Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/plutarchoneducatOOplut PIMM OH EDDCATION EMBRACING THE THREE TREATISES THE EDUCATION OF BOYS HOW A YOUNG MAN SHOULD HEAR LECTURES ON POETRY THE RIGHT WAY TO HEAR Charles William Super, Ph. D., LL. D. Ex-President of the Ohio University and Professor of Greek, ibidem; Translator of Weil's Order of Words in the Ancient Languages Compared with the Modern; A History of the German Language; Between Heathenism and Christianity; Wisdom and Will in Education, etc., etc. SYRACUSE, N. Y. C. W. BARDEEN, PUBLISHER ^3 Copyright, 1910, by C W. Bardeen € CI. A 280801 Doctori Adolpho Michaelis, viro omato omnibus liberalium artium disciplinis soli superstiti professorum quorum lectionibus olim adfuit studiosus Tubingensis, hunc libellum dedicat auctor. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Page 9. THE EDUCATION OF BOYS Introduction. Where education should be- gin, page 47 — Euripides' Hippolytus. An illustrious father and a foolish son, page 48 — Wine to be eschewed. The three factors of an education, page 49 — Inanimate nature and brutes, page 51 — The time to begin an education, page 52 — What a pedagogue should be, page 55 — Socrates. The first Socratic who taught for pay, page 57 — Results of parental neglect, page 58 — The supreme good, page 59 — Stilpo to Demetrius, page 60 — Hippolytus. Garrulity to be avoided, page 61 — Pericles. Demosthenes, page 62 — Apelles. As to style, page 63 — Philosophy the crowning glory, page 65 — Three modes of life, page 66 — Physical training, page 67 — Ad- vice to the poor, page 68 — Praise and reproof, page 69 — Work and play, page 70 — Import- ance of memory, page 71 — Protesilaus. See the Life of Lysander, chapter 16, page 72 — Socrates and the Kicker, page 73 — Archytas. Plato, page 73 — The tongue. Ptolemy and 5 6 Plutarch on Education Sotades, page 74 — Theocritus, page 75 — Strip- lings often worse than boys, page 77 — Pythag- oras, page 78 — Cursed be flatterers, page 79 — Do not drive; lead, page 81 — Wedlock recom- mended, page 82 — Parents should set a good example, page 83 HOW TO HEAR LECTURES ON POETRY Introduction, page 85 — Danger in reading po- etry, page 87 — Not all poetry is to be read , page 88 — Aristotle. Fiction and painting. Not all verse is poetry, page 90 — Quotations from Homer, page 92 — Euripides' Iphigeneia in Aulis, page 93 — Poetry and painting, page 94 — Euripides' Phoenissa and Ixion. Menander, page 96 — Homer, page 98 — A strange misapprehension, page 99 — Politicians at variance, page 101 — Pindar, page 102 — Sophocles, page 103 — Alexis, Socrates, Diogenes, page 104 — Homer, page 105 — Sophocles, page 107 — Archilochus. Hom- er, page 108 — Interpretation. Plutarch's mis- take. Hesiod, page 100 — Meaning of Arete, page 112 — The nature of poetry, page 113 — Homer, page 115-6 — Public opinion, page 118 — Cave poetas, page 120 — Homer, page 123 — A time-server, page 124 — Cato. Aeschylus, page 125 — Greeks and Trojans, page 126 — Diverse tastes, page 127 — Results of ignorance. Lying is base, page 131 — Homer. Wisdom is the principal thing, page 132 — Read between the lines, page 133 — How to amend poetry, page 136 — Interpretation in the interest of Contents 7 good morals, page 139 — Philosophy and poetry must harmonize, page 141 — But see Iliad Book II, beginning, page 142. THE RIGHT WAY TO HEAR Introduction, page 145 — Hearing is the most important sense, page 147 — Hear before }^ou speak, page 149 — Hearing should precede speak- ing, page 150 — Hear with patience, page 151 — Envy, page 152 — Prejudice to be eschewed. Plato's question, page 154 — A bad witness may give good testimony, page 156 — Words are not necessarily thoughts, page 157 — We should imitate the bee, page 158 — Importance of self-examination. Matter, not manner, of chief importance, page 159 — Questions should be relevant, page 161 — Ne sutor ultra crepidam, page 162 — Is the lesson for us? page 163 — Nil admirari, page 165 — A listener need not be an impartial judge, page 166 — Plato. Seek the best, not the worst, page 167 — Let praise be moderate, page 169 — Euripides' reproof, page 170 — Over and under sensitiveness, page 171 — We should stand our ground, page 172 — Difficulties not insuperable. Gleanthes and Xenocrates, page 174 — To be an honest hearer is Alpha and Omega, page 177. APPENDIX Note to page 52, 179 — Note to page 72 and 99, 184— Note to page 152, 190— Note to page 170, 191. INTRODUCTION As I have elsewhere dealt at some length with Plutarch and his times it is not necessary that I should again go into the details of the subject here.* As, however, this Introduction is not written for philologists but for persons who are interested in the history of education, and as some knowledge of the conditions under which they were composed is essential to a proper understanding of the tracts which follow, it is proposed here to give the reader some in- sight into the personality of Plutarch and to set forth briefly his mental attitude towards the past and toward the era in which he lived. It can not be too often repeated and too strongly insisted upon that we cannot comprehend the social or intellectual conditions existing at any period of a people's history without examining the circumstances and the national spirit out of which they grew. Notwithstanding the fact that everybody who reads anything except the current issues of the press knows something of the Sage of Chasronea, it is probable that with the great majority this knowledge is confined to a few of his Biographies. And while the interest in these delightful narra- tives is due much more to the manner in which they are related than to the men whose lives they are designed to r protray, since some of them *See list of books at the end of this Introduction. 10 Plutarch on Education are largely or wholly mythical, it is nevertheless true that we get but a one-sided view of Plutarch if we do not acqaint ourselves with some por- tions of his Moral Writings, the general desig- nation given to that extensive collection of essays upon an almost unlimited variety of subjects. As a collector of biographical material Plutarch may be compared to the bee rather than the botanist. The former seeks no plants except those that yield honey and solely the parts that secrete the sweet fluid, while the latter is inter- ested in all flowers and plants without reference to any particular properties. Plutarch is con- cerned only with those men whose careers seemed to furnish material for the ethical lessons which he wishes to deduce and only to the extent which they permit the extraction of those precepts which he persistently keeps in the fore- ground. On the other hand the biographer, in the proper sense of the word, endeavors to place before his readers his hero or heroes in their entirety; to portray them as men of flesh and blood, extenuating nothing, setting down noth- ing in malice. Plutarch has deliberately chosen his method, for in his life of Nikias he says: "I am not a writer of histories but of biographies. My readers therefore must excuse me if I do not record all the events or describe in detail, but only touch upon the noblest and most famous. For the most conspicuous do not Greek Education 11 always or of necessity show a man's virtues or failings, but it often happens that some light occasion, a word or a jest, gives a clearer insight into the character, than battles with their slaughters of tens of thousands and the greatest array of armies and the sieges of cities. Accord- ingly as painters produce a likeness by a repre- sentation of the countenance and the expression of a face, in which the character is revealed, without troubling themselves about the other parts of the body, so I must be allowed to look rather into the signs of a man's character and by means of these to portray the life of each, leaving to others the description of great events and battles." Plutarch lived at a time when the individual had already emerged to a considerable extent from the social unit. He had to a great degree become a separate and distinct entity. It is true the Homeric age had its heroes, men who loomed high above the common herd; but they all claimed descent from a god. In the Greek states during those times where the sources of our information are the fullest the individual counted for little. We shall see further along in what a strange contradiction this ethnic dogma involved them. The men who made themselves conspicuous by the force of their talents soon incurred the jealousy of their fellow citizens and were hurled from power. The panorama that Herodotus unrolls before our eyes shows us on the one hand a portion of the Greek people 12 Plutarch on Education engaged in a life and death struggle with the hosts of Asia under the lead of a despotic ruler. One man or even one thousand men were as nothing when weighed against the Great King. But the free will of the Greeks was almost equally circumscribed, though by a different and impersonal agency. The Spartans who fell at Thermopylae were an offering to the spirit of law, not to their own free will. That one citizen is as good and competent as another is a political doctrine which the Athenians put in practice by filling many of their public offices by lot. The same custom prevailed in Rome, though the limits of chance were much more circumscribed. The extension of the Alexandrian empire and later the Roman conquest did much to break down the barriers between the little Greek commonwealths, no less than between these and the "barbarians", and to demonstrate to the Hellenes that there were men in the world much more efficient as rulers than their own kith and kin. The facilities for intercommuni- cation had in the meantime greatly improved; travel had become much more common, and the different parts of the Eastern world had learned to know each other better. Greek thought was slowly getting rid of its local and national prejudices, while Jewish thought was moving in the same direction. In the nature of the case Christianity found the mind of the world in some measure prepared Greek Education 13 for the doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man. Plutarch, though perhaps unconsciously, was to a large extent a child of his age. He was still somewhat narrow in his views and unable to see much of value in anything that was not Greek in language and spirit ; but he had learned to place a high estimate upon the individual. With him a man's social condition and antece- dents counted for less than with most of his countrymen. He could not but be aware that Rome had produced great men and he does not hesitate to place some of them alongside of his own countrymen. By reason of this breadth of view there was naturally evolved in his mind a great interest in young men, and he took pleasure in aiding them in every way in his power. There are many passages in his writings in which he unostentatiously refers to instances of this kind. Yet Plutarch was no innovator either in matters educational or in anything else. He nowhere proposes a marked departure from time-honored customs and usages. His main object is always to teach his readers how to make the best use of the materials that liad for centuries been in vogue among his countrymen. It is singular that in the treatises which follow he seems to attach so little importance to history as a teacher of morals and as a guide for conduct in the future, seeing that many of his country- men had laid so much stress upon it. But this subject was not in the traditional curriculum 14 Plutarch on Education and he could see no need of putting it there. A writer of biographies whose chief aim is to tell his readers that "Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime" might very properly be expected to linger on the theme wherever the opportunity offered; yet it occupies no place in his system. It may be said on the other hand, that as he had written pedagogical biographies or purposed to write such, he ought to be excused from touch- ing upon the subject again in these short papers. Plutarch's conservatism is further shown by his attitude toward the gods. Like Plato he condemns the poets for fabricating lying tales about them, but it does not seem to have occur- red to him that polytheism rests on an entirely erroneous conception of the universe, and that a religion which attributes all kinds of immoral- ities to divine beings can not consistently be made the basis of moral instruction. Neither does he seem to be aware that the study of philosophy which he so often and strongly urges can not but undermine his religion. On the other hand, as paganism had nurtured many noble men, or as they had at least grown up under it, he may have thought that their religion deserved some of the credit and not all of the discredit that attaches to bad men. If he had lived in our time he would probably have remind- ed his hearers that the greater part of Europe Greek Education 15 has been nominally christian for more than a thousand years and that within this time have lived some of the worst men known to history. Yet they professed to be zealous christians. The noblest and the vilest have not unfrequently acknowledged allegiance to the same religion. It either had no influence on their lives or was conceived in a different spirit. Few men are made worse by their religion ; doubtless many are not made better. The careful student of Greek literature and history can hardly resist the conviction that the Greek people were incapable of taking the world seriously. Renan has somewhere said: "They that laugh shall not rule." The dictum certainly proved true in their case. They lacked moral earnestness. This statement needs some qualification, for Socrates was an earnest man. Yet even he, if he has been correctly reported, constantly indulged in irony and mock gravity, so that we are often in doubt as to his real meaning. He was too lenient a critic of existing conditions and withal too optimistic to be a reformer of popular morality. Aristophanes is often bitterly in earnest; but he could not resist the temptation to make jokes, to turn the most sacred things to ridicule. For him the most alarming situation had its farcical side, and this side he is fond of turning to view. He evidently knew his public. No man who really desires to make his hearers better would 16 Plutarch on Education speak of the most revered beings and most sacred mysteries as he does. The tragic poets move on a higher plane. But Sophocles was too good-natured, too well satisfied with his hearers, which is not to be wondered at since they were so well satisfied with him, to dwell long and earnestly on their failings. Euripides is sometimes bitter, occas- ionally very bitter; but he is too much of a fatalist to make his diatribes effective. Aris- totle is a keen analyst of what is; he judges men and institutions with, a masterly grasp, but he has little to say about what ought to be. He holds that growth and decay are as natural for states as for individuals. Demosthenes is usiial- ly very much in earnest; but his aims were for the most part wholly unpractical and his narrow particularism was sadly out of date. Besides, he was a man whose moral character was marred by many weaknesses. Plutarch occasionally denounces groups and individuals for rude manners, unseemly behavior and immorality, but he does not seem to see that the whole trend of events in his time is in the wrong direction, nor that his fellow Greeks are entirely given to wasting their time on trifles. Lukian is a bitter and biting satirist. He unmercifully castigates the weaknesses and frivolities of his country men, but he does little to place before them higher aims or the true purposes of life. A reformer must not merely endeavor to des- Greek Education 17 troy the old; he must also have something better to put in its place. Contrast with the whole trend of Greek thought the terrible moral earnestness of the Hebrew prophets, of St. Paul, Plutarch's contemporary, and of the early Christians, and it becomes plain why Greek influence declined and Chris- tianity gradually gained ground. The centuries that met about the time Christ was born were no time for taking the world easily. It was a time for serious thought and determined action in the domain of morals. Plutarch was not the man for the times, except in a limited sense. He abhorred all extremes. He saw no use in getting alarmed. He seems to have belived that it does not matter so much what one does if he does not go to extremes. It is important above all things to keep in the via media aurea. For him the old religion was good enough; but it is essential that one gets the best out of it, not the worst. This is always the argument used by the conservatives in education, in government, in ecclesiastical affairs, and in what not! They see no use in departing from the old standards. They are right, if the majority could be induced to see things in this light. There are few relig- ions that are not better than its professed fol- lowers. Yet it is historically true that estab- lished churches are lifeless everywhere, if there is no rivalry between them and the dissenters. IS Plutarch on Education Plutarch therefore had no patience with those who found fault with the old religion. He saw no need of dissent and discouraged all signs of it. Like most of the Greek thinkers he was favorably disposed towards a monarchical form of government. Here he was probably much influenced by contemporary conditions. The Romans had at least brought peace to his long distracted country, though it was to a consider- able extent the peace of death. As a close student of history he could not help but know that the statesmanship of his countrymen throughout their entire career, with a few bril- liant exceptions, was a melancholy failure. In the matter of conduct he seems to have been rather lenient towards what is usually called personal immorality. Not that we have any reason to think that he was himself lax in this respect, but he regarded somewhat lightly the peccadilloes of others. We can hardly think otherwise than that with Hesiod he held that even the best of men may be guilty of occasional lapses. We are safe in saying that the story of Joseph's temptation would not have appealed strongly to him, and that the frequent injunc- tions of the New Testament that we ought to abstain from even the appearance of evil, or that we must refrain from doing some things which, though perfectly proper in themselves may make others to offend, would have seemed absurd to him. Greek Education 19 The recklessness with which the Greeks took human life, often, in fact usually, for the purpose of gaining advantages over their political oppon- ents is another proof of their naturally frivolous temperament. French revolutions on a small scale were all the time breaking out, though the motives were usually far less honorable. Like children who sometimes get angry at their dolls and break them in pieces only to be sorry a moment later for what they have done, the Greeks slew their political adversaries not unfrequently to regret it afterwards, The rancor and ruthlessness exhibited by the various political cliques and parties toward each other were generally more bitter than the hostility displayed toward a foreign foe. No public man was safe in life or character. And if we believe the records transmitted to us the really upright were few. But it made little difference with the populace. He who was so unfortunate as to incur their momentary dis- pleasure usually had to pay the penalty in some way, often with his life. When we note the extraordinary and even excessive care with which all modern civilized states, and even Rome during a large part of her existence, safeguard a man's life against judicial error or legal injustice we realize the contrasts between our times and the "golden age of Greece." Few features of Greek history are more sur- prising than the martial spirit, the irrepressible energy, the inherent vigor of the early Greek 20 Plutarch on Education tribes and the utter breakdown of these qual- ities as we approach the Christian era. The decay began to manifest itself very markedly in the wars against Philip of Macedon, the visible results of which were the uninterupted advance of that monarch and his successors. The last act of the drama was performed by the Romans. If the Greeks had evinced to any considerable degree their old-time valor the result would have been different. When they had so far degener- ated that their country became a part of the world-empire they were hardly considered fit for service in the armies of their conquerors. Left largely to themselves they passed a sort of vegetative existence, feeding on the glories of their own past. They did not cease, as they have not ceased to this day, to boast of the achievements of the heroes of Marathon and Salamis and Platasa. Few of them however manifested any inclination to imitate or emu- late them. Plutarch still recommends martial exercises, but it is hard to see for what purpose, since comparatively few Greeks seem to have enrolled in the Roman armies. Not many of them were even efficient citizens within the narrow sphere still open to them; otherwise Greece would not have exhibited the economic decay that was so marked in the time of Plu- tarch. In this respect he was an honorable exception. He filled various municipal offices and discharged their functions faithfully, humble as they were. Greek Education 21 Though a larger field of labor was open to him he remained faithful to his native Chaeronea. The predilection of the Greeks for talking, for discussion, was not yet extinguished. In this respect Plutarch was a "chip off the old block." The catalogue of his works compiled by Lamprias, a reputed son of his, comprises the names of two hundred and ten treatises attributed to him. Many of these are no longer in existence. The subjects are often trivial. Still as long as their author did not neglect more important duties there is no reason why he should not entertain his friends with compil- ations from the books in his extensive library. Modern scholars set great store by many of these excerpts. Though Christianity may properly be said to have been first proclaimed in Greek lands and in the Greek tongue, it expanded but little until it gained a footing on Roman soil, in the narrow- er sense. After it became the court religion of the Eastern empire it soon degenerated into the empty form and the vain ceremony it is to-day all over the Russian lands. Its votaries spent their efforts in talking and disputing and writing or in solitary contemplation either as monks or cenobites. During all this time Christianity kept on its triumphant march westward. But in the East it can hardly be said to have passed beyond the sphere of the Greek tongue, while even here it lost ground to the Saracens, whose onward course was not stayed until their power 22 Plutarch on Education was shattered in the conflict with the hosts of the sire of Pepin on the plains of Tours. Before the middle of the second century- Christianity had gained a foothold in Gaul, and in less than a century from this date many episcopal sees had been founded in that country. At the close of the fifth century Clovis and his followers had embraced the orthodox faith; thus Christianity became the state religion of the Frankish kingdom. In 732 Charles turned back the advancing tide of Mohammedanism, and by 760 the last of the votaries of the Cres- cent had left French soil for ever. As early as the sixth century Christianity had made its way across Britain, leaving many traces, and Ireland had already become so christianized that it was able to send out missionaries in all directions. It was not till the ninth century that Greek monks set out to preach to the Slavs. From the time the new doctrines spread slowly northward from Constantinople, but it was only after almost all of the rest of Europe had become nominally christian. Yet even here the efforts of the eastern monks failed to a large extent, since many of the Slavs are Roman and not Greek Catholics. Roman Catholicism almost from its first organization never ceased to be an expansive force. It rapidly spread over nearly the whole of Europe with little support from the government, and eventually over most of the known world. Greek Education 23 Greek Catholicism moved forward as fast as Russian conquests and generally no faster or no farther. It offered nothing that appeals either to the human heart or to the human intellect. It cannot adapt itself to the progress of enlightenment. It does not draw men, it has to carry them almost as a dead weight. There is probably no equal number of men with- in the pale of Christendom that is of so little use to any one as the monks who dwell on Mount Athos; they do very little even for themselves. It makes one sad to think that the treasures of Greek antiquity in the East were buried treasures until unearthed by the West. Even the monks on Athos did not know what their libraries contained until they were exhumed from the dust and mold by scholars from distant lands. These historical facts are cited here to show that the greatness of Greece and the uniqueness of the Greek genius seem to have been so closely interwoven with the religion of the people, with faith in the gods of the olden time, that when the latter began to decay the former entered upon a period of decline. Perhaps such men as Plutarch, Dio Chrysostum, Julian the Apostate, instinctively divined that everything which made the Greeks a peculiar people was due more to their religion than any other cause. The feeble efforts that were made more than once during the first Christian centuries to set in motion a pagan revival were an anachronism. The time for a pagan Reformation was past; 24 Plutarch on Education that for a Christian Reformation had not yet come. Plutarch placed his hope in the rising gener- ation, in boys. He rarely deplores present conditions because he believed that by proper training of the young the future could be made better. He thinks the old religion good enough and is opposed to the introduction of any other. The important thing is to view it from its best side and to use the best that is in it. Plutarch has faith in the innate goodness of the human heart; nevertheless the right kind of education is far more cogent than the best natural endow- ments. The chief thing is to view it from its best side and to select the best that is in it. The main purpose of right education is to enable the worst boy's better nature to get the mastery of the vicious impulses that may be in him. For this reason all education should have chiefly a moral end in view. It may be said in this connection that the cur- rent practice of dealing with education as if it were synonymous with the communication and acquisition of knowledge is an essentially modern phase of thought. It has grown and gathered strength with the growth and development of the physical sciences; it is part and parcel of the doctrine that the best education is one that will yield the largest, or at least large pecuniary returns. The seekers for a liberal education as the Greeks counted a liberal education have become very few. Greek Education 25 The fundamental thought that underlies all Greek education as the best of the Greeks con- ceived it is its ennobling influence.. A man should be a Kalokagathos, not so much because the state needs such men, though this is im- portant, but because the attributes it embodies and the epithet it connotes include the highest type, the ideal type of manhood. It is some- thing that can not be bought with a price and ought not to be sought nor communicated for pecuniary considerations. This conviction prompts the more or less avowed hostility to the Sophists which pervades Greek literature and is found in the writings even of those who were themselves, though unconsciously, Sophists. Education should be liberal and sought for its own sake, for its influence on the seeker, and not because of any pecuniary gain that he expects to make out of it. The profit is to be intangible but none the less real or less evident. It may be thought strange that Plutarch manifests so slight an interest in anything that is not Greek except men. Though he spent some time in Rome there is no evidence that he gave any attention to her great writers unless they were also statesmen and commanders. It is doubtful whether he read Horace or Virgil or Lucretius and other authors of almost equal note. His knowledge of Latin was scant and he took little interest in the language. Plutarch is inclined to disparage education that is acquired late in life. One who has not 26 Plutarch on Edit cation been brought up as a gentleman — and we must not forget that with Plutarch education is for the largest part a bringing-up — will have great difficulty in mastering the finished grace of man- ner and polish of speech that characterize the man of genuine culture. He probably takes this position, to some extent at least, in order to impress the more forcibly upon parents the im- portance of looking carefully after the education of their sons before it may be too late. Albeit, this creed is as old as civilized man and as re- cent as our contemporaries. It is doubtless true that some things can be learned only early in life; whether they are generally of great value is another question. Plutarch's dislike of coercion is the correlate of his faith in reason. If man is inherently a reasonable being he should be induced to follow reason as early in life as possible and taught to seek no other guide. Let us cast a glance at the social conditions in which Plutarch lived and contrast them with our own time in one important aspect. What inducement was there for a young man to ed- ucate himself ? What career opened to him that required more than a knowledge of the ele- ments? He could look forward to no official position higher than some local magistracy where fitness usually counted for less than avail- ability or even servility. He might become a peripatetic teacher of rhetoric, and journey from city to city for the purpose of displaying his or- Greek Education 27 atorical pyrotechnics or of making fine speeches without saying anything worth while. He who sought knowledge in all seriousness, the phil- osopher, had few motives to entice him but the genuine love of wisdom. Note the contrast with our own time. The educated man has an assured career before him. The state and the community encourage and sustain him, at least to a certain extent. It is probable that the seekers after knowledge for its own sake are relatively no more numerous now than they were in the days when Plutarch delivered his lectures and wrote his books. But knowledge "pays in cash;" it paid little or not at all then. Looking at the conditions from the modern point of view, the young man who seeks an ed- ucation wishes to be reasonably certain that the time spent in its acquisition has not been lost. He does not want to realize, after it is too late, that he had better spent it in learning a trade or in training his muscles to manual labor. When we recall how many great think- ers Greece produced in her prime and reflect that their inquiries and researches were inspired purely by the desire to know; that knowledge was its own reward solely and entirely ; and that nowhere in the world was such an intellectual ferment anticipated or repeated, we begin to realize that the ancient Greeks were indeed a unique people. 28 Plutarch on Education There were two motives that were constantly struggling for the mastery in the breast of every Greek citizen — the feeling of personal inde- pendence and the necessity of obeying the laws of the state. In a quick-witted, inquisitive, and highly endowed people the former of these two motives led to investigation, to reflection, to the quest for facts, to the search for truth. But it also made them averse to authority even when their very political existence depended upon obedience. The Athenian was rarely willing to do what anybody else did, or if he was willing to do it he objected to doing it to order. He believed in education, but he was strongly opposed to compulsion by the state or any other authority in this as in other matters. Public opinion was a foe to ignorance; the man who lacked culture made himself an object of ridicule and con- tempt; but it held him personally responsible, not the community of which he formed a part. We see exemplified in a most remarkable de- gree the irreconcilable antagonism between a central authority and personal freedom in the two leading states of Greece, Athens and Sparta. All the others were modeled more or less closely on the same plan. The points of similarity and of difference are to some extent brought out by Pericles in his funeral oration, as re- ported by Thucydides. If he had lived a few years longer, or if he could have seen how his fellow-citizens managed affairs after he was no Greek Education 29 longer with them, he would have become pain- fully aware of the falsity of his prediction and of the innate perversity of those from whom one might have expected better things. Per contra, when we remember that modern governments are still engaged in the solution of this problem; that it has never yet been pos- sible to fix the limits between the authority of the state and the individual; that these limits are shifted from year to year by the same legis- lature; and that the functions of the citizen are much more circumscribed in some countries than in others that are equally enlightened, we need not be surprised that the task was too hard for the ancients. And so far as compulsory ed- ucation is concerned, it is in most countries an affair of the present generation. It is probable that very few people of the present day have a well-defined faith in the So- cratic doctrine that virtue and knowledge are in- terchangeable terms. Yet it is a doctrine that everybody holds. On what grounds can we account for the extraordinary confidence in the saving efficacy of knowledge? In every civil- ized country, more or less is done through gov- ernment agency to promote universal intel- ligence. Those parents who will not give their children at least the elements of an education voluntarily are constrained by law to do so. Is the outlook promising? One thing is certain: that is that you can not educate anybody by compulsion. Here 30 Plutarch on Education Plutarch was right. It can no more be done now than it could be done in the days of Plu- tarch or Socrates. Herein the Greek attitude was correct while the modern is, generally speaking, wrong. We can compel the acquire- ment of a certain amount of knowledge, or of a certain measure of skill, but there is no power on earth that will make an educated man except his own volition. In spite of the utter break-down of reason as a regenerative agency in a decaying society, Plutarch still has faith in reason. But to what else could he appeal ? Not to patriotism, not to national pride or the pride of race, not to re- ligion, though he would have us believe that polytheism contained more of good than is com- monly believed; he could therefore appeal only to philosophy, to reason, to man's consciousness of his inborn dignity. While Plutarch wculd entice the young to seek wisdom and knowledge we are undertaking to drive those that we can not lure; or we hold out pecuniary inducements. In our public schools we have virtually pro- hibited an appeal to the religious sanction, to other-worldliness. But we insist on training the reasoning powers of the young, on making every young person a philosopher in embryo, in the hope that he will continue to exercise his reasoning faculties when he is no longer held in leading strings. It would be unjust to say that the modern world has failed in this gigantic Greek Education 81 undertaking; but it is quite within bounds to say that it has fallen far short of its ideals. The store of wisdom deposited in their writ- ings by the Greek thinkers is not yet exhausted, in spite of the fact that the mine has been worked for more than four modern centuries. None have penetrated more deeply into the secrets of the human heart than they; none have so profoundly influenced the course of modern civilization. They laid the foundations of modern progress, though they did not, of course, furnish every stone that enters into the struc- ture. We are all Greeks, said the poet Keats; and in a sense he was right. Take up almost any author you please and you will find in him some- thing to stimulate thought. The late writers do not deserve the neglect with which they are treated. No one Greek writer shows more clearly the universality of Greek inquiry than Plutarch, since he is a sort of cyclopedia of what the Greeks and Romans had said and done up to his time. But in what constitutes the prac- tical affairs of life, how little have they accom- plished! Failure is "writ large" over all their aspirations. Like the corn of wheat buried in the earth that can not spring up unless it die, their wisdom left no impress and no trace except as it is buried in books and under the soil. They always knew just what to do but rarely did it. Of no people can it be more truly said what certain individuals might say of them- 32 Plutarch on Education selves, "Do what I tell you, not what I do." They usually saw the goal to which virtue leads, but almost inevitably wandered to the right or left in paths of vice before reaching it. Pericles, the most brilliant and successful Athenian statesman, guided for a time his coun- trymen in the path of prosperity and solemnly urged them not to depart from the course marked out by him; but his successors w/^re wiser in their own conceit and followed neither his example nor his counsels. Rarely have a people paid so heavy a penalty for the failure to heed the wise admonitions of a statesman. Socrates died the death of a malefactor on such frivolous charges that we ask in amazement : "Can these things be?" Themistocles and Al- cibades, two of the most brilliant men Athens produced, were alternately patriots and traitors. Demosthenes, though he can not be acquitted of acts unworthy of him, at least strove nobly and unselfishly by word and deed for his coun- try; but he died a voluntary death in order to avoid falling into the hands of his mortal en- emies. Theramenes, though not wholly disin- terested, deserved a better fate then that which overtook him. Phokion at the end of a long and useful life faithfully given to what he con- sidered the best interests of his country was not permitted to depart in peace, and ended his life the victim of the proverbial ingratitude of republics. Greek Education 33 Euripides who has left upon record so many wise sayings was neglected and ridiculed by his countrymen to the end of his days. Aristotle like Anaxagoras was exiled from Athens on the same charge that led to the condemnation of Socrates by the same populace that applauded the coarse wit and sacrilege exhibited in the plays of Aristophanes. The corrupt as well as the incorruptible almost invariably shared the same melancholy fate; for the list above given is by no means exhaustive. We are always in danger of falling into error when we seek modern analogies in ancient con- ditions. We are however not far from the truth if we say that the prime source of the low moral standard of the Greeks must be found in the total absence of family life. They never ad- vanced beyond the standpoint indicated by Pericles when he said that the great glory of woman is to be least talked about among men, whether for good or for evil. There was no fam- ily life anywhere in ancient Hellas. In the very nature of the case children had to pass their first years in the home; but the mothers were so illiterate, the atmosphere in which they had themselves been brought up was so unfavor- able, that their influence upon their offspring had in it little or no wholesome stimulus. The great majority probably could not read; hence they had little to talk about but idle gossip or their domestic cares. Under such circumstances, the children, even if they had spent more 34 Plutarch on Education time in the society of their mothers, would have been none the better or the wiser for it. In Lacedaemon the situation was no better, since the young Spartan hardly knew his own mother. For boys and men the home, if we may so call it, was little more than a place to sleep and to take their meals; the remainder of the twenty- four hours was spent in the open air, or with companions at school, or in places of amuse- ment, or in occupations intended to fit them for citizenship in the future. Plato gives us a hint of what children learned at home when he tells us in the Republic that mothers must not be under the influence of poets, scaring their chil- dren with bad versions of the myths in which certain gods are represented as going about in the night disguised as so many strangers and in divers forms; in this way making cowards of their children and speaking blasphemy against the gods. His plea for an equal education for men and women is evidence that he recognized a source of weakness in the pedagogy of his day. Plutarch, either because he lived at a later time when men had become wiser in this regard, or because the example of some noble Roman matrons had enlightened him, or because his own insight had made him wiser, had a higher idea of the influence of woman. He accorded to her a more conspicuous place in the economy of the household and attached a higher impor- tance to her influence on her offspring than his countrymen; but he was an exception. Popular Greek Education 35 opinion was still against him, against the slight innovation he made in this respect in his own family, and has continued so to this day. In the position assigned to woman outside of the large cities Greece is still essentially an oriental country. Many of the Greek thinkers were well aware of the indaequacy of the methods of procedure in matters educational. They realized the ab- surdity of which the governments of their day were guilty in requiring the performance of duties on the part of the citizens which it made no sustained effort to qualify them to perform. But the popular notion of personal liberty which every Ionian cherished with fanatical zeal was a fatal delusion which no experience could dis- pel. Nothing produced such a flurry of ex- citement among the minor Greek states as the promise of freedom. Though unable to defend themselves they were always unwilling to pay tribute to a government that could do it for them. Thus they were ever ready to change the constitution at the beck of a power that promised them liberty. We are often amazed at the gullibility of the populace in this regard. What liberty meant when granted by Sparta ought to have been as clear to everybody as the sun at noonday; yet the Spartans were often welcomed as liberators. Government by the Ins was always oppression ; by the Outs, mildness and consideration. 36 Plutarch on Education Plutarch makes himself a sharer in this ethnic folly by representing the avenging spirits of Nero as having granted to this monster of in- iquity some alleviation of his torments in the nether world because he had freed Greece. The natural alertness of the Greek mind to- gether with the frequency of intercourse between the different commonwealths, large and small, both in war and peace made the majority of the men well-informed; but mere information is not education, a truth that was as well understood twenty-five hundred years ago as it is to-day. But the rural population was in a great measure debarred from the intellectual benefits that arise from the attrition of mind against mind. Besides, the peculiar and utterly imprac- ticable theories which the most profound think- ers held as to the motives which should in- fluence men to seek intellectual culture were an insurmountable obstacle to the adoption of state educational systems. The number of persons who seek knowledge for its own sake for the mere pleasure of knowing has never been large and never will be. Among the ancient Greeks it was perhaps relatively more numerous than at any time since; nevertheless it com- prised but a small proportion of the citizens even in enlightened Athens. This becomes evident when we remember that the pecuniary rewards of what we may call authorship must have been very small and that there was little chance of Greek Education 37 turning any important discovery or invention to profitable account. That even teachers of the higher branches should not expect pay was a doctrine held by so many persons that Greek literature is permeated with a more or less outspoken contempt for the Sophists because they accepted compensation for their lessons. Elementary teachers as a class were held in slight estimation both by the Greeks and Romans. It was maintained that he who teaches for pay must teach that for which there is a demand, that which will yield the learner an adequate return in kind, and that such instruction is more likely to be wide of the truth than not. The attitude of the Sophists toward knowl- edge, the avarice of many of them, their pre- dilection for rhetoric, their slight regard for logic and truth gave a strong color of verity to the charges brought against the whole system of "paying by results." The history of modern literature abundantly confirms the fears of the ancients, since what is written to sell has never had and will never have any real or permanent value. It is but rarely that what is artistically excellent and at the same time true to nature achieves an immediate and abiding success: "Poetry," says Leigh Hunt, "is the flower of any sort of experience rooted in truth and grow- ing up into beauty." It is however a rare prod- uct and can not be bought with money or pro- duced for money. 38 Plutarch on Education The Greek thinkers knew this as well as the moderns know it; but they carried their doc- trines to extremes. We need to know many things that do not possess any aesthetic excel- lence because they are serviceable, yea indis- pensable. Few of us are able to possess genuine works of art; it is better then that we should provide ourselves with good reproductions than that our walls and houses should be entirely bare. Few of us can hear classical music often; it is better that we should listen to second and even third rate performers than to neglect wholly our aesthetic culture in this direction. There is however one privilege that is open to all, a source of enjoyment that is clossed to none except the psychically deformed or dwarfed: it is free access to the thoughts of the wisest and the best of all ages and all climes. Though Plutarch and those whom he regarded as his teachers held that training is more effi- cacious than endowments their belief was more circumscribed than the dogma now generally accepted, that the lower and even the lowest races can be civilized. They were hardly wil- ling to admit within the charmed circle any per- sons but pure Greeks. In fact, experience has almost demonstrated the correctness of the mod- ern belief. Plutarch would have been amazed if he could have seen in a vision the custodian- ship of the treasures of literature and art trans- ferred from his countrymen to the northern bar- barians. It would have been incredible to him Greek Education 39 that his fellow Greeks could ever become so in- different to everything he valued most highly. I have already called attention to the fact that he is disposed to look askance at culture gained late in life as being somewhat spurious. A man must have early advantages in order to meet all the requirements. That this aristo- cratic feeling is thoroughly Greek may be seen from other passages in the ancient writers. A good illustration may be found in the oration On the Crown, where Demosthenes, instead of commending his opponent for having made so much of himself in spite of early disadvantages, twits him because he had been brought up in indigent circumstances, circumstances for which he was not in the least responsible. The speaker must have known that the sentiment would meet the approval of the audience else he would not have expressed it at a time when it was im- portant that he should gain their good- will. Few epochs of history are more mysterious, more interesting, and, I may say, more painful to the modern student than the decline of Greek civilization. No competent judge will, I be- lieve, deny that Sir Francis Galton is right in the high rank he accords to it. In the fourth pre-christian century the decline began though there were still some great men living toward the close of it. With the Alexandrian age knowledge had been greatly increased but the human intellect seems to have become perceptibly weaker. 40 Plutarch on Education There were remarkable scholars but no thinkers of unusual ability. In mathematics the well known Euclid, in physics Archimedes, in sev- eral departments of learning Eratosthenes, to name only a few, were men of note, but they were no longer alive B. C. 200. Each gener- ation was less productive of able men than that which preceded it. During the first three cen- turies of the Christian era there are not more than half a dozen Greek writers who are of in- terest to us for what they themselves were. The scarcity of records for this long period makes our knowledge of it to consist chiefly of combination and inference, a sort of knowledge that is hard to distinguish from ignorance. Promising beginnings had been made in those sciences of which the moderns are so proud, but they were only beginnings. Each succeeding generation looked more and more to the past, less and less to the future. We need not be as severe on those times as is Professor Jowett in a note to his translation of Plato's Phaedrus, yet the reality without the slightest exagger- ation is sad enough. We can understand why Roman literature was to a large extent lost sight of during the Mid- dle Age. The Roman people had virtually ceased to exist, barbarous tribes one after an- other having fallen upon and disrupted the em- pire. In the very nature of the case these would not forthwith take an interest in the finer products of the Roman genius. Greek Education 41 But the case of the Greeks was different. The Eastern empire existed for more than a thous- and years after the Roman conquest of Greece. Greek was the language of the court, of all who could read and of a great majority of its sub- jects. It is almost certain that toward the close of the first millenium after Christ, occurred those enormous losses in Greek literature that modern scholars feel so keenly. Granting that the Cru- saders destroyed many books still stored in the libraries of Contsantinople, it is striking tes- timony to the general indifference of the Greek people that virtually all their literary treasures could be gathered in a single city. Muller's Fragments of the Greek historians contains remnants of more than three hundred authors of whose works only a few shreds have come down to us. Enough of Greek poetry has been preserved to put us in position to estimate its general character as correctly as if we had much more. Few facts in the natural and physical sciences were recorded and afterward lost that can not be recovered. In philosophy, in its largest sense the human mind can go over the same problems to which the ancients gave so much attention, just as long as men exist upon the earth. But the unrecorded history of past times is gone for us forever. It is worthy of mention in this connection that for many episodes in the lives of notable Greeks and Romans we are indebted to Plutarch. But as we often have no other testimony we 42 Plutarch on Education are compelled to accept his or admit our total ignorance. Albeit, we often find ourselves in a like predicament when dealing with the records of the past. If there is one lesson which the history of the Greek people teaches us with solemn impres- siveness it is that a nation can have no per- manent existence, so far as human affairs are permanent, that does not understand the art of government. They thought and wrote and experimented, but the practical results were for themselves meager in the extreme. They did not know how to profit by experience. Many of them knew just what sort of an education the individual ought to have, but their fellow citizens never learned how to put these theories into practice on a sufficiently large scale to bring about the results aimed at. They never fully realized the responsibility of the state as whole. If they had been in possession of this weighty secret we should not have to mourn the irre- parable losses in literature and art. A modern Greece would have been evolved out of an an- cient Greece. A glorious present would have been the extension of a glorious past. Instead of this we have a chasm of nearly two thousand years that can never be bridged. Well is it for our generation and better will it be for those that are to follow if unlike the dwellers on the shores of the Aegean decay does not begin when they have reached the zenith of their power and prestige. Greek Education 43 As there are no exact English equivalents for several of the Greek terms used in general pedagogy it has been necessary to translate these with several different English words. It did not seem amiss therefore to insert here and there in the translation the original word in order that the reader, even if he knows no more of Greek than the alphabet, may in a measure be brought in direct contact with the underlying- thought. Some additional information on. these points will be found in the Appendix, Note A. It may be stated briefly in this place that three agencies cooperated to make the edu- cated man as the Greeks conceived him: a cer- tain amount of knowledge gained from books and from practical life; a certain grace of speech and conduct acquired by association with men of polished manners; a well-developed and robust body trained by means of gymnastic and mili- tary exercises. In our day it is not uncommon to hear it said of So-and-So that he is a man of fine education but that hard study has under- mined his health. According to the Greek standard such a man is at most only half edu- cated. No one will deny that the ancient ideal is the correct one; it is certain that the effort to bring the real as closely to it as possible produced splendid results. If an intelligent man who had made a careful study of modern thought throughout the civil- ized world were to be asked what he regarded as 44 Plutarch on Education its most prominent characteristic he could hardly answer otherwise than, "Faith in the regen- erative power of knowledge." If he were to be asked what results were expected from the gen- eral diffusion of intelligence he could hardly answer otherwise than that they were a some- what vague hope in the continued betterment of the human race. Most men believe that in some way the highest good of the community and of the state as a whole will be promoted by the widest possible diffusion of knowledge; but if they were asked in what that good consists or is to consist they would probably be com- pelled to say that they did not very clearly apprehend. It is no easier now to apprehend the highest good than it was two thousand years ago. It is therefore not surprising that Plutarch had faith in the ultimate regeneration of man- kind through the spread of intelligence, the power to think justly and the will to use this power honestly and altruistically. On what else could he base his hope? It would be a good deal easier to set forth in a comparatively short essay what is worthy of special attention and characteristic of the peda- gogy of Plutarch; but that would not be Plu- tarch at first hand. It is true a translation is not exactly Plutarch in the strict sense of the word, yet it is nearer than an abridgment and as near as one can get who does not thoroughly understand Greek; and, I might add, the some- what peculiar Greek of the Sage of Chasronea. Greek Education 45 If the knowledge of antiquity including the Bi- ble could be got in no other way than by the study of originals it would be scanty indeed. Readers of this volume who may be further interested in the subjects of which it treats will find additional information in the following books: German: R. Volkmann, Leben und Schriften des Plutarch von Chaeronea. Berlin. French : 0. Greard, De la morale de Plutarque. Paris. English : Thomas Davidson, Aristotle and the Ancient Educational Ideals, New York. — The same, The Education of the Greek People, N. Y. — C. W. Super, Between Heathenism and Christianity. Chicago. — The same, Wisdom and Will in Education. Harrisburg. — R. C. Trench, Plutarch, His Life, His Lives and His Morals. London. — J. P. Mahaffy, The Greek World under Roman Sway. London and New York. — W. W. Capes, University Life in Ancient Athens. London. The title of this little volume would be quite as accurate if it read: "University Life outside of ancient Athens", since it treats in a cursory way (no other is possible owing to the scarcity of records) of the higher education in the "Near East," chiefly during the first cen- turies of the Christian era. PLUTARCH ON EDUCATION THE EDUCATION OF BOYS (Note: It is proper to state here that the tract which follows is not of undoubted authenticity. In fact the preponderance of modern criticism is against placing it among the genuine writings of the Sage of Chaeronea. It abounds in a large number of figura- tive expressions, to mention only a single peculiarity, than the works of Plutarch about whose authorship there is no question. Many of these have .been some- what toned down in the translation. On the other hand it is always included among Plutarch's works and is withal so thoroughly Plutarchean in sentiment that if it did not emanate from the hand of the master it must have been composed by a disciple. It may therefore with perfect propriety and justice be included among the treatises intended to set forth Plutarch's views on education.) What may be said about the education (ajcoy^) j n t rod.«LCtion of free born boys and by the use of what agencies they may be trained to become men of upright character, it is here proposed to consider. II. It is perhaps best to begin with the parents. I should accordingly advise fathers who wish to beget noble children not to associate with Where women of doubtful reputation, since those per education sons who either on their father's or their moth- 47 48 Plutarch on Education An illustrious father and a foolish son. er's side are of a questionable parentage are likely to be marked all their lives with an in- effaceable stain. In addition to this they are always liable to the reproaches of those who wish to put them to shame or to hurt their feelings. Wisely, therefore, does the poet say: "When the foundation of the race is laid In sin, needs must the issue be ill-starred." Verily, a capital foundation on which to build a fine character is honorable birth: to this care- ful regard should always be had by those who desire to beget children such as they would wish them to be. And in truth the principles of those who are of questionable or spurious parentage are naturally lacking in fixedness, and prone to servility, so that the poet very properly says: "For this cows man, how stout his heart soe'er, To know a father's or a mother's sin." Of course, the sons of illustrious parents are sometimes notorious for arrogance and unseemly conduct. Diophantus, for example, the son of Themistocles, is reported to have said frequently and in the presence of many persons, that what- ever his wish was, that was agreeable to the Athenians. For what he himself wanted his mother likewise wanted, and what his mother desired Themistocles wanted and what Them- istocles liked that all the Athenians were eg^er for. Very much to be commended on the score of lofty patriotism are the Lacedaemonians for eschewed. The Education of Boys 49 laying a fine upon their king Archidamus be- cause he showed such poor judgment as to marry a little woman, alleging that he did not intend to beget kings for them but kinglets. III. Closely connected with these matters is one that has not escaped our predecessors. It is this : married men ought either to abstain en- Wine to be tirely from wine or use it only in moderation. For, those whose fathers are unduly fond of wine or are drunkards are wont to turn out drunkards also. This fact is what led Diogenes to remark, when he noticed an addle-pated and silly youth: "Young man, your father must have begotten you when he was drunk." This will suffice concerning the begetting of children. I shall now speak about their education, (aycoyrj) IV. We may remark in general terms regarding virtue what we are accustomed to say con- cerning the arts and sciences, namely, that three factors are essential to the formation of a well factorTof a rounded character: nature or natural dispo- education, sition (vcrL