Very skilful discipline which, by way of amusement, 2 leads the

mind of the child to love that which is to make it finished.

On the other hand, he protests against the weakness of those

parents who seek to spare their children every trouble and

every pain. " I am persuaded," he says, " that the inclina-

tion to humor the likings of children is the surest of all ways

to spoil them. We should not make too much haste in our

search after what is pleasurable, especially as we shall never

be wholly exempt from what is painful."

Let us add this definition of a good education : " I call

education the virtue which is shown by children when the

feelings of joy or of sorrow, of love or of hate, which arise

in their souls, are made conformable to order."

1 See especially Book vn. of the Laws.

- Compare also this quotation: "A free mind ought to learn nothing as

a slave. The lesson thai, is made to enter the mind by force, will not

remain there. Then use no violence towards children; the rather, cause

them to learn while playing."

34 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

With the statement of these principles, Plato enters into

details. For children up to the age of six, he recommends

the use of swaddling-clothes. The habit of rocking, the

natural plays which children find out for themselves, the

separation of the sexes ; swimming, the bow, and the javelin,

for boys ; wrestling for giving bodily vigor, and dancing, for

graceful movement ; reading and writing reserved till the

tenth year and learned for three }'ears.

It would require too much time to follow the philosopher

to the end. In the rules he proposes, he makes a near

approach to the practices followed by the Athenians of his

day. The JRejmblic was a work of pure imagination. The

Laws are scarcely more than a commentary on the actual

state of practice. But here we still find what was nearest

the soul of Plato, the constant search for a higher morality.

33. Xenofiion. — As an educator, Xenophon obe} T ed two

different influences. His master, Socrates, was his good

genius. That graceful and charming book, the Economics,

was written under the benign and tempered inspiration of the

great Athenian sage. But Xenophon also had his evil genius,

— the immoderate enthusiasm which he felt for Sparta,

her institutions and her laws. The first book of the C'yropce-

dia, which relates the rules of Persian education, is an unfor-

tunate imitation of the laws of Lycurgus.

34. The Economics, and the Education of Woman. —

All should read the Economics, that charming sketch of the

education of woman.. We may say of this little work what

Renan has said of the writings of Plutarch on the same sub-

ject : " Where shall we find a more charming ideal of family

life? What good nature! What sweetness of manners!

What chaste and lovable simplicity ! " Before her marriage,

the Athenian maiden has learned only to spin wool, to be

EDUCATION AMONG THE GREEKS. 35

discreet, and to ask no questions, — virtues purely negative.

Xenophon assigns to her husband the duty of training her

mind and of teaching her the positive duties of family life, —

order, economy, kindness to slaves, and tender care of

children. As a matter of fact, the Athenian woman was

still held in a position of inferiority. Shut up in her own

apartments, it was an exception that she learned to read and

write ; it was very rare that she was instructed in the arts

and sciences. The idea of human dignity and of the value

of the human person had not yet appeared. Man had value

only in proportion to the services which he could render the

State, or commonwealth, and woman formed no part of the

commonwealth. Xenophon has the merit of rising above

the prejudices of his time, and of approaching the ideal of

the modern family, in calling woman to participate more inti-

mately in the affairs of the house and in the occupations of

the husband. 1

35. The Cyrop^edia. — The Cyropcedia is not worthy of

the same commendation. Under the pretext of describing

the organization of the Persian State, Xenophon here traces,

after his manner, the plan of an education absolutely uniform

and exclusively military. There is no domestic education,

no individual liberty, no interest in letters and arts. When

the period of infancy is over, the young Persian is made

subject to military duty, and must not leave the encamp-

ment, even at night. The .state is but a camp, and human

existence a perpetual military parade. Montaigne praises

Xenophon for having said that the Persians taught their

children virtue "as other nations do letters." But it is

difficult to form an estimate of the methods which were fol-

lowed in these schools of justice and temperance, and we

1 Sec particularly Chaps, vu. and vin.

3b* THE HISTOUY OF PEDAGOGY.

may be allowed to suspect the efficiency of the means pro-

posed by Xenophon ; for example, that which consisted in

transforming the petty quarrels of the scholars into regular

trials which were followed by sentences, acquittals, or convic-

tions. The author of the Oyropcedia is on surer ground

when, recollecting his own studies, he recommends the study

of history to those who would become just. He teaches

temperance by practice rather than by precept ; his pupils

have only bread for their food, only cresses for seasoning,

and only water for their drink.

Whatever may be the faults and the fancies of the Cyro-

pcedia, we must recollect, as a partial excuse for them, that

the purpose of the writer in tracing this picture of a simple,

frugal, and courageous life, was to induce a reaction against

2he excesses of the fashionable and formal life of the

Athenians. As Rousseau, in the middle of the eighteenth

century, protested against the license and the artificial

manners of his time by advising an imaginary return to

nature, so Xenophon, a contemporary of the sophists, held

forth the stuixby virtues of the Persians in opposition to the

degenerate manners of the Greeks and the refinements of an

advanced civilization.

3G. Aristotle : General Character of his Plan of

Education. — By his vast attainments, by his encyclopaedic

knowledge, by the experimental nature of his reseai-ches, and

by the positive and practical tendencies of his genius,

Aristotle was enabled to excel Plato in clearness of insight

into pedagogical questions. He had another advantage over

Plato in having known and enjoyed the delights of family

life, and in having loved and trained his own children, of

whom he said, " parents love their children as a part of

themselves." Let us add, finally, that he was a practical

teacher, since he was the preceptor of Alexander from 343

EDUCATION AMONG THE GREEKS. 37

to 340 B.C. Such opportunities, superadded to the force of

the most mighty genius the world has ever seen, give promise

of a competent and clear-sighted educator. Unfortunately,

we have lost the treatise, On Education (rrepl 7raioVas) , which

on the authority of Diogenes Laertius, Aristotle is said to

have composed ; and to form some conception of his ideas

on education, we have at our disposal only some imperfect

sketches, some portions, and those in an imperfect state,

of his treatises on ethics and politics. 1

Whoever labors to give stability to the family, and to

tighten its bond of union, labors also for the promotion of

education. Even in this respect, education is under great

obligations to Aristotle. In him the communism of Plato

finds an able critic. That feeling of affection which we of

to-clay would call charity or fraternity, he declared to be the

guaranty and the foundation of sociallife. Now, communism

weakens this feeling by diluting it, just as a little honey

dropped into a large quantity of water thereby loses all its

sweetness. "There are two things which materially con-

tribute to the rise of interest and attachment in the hearts of

men , — property and the feeling of affection." It was thus

in the name of good sense, and in opposition to the dis-

tempered fancies of Plato, that Aristotle vindicated the

rights of the family and the individual.

37. Public Education. — But Aristotle does not go so far

as his premises would seem to lead him, and relinquish to

parents the care of educating their children. In accordance

with the general tendencies of antiquity, he declares himself

the partisan of an education that is public and common.

He commends the Spartans for having ordained that " edu-

cation should be the same for all." "As there is one end

1 See especially the Politics, Books iv., v.

38 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

ill view in every city," he says, " it is evident that education

ought to be one and the same in all, and that this should be

a common care, and not of each individual. ... It is the

duty of the legislator to regulate this interest for all the

citizens." There must, therefore, be the intervention of

the State, not from the day of birth, as Plato would have it,

for the nursing of infants, but only at the age of seven, for

instructing and training them in the habits of virtue.

What, then, should be the training of the child, and upon

what subjects would Aristotle direct his studies?

38. The Progressive Development of Human Nature.

— An essential and incontrovertible distinction is taken by

the Greek philosopher as his starting-point. There are, he

sa3 r s, three moments, three stages, in human development :

first, there is the physical life of the body ; then, instinct and

sensibility, or the irrational part of the soul ; and finall}-, the

intelligence, or the reason. ' From this, Aristotle concludes

that the course of discipline and study should be graduated

according to these three degrees of life. "The first care

should necessarily be given to the body rather than to the

mind ; and then to that part of the spiritual nature which is

the seat of the desires." But he adds this important obser-

vation, which is a refutation of Rousseau in advance : " In the

care which we give to the sensibilities, we must not leave out

of account the intelligence ; and in our care of the body, we

must not forget the soul."

39. Physical Education. — The son of a physician of the

Macedonian court, and well versed in the natural sciences,

Aristotle is very happy in his treatment of physical educa-

tion. It begins before the child is born, even before it has

been conceived. Consequent!)' he enjoins a legal regulation

of marriages, interdicts unions that are too early or too late,

EDUCATION AMONG THE GREEKS. 39

indicates the climatic conditions most favorable for marriage,

and gives mothers wise counsels on matters of hygiene, rec-

ommending them to nurse their own children, and prescrib-

ing cold baths. Such, in outline, is a plan which a modern

hygienist would not disavow.

40. Intellectual and Moral Education. — It was the

opinion of Aristotle that intellectual education should not

begin before the age of five. But, in accordance with the

principle stated above, this period of waiting should not be

the occasion of loss to the intelligence of the child ; even his

play should be a preparation for the work to which he will

apply himself at a later period. On the other hand, Aristotle

strongly insists on the necessity of shielding the child from

all pernicious influences, such as those Avhich come from

association with slaves, or from immoral plays.

In accord with all his contemporaries, Aristotle includes

grammar, gymnastics, and music, among the elements of

instruction. To these he adds drawing. But he is chiefly

preoccupied with music, by reason of the moral influence

which he attributes to it. He shared the prepossession

which caused the Greeks to say, that to relax or to reform

the manners of a people, it suffices to add a string to the

lyre or to take one from it. 1

Aristotle was strongly preoccupied with moral education.

Like Plato, he insists ou the greatest care in forming the

moral habits of early life. In his different writings on ethics

he has discussed different human virtues in a spirit at once

wise, practical, and liberal. No one has better sung the

1 It seems impossible to comprehend the almost sovereign power which

the Greeks ascribed to music, unless we conceive that the Greek was en-

dowed with peculiar and extreme sensitiveness. Perhaps there is special

signilicancc iu the story of Orpheus and his lyre. (P.)

40 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

praises of justice, of which he says, " Neither the evening

nor the morning star inspires as much respect as justice."

It would do Aristotle injustice to seek for a complete

expression of his thoughts on education in the incomplete

and curtailed statements of theory which are found in his

Politics. In connection with these, we should recall the ad-

mirable instruction which be himself gave in the Lyceum, and

which embraced almost all the sciences in its vast programme.

He excluded from it only the sciences and the arts which

have a mechanical and utilitarian character. Enslaved on

this point to the prejudices of antiquity, he regarded as

servile and unworthy of a free man whatever has a direct

bearing on the practical and material utilities of life. He

recommended to his hearers only studies of the intellectual

type, those whose sole purpose is to elevate the mind and to

fill it with noble thouohts. 1

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