by a single principle, which he can trace in many forms and combinations, but can distinguish from them all. Then the shadows and images of everyday life will acquire their true meaning, for he will see through them and over them to the realities which they reflect. The isolated and self-contradictory maxims of popular morality will interpret themselves into fragments of a single perfection which human life suggests although it does not realise it. The separate sciences will cease to talk "in dreams," and will point beyond themselves to the waking vision of an absolute being. Philosophy will be not a cunning device of words or an occupation for a listless hour, but the articulate language of truth which a lifetime is too short for learning. Only eternity can interpret that language fully, but to understand it is the nearest approach to heaven on earth and to study it is true education.'

1

There are important differences between the teaching of Aristotle and that of Plato. Aristotle was before everything a scientific and practical inquirer. Instead of considering, as Plato did, ideas as the only real existençes which underlie phenomena, he regarded them as abstractions from phenomena. Men, he said, have souls and there are traces of souls in animals, but men have reason which animals have not. This reason is partly active and partly passive, and is to some extent subordinate to the lower appetites. Now the highest object of man is the attainment of happiness, and the highest happiness of man is to be reached by perfect virtue. The highest virtue is that of the reason. This is realised in the life of contemplation, which is higher than

1 Aristotle's views on education are found in the Ethics and Politics. There is some difference in the views expressed in the two books.

the life of action. We cannot as mortal men attain to it, but in proportion as we do attain to it so do we become divine. The end of life, and therefore of education, is the attainment at once of intellectual and of moral virtue, which brings with it the truest pleasures of which man is capable. The means of obtaining this are three -nature, habit, and instruction. In education, then, which presumes natural gifts on which to work, habit must come first, instruction second. The semirational part of our nature develops before the reasoning part; the body develops before both. Therefore the order of education must be-1, bodily; 2, moral; 3, scientific. Of bodily occupations Aristotle carefully excludes those which are fit only for craftsmen or slaves. The city states for which he wrote were in fact aristocracies, resting on what Curtius calls a 'broad and convenient basis of personal servitude.' First then in education will come gymnastics, but this is not intended to make men athletes, to develop mere brute force, but to produce courage, which is a mean between the unbridled wildness of the animal and the sluggishness of the coward. Too much weight must not be given to athletics lest the child be spoilt, and body and mind must not be hard-worked at the same time. Gymnastics are only regarded as a preparation for the education of the soul. This is done by music. But here also we must have moderation. The student must not degenerate into an artist. An artist practises music not for his own perfection but to give pleasure, and that not always of the highest kind. Music in general education is always to be used for one of three purposes: either for education proper, or for the training of the affections, or for the rational employment of leisure. And it will be found that different kinds of melodies have very different effects in these respects. Next to

music comes the art of drawing, which will encourage and develop a sense of the beautiful. Next is mathematics, which is purely intellectual and has no effect on the moral nature. Dialectic is the foundation of scientific training. Its use is of three kinds : 1, as a gymnastic of the mind; 2, as a means of intercourse with others for the purpose of persuading them; 3, for the learning of philosophic sciences, so as more readily to distinguish between what is true and what is false. It leads the way to higher speculation, and helps to the knowledge of each separate detail. Connected with dialectic is rhetoric, the object of which is not to persuade but to know in each case what is useful for the obtaining of credit and belief. Philosophy, according to Aristotle, has for its object the knowledge of the first cause, and by this we learn to know everything else. The highest of the practical sciences is politics, which has for its object the attainment of the highest good-that is, happiness in the State. It requires a deep moral nature for its pursuit, and therefore is not suited for the study of youth.

Such is a general sketch of Greek education both from its practical and its ideal side. There is much in it that may be useful to ourselves, but much is omitted to which we attach great importance. There is no learning of languages, no arrangements are made for instruction in Persian, Latin, Phoenician, or Egyptian. There is no history in the curriculum, unless we class legends under this head. The Greeks did not, like the Jews and other eastern nations, give to their own history the sanctity of a religion, and keep it continually before their eyes and ears. We must never forget that the society of Greece was a society served by slaves, and also that it was developed in city states in which

Peculiarities of Greek Society.

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everyone was known by everyone else, and which might not exceed a number which could be conveniently addressed by a single person. In its control of personal freedom by public opinion a Greek State resembled the Geneva of Calvin, or the Bosion of the Puritans, and still more the city republics of Italy in the Middle Ages. No wonder that Greek learning spread so rapidly among men, who read in it the apotheosis of a society which had so many analogies with what they saw around them. An education such as I have described produced the most gifted and attractive nation that ever lived upon the earth. Whether we would understand the course which European culture has taken, or the strongest influences which underlie the daily life of modern Europe, we must recur again and again to the head-spring of Hellenic thought.

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CHAPTER II.

ROMAN EDUCATION-ORATORY.

IN passing from Greece to Rome we find a new ideal of the perfection of man. Hellenism, the most important factor in our modern civilisation, is almost synonymous with our modern conception of culture. Rome has left us but one intellectual product, a system of organised and carefully developed law; but Roman law was the natural outcome of her national life as the ruler and civiliser of the world. The object of Greek education was to foster to its highest development the inner life of man, to form the philosopher who should guide the man of action. Roman education aimed at no higher object than to mould the man of action himself, to make a citizen fit, in the language of Milton, to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both public and private, of peace and war.' At a later period, when Greece had taken her conqueror captive, when Cicero spent the leisure of his retirement in writing philosophical primers for the use of his countrymen, when a knowledge of Greek was a necessity of good education, and when Rome was filled, as Europe was at a later period, with hungry professors of Hellenic learning, this practical training took a more intellectual shape, and became