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EDUCATION
HOW OLD THE NEW
BY
JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., Ph.D., Litt. D.
Dean and Professor of the History of Medicine and of Nervous Diseases
at Fordham University School of Medicine; Professor of Physiological
Psychology at the Cathedral College, New York.
SECOND IMPRESSION
NEW YORK
FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS
1911
COPYRIGHT. 1910, BY
JAMES J. WALSH
Published October 20th, 1910
Second Impression March 20th, 1911
THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS
RAMWAY, N.J.
TO THE
_Xavier Alumni Sodality_
Most of the thoughts contained in this volume were originally
expressed at our breakfasts. It seems only fitting, then, that on
presentation to a larger audience they should be dedicated to you.
J. J. W.
_Our Lady's Day._ August 15, 1910
{v}
PREFACE
The reason for publishing this volume of lectures and addresses is the
persuasion that present-day educators are viewing the history of
education with short-sighted vision. An impression prevails that only
the last few generations have done work of serious significance in
education. The history of old-time education is neglected, or is
treated as of at most antiquarian interest and there is a failure to
understand its true value. The connecting link between the lectures
and addresses is the effort to express in terms of the present what
educators were doing in the past. Once upon a time, when I proclaimed
the happiness of the English workmen of the Middle Ages, the very
positive objection was raised, "How could they be happy since their
wages were only a few cents a day?" For response it was only necessary
to point out that for his eight cents, the minimum wage by act of
Parliament, the workman could buy a pair of handmade shoes, that being
the maximum price established by law, and other necessaries at similar
prices. If old-time education is studied with this same care to
translate its meaning into modern values, then the very oldest
education of which we have any record takes on significance even for
our time.
{vi}
While it is generally supposed that there are many new features in
modern education, it requires but slight familiarity with educational
history to know that there is very little that is novel. Such
supposedly new phases as nature-study and technical training and
science, physical as well as ethical, are all old stories, though they
have had negative phases during which it would be hard to to trace
them. The more we know about the history of education the greater is
our respect for educators at all times. Nearly always they had a
perfectly clear idea of what they were trying to do, they faced the
problems of education in quite the same spirit that we do and often
solved them very well. Indeed the results of many periods of old-time
education are much better than our own, even when judged by our
standards.
Unfortunately there exists a very common persuasion that evolution
plays a large role in education and that we, "the heirs of all the
ages in the foremost files of time," are necessarily in the forefront
of educational advance. There has been much progress in education in
the last century, but it would, indeed, be a hopeless world if there
had not been progress out of the depths in which education was plunged
in the eighteenth century. There were a number of reformers in
education at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the
nineteenth century. It was rather easy to be an educational reformer
at that time. The lowest period in the history of {vii} education was
about the middle of the eighteenth century. It has been assumed that
since we are far ahead of that generation we must be still farther
ahead of the people who preceded them. That is the mistake. There are
periods of education of very great significance centuries long before
that time.
In educational lectures and addresses for the past five years, I have
been trying to translate into modern terms the meaning of these old
periods of education. A great many teachers have thought the ideas
valuable and suggestive and so I am tempted to publish them in book
form. There is an additional reason, that of wishing to create a bond
of sympathy between the two systems of education that have grown up in
this country. For some three generations now Catholic educators have
been independently building up a system of education from the
elementary schools to the university. The American world of education
is coming to recognize how much they have accomplished. There has even
been some curiosity expressed as to how it was all done in spite of
apparently insuperable obstacles. One phase of Catholic education, its
thorough-going conservatism and definite effort to value the past
properly and take advantage of its precious lessons, is here
represented.
My own educational interests have been taken up much more of late
years with medicine than with other phases of this subject. Hence the
{viii} volume contains certain addresses relating to the history of
medical education. They are more intimately linked with the general
subject of education than might perhaps be thought. We have had finely
organized medical education at a number of times in the past, and,
indeed, at the present moment can find inspiration and incentive in
studying the legal regulation of medicine and of medical education in
what might seem to be so-unpromising a time as the thirteenth century.
For true educational progress there has always been need of close
sympathy between the non-professional and the professional department
of universities. Only when the professional schools are real graduate
departments, requiring under-graduate training for admission, is the
university doing its work properly. This was the rule in the
past--hence the precious lessons for the present in the story of
these old-time universities.
These lectures and addresses were actually delivered, not merely read.
They were written with that purpose. Certain repetitions that would
have been avoided if the articles had been prepared directly for
reading and not for an audience, may be noted. Some of the subjects
overlap and certain phases had to be treated usually in variant form
in different lectures. For these faults the reader's indulgence is
craved.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 8
II. THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 63
III. MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 93
IV. IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 155
V. CYCLES OF FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 199
VI. THE CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 273
VII. ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 299
VIII. THE MEDICAL PROFESSION FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 349
IX. UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 377
X. THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 403
XI. NEW ENGLANDISM 433
EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW
"Nothing under the sun is new, neither is any man able to say:
Behold this is new: For it hath already gone before in the ages that
were before us."
--_Ecclesiastes i:10_.
"Nullum est jam dictum, quod non dictum sit prius."
--Terence, _Eun. Prol.,_ 41.
[Nothing is now said which was not said before.]
St. Jerome relates that his preceptor Donatus, commenting on this
passage of Terence, used to say: "Pereant qui ante nos nostra
dixerunt."
[May they perish who said our good things before us.]
{3}
EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW [Footnote 1]
[Footnote 1: Material for this lecture was gathered for one of a
course of lectures on Phases of Education delivered at St Mary's
College, South Bend, Ind., at the Sacred Heart Academy, Kenwood,
Albany, N. Y., and at St. Mary's College, Monroe, Mich, 1909. In
somewhat developed form it was delivered to the public school
teachers of New Orleans at the beginning of 1910. In very nearly its
present form it was the opening lecture at the course of the
Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, on "How Old the New Is,"
delivered in the spring of 1910.]
Popular lectures are usually on some very up-to-date subject. Indeed,
as a rule they are on subjects that are developing at the moment, and
the main aim of the lecturer is to forecast the future. It is before a
thing has happened that we want to know about it now, and though, as
not infrequently occurs, the lecturer's forecast does not in the event
prove him a prophet nor the son of a prophet, for nature usually
accomplishes her purposes more simply than the closet philosopher
anticipates, at least we have the satisfaction for the moment of
thinking that not only are we up to date but a little ahead of it.
Unfortunately I have to claim your indulgence this evening in this
matter, for taking just the opposite course. I am to talk about the
oldest book in the world, its old-fashioned yet novel contents, its
up-to-date applications, and its significance for the history of the
race and, above all, the history of education. The {4} one interesting
feature, as I hope, of what I have to say, is that old-time methods in
education as suggested by this little volume are strangely familiar
and its contents are as significant now as they were in the old time
from which it comes. The book was written almost as long before
Solomon as Solomon is before us, yet there is a depth of practical
wisdom about it that eminently recalls the expression "there is
nothing new under the sun."
So much attention has been given to education in recent years, we have
made such a prominent feature of it in life, have spent so much money
on it, have devoted so much time and thought to its development and
organization, that we feel very sure that what we are doing now in
every line of educational effort represents--indeed must represent--a
great advance over anything and everything that was ever accomplished
in the past. To say anything else would seem to most people pure
pessimism. It would mean that in spite of all the efforts of men we
were not making advances. As a matter of fact, all of us know that it
is quite possible to make heroic efforts so sadly misdirected that
they accomplish nothing and get us nowhere. Progress depends not on
effort but on the proper direction of the effort. We are supposed,
however, to represent one phase and that at the front rank of an
inevitable advance in things human, pushed forward, as it were, by the
wheel of evolution in its ceaseless progress, and bound {5} therefore
to make advancement. It is with this idea, so commonly accepted, that
I would take issue by showing how much was accomplished in the past
that anticipates much of what we are occupied with at the present
time, and that serves to show what men can accomplish at any time when
they set themselves to doing things with high ideals, well-considered
purpose and strenuous effort.
There are those who insist that unless men have the encouraging
feeling that they are making progress, their efforts are likely to be
less strenuous than would otherwise be the case. There are those who
think apparently that compliments make the best incentive for
successful effort. Some of us who know that the world's best work, or
at least the work of many of the world's great men, has been done in
the midst of opposition, in the very teeth of criticism, in spite of
discouragement, may not agree with that opinion. The history of
successful accomplishment seems to show, indeed, that incentive is all
the stronger as the result of the opposition which arouses to renewed
efforts and the criticism which strips whatever is new of errors that
inevitably cling to it at the beginning. On the other hand, if there
is anything that the lessons of history make clear it is that
self-complacency is the very worst thing, above all for intellectual
effort of any kind, and that criticism, when judicious, is always
beneficial.
Above all, comparisons are likely to be {6} chastening in their
effects to make us realize that what we are doing at any particular
time does not mean so much more than what many others have done and
may indeed even mean less. It is rather interesting, then, to set our
complacent assurance that we are doing such wonderful work in
education and represent such magnificent progress over against some of
the educational work of the past. After all we are not nearly so
self-congratulatory about our education, its ways and methods and,
above all, its success as we were a dozen years ago. There are many
jarring notes of discordant criticism of methods heard, there are many
deprecatory remarks passed with regard to our supposed success, and
there have been some educators unkind enough,--and, unfortunately,
they are often of the inner circle of our educational life,--to say
that we are lacking in scholarship to a great degree, and that much of
our so-called educational progress has been a tendency toward an
accumulation of superficial information rather than a training of the
intellect for power. The absolute need of the distinction between
education for information and for power has been coming home to us.
Above all, we have felt that we were not a little deceived by
appearances in education and so are more ready to listen to
suggestions of various kinds.
Under these circumstances it has seemed to me, that a calling of
attention to what was accomplished at certain long-past periods for
{7} education, would not only be of interest as information for
teachers, but might possibly be helpful or at least suggestive, in the
midst of the somewhat disordered state of mind that has resulted from
recent criticisms of our educational methods and success, by men whose
interest in education cannot be doubted and whose opportunities for
knowing are the best. For we are in a time when nearly every important
educator, president of a university, dean of a department, old-time
teacher or old, thoughtful pupil with the interest of _Alma Mater_ at
heart, who has had something to say with regard to education has said
it in rather derogatory fashion. Perhaps, then, it will do us good to
study the periods of the past and see what they did, how their methods
differed or still more often were like our own, what their success was
like and what we may learn from them. The surprising thing is the
number of repetitions of present-day experiences in education that we
shall find in the past. This is true, however, in every mode of
thinking quite as well as in education, once careful investigation of
conditions is made.
If we begin at the beginning and take what is sometimes called the
oldest book in the world, we shall see how early definite educational
ideas took form. It is a set of moral lessons or instructions given,
or supposed to be given, by a father to his son. The father's name was
Ptah Hotep. He was a vizier of King Itosi of the Fifth Dynasty in
Egypt, some time about 3500 B.C. {8} The Egyptologists used to date
him earlier than that, but in recent years they have been clipping
centuries off Egyptian dates until perhaps King Itosi must be
considered as having lived probably not earlier than 3350 B.C. That
makes very little difference for our purpose, however. The oldest
manuscript copy of the book was written apparently not later than 2900
b.c. It exists as the famous Prisse Papyrus in the Bibliotheque
Nationale in Paris. There is another copy in the British Museum. There
is a pretty thorough agreement as to these dates, so that we can be
sure that this little book which has come to be known as the
Instruction of Ptah Hotep, or the Proverbs of Ptah Hotpu--another form
of his name with a variation in the title--represents the wisdom of
the generations who lived in Egypt about 5000 years ago. It was
written, as I have said, almost as long before Solomon as Solomon is
before us, so that the character of the moral instructions which it
contains is extremely interesting.
There must have been a number of copies of it made. This and books
like it were used as schoolbooks in Egypt. They were employed somewhat
as we employ copybooks. The writing of the manuscript is the old
hieratic, cursive writing of the Egyptians, not their hieroglyphics,
and the children used portions of this book as copies, listened to
dictation from it and learned to write the language by imitating it.
Of books similar to it we have a number of manuscript copies. Some {9}
of these copies preserved from before 2000 B.C. are full of errors
such as school children would make in taking down dictation. This was
their method of teaching spelling, and after the children had spelled
the words the teacher went over them and corrected the mistakes. These
corrections were made in a different colored ink from that used by the
pupils! The whole system of teaching, as it thus comes before us,
resembles our own elementary school teaching much more than we might
think possible. Spelling, writing, composition are all taught in this
way yet, or at least they were when I was at school, and while I have
heard that some of the old-fashioned methods were going out, I have
also received some hints of the reaction by which they are coming in
again, so that the Egyptian methods take on a new interest.
Perhaps there is no more interesting feature of the education of that
olden time than the fact that these books which were used as copybooks
in the school contain moral lessons. We have been neglecting these in
our schools and have come to recognize the danger of such neglect.
Definite efforts at the organization of moral teaching in some form
are being made by many teachers, and their necessity is recognized by
all educators. All of these old Egyptian books, then, will have a
special claim on our interest at the present time. Above all, the
oldest of them, though it is literally the oldest book in the world,
merits {10} our attention, because its moral teaching is very
clear-cut and its emphasis on ethical precepts very pronounced.
We would be very prone to think that what an old father has to say to
his boy over fifty centuries ago would have, at most, only an
antiquarian interest for us. It is not easy even to imagine that the
old gentleman could have known human nature so well and written from
so close to the heart of humanity because of his love for his boy,
that his words would always have a practical application in life.
Such, however, is actually the case. Any father of the modern time
would be proud to be able to give to his boy the eminently practical
maxims that this old father has written down. If there is any advice
that will be helpful for youth, for the young usually demand that they
shall have their own experience and not take it at second hand, this
is the advice that is of value. Only fools, it is said, learn by their
own experience, but then there is good Scripture warrant for believing
that they were not all wise men in the olden time, and we are pretty
well agreed that all the fools are not dead yet. If advice can be of
service, however, from one generation to another, then here is the
wisdom of age for the inexperience of youth. At least it will serve
after the event to show youth that it was properly warned and that it
is entirely its own fault if it has been making a fool of itself--as
other generations have done before.
{11}
It might be expected that at least in form these old-time maxims would
be rude and crude, expressed with an old man's loquaciousness and with
many personal foibles. Fortunately for us, while to his son Ptah Hotep
was very probably an old man, he was not what most of us would call
old. In Egypt they married comparatively young. This boy was probably
the oldest son. It is usually for the oldest that such advice is
treasured up and written out. The father then, giving his advice just
as his son was leaving the paternal household when he had married a
wife and was about to set up a home of his own, was probably not more
than forty. To seventeen or eighteen, forty is quite ancient. To most
of the rest of us it is entirely too young to be trusted absolutely in
serious matters. Aristotle declared that a man's body reaches physical
perfection at thirty-five and his mind reaches intellectual maturity
at forty-nine. His students were inclined to think that this age was
entirely too old, his philosophic contemporaries of his own generation
and the members of national academies and learned societies of most of
the generations since, have been quite sure that the term set was
entirely too young.
Ptah Hotep's son, then, very probably looked on his father as most
sons under twenty are prone to do, as a dear old-fashioned gentleman
(he does not like to use the word old fogy for his father, reserving
it for the fathers of others), who would {12} be quite tolerable if he
only had a little more sympathy with the wonderful advance that is in
the world in this new generation. The real young man of the time,
however, was the father who wrote his maxims, the condensed wisdom of
his experience of life, with a directness, an absolute clarity, an
occasional appeal to figures of speech and a variety of expression so
striking as to make his work literature. As such it has come down to
us. It is eminently human in every way, and while there is here and
there an unfortunate tendency to repeat words of similar sound and
different meaning, after the fashion of what we call punning, this is
pardonable enough since so many of our friends indulge in it and give
us practice in pardoning, while, on the whole, the old man wrote as
wisely as Polonius, and in a style not quite as artificial as that
which Shakespeare has invented as suitable to the old Danish Prime
Minister, whom the ancient vizier of Egypt recalls so vividly in many
ways.
No idea is probably more ingrained in modern thinking, no opinion is
more generally accepted, no conclusion is surer to most people, than
that we are in the midst of marvellous progress in this little world
of ours, and that our generation is somewhere at the apex of the
Pyramid of Progress, elevated thereto by the attainments of the
generations that have preceded us. As the Poet Laureate put it at the
close of the nineteenth century, "we are the heirs of all the ages in
the {13} foremost files of time"; and because we have the advantage of
our predecessors' progress in their time, we are, of course, in all
that makes for human happiness and fulness of life, very far ahead of
those gone before us. The farther back we go in history, then, the
lower down men are supposed to be found in all that stands for
intellectuality and in all that represents the possibilities of human
achievement at its best. It is now well understood that the
generations of the past are not so much to be blamed for their
backwardness as to be pitied for the misfortune that, having come
earlier in the world's history, they could not have the advantages
that we enjoy, and therefore could only attain much lower stages in
human progress than ours.
Apparently, there are very few people who do not share in the opinions
thus expressed. The nineteenth century has been proclaimed the century
of evolution; and the idea of evolution has become so much a part of
the thought of our time that man also is assumed to be in the midst of
it, and history is presumed to show distinctly the wonderful advance
that humanity has made. As a matter of fact, it is extremely difficult
to point out definitely where progress in humanity may be observed.
Ambassador Bryce was asked, two years ago, to deliver an address
before Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard, and took for his subject "What is
Progress?" Phi Beta Kappa is the fraternity that admits into its
classes only the best {14} students,--men who have proved their
ability by success. Mr. Bryce, speaking to the most intelligent
university graduates, might be expected to make much of our wonderful
recent progress. The address subsequently appeared in the _Atlantic
Monthly_ for August, 1907. Far from any glorification of progress, the
historian of the American Commonwealth, who has demonstrated his
breadth of view and his notable lack of British insularity by the
large way he has written about us, so that we have adopted his work as
a text-book of information about ourselves, is very dubious as to
whether there is any progress in the world. There is certainly no
progress in man's highest expressions of his intelligence. As Mr.
Bryce says: "The poetry of the early Hebrews and of the early Greeks
has never been surpassed and hardly ever equalled. Neither has the
philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, nor the speeches of Demosthenes and
Cicero." No one pretends that there is any progress in art. The
masterpieces of architecture, sculpture, and painting date as a rule
from long before our time, some of them nearly twenty-five hundred
years back.
As has been very well said, the man who talks much about progress in
our time usually knows only the history of human thought in his own
generation, and not very much about that. In nearly every important
phase of human achievement, we are, in present accomplishment, far
behind the great predecessors. In our generation, {15} we are
confessedly imitators in every phase of aesthetic expression. In
painting, sculpture, art and literature, our models are all in the
past, and we are quite frank in confessing that we are doing no work
at all so good as the work of our forefathers of many generations and
sometimes many centuries ago. Whence, then, comes the idea of
progress? It has obtained most of its vogue from the theory of
evolution; and the lack of evidence for evolution in general, in spite
of the persuasion on the part of many educated people that there are
proofs for it, can be very well judged from the corresponding lack of
evidence with regard to progress in humanity. There is complete
absence of proof for this latter, when the situation with regard to
human achievement in the really great things of human life is
examined. Indeed, it would be amusing were it not amazing to think how
readily we have come to accept notions for which there is so little
substantiation. To many this will doubtless seem a surprising
declaration to make, after all that has been written, and universally
accepted as most people think, with regard to evolution by the great
minds of the nineteenth century. What evolution means, however, is
summed up in the theory of descent, that is that living things as we
know them now, have all come from simpler forms and perhaps all from a
single form. The only other phase of interest in evolution is what
concerns the theory of natural selection, which is supposed by many
people to {16} have been demonstrated in the nineteenth century. It
may be well for those who think thus to have recalled to them what a
recent writer on the subject, himself a distinguished investigator in
biology, a professor at Leland Stanford University, where under the
influence of President Jordan biology is thoroughly yet conservatively
cultivated, has to say with regard to these theories and the objective
evidence for them. Professor Vernon L. Kellogg in his "Darwinism
To-day," [Footnote 2] p. 18, though himself an evolutionist and a
Darwinian, says: "What may for the moment detain us, however, is a
reference to the curiously almost completely subjective character of
the evidence for both the theory of descent and natural selection.
Biology has been until now a science of observation; it is beginning
to be one of observation plus experiment. The evidence for its
principal theories might be expected to be thoroughly objective in
character; to be of the nature of positive, observed and perhaps
experimentally proved, facts. How is it actually? Speaking by and
large, we only tell the general truth when we declare that _no
indubitable cases of species forming or transforming, that is of
descent, have been observed; and that no recognized case of natural
selection really selecting has been observed._ I hasten to repeat the
names of the Ancon sheep, the Paraguay cattle, the Porto Santo rabbit,
the Artemias of Schmankewitch and the de Vriesian {17} evening
primroses to show that I know my list of classic possible exceptions
to this denial of observed species forming, and to refer to Weldon's
broad-and-narrow fronted crabs as a case of what may be an observation
of selection at work. _But such a list, even if it could be extended
to a score, or to a hundred, of cases, is ludicrous as objective proof
of that descent and selection, under whose domination the forming of
millions of species is supposed to have occurred."_ (Italics mine.)
[Footnote 2: Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1907.]
Mr. Kellogg, as might be expected from this, objects very much to the
application that has been so heedlessly made of certain supposed
principles of evolution to pedagogy. In practically every science to
which Darwinian principles have been applied it is the weakest of the
principles that have been appealed to as the foundation for presumedly
new developments in the particular science. With regard to the
so-called science of education Professor Kellogg says:
"In Pedagogy it is also the theory of descent rather than the
selection theory which has been drawn on for some rather remarkable
developments in child study and instruction. Unfortunately it is on
that weakest of the three foundation pillars of descent, namely the
science of embryology with its Muellerian-Haeckelian capitulation
theory or biogenetic law, that the child-study pedagogues have
builded. The species recapitulates in the ontogeny (development) of
each of its individuals the course or history of its {18} phylogeny
(descent or evolution). Hence the child corresponds in different
periods of its development to the phyletic stages in the descent of
man. As the child is fortunately well by its fish, dog and monkey
stages before it comes into the care of the pedagogue, he has to
concern himself only with safe progress through the various stages
of prehistoric and barbarous man. Detect the precise phyletic stage
cave-man, stone-age man, hunter and roamer, pastoral man,
agriculturalist, and treat with the little barbarian accordingly!
What simplicity! Only one trouble here for the pedagogue: _the
recapitulation theory is mostly wrong and what is right in it is
mostly so covered up by the wrong part, that few biologists longer
have any confidence in discovering the right._ What, then, of our
generalizing friends, the pedagogues?"
It is in educational matters, above all, then, that we must be careful
about assumptions with regard to evolution and supposed inevitable
progress because we must, forsooth, be taking advantage of the
accumulated experience of previous generations. There is no
inevitability about progress in any line. The attainment of any
generation depends absolutely on what that generation tries to do, the
ideals that it has and the fidelity with which it sets itself to work.
We can make just as egregious mistakes, and we have made them, as any
generation of the past. We can foster delusions with regard to our
all-knowingness just as {19} many another foolish people before us
have done, and our one hope of real accomplishment for ourselves and
our generation is to choose our purposes carefully and then set about
their accomplishment with strenuous effort. The lessons of the past in
history are extremely precious not only because they show us where
others made mistakes but also because they show us the successes of
the past. The better we know these, the deeper our admiration for
them, the better the outlook for ourselves and our accomplishment.
This is the ideal that I would like to emphasize in this series of
lectures and addresses and in this, far from there being any
pessimism, there is, as it seems to me, the highest optimism. Any
generation that wants to can do well, but it must want to do
efficaciously.
Any one who thinks that education, in the sense of training of
character or advice with regard to practical, every-day life, has
evoluted in the course of time, should read this little book that I
bring to you this evening. Indeed, it is as the first chapter in the
history of education that it finds its most valuable place in
literature. This teacher of the old-time, who had his boy's best
interest at heart, not only knew what to say but how to say it so as
to attract a young man's attention. Of course it is probable that,
even with all this good advice, the young man went his way in his own
fashion; for that is ever the mode of the young. But, so far as the
experience of another {20} could supply for that personal experience
which every human being craves, and will have, no matter what the
cost, surely this oldest book in the world supplies the best possible
material. As literature, it has a finish that is quite surprising. Art
is said to be the elimination of the superfluous. Surely, then, this
is artful, in the best sense of that word, to a supreme degree. It is
surprising how few repetitions there are, how few tergiversations, how
few unnecessary words; and yet the style is not so austere as to be
dry and lacking in human interest.
Probably the most interesting feature of the book is the fact that in
it God is always spoken of in the singular. It is not the "gods" who
help men, who punish them, who command and must be obeyed, whose
providence is so wonderful, but it is always "God." The latest
editor,[Footnote 3] Mr. Battiscombe G. Gunn, in his version always
inserts the definite article before the word God because, he says, in
different places there were different local gods, and the idea of the
writer was to emphasize the fact that the god of any particular
locality would act as he declared in his instructions. There are many
distinguished Egyptologists, however, who insist that the expression
"the God," which occurs not only in this but in many other very early
Egyptian writings, is a {21} monotheistic deity whose name is above
all names, and transcends all the power of humanity to name him, and
hence is spoken of always without a name but with the definite
article.
[Footnote 3: "The Instructions of Ptah Hotep." Translated from the
Egyptian, with an Introduction and an Appendix, by Battiscombe G.
Gunn. E. P. Dutton & Co. Wisdom of the East Series, 1909.]
It is curious indeed to find that the very first bit of instruction
given to his son by this wise father is, not to be conceited about
what he knows. How striking the expression of his first sentence of
this oldest book: "Be not proud because thou art learned." And the
second is like unto the first: "But discourse with the ignorant man as
with the sage." And then at the end of this very first paragraph comes
the first figure of speech in human literature that has been presented
for us. It is as beautiful in its simplicity and illuminating quality
as any of the subsequent time. "Fair speech" (by which is meant
evidently kindly speech toward those who know less than we do) "is
more rare than the emerald that is found by slave maidens on the
pebbles." Then there comes a series of directions as to how the young
man should treat his superiors, his equals and his inferiors. If in
argument he is worsted by some one who knows more than himself, he is
cautioned. "Be not angry." If some one talks nonsense. "Correct him."
If an ignorant man insists on arguing, "Be not scornful with him, but
let him alone; then shall he confound himself"; for "it is shameful to
confuse a mean mind."
The advice may be summed up. Do not argue with your superiors, it does
no good; nor with {22} your equals, state your case and let it go; but
above all, not with your inferiors; let them talk and they will make
fools of themselves.
Kindness is always insisted on as the quality most indispensable to a
man. "Live therefore," says the father, "in the house of kindliness,
and men shall come and give gifts of themselves." There are lessons in
politeness as well as in kindliness. For instance: "If thou be among
the guests of a great man, pierce him not with many glances. It is
abhorred of the soul to stare at him. Speak not till he address thee.
Speak when he questioneth thee; so shalt thou be good in his opinion."
Again, he wants his son not to eat the bread of idleness: "Fill not
thy mouth at thy neighbor's table." He insists much on the lesson that
God helps those who help themselves. "Behold," he says, "riches come
not of themselves. It is their rule to come to him that actively
desires. If he bestir him and collect them himself, God shall make him
prosperous; but He shall punish him if he be slothful." On the other
hand, the gaining of riches for riches' sake is not worth the while.
"When riches are gained, follow the heart; for riches are of no avail
if one be weary." As much as to say, after having gained a competency,
do not spend further time in amassing wealth, but enjoy in a
reasonable way that which has been obtained.
There are certain things, however, that a man should not follow; they
are unworthy of his {23} nature as a man. "As to the man whose heart
obeyeth his belly, he causeth disgust in place of love. His heart is
wretched, his body is gross. He is insolent toward those endowed by
God. He that obeyeth his belly hath an enemy." While the old man warns
his son against gluttony and against sloth, he has much to say with
regard to covetousness: "If thou desire that thine actions may be
good, save thyself from all malice, and beware of the quality of
covetousness, which is a grievous inner malady." This expression is
rendered still more striking by what is added to it; for the father
insists that it is particularly relatives-in-law who quarrel over
money. "Covetousness setteth at variance fathers-in-law and the
kinsmen of the daughter-in-law. It sundereth the wife and the husband;
it gathereth unto itself all evils. It is the girdle of all
wickedness." It needed only the next sentence to make these
expressions supremely modern: "Be not covetous as touching shares, in
seizing that which is not thine own property."
The God of this earliest book that we have from the hand of man has
nearly all the interesting and important qualities that we refer to
the Deity. He is looked up to as the giver of all good things. He
loves his creation, and above all loves man, and observes men's
actions very carefully, and rewards or punishes them according to
their deserts. He desires men to be fruitful, and to multiply upon the
earth for their own good and {24} for his glory. Nothing unworthy of
the Deity, as he is known by the most educated people, is attributed
to this God, who transcends a personal name. There is an utter
disregard of all trivial mythology and of all mysterious riddles,
though these trimmings of truth are to be found constantly in other
Egyptian works of later date. Indeed, the picture of God is as
striking a presentation of the fatherliness and the providence of the
Almighty and of most of the lovable characteristics of the Deity as
there is to be found anywhere in literature until the coming of the
Saviour.
One might think that after having warned his son about most of the
Seven Deadly Sins as we know them--pride, covetousness, gluttony,
envy, sloth and anger,--at least we should not find lust touched on in
the modern way. There is, however, in this matter an extremely chaste
bit of advice that sums up the whole situation as well as a father can
tell his son. The writer says: "No place prospereth wherein lust is
allowed to work its way. A thousand men have been ruined for the
pleasure of a little time short as a dream. Even death is reached
thereby. It is a wretched thing. As for the lustful liver, every one
leaveth him for what he doeth; he is avoided. If his desires be not
gratified, he regardeth no laws."
The father tells his son, straightforwardly and emphatically, that
indulgence in this vice inevitably leads to loss of friends, of
health, of {25} everything that the world holds good; and that once a
man has started down this path he has no regard for law or order or
decency or self-respect. This eighteenth paragraph on a thorny subject
is probably one of the most wonderful passages in this advice of a
father to his son. Fathers of the modern time ask what shall they say
to their boys. Here is something to tell them that does not excite
pruriency, that does set the full state of the case before them and
represents probably all that can be said with assurance and safety.
In recent years we have heard much of moral and social prophylaxis and
the necessity for giving precious information with regard to this
subject that may prove helpful to young people. Most people are sure
to think that this is the first time in the history of the race that
there has been an awakening to the necessity for this. Of course there
is no doubt that owing to delayed marriages and unfortunate social
conditions in our large cities we have more need of it than past
generations, yet here in this old schoolbook from Egypt we have very
definite and very wise teaching in the matter. A physician is prone to
wonder what did the old man mean by "a thousand men have been ruined
for the pleasure of a little time short as a dream. Even death is
reached thereby." Is it possible that he knew something of the
physical, or let us rather say, the pathological dangers of the vice?
In the discussion of the pictures of old-time surgery in {26} _The
Journal of the American Medical Association_ I suggested that these
generations seem to have known more about this phase of pathology than
we are inclined to admit.
On the other hand, the father emphatically warns his son that his
happiness will depend on loving his wife and caring for her to the
best of his ability; though some of the details of that advice are so
naively modern in their expression that it seems almost impossible to
believe that they should have been spoken nearly six thousand years
ago. He says: "If thou would be wise, provide for thine house, and
love thy wife. Give her what she wants to eat, get her what she wants
to wear [literally, fill her stomach, clothe her back]. Gladden her
heart during thy lifetime, for she is an estate profitable unto its
lord. Be not harsh, for gentleness mastereth her more than strength."
There is a variant translation of this passage quoted in Maspero's
"The Dawn of Civilization," which brings out even more clearly the
ideas that seem most modern, and which makes it very sure that it is
not the translator who has found in vague old expressions thoughts
that, when put into modern words, have modernized old ideas. Maspero
reads: "If thou art wise, thou wilt go up into thine house and love
thy wife at home; thou wilt give her abundance of food; thou wilt
clothe her back with garments; all that covers her limbs, her
perfumes, are the joy of her life. As {27} long as thou lookest to
this, she is as a profitable field to her lord [master]."
The old gentleman's idea evidently was that, looked at merely from a
material standpoint, it was worth a man's while to spend as much time
caring for his wife as for his estate. She meant just as much for his
happiness in the end and might mean probably more for his unhappiness.
It is a very practical way of looking at the subject and perhaps the
romancists might think it sordid. It must not be forgotten, however,
that this is only the secondary motive suggested. At the beginning he
commands him to love his wife for her own sake, and then, after
suggesting the material benefit that comes from caring for her, he
says that "gentleness mastereth her more than strength."
Immediately after this valuable advice with regard to the care of the
principal member of his household the old man turns to the question of
the care of his servants. We are surely prone to think that the
servant problem at least is a new development in this little world of
ours. Many literary works serve to foster the impression that in the
old days servants were easy to obtain, that they were always
respectful, that they could readily be managed and life with them was,
if not one sweet song, at least a very smooth course. Men, however,
have always been men, and women and even servants have always had
minds of their own, and strange as it may seem to us there has always
{28} been a servant problem and there was one in Egypt 5,500 years
ago.
Ptah Hotep said: "Satisfy thine hired servants out of such things as
thou hast; it is the duty of one that hath been favored of God. In
sooth, it is hard to satisfy hired servants. For one saith, 'he is a
lavish person; one knoweth not that which may come from him.' But on
the morrow he thinketh, 'he is a person of exactitude (parsimony),
content therein.' _And when favors have been shown unto servants, they
say 'we go.'_ (Italics mine.) Peace dwelleth not in that town wherein
dwell servants that are wretched."
A difficult problem; presents will not solve it but only complicate
it, exact justice is necessary, but the peace that follows is worth
the trouble it entails. The principle would be valuable in many a
squabble of corporate employer and hosts of servants in the modern
time.
For domestic happiness, it needed only the advice given a little later
in this instruction: "Let thy face be bright what time thou livest.
Bread is to be shared. He that is grasping in entertainment himself
shall have an empty belly. He that causeth strife cometh himself to
sorrow. Take not such a one for thy companion. It is a man's kindly
acts that are remembered of him in the years after his life."
There is one phase of life in which Ptah Hotep differs entirely from
the present generation,--at least if we are to judge the present
generation {29} from its results in this matter. Of course there are
many of us who consider that, in spite of six thousand years of
distance in time, the old Egyptian prime minister is far ahead of our
contemporaries in this important subject. He thought that obedience
was the most important thing in life. For him independence of spirit,
in a young person particularly, was an abomination. In spite of the
tendency to loquacity and to repeat itself, often said to be so
characteristic of old age, the father, who in all his instructions has
never sinned against this literary canon, almost seems to do so when
it comes to the question of obedience. Over and over again he insists
that obedience is the one quality that must characterize a man if he
is to get on in life, and if he is to secure happiness, and have a
happy generation of his own group around him. The sentences read more
like a Kempis or some mediaeval writer on spirituality, and seem meant
for monks under obedience rather than for a young man of the world,
the son of a prime minister, just about to enter on his life work in
business and politics. Two of the paragraphs are well worth quoting
here:
"A splendid thing is the obedience of an obedient son; he cometh in
and listeneth obediently. Excellent in hearing, excellent in
speaking, is every man that obeyeth what is noble. The obedience of
an obeyer is a noble thing. Obedience is better than all things that
are; it maketh good will. How good it is that a son should take {30}
that from his father by which he hath reached old age [obedience]!
That which is desired by the God is obedience; disobedience is
abhorred of the God. Verily, it is the heart that maketh its master
to obey or to disobey; for the safe-and-sound life of a man is his
heart. It is the obedient man that obeyeth what is said; he that
loveth to obey, the same shall carry out commands. He that obeyeth
becometh one obeyed. It is good indeed when a son obeyeth his
father; and he (his father) that hath spoken hath great joy of it.
Such a son shall be mild as a master, and he that heareth him shall
obey him that hath spoken. He shall be comely in body and honored by
his father. His memory shall be in the mouths of the living, those
upon earth, as long as they exist.