows
that they had degenerated to a similar condition of savagery, or to a
condition of absolute selfishness, which is its moral equivalent. Given
a savage state, two savages and one dinner; the savages will fight to
the death for the dinner. Given a state of civilization absolutely
selfish, two contestants and one prize; each contestant will exhaust all
the resources of artifice, duplicity, and falsehood to secure the prize.
To this deplorable condition the Roman people were reduced by subjective
educational processes. Selfishness causes the individual to seek his own
interest in total disregard of the interest of others. Hence it tends
directly to the disintegration of society, since the essence of the
civil compact is the pledge of each member of the community that he will
do no injury to his fellows. Selfishness violates this pledge; for to
gain its end it ruthlessly crushes whatever appears in its path.
In Rome selfishness did its complete work. It transformed the government
from a pure democracy into an oligarchy composed of wealthy citizens,
who called themselves nobles. By this class wealth was made the sole
standard of social and political distinction, and in its presence, and
through its influence, the old strife between the patricians and the
plebeians gave way to a state of hostility between the rich and the
poor--always the last analysis of social disorder. The contest was
distinguished by assassinations, embezzlements of the public money, the
quarrels of rival demagogues, and civil wars, and it culminated in Cæsar
and the empire.
The nobles, or aristocrats, who wrought the work of transformation, were
refined and elegant in their manners, and accomplished in the tricks of
finance, the technicalities of the law, and the arts of oratory. They
were the product of the Roman schools of rhetoric and logic, whose
subjective methods obscured the truth, promoted vanity, and deified
selfishness. All the guards of honor and rectitude having been swept
away by Cæsar, a savage contest for supremacy ensued among the
aristocrats. The prize for which they contended consisted of the spoil
of the Roman legions and the product of the labor of the Roman slaves.
This was the Roman patrimony--the price of blood and of the sweat of
enforced toil. For this prize the Roman aristocrats struggled like
savages fighting for the one dinner.
It is the old struggle, the struggle witnessed by each, in turn, of the
nations of antiquity--the struggle in which selfishness vanquishes
itself. But this is a struggle of giants, is on a grander scale, and is
more conspicuous, for the historian, pen in hand, records its bloody
scenes. It is the last act in a great drama, a drama that has lasted a
thousand years. It is the conclusion of the long struggle of a few
large-brained, unscrupulous individuals, to grasp the fruits of the toil
of all men. The conspirators are about to fail, as such conspiracies
have always failed and must always fail, and like Samson in his blind
fury they will pull down upon their own devoted heads the pillars of the
temple. The struggle culminates in a hand-to-hand conflict for the
mastery between the baffled chiefs of the conspiracy to enslave
mankind--the supreme effort of selfishness--and it involves the authors
and their victims in one common disaster. Once more it is proved that a
false system of education, a system which exalts abstract ideas and
degrades things, promotes selfishness; that selfishness is the
equivalent of savagery, and that savagery, however refined, wrecks
society.