Aristotle and Ancient Educational Ideals. Thomas Davidson
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good by nature, others by training, others by instruction. The part that is due to nature obviously does not depend upon us, but is imparted through certain divine causes to the truly fortunate.—Aristotle.
It is not merely begetting that makes the father, but also the imparting of a noble education.—John Chrysostom.
There are two sorts of education, the one divine, the other human. The divine is great and strong and easy; the human small and weak and beset with many dangers and delusions. Nevertheless, the latter must be added to the former, if a right result is to be reached.—Dion Chrysostom.
The same thing that we are wont to assert regarding the arts and sciences, may be asserted regarding moral worth, viz. that the production of a completely just character demands three conditions—nature, reason, and habit. By "reason" I mean instruction, by "habit," training.... Nature without instruction is blind; instruction without nature, helpless; exercise (training) without both, aimless.—Plutarch.
To the realization of their ideal in any individual the Greeks conceived three conditions to be necessary, (1) a noble nature, (2) persistent exercise or training in right action, (3) careful instruction. If any one of these was lacking, the highest result could not be attained.
(1) To be well or nobly born was regarded by the Greeks as one of the best gifts of the gods. Aristotle defines noble birth as "ancient wealth and worth," and this fairly enough expresses the Greek view generally. Naturally enough, therefore, the Greek in marrying looked above all things to the chances of a worthy offspring. Indeed, it may be fairly said that the purpose of the Greek in marriage was, not so much to secure a helpmeet for himself as to find a worthy mother for his children. In Greece, as everywhere else in the ancient world, marriage was looked upon solely as an arrangement for the procreation and rearing of offspring. The romantic, pathological love-element, which plays so important a part in modern match-making, was almost entirely absent among the Greeks. What love there was, assumed either the noble form of enthusiastic friendship or the base one of free lust. In spite of this, and of the fact that woman was regarded as a means and not as an end, the relations between Greek husbands and wives were very often such as to render the family a school of virtue for the children. They were noble, sweet, and strong,—all the more so, it should seem, that they were based, not upon a delusive sentimentality, but upon reason and a sense of reciprocal duty.
(2) The value of exercise, practice, habituation, seems to have been far better understood by the ancients than by the moderns. Whatever a man has to do, be it speaking, swimming, playing, or fighting, he can learn only by doing it; this was a universally accepted maxim. The modern habit of trying to teach languages and virtues by rules, not preceded by extensive practice, would have seemed to the ancients as absurd as the notion that a man could learn to swim before going into the water. Practice first; theory afterwards: do the deed, and ye shall know of the doctrine—so said ancient Wisdom, to which the notion that children should not be called upon to perform any act, or submit to any restriction, without having the grounds thereof explained to them, would have seemed the complete inversion of all scientific method. It was by insisting upon a certain practice in children, on the ground of simple authority, that the ancients sought to inculcate the virtues of reverence for experience and worth, and respect for law.
(3) The work begun by nature, and continued by habit or exercise, was completed and crowned by instruction. This had, according to the Greek, two functions, (a) to make action free, by making it rational, (b) to make possible an advance to original action. Nature and habit left men thralls, governed by instincts and prescriptions; instruction, revelation of the grounds of action, set them free. Such freedom, based on insight, was to the thinkers of Greece the realization of manhood, or rather, of the divine in man. "The truth shall make you free"—no one understood this better than they. Hence, with all their steady insistence upon practice in education, they never regarded it as the ultimate end, or as any end at all, except when guided by insight, the fruit of instruction. A practicality leading to no widening of the spiritual horizon, to no freeing insight, was to them illiberal, slavish, paltry—"banausic," they said,—degrading both to body and soul.
CHAPTER IV
SUBJECTS FOR EDUCATION
It is right that Greeks should rule over barbarians, but not barbarians over Greeks; for those are slaves, but these are free men.—Euripides.
Barbarian and slave are by nature the same.—Aristotle.
Nature endeavors to make the bodies of freemen and slaves different; the latter strong for necessary use, the former erect and useless for such operations, but useful for political life.... It is evident, then, that by nature some men are free, others slaves, and that, in the case of the latter, slavery is both beneficial and just.—Id.
Instruction, though it plainly has power to direct and stimulate the generous among the young ... is as plainly powerless to turn the mass of men to nobility and goodness (Kalokagathia). For it is not in their nature to be guided by reverence, but by fear, nor to abstain from low things because they are disgraceful, but (only) because they entail punishment.—Id.
In thinking of Greek education as furnishing a possible model for us moderns, there is one point which it is important to bear in mind: Greek education was intended only for the few, for the wealthy and well-born. Upon all others, upon slaves, barbarians, the working and trading classes, and generally upon all persons spending their lives in pursuit of wealth or any private ends whatsoever, it would have seemed to be thrown away. Even well-born women were generally excluded from most of its benefits. The subjects of education were the sons of full citizens, themselves preparing to be full citizens, and to exercise all the functions of such. The duties of such persons were completely summed up under two heads, duties to the family and duties to the State, or, as the Greeks said, œconomic and political duties. The free citizen not only acknowledged no other duties besides these, but he looked down upon persons who sought occupation in any other sphere. Œconomy and Politics, however, were very comprehensive terms. The former included the three relations of husband to wife, father to children, and master to slaves and property; the latter, three public functions, legislative, administrative, and judiciary. All occupations not included under these six heads the free citizen left to slaves or resident foreigners. Money-making, in the modern sense, he despised, and, if he devoted himself to art or philosophy, he did so only for the benefit of the State. If he improved the patrimony which was the condition of his free citizenship, he did so, not by chaffering or money-lending, but by judicious management, and by kindly, but firm, treatment of his slaves. If he performed any great artistic service to the State—for example, if he wrote a tragedy for a State religious festival (and plays were never written for any other purpose)—the only reward he looked forward to was a crown of olive or laurel and the respect of his fellow-citizens.
The Greeks divided mankind, in all the relations of life, into two distinct classes, a governing and a governed, and considered the former alone as the subject of education; the latter being a mere instrument in its hands. The governing class required education in order that it might govern itself and the other class, in accordance with reason and justice; that other, receiving its guidance from the governing class, required no education, or only such as would enable it to obey. It followed that the duty of the governing class was to govern; of the governed, to obey. Only in this correlation of duties did each class find its usefulness and satisfaction. Any attempt to disturb or invert this correlation was a wilful running in the teeth of the laws of nature, a rebellion against the divine order of things.
As husband, father, master in the family, and as legislator, officer, judge in the State, each member of the governing class found his proper range of activities; and he did wrong, degrading himself to the level of the serving class, if he sought any other. This view, in a more or less conscious form, pervades the whole ancient world, conditioning all its notions and theories of education; and Paul the Apostle only echoed it when he said to wives: "Wives, be in subjection to your own husbands as to the Lord"; to children: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right";