Aristotle and Ancient Educational Ideals. Thomas Davidson
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speaking, the whole historic life of free Greece, from the date of the first Olympiad to that of the absorption of Greece into the Macedonian Empire. It naturally subdivides itself into two periods, (a) 776-450; (b) 450-338.
(a) That of the "Old Education," authoritative and puritanical, whose aim was the training of good citizens, god-fearing, law-abiding, patriotic, and brave.
(b) That of the "New Education," rationalistic and "liberal," whose aim was the training of formidable individuals, self-centred, law-despising, time-serving, and cunning.
It is in the struggle between the two systems, and in the practical triumph of the latter, that Greece loses her moral fibre; so that her citizens, weakened through sundering selfishness, fall an easy prey to the foreign invader.
II. The Hellenistic Period (338 b.c.-313 a.d.). This extends from the Battle of Chæronea, in which Greece lost her independence, to the definitive triumph of Christianity, which brought a new ideal and a new spirit into life and education. It naturally subdivides itself into two periods, (a) b.c. 338-146; (b) b.c. 146-a.d. 313.
(a) The Macedonian Period, during which Macedonian influence prevailed, and Greek thought and education, absorbing foreign, chiefly Oriental, elements, tended toward an encyclopædic cosmopolitanism. During this period, Alexandria is the centre of Greek influence.
(b) The Roman Period, during which, as Horace says, "Captive Greece took captive her rude conqueror," and Rome became, alongside Alexandria, a diffusive centre of Greek thought, art, and education.
Between the two great periods, the Hellenic and the Hellenistic, stands the man who draws up the testament of the former and outlines the programme of the latter, the Macedonian Greek, Aristotle.
Our second distinction will lead us to treat separately, in the Hellenic period, the educational system of the three Greek races, (1) the Æolic, (2) the Doric, (3) the Ionic, the first having its chief centre at Thebes, the second at Sparta, the third at Athens. For an account of the education of the first our data are but meagre; with the main features of Spartan and Athenian education we are well acquainted. In education, as in everything, Sparta was conservative, socialistic, and aristocratic, while Athens tended to liberalism, individualism, and democracy. Hence Sparta clung desperately to the "Old Education," and almost closed her doors against art, letters, and philosophy, while Athens, dragged into the "New Education," became the home of all these. It must always be borne in mind that, in favoring individualism and the "New Education," Athens was abandoning the Hellenic ideal, and paving the way for the cosmopolitanism of the Hellenistic period. In this latter, we shall have to distinguish between the educational systems of Athens, Alexandria, and Rome.
Our third distinction is that between individual theory and popular practice. In all epochs of their history the Greek states produced men who strove to realize in thought and imagination the ideal of their people, and to exhibit it as an aim, an encouragement, and an inspiration, in contrast with the imperfect actual. In more than one case this ideal modified the education of the following periods. Of course, such theories did not arise until practice was compelled to defend itself by producing sanctions, either in religion or in reason, and it may perhaps be affirmed that the aim of them all was to discover such sanctions for the Greek ideal. Among the many educational theorists of Greece, there are six who especially deserve to be considered: (1) Pythagoras, who in Southern Italy sought to graft on the Doric ideal a half-mystical, half-ethical theology, and a mathematical theory of the physical world; (2) Xenophon, who sought to secure the same ideal by connecting it with a monarchical form of government; (3) Plato, who sought to elevate it, and find a sanction for it in his theory of super-sensuous ideas; (4) Aristotle, who presented in all its fulness the Hellenic ideal, and sought to find sanctions for it in history, social well-being, and the promise of a higher life; (5) Quintilian, who, in Rome, embodies the rhetorical or worldly education of the Hellenistic period; and (6) Plotinus, who presents an ideal of philosophical or other-worldly education, and paves the way for the triumph of Christian dogma.
BOOK II
THE HELLENIC PERIOD (b.c. 776-338)
Part I
THE "OLD EDUCATION" (b.c. 776-480)
CHAPTER I
EDUCATION FOR WORK AND FOR LEISURE
When we consider the different arts that have been discovered, and distinguish between those which relate to the necessary conditions of life and those which contribute to the free enjoyment of it (διαγωγή), we always consider the man who is acquainted with the latter wiser than him who is acquainted with the former, for the reason that the sciences of the latter have no reference to use. Hence it was only when all the necessary conditions of life had been attained that those arts were discovered which have no reference either to pleasure or to the common needs of life; and this took place first in those countries where men enjoyed leisure.—Aristotle.
The free life of God is such as are our brief best moments.—Id.
It is not fitting that the free enjoyment of life should be permitted to boys or to young persons; for the crown of perfection belongs not to the imperfect.—Id.
Obviously, the free enjoyment of life demands not only the noble but also the pleasant; for happiness consists of these too.—Id.
Among the Homeric Greeks, whose life was almost entirely devoted to practical pursuits, education was mainly practical, aiming to produce "a speaker of words and a doer of deeds." As civilization advanced, and higher political forms were evolved, certain classesof men found themselves blessed with leisure which they were not inclined to devote to mere play. In order to make a worthy use of this leisure, they required a certain training in those arts which were regarded as befitting a free man. Education, accordingly, in some states, widened its scope, to include those accomplishments, which enable men to fill their hours of freedom with refined and gracious enjoyment—music and letters. Music, indeed, had been cultivated long before, not only by professional bards, but even by princes, like Achilles and Paris; this, however, was for the sake of amusement and recreation rather than of the free enjoyment of life. It had been regarded as a means, not as an end. We must be careful, in our study of Greek life and education, not to confound play and recreation, which are for the sake of work, with the free enjoyment of life, which is an end in itself, and to which all work is but a means. "Enjoyment is the end." We shall see, as we proceed, to what momentous results this distinction leads, how it governs not only all education but all the institutions of life, and how it finally contributes to break up the whole civilization which it determines. It may fairly be said that Greece perished because she placed the end of life in individual æsthetic enjoyment, possible only for a few and regarding only the few.
In historic Greece, music came to be an essential part of the education of every free man. Even free women learnt it. Along with music went poetry, and when this came to be written down, it was termed "letters." As every free man came to be his own minstrel and his own rhapsode, the professional minstrel and rhapsode disappeared, and the Homeric poems even, in order to be preserved from oblivion, were committed to writing by an enlightened tyrant—Pisistratus.
The first portion of the Greek people that attained a degree of civilization demanding an education for hours of leisure, was the Æolian race, and particularly the Asiatic portion of it. Accordingly we find that all the earliest musicians and poets, didactic and lyric, are Æolians—Hesiod, Terpander, Arion, Alcæus, Sappho, Pittacus, etc. Lesbos seems to have taken the lead in this "higher education." The last five names all belong to that island, which produced also the earliest Greek historian and prose-writer—Hellanicus. But the Æolians, though earliest in the field, were soon outstripped