Givisi*n. L l. 
 
 
 Secti^n^LuJ-S 
 
 
 N#,_ 
 
 
 " ••• * *M»»« . <w 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 / 
 
 
 \ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

HISTORICAL SURVEY 
 
 OP 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2018 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/detajls/historicalsurvey00laur_0 
 
HISTORICAL SURVEY 
 
 OF 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 BY 
 
 S. S. LAURIE, A.M., LL.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THE INSTITUTES AND HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF EDINBURGH; AUTHOR OF ‘INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION,’ ‘LANGUAGE 
 AND LINGUISTIC METHOD IN THE SCHOOL,’ ‘LIFE AND EDUCA¬ 
 TIONAL WRITINGS OF COMENIUS,’ ETC. 
 
 SECOND EDITION, REVISED 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
 LONDON AND BOMBAY 
 
 1900 
 
Copyright, 1900, by 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 Mntbersttjj Press: 
 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This book is a historical survey, not a history. At the same 
 time I believe that nothing essential to the understanding of 
 pre-Christian education has been omitted. 
 
 In traversing so wide a field, I cannot expect to have 
 escaped errors: I hope these are of a minor kind and that 
 they will be pointed out. Certain opinions may be considered 
 erroneous by some of the experts in the various departments 
 of historical inquiry in which I have involved myself: but 
 until experts are themselves at one, I may be allowed to 
 form my own judgment. 
 
 The greatest difficulty that presented itself was the giving 
 expression, within the limits of a few pages, to the religious 
 and ethical attitude of the various nations of antiquity to 
 life and its duties. Brief statements on so all-important a 
 matter cannot fail to be inadequate, and this all the more 
 because the gradual historical development of religious beliefs 
 has, for our purposes, to be ignored. 
 
 My aim has been to seize the leading religious and social 
 characteristics of pre-Christian societies as these were actually 
 found operative in the life of the people of each nation taken 
 as a whole. For example, the purified and abstract religious 
 
VI 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 
 
 conceptions of the Greek dramatists and philosophers are in 
 the history of thought of surpassing value, but they had 
 little to do with the religious and moral forces which gov¬ 
 erned the actual life of the Hellenic races. The general cur¬ 
 rent of religious belief and emotion on which Greece was 
 carried forward to the manifestation of a supreme activity 
 in arts and arms is what chiefly concerns the educational 
 historian. For it was on this broad current alone that the 
 life, and consequently the education, of the people was borne 
 along. 
 
 So with the Hindus. The doctrines of Brahmanical 
 philosophical sects are part of the history of thought, but it 
 is only the governing idea of Brahmanism and the moral sen¬ 
 timents and convictions flowing from this, that are reflected 
 in the life, character, and education of the race. I hope that 
 the reader will hear these things in mind and not expect 
 from me more than I profess to give. 
 
 Further, in estimating the civilisation of a people, I have 
 had to confine myself to that point of time at which they 
 were approaching the highest expression of the national 
 idea. 
 
 As regards Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria, I have formed 
 my own judgment on the materials at present available. 
 Every reader will understand that the history of these coun¬ 
 tries is now in the process of reconstruction. Professor 
 Flinders Petrie’s History, now being published, when fol¬ 
 lowed by a history and estimate of Egyptian civilisation, 
 will doubtless place Egyptology on a firmer basis. 
 
 S. S. LAURIE. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 The various chapters are based on the authorities enumer¬ 
 ated, with references to many others not named (including En¬ 
 cyclopaedias). In the final revision before printing, I kept 
 before me, and took occasional assistance from, Schmidt’s 
 Geschichte der Pddagogik , 1870, and Schmid’s Geschichte der 
 Erziehung , &c., 1885, chiefly in the chapters on’ Greek educa¬ 
 tion. 
 
 University of Edinburgh, April, 1895. 
 
 NOTE TO SECOND EDITION 
 
 In this second edition I have made corrections —these, how¬ 
 ever, verbal except in the chapter on the Jews. 
 
 S. S. L. 
 
 Edinburgh, 1900. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction. — The place of the History of Education in Uni¬ 
 versal History.1-8 
 
 v 
 
 THE HAMITIC RACES 
 
 Egypt. — Political Constitution. Religion and Ethics. Literature 
 and Art. Social Condition. Women. Education in Egypt. 
 Instruction of the People. Method and Discipline . . . 11-48 
 
 THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 Arabs, Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Hebrews 
 
 (1) The Arabs. (2) The Babylonians. Education. The 
 masses of the people. Education of the upper classes. (3) 
 
 The Assyrians. (4) The Hebrews or Jews. Mosaism: The 
 Priesthood, Prophets, and Scribes, as educational forces. Edu¬ 
 cation of the Young among the Jews generally. Epochs of 
 Jewish Education. The First Period. The Second Period. 
 
 The Third Period (Period of the Scribe and the Synagogue). 
 Higher Education. Popular Education. Fourth Period (Period 
 of the Rabbin and the Elementary School). The Talmud and 
 Education.51-100 
 
 THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 
 
 China. — Chapter I. National Characteristics. Language. 
 General Character of the Chinese. II. Religion and Phil¬ 
 osophy of Life. Sacred Books. Philosophical attitude of 
 the Chinese mind. Religion. III. The Dominant Ideas of 
 
X 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chinese Life. IV. The Educational System. 1. Its 
 General Character and Aim. 2. The External Organisation of 
 the Examination System. 3. The Examinations. 4. Rewards 
 of Success in the Examinations. 5. Subjects of Examination. 
 
 6. Schools, Teachers, Course of Study and Method: (a) Teach¬ 
 ers and Schools. ( b ) The Course of Study, (c) Method of 
 Instruction. Earlier Stages. ( d ) Higher Stages, (e) Con¬ 
 clusion . 103-152 
 
 THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 
 Hindus , Medo-Persians , Hellenes , Italians ( Romans ) 
 
 (A) India and the Hindus. — Religion and Ethics. Educa¬ 
 tion among the Hindus. Aim. Organisation and Materials of 
 Education. Women. Teachers. Method and Discipline 155-177 
 
 (B) The Medo-Persians. — General Characteristics. Social 
 
 and Civil Relations. Persian Character. Religion and Ethics. 
 Education of the Ancient Persians.178-195 
 
 (C) The Hellenic Race. — Chapter I. General Charac¬ 
 teristics. Religion. Art. Manhood. II. The Greek 
 Ideal of Manhood and the Consequent Character¬ 
 istics of Hellenic Education generally. III. Edu¬ 
 cation among the Dorian Greeks. Cretan Education. 
 Spartan Education. 1. Infancy. 2. Education of the Boys. 
 
 3. Education of the Young Men. 4. Education of the Women. 
 
 IV. Athenian and Ionic-Attic Education. 1. Infancy. 
 
 2. Childhood and Boyhood. 3. State Supervision and Schools. 
 
 4. Education of the School: (a) Primary Instruction and 
 Methods. Literary Education. Reading, Arithmetic, Writing, 
 Drawing, Geometry, Geography. ( b ) Secondary Education. 
 
 (c) Music in the narrower sense of the word, (d) Gymnastic. 
 
 (e) Moral Education. ( f ) Advanced Education. (g ) School 
 and Home Discipline. (A) Education of the Women. ( i ) Method. 
 
PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 xi 
 
 The Schoolmaster. Schoolhouses. Holidays. (5) Contrast be¬ 
 tween Athenian and Spartan Education. V. The Higher 
 Education in the Fifth Century b.c. and thereafter. 
 Note on Aristotle.l%-300 
 
 (D) The Romans. — Chapter I. The Roman People and 
 their General Characteristics. Religion. Social Life. 
 
 Civil Relations. Personal Character of the Romans. II. His¬ 
 torical Development of Roman Education. First 
 National Period, to 303 b.c. Second National Period, 303 b.c. 
 to 148 b.c. Third National Period, 148 b.c. onward. III. 
 Curriculum of Study. Schools, Methods, and Mas¬ 
 ters. Primary Instruction. Secondary Instruction. The 
 Higher Instruction. Oratory. Discipline, Teachers, School- 
 houses. IY. Details of Instruction and Method in 
 the Grammatical and Rhetorical Schools : The School 
 of the Grammaticus. The School of the Rhetorician. Y. The 
 School of Quintilian. Quintilian and his Educational 
 Aim. First Book of the Institutions. Primary Instruction. Sec¬ 
 ondary Instruction. Second Book. The Higher Instruction, 
 etc. YI. Education in Imperial Times. The Classical 
 Decadence. Tacitus. Petronius Arbiter. Educational Activity 
 under the Emperors. Plutarch. Musonius. Rise of Chris¬ 
 tianity. Conclusion.301-411 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
HISTORICAL SURVEY 
 
 OF 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 INTKODUCTION 
 
 THE PLACE OF THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN UNIVERSAL 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 The history of education is involved in the general history 
 of the world. No adequate survey of it is possible which 
 does not presume a considerable acquaintance with the his¬ 
 tory of the leading races which have occupied and subdued 
 the earth and formed themselves into civilised societies. 
 
 At what successive periods did these races enter on a pro¬ 
 gressive civilisation ; what were the leading intellectual and 
 moral characteristics of each ; under what circumstances of 
 climate, soil, and contention with other nascent or dying 
 nations were these native characteristics developed and 
 moulded; and what was the issue of all to the wealth, the 
 life, the thought, the art of humanity ? — these are questions 
 which concern us intimately as students of the history of 
 education. For the history of the education of a people is 
 not the history of its schools, but the history of its civilisa¬ 
 tion ; and its civilisation finds its record mainly in its intel¬ 
 lectual, moral, and aesthetic products, and only in a subordinate 
 way in its material successes, and its achievements in war. 
 
 To treat of the education of the human race in this its 
 broadest conception would be to attempt a philosophy of 
 
 1 
 
2 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 history. We have accordingly to narrow our view, and this 
 we can do only by first narrowing the scope of the word 
 education. The education of the ancient Egyptians, for 
 example, is not precisely synonymous with the history of 
 the civilisation of that race as a factor in the universal his¬ 
 tory of man. At the same time, it certainly embraces an 
 estimate of the civilising forces at work among that remark¬ 
 able people, and involves our forming a pretty clear concep¬ 
 tion of their social organisation and of the ideal of life and 
 character to which they unconsciously attained, or after 
 which they consciously strove. For by education, even in 
 the narrow sense in which the word must be employed here, 
 I understand the means which a nation, with more or less 
 consciousness, takes for bringing up its citizens to maintain 
 the tradition of national character, and for promoting the 
 welfare of the whole as an organised ethical community. It 
 is essential, therefore, that we should understand the objects 
 which the nation, as such, desired to secure ; in brief, its 
 own more or less conscious ideal of national and civic life, 
 of personal character, and of ideal political justice. If we 
 can ascertain this by the study of its highest products in 
 men, deeds, thought and arts, we have made a great step 
 towards interpreting the course of training to which it would 
 naturally endeavour to subject its youth by means of its 
 laws and institutions. 
 
 In a historical survey we can afford to ignore the vast 
 variety of tribes which are still in a savage state, and which, 
 either by innate incapacity for development, or by the force 
 of irresistible external circumstances, have risen little above 
 the beasts that perish. The human possibilities of such 
 tribes may be, in germ, as high as those of many more fav¬ 
 oured races; but this is doubtful. They labour to acquire 
 skill in getting food by the exercise either of bodily vigour 
 or successful cunning, and they cherish the virtue of bravery 
 in warding off the attacks of others like themselves. As 
 they have, however, no political or ethical ideal, they can 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 3 
 
 have no education in the sense in which we use the term in 
 this book. They can teach us nothing. For, training to 
 expertness in the use of the weapons of the chase or of 
 war is not education, except in a narrow technical sense. 
 It is only when the ideas of bodily vigour, of bravery, of 
 strength, bodily beauty, or personal morality, become desired 
 for themselves, or as the necessary conditions of political 
 life and national conservation, that education begins. The 
 training which the national idea gives has then an ideal aim 
 more or less conscious. An education which contemplates 
 an ideal of life for each man, as distinct from the state 
 organism as a whole, is, necessarily, of later growth. 
 
 It is only, then, with those nations which, by virtue of 
 their ordered civilisation, had an idea of individual or of 
 national life, and which, by virtue of their having this idea, 
 possessed a civilisation, that we have to do. The races 
 which chiefly interest us are the Indo-European or Aryan, 
 to which we ourselves belong, and it might be sufficient to 
 trace the history of education among the peoples who bear 
 the Aryan character as that has developed itself west of the 
 Caucasus. But we should feel the survey of educational 
 history to be imperfect if we did so. It is desirable, there¬ 
 fore, to comprehend other races, such as the Hamitic, the 
 Semitic, and Uro-Altaic; and not wholly to omit the Aryan 
 element south-east of the Caucasus. We are, of course, com¬ 
 pelled to confine ourselves, in dealing with the education of 
 almost all these races, to the highest and most generalised 
 expression of their national life; and this, frequently, for 
 want of materials to do anything else. 
 
 As the ide^l of life grows in a nation, its idea of educa¬ 
 tion grows and it begins to ask more and more in a self- 
 conscious way, How can we attain this ideal in the persons 
 of our children ? Thus arise systems of education in civ¬ 
 ilised countries. Such systems or customs as may have 
 existed prior to the asking of this question are not con¬ 
 sciously constructed with a view to a specific result. Nations 
 feel their way, by slow degrees, to the highest expression of 
 
4 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 their corporate life and to the best machinery for sustaining 
 and promoting it, taught by the results of experience and 
 their ever-growing thought on the nature and destiny of man 
 and the conditions of national permanence. Thus it is that 
 the education of a nation has always been determined mainly 
 by its moral and spiritual leaders. These, as the historians 
 of its experience and the conservators of its thought, right- 
 fully govern. They have in all ages, till recent times, been 
 more or less identified with a church or priesthood in one 
 form or other; and if there he no distinctive organised 
 priesthood as among the Chinese, Greeks, and Romans, then 
 by that which takes its place — a political aristocracy which 
 always embodies in its scheme of civil life, moral and 
 religious, if not also theological, conceptions. In such cases 
 the State is the church. 
 
 The educational aim, we shall find, is always practical in 
 the large sense of that word; for, even in its highest aspects, 
 it has always to do with life in some form or other, and 
 indeed presumes a certain philosophy of life. Even philos¬ 
 ophy, religion and poetry have a practical aim — the nobler 
 life of a man as an individual and as a citizen; and, when 
 they forget this aim, they degenerate into verbal frivolities 
 or empty forms. This higher form of the practical aim is 
 ‘ liberal * education. 
 
 But not only in this larger sense is the educational aim 
 always practical, hut till the time of the Athenians it was 
 always practical in the narrower sense of the word. Indeed, 
 in every form of national education, the ‘practical’ in the 
 restricted sense of the term, in other words, the professional 
 and technical, always occupied (and must always occupy) 
 the greater part of the field, thwarting or promoting the 
 laigei general aim. It is this narrower aim, which statesmen 
 and politicians generally contemplate in their public acts; 
 for all civilised societies demand services of a specific kind, 
 which can fitly be discharged only by those who are trained 
 to discharge them. The division of occupations, all of which 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 5 
 
 are in their degree serviceable to the community, makes 
 specific training necessary, if service is to be efficiently ren¬ 
 dered. Thus we have classes of the population trained and 
 devoted to the various industrial arts ; to the fine arts; to the 
 service of man’s body — the medical art; to the service of 
 mutual rights — the legal art; to the service of man’s spirit — 
 the priestly art, of which last the teaching art, in the highest 
 conception of it, is a branch; to the military art; and so forth. 
 
 The education of a man as a member of a nation and for 
 manhood simply, is what we mean by ‘ liberal ’ education, 
 and this, I have said, is to be identified with the ‘ practical ’ 
 in its highest sense, which may be summed up in the word 
 ‘ ethical ’: the training for specific services, again, is technical, 
 whether we dignify some of these services by calling them 
 professions or not. The stress of competition among indi¬ 
 viduals and nations compels us, unhappily, more and more 
 to give a specific character to our training, and to ignore the 
 larger national and human aims. It is clear, however, that 
 in so far as we lose sight of the latter in the interest of the 
 former we err: because it is the broad human and national 
 element in education that gives character and power and 
 makes itself felt in every department of work. If we fail in 
 giving this, all specific activities of mind will be weakened 
 by the weakening of their foundation in the man as a man. 
 In the systematisation of education accordingly, the real 
 problem amounts in these days to this: How shall we rear 
 specific aptitudes on the basis of a common instruction and 
 discipline which shall contemplate the man and the citizen, 
 and only in the second place the worker ? ‘ This (ideal per¬ 
 
 fection of citizenship) is,’ says Plato , 1 ‘ the only education 
 which in our view deserves the name; that other sort of 
 training which aims at the acquisition of wealth or bodily 
 strength or mere cleverness, apart from intelligence and jus¬ 
 tice, is mean and illiberal and not worthy to be called educa¬ 
 tion at all/ 
 
 1 Laws , i. 465, as rendered by Jowett. 
 
6 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 The modern educational problem may, perhaps, be put 
 thus: — How shall we conserve the national type, tradition, 
 and ideal, and, while training for specific arts, educate all to 
 such manhood as their racial possibilities and historical 
 tradition admit of ? 
 
 In the historical evolution of the educational idea we may 
 note at least three stages. First of all, we have the unpre¬ 
 meditated education of national character and institutions, 
 and of instinctive ideals of personal and community life in 
 contact with definite external conditions, and moulding or 
 being moulded by these. Secondly, we find that the educa¬ 
 tion of the citizen becomes a matter of public concern, and 
 means, often inadequate, are taken by individuals or societies 
 within the State for handing down the national tradition by 
 the agency of the family and the school, and by public 
 institutions and ceremonials; but there is no systematised 
 purpose. Thirdly: Education passes out of the hands of 
 irregular agencies, and, from being a merely public and vol¬ 
 untary, becomes a political or State interest. We then have 
 a more or less conscious ideal of national life, determin¬ 
 ing the organisation of educational agencies and reducing 
 these to an elaborate system designed to meet the wants 
 of the citizen at every age from infancy to manhood. 
 
 Education, in the third stage of development, is to a large 
 extent taken out of the hands of the family. But at all 
 stages of educational history (and notwithstanding the action 
 of the State) the family is the chief agency in the education 
 of the young, and as such, it ought never to be superseded. 
 The State is made up of families rather than of individuals: 
 the family is the true moral unit. We are what our fathers 
 have made us, and future generations are what we are even 
 now making our children. There is a continuity in the life 
 of a nation, and the individual, here and now, is a mere tran¬ 
 sition point from the past to the future. It is in truth the 
 family tradition, along with civil and religious institutions, 
 which chiefly educates. Whatever tradition there may be of 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 7 
 
 opinion and conduct, whatever may be the laws and institu¬ 
 tions by which the State protects itself as an organised body, 
 it must rely on the family to hand down and perpetuate 
 these and to give them the support of the affections and sen¬ 
 timents of our nature. And where, owing to the social 
 necessities of a complex civilisation, it is found necessary to 
 set apart a class to help in the work which it is the primary 
 duty of parents to discharge, that class should regard itself 
 as, in every sense, in loco parentis : that is to say, the aims, 
 instruments, and methods of the school should always be 
 those of a humane and enlightened parent. The moral and 
 religious influence of the school ought to be, for example, as 
 far as possible, a mere continuation and extension of the 
 family conception of education, and not an alien substitute 
 for it. If this be understood and accepted, the deductions 
 from it will be found to be numerous and significant. 
 
 As we survey the annals of education we see that it is the 
 national tradition through the family that constitutes the 
 earliest form. The Romans had thus moulded themselves 
 and their State and were already marked for empire, before 
 they had any schools. So the Persians were a brilliant and 
 imperial nation, though destitute of schools in any modern 
 sense of the word. Hellenic education, again, for probably 
 two centuries before Socrates, was an illustration of the 
 second period of national education in which State tradition 
 and institutions combined with schools (existing but as yet 
 undeveloped) to form the Greek mind and body. In post- 
 Socratic times the Greek became self-conscious in his educa¬ 
 tional aims — he had a type of man whom he aimed at pro¬ 
 ducing. The Romans towards the end of the Republic 
 followed, with some differences, the leading of Greece ; but 
 it cannot be said that education was ever systematised by 
 either people. 
 
 The only nations in pre-Christian times, who had attained 
 to the third stage of national education before the Christian 
 era, were the Chinese and the Doric Greeks as represented 
 by the Spartans. The former had, and have, a definite ideal 
 
8 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 of human excellence, such as it is ; but always with a view 
 to the service of a bureaucratic State. So with the Spartans, 
 where the whole organisation (but the Spartans were, after 
 all, a mere tribe) was educational, and where every freeborn 
 citizen was deliberately formed to a certain ideal — also (as 
 in China) in the interests of civic continuity. 
 
 The Hellenic races, however, much as we owe them, had 
 no conception of education as a human need and a human 
 right; they thought only of the free,pure Greeks who formed 
 an aristocracy among a body of servile inferiors. This char¬ 
 acteristic of the Greeks was specially emphasised in Sparta. 
 The Romans, also, thought chiefly of the upper half of soci¬ 
 ety. In Egypt, Judsea, Persia, and China., on the other hand, 
 nothing stood, theoretically at least , between the lowest mem¬ 
 ber of the communitv and the best the State could offer in 
 the way of education, except poverty. It was the Stoics in 
 the earlier imperial times who first rose to the conception of 
 humanity and of human, as distinct from local and national 
 rights ; and Christianity about the same time proclaimed 
 these. The Stoic and Christian were the first humanitarians, 
 and consequently the first to believe in the inherent right of 
 each citizen to claim education for himself. 
 
 In taking a survey of educational history we have to bear 
 in mind the distinctions I have made in these introductory 
 remarks (and which might with advantage be even further 
 elaborated) and carry them always with us. If we do not, 
 we shall certainly fail to interpret facts aright and to learn 
 the lessons which the past has to teach. 
 
THE HAMITIC RACES 
 
THE HAMI TIG RACES 
 
 Under the designation Hamites are generally included 
 Egyptians, Ethiopians to the south of Egypt, Libyans to 
 the west and north-west, the inhabitants of south-eastern 
 Arabia, and the Hittites (extending from the Taurus range 
 to Canaan). In the Egyptians this race of mankind found 
 the highest expression of its capacity for civilised life, as did 
 the Hebrews among the Semites, the Chinese among the 
 Uro-Altaic (Turanian) and the Greeks among the Aryans. 
 And quite apart from their superiority to other nations of 
 their own blood, we find the Egyptians to he by far the 
 most interesting of ancient peoples, in respect, at least, of 
 the antiquity and detailed organisation of their complex 
 civilisation. 
 
 EGYPT 
 
 It is now generally believed that the original immigrants 
 who formed the Egyptian nation did not come from 
 Ethiopia or Libya, but from the interior of Asia . 1 
 
 Egypt proper is a country made, and it may he almost 
 said annually re-made, by a single river — the Nile, which, 
 rising in the equatorial regions, falls into the Mediterranean. 
 The water and mud deposited by the river in its annual 
 
 1 Professor Petrie, in vol. i. of his History, says that the Egyptians came 
 from the land of Pun or Punt, which seems to have been on both sides of the 
 southern part of the Red Sea, having reached this region from the vicinity of 
 the Persian Gulf, moving south and west. He connects them with the 
 Phoenicians, who would then have to be classed under the Hamitic, and not 
 the Semitic, race. The history of Egypt is usually given under thirty dynas¬ 
 ties, beginning, according to Mariette, with Mena, 4400 b.c., and ending with 
 Alexander the Great, b.c. 332. These do not include that of the foreign (and 
 doubtless Semitic) Hyksos, which lasted about 500 years prior to 2226 b.c. 
 
12 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 inundations have made Egypt probably the most fertile 
 tract of country in the world. When we consider that it 
 is enclosed on all sides by desert or mountains or seas, and 
 thus shut off from contact with other countries, we can 
 understand that it should early become the home of a 
 settled people who would develop their life and civilisation 
 from within. It is this exclusion from external influences 
 that gives to Egypt, a unique position in the history of civili¬ 
 sation. 1 The fertility of the soil, and we may add the easy 
 conditions of life caused by an almost uniform climate, en¬ 
 abled the Nile basin to support a large population. The 
 tradition is that there were 20,000 cities, but doubtless 
 among cities were included what we should call villages. 
 
 The conquering race which occupied Egypt (already 
 inhabited by a primitive barbarian population) had three 
 leading characteristics — a natural capacity for equity and 
 government, a shrewd practical intelligence, and a deep 
 religious sense in which the feeling of awe predominated. 
 Their religious sentiment revolved round two points, (1) A 
 feeling of wonder as they contemplated the forces of nature 
 and the regular and beneficent recurrence of natural events. 
 This was forced on the Egyptians, above all other races, by 
 the peculiarities of their physical conditions. (2) The fact 
 and mystery of death which always lay close to the Egyptian 
 mind. The Pyramids alone, were there no other records, 
 would testify to all time the profound sense of the serious¬ 
 ness of life and the majesty of death which characterised the 
 ancient Egyptians. 
 
 Political constitution. —At a very early period we find 
 the country divided into forty-two nomes or districts, each 
 with its own captain or governor. It would seem that the 
 chieftainship was originally hereditary, and that Egypt was 
 a feudal monarchy; but as the monarchy gained strength 
 these heads of nomes were either appointed by the sovereign 
 
 1 The same remark applies to China. I do not mean to say that Egypt 
 and China had no external relations, but merely that they were as nothing 
 compared with those of other races. 
 
THE HAMITIC RACES 
 
 13 
 
 or had to be confirmed in tlieir authority by him. Egypt 
 was a monarchy from very early times (probably 5000 years 
 B.c.), but the relation of the monarch to the nomes and their 
 chiefs fluctuated, and the heads of principalities frequently 
 quarrelled with each other and with the central government. 
 The monarchy, when finally supreme, was despotic in its 
 character, and supported by a strong and wealthy priesthood. 
 Ranke points out that a despotic monarchy was a necessity 
 of the situation, not only because of the need of a central 
 authority for civil and military purposes, but also because of 
 the annual inundations which had to be regulated through¬ 
 out the length and breadth of Egypt and made local auton¬ 
 omy impossible. One river made Egypt, and there was 
 consequent need for a central administration to watch and 
 regulate the waters and settle questions of ever-shifting 
 boundaries as the waters retired. The monarch was centre 
 of all government, and, as symbol of the unity of the life of 
 the nation in a material as well as moral sense, he was 
 likened to god, and called the son of god; and not only 
 called the son, but believed to be the son of the god (Ra), 
 and treated as such during his lifetime. He was, in a real 
 and practical sense, regarded as god on earth and intermediary 
 with the gods in heaven. 
 
 The administrators of justice, after a certain date, may 
 have been men of legal training; but speaking of Egypt 
 generally, we find that the decision of civil suits and the 
 trial of criminal cases was a part of the general executive 
 functions of the chiefs of nomes and the governors of towns 
 or villages. ‘ For a certain number of days in the month 
 they sat at the gate of the town or of the building which 
 served as their residence, and all those possessed of any title, 
 position, or property, the superior priesthood of the temples, 
 scribes who had advanced or grown old in office, those in 
 command of the militia or police, the heads of divisions 
 or corporations, might, if they thought fit, take their position 
 beside them and help to decide ordinary lawsuits.’ 1 The 
 
 1 Maspero’s Dawn of Civilisation in the East, p. 336, 
 
14 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 poor man, we may presume, had little chance of obtaining 
 a just decision before a tribunal so constituted, if his claim 
 conflicted with that of bis social superiors. The monarch 
 was fountain of law and justice. The system, on the whole, 
 of law or usage seems to have been mild, and to have been 
 administered with equity and clemency. 
 
 The government really governed, and the consequence of 
 this was infinite bureaucratic detail and an army of officials 
 of all kinds. 
 
 Religion and Ethics. — It is exceedingly difficult to 
 give an account which shall he at once brief and intelligible, 
 and at the same time fairly accurate, of the religion of Egypt, 
 the land of the ‘ thousand gods.’ Our desire to attain to a 
 unity of view and to discover some central-principle is al¬ 
 most baffled, and we can, at best, only partially succeed. 
 
 There can he little doubt that the earliest gods worshipped 
 by the Egyptians were, as was natural, the Sun (Ea) and the 
 Nile. But some confusion arises from the fact that the same 
 gods were worshipped under different names in the various 
 cities. 
 
 It would appear, however, that a very simple idea lay at 
 the root of the Egyptian religion. The elements were not 
 merely objects of sense, they were living gods; they had 
 their doubles. ‘ The sky,’ says M. Maspero, 1 ‘ the earth, the 
 stars, the sun, the Nile, were so many breathing and think¬ 
 ing beings whose lives were daily manifest in the life of the 
 universe. They were worshipped from one end of the valley 
 to the other, and the whole nation agreed in proclaiming 
 their sovereign power. But when they began to name them, 
 to define their powers and attributes, to particularise their 
 forms or the relationship which subsisted among them, this 
 unanimity was at an end. Each principality, each nome, 
 each city, almost every village, conceived and represented 
 these differently.’ 
 
 Animals and statues were not merely symbolic of the 
 gods; but the gods dwelt in them. Other objects of nature 
 
 1 Maspero’s Dawn of Civilisation in the East , p. 85. 
 
THE HAMITIC RACES 
 
 15 
 
 which evoked surprise were worshipped, e. g. sycamore trees 
 growing where no tree should be. It is evident that on 
 these lines of religious thought, there would be no end to 
 the number of gods. ‘ Each family and almost every indi¬ 
 vidual possessed gods and fetishes which had been pointed 
 out for their worship by some fortuitous meeting with an 
 animal or an object, or indicated by a dream or a sudden 
 intuition’ (p. 122). 
 
 The worship was a worship by sacrifice and offerings and 
 invocations, wholly with the purpose of securing the help of 
 the god or gods in the affairs of life. I cannot find that it 
 had any ethical or spiritual significance, save thus far, that 
 it was an expression of reverential awe and not of craven 
 fear. The ordinary Hebrew also looked for material bless¬ 
 ings, but there was much more than this in his case: his 
 worship was essentially the fulfilling of a contract or cove¬ 
 nant — on his side the fulfilment of the moral law, and on 
 the other side, the favour of God as God. The detail of sac¬ 
 rifice in the Egyptian temples was most minute, affecting the 
 purification and dress of the priest, and the qualifications and 
 slaughter of the animals. It was necessary also that the 
 priest should repeat the traditionary formulas and prayers 
 with absolute exactness and with the authorised intonations 
 and rhythm ; otherwise they lost altogether their efficacy. 
 
 The chief of the nome or principality acted as priest in the 
 earlier centuries : the high priest of all was the Pharaoh. It 
 being vain, however, to expect ritualistic perfection in men 
 occupied with other affairs, the custom grew up of associating 
 officials as priests with the civil authorities. Thus each tem¬ 
 ple had its staff of priests and a high priest set over them, 
 and gradually there grew up a graded hierarchy. These 
 temples received numerous gifts and legacies from worship¬ 
 pers seeking favour in this life from the gods, or wishing to 
 buy the prayers of the priests when they, the worshippers, 
 were dead. The temples thus became wealthy corporations. 
 
 The sacerdotal temple or college had each not only its own 
 hierarchy, but its own theology. The god of each nome 
 
16 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 temple was addressed as the chief god among all the gods 
 and as the maker of the world. To Heliopolis, where there 
 was a strong priestly college, is due the attempt to arrange 
 the chief gods in a hierarchy with one supreme over all the 
 rest. The other temples of Egypt accepted this substan¬ 
 tially ; hut they naturally reserved the supreme position for 
 their own local god. The idea, however, was the same — a 
 supreme god working through subordinate agencies in the 
 creation of the world. It may be, as M. Maspero says, that 
 Egypt, as a whole, never accepted the idea of a one sole god ; 1 
 but in the elevation of the various nomic gods to supremacy, 
 the idea of a one supreme god was unquestionably operative. 
 
 The belief in immortality was universal; but the life be¬ 
 yond the grave suggests to us, in the earlier stages of doctrine, 
 nothing better than the Accadian underworld or the Homeric 
 Hades. The soul kept the distinctive character and appear¬ 
 ance which pertained to it c upon the earth *; as it had been 
 a ‘ double ’ before death, so it remained a double after it, 
 able to perform all functions of man-life after its own 
 fashion. It moved, went, came, spoke, breathed, accepted 
 pious homage, but without pleasure, and as it were mechani¬ 
 cally ; rather from an instinctive horror of annihilation than 
 from any rational desire for immortality. Unceasing regret 
 for the bright world which it had left disturbed its mournful 
 and inert existence. ‘ 0 my brother/ are the words of a hymn, 
 ‘ withhold not thyself from drinking and from eating, from 
 drunkenness, from love, from all enjoyment, from following 
 thy desire by night and by day; put not sorrow within thy 
 heart, for what are the years of a man upon earth ? The 
 West is a land of sleep and of heavy shadow, a place wherein 
 its inhabitants when once installed slumber on in their 
 mummy forms, never more waking to see their brethren; 
 never more to recognise their fathers or their mothers; with 
 hearts forgetful of their wives and children. The living 
 water which earth giveth to all who dwell upon it is for me 
 
 1 It does not follow from this that the more cultured few did not recognise 
 a One Supreme Being. 
 
THE HAMITIC RACES 
 
 17 
 
 but stagnant and dead; that water floweth to all who are on 
 earth, while for me it is but liquid putrefaction, this water 
 that is mine. Since I came into this funereal valley I know 
 not where nor what I am. Give me to drink of running 
 water ! Let me be placed by the edge of the water with my 
 face to the North, that the breeze may caress me and my 
 heart be refreshed from its sorrow.’ 1 This is a very ancient 
 hymn. The conception of the life beyond the grave, how¬ 
 ever, subsequently took a more elevated form, and to secure 
 eternal felicity good works had to be done on earth. 
 
 The Book of the Dead (more correctly translated, ‘ The 
 Book of the goings forth to Day ’), the sacred Scripture of 
 the Egyptians, is in truth a guide book for departed spirits in 
 the underworld where they find their way through many 
 difficulties, by the help of texts, prayers, and incantations, to 
 the presence of Osiris, god of the dead and of the underworld, 
 and his jury, 2 the forty-two judges who are ‘ Lords of Truth.’ 
 The confession which the soul is represented as making be¬ 
 fore the god and jury is the most interesting of Egyptian 
 theological remains, indicating a marked advance on earlier 
 ideas. The soul which is acquitted of evil escapes the mis¬ 
 ery of the underworld as described above, and it does so 
 on moral grounds. Having found its way to the halls of 
 Osiris in Hades it makes an appeal to Osiris and the jury 
 of gods. 3 This appeal is of the nature of a confession which, 
 however, is chiefly negative. The appellant spirit says 
 that he has not been guilty of the oppression of the poor 
 and the slave, of assassination, treason, cheating by false 
 balances, refusing temple offerings, disregard for temple 
 property, lying, stealing, fornication, adultery, blasphemy, 
 false witness, and generally that he has not committed any 
 crime. The positive part of the confession says that he has 
 spread joy on all sides, given bread to the hungry, water 
 to the thirsty, clothing to the naked. We have here the 
 
 1 The Dawn of Civilisation, p. 113. 
 
 2 The translations I have read are that of Birch in Bunsen, and that in 
 Dr. Davis’ recent Book of the Dead. This is sufficient for my purpose. 
 
 3 Chap. 125 in Davis’ edition. 
 
18 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 ethical creed of the ancient Egyptian, a good working com¬ 
 monplace creed, but nothing more. If we add the proverbs 
 and prudential precepts of Ptah-lietep (3600 B.c., the oldest 
 book in the world), we probably exhaust the thought of 
 the Egyptian on moral and social relations. His relation 
 to the gods was, and could be, nothing but abstract adora¬ 
 tion or service in the interests of his own material felicity. 
 It has further to be noted that the bliss which a favourable 
 sentence secured to the soul was, in the earlier stages of 
 religious development, simply the enjoyment of life in its 
 old haunts, somewhat heightened and permanently secured. 
 A further advance was manifest when the highest bliss was 
 held to be sharing the life of the sun-god, but with power 
 to leave the bark of the sun when the soul chose, and enjoy 
 earthly life once more. We may, if we choose, call this a 
 ‘ blessed immortality.’ It certainly was as high a conception 
 of the future as any pre-christian nation attained to. 
 
 The question is, was there behind all this polytheistic con¬ 
 fusion any esoteric religious doctrine reserved for the inner 
 circle of the priesthood ? If there had been, should we not 
 have had some record of it ? One comes across suggestions 
 of a mystic esotericism, but in the books I have read I find 
 no evidence of it. This much, however, seems fully worthy 
 of acceptance, that the myth of Osiris, which embodied the 
 idea of the triumph of Light over Darkness, was interpreted 
 by the more thoughtful in an ethical sense. Further, that 
 the more thoughtful believed in a One God the Source of 
 All, Himself the ‘ Hidden One,’ ‘ Self-begetting ’; and not to 
 be represented by any symbol. The other gods, even when 
 addressed as supreme, were so only as operative gods. Many 
 of the hymns that survive place beyond all question the 
 existence of a belief among the more cultured in a one 
 Supreme Being not to be represented by any symbol. I 
 give in a footnote Professor Sayce’s view, 1 which seems to 
 me highly probable. 
 
 1 Professor Sayce says (Ancient Empires of the East, p. 60): ‘The kernel 
 of the Egyptian state religion was solar.’ At the head of the hierarchies of 
 gods we have ‘ a form of the sun-god.’ The priesthood could have no diffi- 
 
THE HAMITIC RACES 
 
 19 
 
 The popular religion was on a much lower plane of 
 thought than that which we have been endeavouring briefly 
 to describe. The worship of animals, on the assumption 
 that they were, not merely the visible symbols of gods, but 
 their abode, was highly characteristic of the people. It was 
 a genuine worship and encouraged by the priests. But this 
 animal worship seems, as the nation advanced, to have been 
 regarded by all the more educated as merely symbolic. It 
 clearly mattered little to the priests of a religion which had 
 no special religious moral sanction derived from the essential 
 attributes of the ‘Hidden God/ what the masses worshipped, 
 so long as they were reverent and devotional and obedient. 1 
 And this they certainly were. The belief in amulets, charms, 
 and incantations was universal. 
 
 Along with the animal worship, and taking universal 
 precedence of it, the visible objects of worship were always 
 the Sun and the Nile. The following, which I quote from 
 the ‘ Records of the Past/ vol. iv. (including the notes), is as 
 late as the 19th Dynasty (1400 B.c.). It will be noted that 
 the names of gods are frequently interchangeable, and fur- 
 
 culty in accepting this physical symbol of the creative and life-giving source 
 of all. It was to Ptah, the ‘ personal ’ creator, that the sacred bull was 
 dedicated, in which he was incarnate. Nor is the above central conception 
 inconsistent with the cosmogonic system, as given by Professor Sayce, which 
 seems to be prior to the Theban Dynasty. ‘ In the philosophic system of the 
 priesthood,’ he says, ‘Nun, or Chaos, was the first cause from which all pro¬ 
 ceed— unshaped, eternal, and immutable matter. Kheper, the scarabasus 
 with the sun’s disk, was the creative principle of life, which implanted in 
 matter the seeds of life and light. Ptah, “the opener,” was the personal 
 creator or demiurge, who, along with the seven knumu, or architects, gave 
 form to these seeds, and was at once the creator and opener of the primaeval 
 egg of the universe (the ball of earth rolled along by Kheper), out of which 
 came the sun and moon according to the older myth, the elements and forms 
 of heaven and earth, according to the later philosophy. Nut, the sky, with 
 the star and boat of the sun on her back ; Seb, the earth, symbol of time and 
 eternity, and Amenti, or Hades, now took their several shapes and places. 
 Over this threefold world, the gods and other divine beings presided.’ 
 
 1 Almost all nations which have attained to civilisation have entered on 
 the possession of lands already inhabited by inferior races. It is not improb¬ 
 able that animal worship was a continuation of the Totemism of the original 
 occupants of the Nile Valley. 
 
20 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 ther, that the devotional writer frequently passes from the 
 particular god to the Universal Source of Order and Life — 
 a natural transition common enough in all poetry, and con¬ 
 stantly to he met with in Egyptian writings. 
 
 HYMN TO THE NILE 
 
 STROPHE I 
 Adoration of the Nile 
 
 1 Hail to thee, 0 Nile ! 
 
 2 Thou showest thyself in this land, 
 
 3 Coming in peace, giving life to Egypt: 
 
 4 0 ammon, (thou) leadest night unto day, 1 
 
 5 A leading that rejoices the heart! 
 
 6 Overflowing the gardens created by ra. 2 
 
 7 Giving life to all animals; 
 
 8 Watering the land without ceasing : 
 
 9 The way of heaven descending : 3 
 
 10 Lover of food, bestower of corn, 
 
 11 Giving light to every home, 0 ptah ! 
 
 II 
 
 1 Lord of fishes, when the inundation returns 
 
 2 No fowls fall on the cultures. 4 
 
 3 Maker of spelt; creator of wheat: 
 
 4 Who maintaineth the temples ! 
 
 1 If this rendering is correct the meaning must be that the god of the Nile 
 is the secret source of light; see sec. iii. 1. 5, and sec. viii. 1.1. The attributes 
 of Egyptian gods, who represent the unknown under various aspects, are 
 interchangeable to a great extent; here the Nile is Ammon, doing also the 
 work of Ra. Dr. Birch suggests that the rendering may be ‘ hiding his course 
 night and day.’ 
 
 2 Ra, the sun-god, who is represented as delighting in flowers, see Ritual 
 of the Dead , lxxxvi. : ‘ I am the pure lily which comes out of the fields of 
 Ra.’ 
 
 3 The Nile-god traverses heaven; his course there corresponds to that of 
 the river on earth. 
 
 4 See x. 6. This is obscure, but it may mean that the Nile-god protects 
 the newly-sown fields from the birds. 
 
THE HAMITIC RACES 
 
 21 
 
 5 Idle hands lie loathes 1 
 
 6 For myriads, for all the wretched. 
 
 7 If the gods in heaven are grieved, 2 
 
 8 Then sorrow cometh on men. 
 
 III 
 
 1 He maketh the whole land open to the oxen, 3 
 
 2 And the great and the small are rejoicing, 
 
 3 The response of men at his coming! 4 
 
 4 His likeness is num ! 5 
 
 5 He shineth, and then the land exulteth ! 
 
 6 All bellies are in joy ! 
 
 7 Every creature receives nourishment ! 
 
 8 All teeth get food. 
 
 IV 
 
 1 Bringer of food! Great Lord of provisions ! 
 
 2 Creator of all good things ! 
 
 3 Lord of terrors 6 and of choicest joys ! 
 
 4 All are combined in him. 
 
 5 He produceth grass for the oxen ; 
 
 6 Providing victims for every god. 
 
 7 The choice incense is that which he supplies. 
 
 8 Lord in both regions, 
 
 9 He filleth the granaries, enricheth the storehouses, 
 
 10 He careth for the state of the poor. 
 
 V 
 
 1 He causes growth to fulfil all desires, 
 
 2 He never wearies of it. 
 
 1 I. e. he sets them at work. Thus, Ritual , xv. 20 : ‘ Ea, the giver of food, 
 destroys all place for idleness, cuts off all excuse.’ 
 
 2 As they are by idleness ; see Ritual , cxxv. p. 255, Birch. 
 
 3 I. e. he makes it ready for cultivation. 
 
 4 Their joy and gratitude respond to his advance. 
 
 5 Num is the Nile-god regarded as giving life. 
 
 6 The Egyptian word corresponds to Ap<rcuprjs, which, according to Plutarch, 
 signifies rb avbpeiov, Isis tt Osiris, c. 37. The Egyptians, like all ancient 
 people, identify terror with strength or greatness. 
 
22 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 3 He maketh his might a buckler. 1 
 
 4 He is not graven in marble, 2 3 
 
 5 As an image bearing the double crown. 
 
 6 He is not beheld : 
 
 7 He hath neither ministrants nor offerings: 
 
 8 He is not adored in sanctuaries : 
 
 9 His abode is not known : 
 
 10 Ho shrine is found with painted figures. 8 
 
 VI 
 
 1 There is no building that can contain him ! 4 
 
 2 There is no councillor in thy heart! 
 
 3 Thy youth delight in thee, thy children : 
 
 4 Thou directest 5 them as King, 
 
 5 Thy law is established in the whole land, 
 
 6 In the presence of thy servants of the Korth : 6 
 
 7 Every eye is satisfied with him : 7 
 
 8 He careth for the abundance of his blessings. 
 
 YII 
 
 1 The inundation comes (then), cometh rejoicing : 
 
 2 Every heart exulteth : 
 
 1 This scriptural phrase comes in abruptly. It is probably drawn from 
 some older source. 
 
 2 The true deity [i.e. the supreme god of gods], is not represented by any 
 image. This is a relic of primaeval monotheism, out of place as referring to 
 the Nile, but pointing to a deeper and sounder faith. Compare the laws of 
 Manu, i. 5-7. 
 
 3 See last line of sec. xiii. There are no shrines covered, as usual, 
 with coloured hieroglyphics. The whole of this passage is of extreme im¬ 
 portance, showing that, apart from all objects of idolatrous worship, the old 
 Egyptian recognised the existence of a Supreme God, unknown and incon¬ 
 ceivable, the true source of all power and goodness. Compare the oldest forms 
 of the 17th chapter of the funeral ritual in Lepsius, Aelteste Texte. 
 
 4 1 Kings viii. 27. 
 
 5 Or, ‘ thou givest them counsels, orderest all their goings.’ 
 
 6 I. e. 1 all magistrates are the servants of the deity, and administer his law 
 from south to north.’ 
 
 7 Maspero, ‘ par lui est hue l’eau (les pleurs) de tous les yeux,’ i. e. ‘ wipes 
 
 away tears from all eyes/ 
 
THE HAMITIC RACES 
 
 23 
 
 
 3 The tooth of the crocodiles, the children of neith 1 
 
 4 (Even) the circle of the gods who are counted with thee. 
 
 5 Doth not its outburst water the fields, 
 
 6 Overcoming mortals (with joy) ; 
 
 7 Watering one to produce another? 2 
 
 8 There is none who worketh with him ; 
 
 9 He produces food without the aid of neith. 3 
 10 Mortals he causes to rejoice. 
 
 VIII 
 
 1 He giveth light on his coming from darkness: 4 
 
 2 In the pastures of his cattle 
 
 3 His might produceth all: 
 
 4 What was not, his moisture bringeth to life. 
 
 5 Men are clothed to fill his gardens : 
 
 6 He careth for his labourers. 
 
 7 He maketh even and noontide, 
 
 8 He is the infinite ptah and kabes. 5 
 
 9 He createth all works therein, 
 
 10 All writings, all sacred words, 
 
 11 All his implements in the North. 6 
 
 IX 
 
 1 He enters with words the interior of his house, 7 
 
 2 When he willeth he goeth forth from his mystic fane. 
 
 3 Thy wrath is destruction of fishes. 8 
 
 1 Dr. Birch, to whom I am indebted for this rendering, observes that the 
 goddess Neith is often represented with two crocodiles sucking her breasts. 
 
 2 I. e. ‘ The Nile fills all mortals with the languor of desire, and gives 
 fecundity. ’ 
 
 3 I. e. ‘ without needing rain, the gift of the goddess of heaven.’ Such 
 seems to be the meaning of a very obscure passage. 
 
 4 See note on section i. 
 
 5 The meaning is evidently that he combines the attributes of Ptah, the 
 Demiurge, and Kabes, an unknown god. 
 
 6 All things serviceable to man — arms, implements, &c. 
 
 7 This seems to mean, he gives oracles at his shrine. Observe the incon¬ 
 sistency of this with section 5. 
 
 8 Causing scarcity of food in the land. See Exodus viii. 18, 21. 
 
24 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 4 Then men implore thee for the waters of the season, 1 
 
 5 That the Thebaid may be seen like the Delta, 
 
 6 That every man be seen bearing his tools, 
 
 7 No man left behind his comrade ! 
 
 8 Let the clothed be unclothed, 
 
 9 No adornments for the sons of nobles, 
 
 10 No circle of gods in the night! 
 
 11 The response (of the god) is refreshing water, 
 
 12 Filling all men with fatness. 
 
 X 
 
 1 Establisher of justice ! men rejoice 
 
 2 With flattering words to worship 2 thee, 
 
 3 Worshipped together with the mighty water ! 
 
 4 Men present offerings of corn, 
 
 5 Adoring all the gods : 
 
 6 No fowls fall on the land. 3 
 
 7 Thy hand is adorned with gold, 4 
 
 8 As moulded of an ingot of gold, 
 
 9 Precious as pure lapis lazuli; 5 
 
 10 Corn in its state of germination is not eaten. 
 
 XI 
 
 1 The hymn is addressed to thee with the harp; 
 
 2 It is played with a (skilful) hand to thee ! 
 
 3 The youths rejoice at thee ! 
 
 4 Thy own children. 
 
 5 Thou hast rewarded their labour. 
 
 6 There is a great one adorning the land; 
 
 1 In a season of scarcity prayers are offered for supply of water. The 
 following lines seem to describe great haste when the inundation comes on ; 
 none wait for their clothing, even when valuable, and the nightly solemnities 
 are broken up. But the passage is obscure. 
 
 2 Literally answer, i. e. ‘ with thanks and prayers, when thou bringest the 
 water in abundance.’ 
 
 3 See. ii. 2. 
 
 4 The gold represents the preciousness of the gift of food. 
 
 5 This is often mentioned in the inscriptions amongst the most precious 
 stones. 
 
THE HAMITIC RACES 
 
 25 
 
 7 An enlightener, a buckler in front of men, 
 
 8 Quickening the heart in depression, 
 
 9 Loving the increase of all his cattle. 
 
 XII 
 
 1 Thou shinest in the city of the King; 
 
 2 Then the householders are satiated with good things, 
 
 3 The poor man laughs at the lotus. 1 
 
 4 All things are perfectly ordered, 
 
 5 Every kind of herb for thy children. 
 
 6 If food should fail, 
 
 7 All enjoyment is cast on the ground, 
 
 8 The land falls in weariness. 
 
 XIII 
 
 1 0 inundation of Xile, offerings are made to thee: 
 
 2 Oxen are slain to thee : 
 
 3 Great festivals are kept for thee; 
 
 4 Fowls are sacrificed to thee ; 
 
 5 Beasts of the field are caught for thee ; 
 
 6 Pure flames are offered to thee; 
 
 7 Offerings are made to every god, 
 
 8 As they are made unto Xile. 
 
 9 Incense ascends unto heaven, 
 
 10 Oxen, bulls, fowls are burnt! 
 
 11 Xile makes for himself chasms in the Thebaid ; 2 
 
 12 Unknown is his name in heaven, 
 
 13 He doth not manifest his forms ! 
 
 14 Vain are all representations ! 3 
 
 XIY 
 
 1 Mortals extol (him), and the cycle of gods ! 
 
 2 Awe is felt by the terrible ones; 
 
 3 His son 4 is made Lord of all, 
 
 1 Which he ate when he could get nothing else. 
 
 2 An allusion to the legend that the Nile comes forth from two openings 
 the south. 
 
 3 See v. last line. 
 
 4 The Pharaoh. 
 
26 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 4 To enlighten all Egypt. 1 
 
 5 Shine forth, shine forth, 0 Nile ! shine forth! 
 
 6 Giving life to men by his oxen : 
 
 7 Giving life to his oxen by the pastures ! 
 
 8 Shine forth in glory, 0 Nile ! 
 
 But while the Nile and the Sun were always the supreme 
 visible gods to the Egyptian, from a very early date the 
 symbol of supreme divine power, as manifested in nature, 
 did not restrict itself to these deities, but extended to ani¬ 
 mals as symbolic of various gods; and, in the course of time, 
 there can be little doubt that with the masses nothing 
 remained but the symbol, with a vague sense of some divine 
 power behind it . 2 This vague sense was, however, undoubtedly 
 there, and its existence could alone justify Ranke’s view that 
 there was nothing secular to the ancient Egyptian ; ‘ properly 
 speaking, there was nothing profane in the land .’ 3 What 
 most struck Herodotus, when, in the middle of the fifth 
 century before the Christian era, he visited the country, was 
 the extreme religiosity of its inhabitants. ‘ The Egyptians/ 
 he says, ‘ are religious to excess, far beyond any other race 
 of men. They themselves speak of the “ thousand gods.” ’ 
 The greater portion of the description of Egypt by the Greek 
 historian is occupied with an account of the priests, the 
 temples, and the religious ceremonies. In the architectural 
 remains, we see that the temple dominates the palace, and is 
 
 1 The two regions. 
 
 2 ‘Who does not know,’ says Juvenal (xv. 1), ‘what kinds of monsters 
 demented Egypt worships ? ’ 
 
 3 The animal worship reached its culmination at Memphis in the worship 
 of the sacred hull, known as Hapi, or Apis, an incarnation of the god phthah. 
 He had a temple, priestly attendants, and a harem of cows. He was brought out 
 on the occasion of great processions and was worshipped by the people. When 
 he died he was embalmed and buried in a polished granite sarcophagus.* It 
 is a remarkable spectacle the mixture which Egypt presents of ‘ high spiritual 
 conceptions with debased animal worship’ (to borrow Professor Sayce’s ex¬ 
 pression). I cannot identify the ‘ high spiritual conceptions’ to which Pro¬ 
 fessor Sayce refers, at least as far as the commonalty was concerned. 
 
 * The cost of his funeral is said to have been about 20,000?. 
 
THE HAMI TIC RACES 
 
 27 
 
 itself dominated by the tomb, both the temple and the tomb 
 being the expression of religious ideas. Everywhere in 
 Egypt gigantic structures upreared themselves into the air, 
 enriched with all that Egyptian art could supply of painted 
 and sculptured decoration, dedicated to the honour, and bear¬ 
 ing the sacred name, of some divinity. The great temple of 
 each city was the centre of its life. A perpetual ceremonial 
 of the richest kind went on within its walls; along its shady 
 corridors, or through its sunlit courts, long processions made 
 their way up or down its avenues of sphinxes. The calendar 
 was crowded with festivals, and a week rarely passed with¬ 
 out the performance of some special religious ceremony 
 possessing its own peculiar attractions. 1 
 
 The sentiment of religious awe in the contemplation of the 
 facts of life and death, did not interfere with practical activ¬ 
 ity or the enjoyment of life. The mental attitude of the 
 Egyptian is, in part at least, well expressed in the festal song 
 which was so universally popular among them. 
 
 FESTAL DIRGE 
 
 1 Wanting 
 
 2 The song of the house of king antuf, deceased, which is 
 (written) in front of 
 
 3 The player on the harp. 2 3 
 All hail to the good Prince, 
 the worthy good (man) ! 
 
 The body is fated (1) to pass away, 
 the atoms 
 
 4 remain, ever since the time of the ancestors. 
 
 The gods who were beforetime rest in their tombs, 
 the mummies 
 
 5 of the saints likewise are enwrapped in their tombs. 
 
 They who build houses, and they who have no houses, see ! 
 
 1 The above sentences seem to be a quotation from some one — probably 
 
 Rawlinson or Wilkinson, I forget which. 
 
 3 The Song of the Harper in the tomb of Nefer-hotep bears a great resem¬ 
 blance to this composition ; see Dumichen, Historische Inschriften , ii. pi. 40. 
 
28 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 6 what becomes of them. 
 
 I have heard the words of imhotep 1 and hartatef. 2 3 
 It is said in their sayings, 
 
 7 After all, what is prosperity 1 
 Their fenced walls are dilapidated. 
 
 Their houses are as that which has never existed. 
 
 8 No man comes from thence 
 who tells of their savings, 
 who tells of their affairs, 
 who encourages our hearts. 
 
 Ye go 
 
 9 to the place whence they return not. 8 
 
 Strengthen thy heart to forget how thou hast enjoyed thyself, 
 fulfil thy desire whilst thou livest. 
 
 10 Put oils upon thy head, 
 
 clothe thyself with fine linen adorned with precious metals, 
 
 11 with the gifts of God 
 multiply thy good things, 
 yield to thy desire, 
 
 fulfil thy desire with thy good things 
 
 12 (whilst thou art) upon earth 
 according to the dictation of thy heart. 
 
 The day will come to thee, 
 
 when one hears not the voice 
 when the one who is at rest hears not 
 
 13 their voices. 4 
 
 Lamentations deliver not him who is in the tomb. 
 
 14 Feast in tranquillity, 5 
 
 seeing that there is no one who carries away his goods with 
 him. 
 
 Yea, behold, none who goes thither comes back again. 6 
 
 1 Imhotep, the son of the primaeval deity Ptah, was the mythical author of 
 various arts and sciences. The Greeks spelt the name Imopth, but more fre¬ 
 quently substituted the name Asclepios. 
 
 2 Hartatef was the son of King Menkera (Mycerinus), to whom the discov¬ 
 ery of part of the Ritual (cap. lxiv.) is attributed, and who was the author of 
 a mystical work. 
 
 3 Compare the Assyrian phrase ‘ The land men cannot return from.' 
 ‘Descent of Ishtar,’ Records of the Past, vol. i. p. 143; ii. p. 5. 
 
 4 I.e. ‘ of the mourners.’ 5 Here follows a lacuna. 
 
 6 From Records of the Past , iv. 117. 
 
THE HAMITIC RACES 
 
 29 
 
 The beliefs and worship of the Egyptians, while giving 
 expression to a sombre religious sentiment and a feeling of 
 profound awe in contemplating Nature, the life of man and 
 above all the stern fact of Death, exercised great influence 
 in teaching reverence generally, and consequently submis¬ 
 siveness and obedience. But they had little moral signifi¬ 
 cance. The only potent ethical force in the system of 
 religious thought was the belief in immortality. When this 
 had fully emerged from its cruder form of ancestor worship, 
 it assumed a character which places it on a high level, and 
 far above the conceptions of the Greeks and Romans. A 
 great and godlike future life was secured by a good life on 
 earth. The human spirit which had been weighed in the 
 balances of the Hall of Osiris returned to the God of Light, 
 but yet retained its individuality. There arose in connection 
 with this an ideal of conduct. That this ideal was under¬ 
 stood or fully realised by the masses it is absurd to suppose. 
 Indeed, among all classes the morality seems to have been 
 often as low in practice as it was elevated in theory. But 
 what shall we say of Christianity itself after 1900 years of 
 existence ? The following dirge well expresses the higher 
 thought on life and immortality and reveals the undercur¬ 
 rent of melancholy in the Egyptian mind. 
 
 THE SONG OF THE HARPER 
 
 Chanted by the singer to the harp who is in the chapel of the 
 Osirian, the Patriarch of Amen, the blessed Nefer-liotep. 
 
 He says: 
 
 The great one is truly at rest, 
 the good charge is fulfilled. 
 
 Men pass away since the time of ra , 1 
 and the youths come in their stead. 
 
 Like as ra reappears every morning, 
 and tum 2 sets in the horizon, 
 men are begetting, 
 
 1 The sun. 
 
 2 A form of the sun god of the west, the chief god of Heliopolis. 
 
30 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 and women are conceiving. 
 
 Every nostril inhaleth once the breezes of dawn, 
 but all born of women go down to their places. 
 
 Make a good day, 0 holy father ! 
 
 Let odours and oils stand before thy nostril. 
 
 Wreaths of lotus are on the arms and the bosom of thy sister, 
 dwelling in thy heart, sitting beside thee. 
 
 Let song and music be before thy face, 
 and leave behind thee all evil cares ! 
 
 Mind thee of joy, till cometh the day of pilgrimage, 
 when we draw near the land which loveth silence. 
 
 Not .... 1 peace of heart . . . . 2 his loving son. 
 
 Make a good day, 0 blessed neferhotep, 
 thou Patriarch perfect and pure of hands! 
 
 He finished his existence . . (the common fate of men). 
 
 Their abodes pass away, 
 
 and their place is not; 
 
 they are as they had never been born 
 
 since the time of ra. 
 
 (They in the shades) are sitting on the bank of the river, 
 thy soul is among them, drinking its sacred water, 
 following thy heart, at peace .... 
 
 Give bread to him whose field is barren, 
 
 thy name will be glorious in posterity for evermore *, 
 
 they will look upon thee .... 
 
 (The Priest clad in the skin) 3 of a panther will pour to the ground, 
 and bread will be given as offerings; 
 the singing women .... 
 
 Their forms are standing before ra, 
 their persons are protected .... 
 rannu 4 will come at her hour, 
 
 1 Lacuna. 2 Lacuna. 
 
 3 The panther’s skin was the special characteristic of the dress of the priest 
 of Khem, the vivifier. 
 
 4 Rannu, an Egyptian goddess who presided over the harvest. 
 
 Someone, I think, has suggested that the esoteric doctrine of the priest¬ 
 hood was this : The self-begetting Hidden One gives birth to Osiris the 
 animating principle (Light of God and of life after death), and Isis as 
 Nature — the manifestation of this principle in conflict with Set — darkness 
 and evil. 
 
THE HAMIT IC RACES 
 
 31 
 
 and shu will calculate his day, 
 
 thou shalt awake .... (woe to the bad one !) 
 
 He shall sit miserable in the heat of infernal fires. 
 
 Make a good day, 0 holy father, 
 neferhotep, pure of hands. 
 
 No works of buildings in Egypt could avail, 
 his resting place is all his wealth .... 
 
 Let me return to know what remaineth of him ! 
 
 Not the least moment could be added to his life, 
 
 (when he went to) the realm of eternity. 
 
 Those who have magazines full of bread to spend 
 even they shall encounter the hour of a last end. 
 
 The moment of that day will diminish the valour of the 
 rich .... 
 
 Mind thee of the day, when thou too shalt start for the land, 
 to which one goeth to return not thence. 
 
 Good for thee then will have been (an honest life), 
 therefore be just and hate transgressions, 
 for he who loveth justice (will be blessed), 
 
 The coward and the bold, neither can fly, (the grave) 
 the friendless and proud are alike .... 
 
 Then let thy bounty give abundantly as is fit, 
 
 (love) truth, and isis shall bless the good, 
 
 (and thou shalt attain a happy) old age. 1 
 
 Literature and Art. — Intellectually, the Egyptians must 
 take high rank, though they cannot for a moment compare 
 with the great European races whose rise was later — the 
 Greeks and Eomans. Their minds possessed much subtlety 
 and acuteness ; they were fond of literary composition ; they 
 made great advances in most of the arts and sciences and 
 were in every department of life intelligent and ingenious. 
 It is astonishing what an extensive literature they possessed 
 at a very early date — books on religion, on morals, law, 
 rhetoric, arithmetic, mensuration, geometry, medicine, books 
 of travels, and, above all, novels! There were many poems 
 
 1 From Records of the Past , vi. 129. 
 
32 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 also, and some of the love-stories, it is said, are fairly good. 1 
 As early as the 6th Dynasty (3500 B.c.) an official bears the 
 title of ‘ Governor of the House of Books. ’ But the literary 
 merit of the Egyptian works is slight. The novels, we are 
 informed by Egyptologists, are vapid and often licentious, the 
 medical treatises interlarded with charms and exorcisms, the 
 travels devoid of interest, the general style of all the books 
 forced and stilted. Egypt is said to have stimulated Greek 
 speculation by some of its doctrines; but otherwise it cannot 
 be said that the world owes much of its purely intellectual 
 progress to this people, about whose literary productions, it 
 is said by experts, there is always something that is weak, if 
 not childish. The rhythmically constructed book of practical 
 precepts by Ptah-lietep 2 already referred to as the oldest 
 book in the world is, however, valuable for its counsels, as 
 well as its practical sagacity. Philosophic speculation seems 
 to have received no contribution from the higher doctrines of 
 the priesthood. 
 
 In Art, the power which the Egyptians exhibited was 
 greater than in thought; but the very highest qualities of art 
 were wanting, although there was a period when it attained 
 to great excellence in bas-reliefs and colour. That it did not 
 make greater progress is a matter for surprise to anyone who 
 will look at the wooden head to which the date 3700 B.c. is 
 assigned and a drawing of which will be found in Brugsch’s 
 ‘History’ and Maspero’s ‘Egyptian Archseology.’ In one 
 department, however, it was art of a very high order, for the 
 architecture produces its effect not only by its mass, according 
 to Eergusson (‘ History of Architecture ’), but also by its har¬ 
 mony of proportion. He says that the Hall in Karnak ‘ is 
 the noblest effort of architectural magnificence ever produced 
 by the hand of man.’ The skill exhibited in overcoming diffi¬ 
 culties in construction is also marvellous. In building, sculp- 
 
 1 Professor Flinders Petrie has issued translations of stories from the 
 papyri. 
 
 2 Or Ptah-hotep, as in Records of the Past, in vol. iii. of which the Pre¬ 
 cepts are translated. 
 
THE HA MITIC RACES 
 
 33 
 
 ture, and colour decoration generally, we find in Egypt the 
 ‘ dawn of artistic development for the whole human race/ 
 (Kanke.) 
 
 Social Condition. — The classes were so separated one 
 from another that it was long believed that the caste system 
 prevailed, as among the Hindus. It was not so, however; 
 there was no rigid and compulsory system of division. In a 
 general way, it would seem to be right to adopt the classifica¬ 
 tion of Strabo, and to say that the entire free population of 
 Egypt which did not belong to the sacerdotal or the military 
 order, formed a sort of third estate, which admitted of sub¬ 
 divisions, but is properly to be regarded as politically a single 
 body. The soldiers and the priests were privileged: the rest 
 of the community was without privilege of any kind; but 
 the recognised usages and customs, as well as law, gave them 
 protection. 
 
 Of all the classes, that of the priests was the most power¬ 
 ful, and the most carefully organised. Priests often held 
 important political offices; they served in the army also, and 
 received rich gifts for their services. Many of them accumu¬ 
 lated great wealth through these secular employments, and 
 their residences were of a luxurious kind. But they were 
 only partially hereditary and grew up into an established 
 Order slowly. They were divided into several classes; and 
 next to them came four orders of prophets, and below them 
 again the ‘ divine fathers.’ Sacred scribes and servitors were 
 attached to the temples. In the precincts, monks occupied 
 cells. There were also priestesses, and prophetesses (among 
 whom were to be found women of the highest rank), the 
 singing women, and the sistrum players of the ‘ Hidden One.’ 
 The priests and their families and subordinate ministers 
 were maintained out of the revenues of the temple and 
 formed a corporation. 
 
 Besides agriculture and the trades and handicrafts in which 
 so many of the Egyptians found occupation for their time and. 
 talents, a considerable portion of the population pursued 
 employments of a more elevated and intellectual character. 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Sculpture, painting, and music had their respective votaries, 
 and engaged the services of a large number of artists. If 
 dancing is to be viewed as a ‘ fine art,’ we may add to these 
 the paid dancers, who were numerous, but were not held in 
 very high estimation. 
 
 Of learned professions in Egypt outside the priesthood, the 
 most important was that of the Scribe, which might be called 
 the literary profession, though not in the sense of authorship. 
 Though writing (at least the cursive or demotic in later 
 times, about 900 B.c.) was an ordinary accomplishment of 
 the industrial classes, and scribes were not, therefore, so 
 absolutely necessary as in most Eastern countries for general 
 correspondence, yet there was still a large number of occupa¬ 
 tions for which professional penmanship was a pre-requisite, 
 and others that demanded legal knowledge, and skill in 
 forms of transfer and of business and in the due recording of 
 ceremonials and contracts. Moreover, a scribe would often 
 profess not only the demotic cursive script, but also the 
 ideographic 1 and hieratic, and then his prospects of promotion 
 were considerable. The Egyptian religion necessitated the 
 multiplication of copies of the ‘ Kitual of the Dead/ and the 
 employment of numerous clerks in the registration of the 
 sacred treasures and the management of the sacred estates: 
 also librarians for the care and multiplication of MSS. The 
 civil administration also depended largely upon a system of 
 registration and of official reports which were perpetually 
 being made to the court by the superintendents in all depart¬ 
 ments of the public service, which was a highly organised 
 bureaucracy. Most private persons of large means, also, kept 
 bailiff’s or secretaries who made up their accounts, paid their 
 labourers, and otherwise acted as managers of their property. 
 In commerce of all kinds scribes were indispensable. There 
 were thus numerous lucrative posts which could be properly 
 filled only by persons who were ready with the pen, familiar 
 with the different kinds of writing, and good at figures. The 
 
 1 The ideographic or hieroglyphic was picture-writing, but even in early 
 times the hieratic which represented the sounds of words was invented. 
 
THE HAMITIC RACES 
 
 35 
 
 occupation of scribe was regarded as one befitting men from 
 the middle ranks of society, who might otherwise have been 
 blacksmiths, carpenters, small farmers, or the like. If scribes 
 failed to obtain government appointments, they might still 
 hope to have their services engaged by the rich corporations 
 which had the management of the Temples, or by private 
 individuals of good means, or in business houses. Hence the 
 scribe readily persuaded himself that his occupation was the 
 first and best of all human employments. And assuming 
 that Tiele and others are correct in saying that the priest¬ 
 hood was only partially hereditary, the scribes would natur¬ 
 ally look to the priestly profession as a possible occupation 
 bringing both money and influence. 
 
 The great number of persons who practised Medicine in 
 Egypt is mentioned by Herodotus, who further notices the 
 remarkable fact that, besides general practitioners, there were 
 many who devoted themselves to special branches of medical 
 science, some being oculists, some dentists, some skilled in 
 treating diseases of the brain, some those of the intestines, 
 and so on. According to a modern authority, the physicians 
 constituted a special subdivision of the sacerdotal order; but 
 this statement is open to question, though physicians may 
 have belonged for the most part to the priest class. 
 
 The profession of Architect in some respects took pre¬ 
 cedence over any other. The chief court architect was a 
 functionary of the highest importance, ranking among the 
 most exalted officials. Considering the character of the 
 duties entrusted to him, this was only natural, since the kings 
 generally set more store upon their buildings than upon any 
 other matter. Religion and architecture were closely associ¬ 
 ated. ‘At the time when the construction of the pyramids 
 and other tombs,’ says Brugsch, ‘ demanded artists of the first 
 order, we find the place of architect entrusted to the highest 
 dignitaries of the court of the Pharaohs. The royal architects 
 recruited their ranks not unfrequently from the class of 
 princes ; and the inscriptions engraved upon the walls of 
 their tombs inform us that, almost without exception, they 
 
36 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 married either the daughters or the grand-daughters of the 
 reigning sovereigns, who did not refuse the architect this 
 honour/ Schools of architects had to he formed in order to 
 secure a succession of competent persons, and the chief archi¬ 
 tect of the king was only the most successful out of many 
 aspirants, who were educationally and socially upon a par. 
 Practical builders and the ordinary sculptors constituted a 
 lower class. It has been well said that the Egyptians might 
 be classed apart as a nation of monumental builders. We 
 can understand the importance assigned to the profession of 
 architect. 
 
 Finally, Engineering must have been an important 
 profession in a land of irrigation and embankments. 
 
 Women. — The relations of the sexes were decidedly on 
 a better footing in Egypt than at Athens or in G-reece gen¬ 
 erally, save perhaps in Sparta. Not only was polygamy rare 
 among the inhabitants of the Nile Valley (although per¬ 
 mitted by law), but woman even took her proper rank as 
 the friend and companion of man. She was never secluded 
 in a harem, but constantly made her appearance alike in 
 private company and in the ceremonies of religion, possessed 
 equal rights with man in the eye of the law, shared equally 
 with her brothers in her father’s estate, was attached to 
 temples in a quasi-sacerdotal character, and might ascend 
 the throne and administer the government. Even among 
 the poorest classes the rights of the women were respected. 
 She shared equally with her brothers in any inheritance 
 there might be, and was left free to manage and direct the 
 household. Her occupations were water-carrying, grinding 
 the grain, and making bread for the daily consumption. She 
 span, wove, and made and mended the few clothes required 
 in the Egyptian climate. If she was the wife of an agri¬ 
 culturist, she went to market to sell poultry and eggs and 
 the butter she had made, or the linen she had woven. A 
 large family was regarded as a blessing ; and it may be easily 
 understood, consequently, that the wife and mother had a 
 hard life and grew prematurely old. But she had freedom 
 
THE HAMITIC RACES 
 
 37 
 
 to come and go as she pleased, with uncovered face, and talk 
 with whom she pleased. Among the labouring classes, how¬ 
 ever, the woman who lived with a man was not always 
 married to him; and among the well-to-do, concubinage was 
 not uncommon. 
 
 Meanwhile the mass of the people — the fellahin — were 
 as poor, oppressed, and miserable as in modern times. They 
 lived from day to day and hand to mouth. Their chief 
 virtue was obedience to their superiors, and they were well 
 inured to the ‘ stick.’ Forced labour was common. The 
 craftsmen formed corporations and depended on their ‘ mas¬ 
 ters ’ or presidents for the recognition of their rights and for 
 justice. The monuments, it seems, bear witness to the fact 
 that both peasants and artisans were, notwithstanding their 
 poverty and oppression, a cheerful race and fond of merri¬ 
 ment. This is quite possible; for we often find a ‘ happy-go- 
 lucky ’ spirit and an enjoyment of the passing hour among 
 people who are quite at the bottom of the social scale. They 
 have been trained by circumstances to improvidence ; they 
 cannot fall lower, and to rise higher is almost impossible. 
 
 To sum up: Taken as a whole we may say that the 
 ancient Egyptians, or, let us say, the ‘ average man ’ among 
 them was, intellectually, eminently practical. His religion 
 was not a reasoned or philosophic religion even in its highest 
 forms. It was, in its highest form, the fruit of a dreamy med¬ 
 itation on the broad aspects of life and death rather than of 
 speculative analysis; in its vulgar form a mixture of animal 
 worship and debased superstitions. In ethics his morality 
 was preceptive and dogmatic — not a subject of philosophic 
 investigation. His artistic tastes were limited to the sym¬ 
 bolic and realistic and did not embrace ideal forms, save in 
 architecture ; and even in architecture the grandeur is due 
 to its symbolic character. Personally, he was grave and 
 serious, industrious, orderly, kindly, peaceable, and submis¬ 
 sive. And, with all his gravity and seriousness he (as we 
 now learn from Egyptologists) seems to have enjoyed life 
 and to have been fond of merriment. 
 
38 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 The preceding synopsis of Egyptian life (as accurate as I 
 can make it in so short a space) shows that in this Nile 
 Valley a highly civilised people, among whom the art of 
 government was organised down to the minutest bureaucratic 
 detail, existed as a community under monarchs for more than 
 4,000 years before Christ. ‘With the 4th Dynasty’ (4235 
 B.c.), says M. Mariette, ‘ Egypt emerges from the obscurity 
 with which it is, till then, surrounded, and we are enabled to 
 date facts by the help of the monuments. . . . The 4th 
 Dynasty marks a culminating point in the history of the 
 kingdom. By an extraordinary movement forward, Egypt 
 threw off all trammels and emerged in the full glory of a 
 fully developed civilisation. From this moment class dis¬ 
 tinctions were recognised in Egyptian society, and art 
 attained a breadth and dignity that even in later and more 
 brilliant days were hardly surpassed.’ 1 
 
 Even Chinese civilisation is a thing of yesterday as com¬ 
 pared with the Egyptian. Here we see what a nation, prac¬ 
 tically excluded from alien influences, could accomplish for 
 its own indigenous growth in political life, in social justice, 
 in the arts and sciences, and in education. It was overrun, 
 rather than conquered, by the Hyksos, Assyrians, Persians, 
 Greeks, and Bomans. The country seems to have gone on 
 its way very little influenced by foreign interference with its 
 native dynasties. It is this that makes Egypt so interesting 
 a study in world-history. Its geographical position secured its 
 originality. Doubtless it had to pay a price for its exclusive¬ 
 ness, for it suffered from the absence of the stimulus which 
 almost all civilised nations have received from imported 
 ideas. 
 
 EDUCATION IN EGYPT 
 
 The Education of a nation is to be found in the character¬ 
 istics of its civilisation. It has educated itself by every pro¬ 
 gressive step it takes in religion, politics, justice, arts, and 
 
 1 Mariette’s Outlines, translated by Miss Brodrick. 
 
THE HAMITIC RACES 
 
 39 
 
 thought. The ever-accumulating tradition of the people is 
 passed on from parents to children and made permanent in 
 institutions. The present has been created by the past. In 
 the above endeavour, then, to estimate the character, life, and 
 institutions of ancient Egypt, we have been virtually giving 
 an account of its national education. 
 
 The education of the young Egyptian, in brief, was through 
 the religion, morality, law, and social customs of his native 
 land. The general influences of the inherited civilisation 
 would of course be felt in different ways according to the 
 social position and opportunities of the children. Compared 
 with the youth of other nations the Egyptian of the lower 
 classes grew up, we may think, too patient of toil and the 
 stick; but, spite of the oppressive conditions of life, there 
 seem to have been prevalent a mildness, kindness, and equity 
 of disposition and a simplicity of life and domestic relations 
 which an organised educational system might have failed to 
 secure. I should say that they compared very favourably as 
 regards their moral training and their sentiments of religious 
 reverence with the lowest stratum in Great Britain now. 
 All, however, lacked the education which free political life 
 gives, and we find that, where this is the case, it operates to 
 deprive men of initiative, reacting on the whole intellectual 
 life, making it torpid and content with the status quo, what¬ 
 ever that may be. Doubtless, the political constitution was, 
 to begin with, itself an expression of a certain racial temper¬ 
 ament, but it reacted on the popular mind so as to confirm 
 natural predisposition. If we may make a distinction be¬ 
 tween individuality and that personality which comes into 
 life along with the free exercise of self-conscious reason, we 
 should say that there was in the ancient Egyptian a marked 
 individuality exhibiting itself in a keen practical intelligence, 
 but that personality as we find it in European nations was 
 absent. ISTor do we find this sense of personality, with 
 which is always associated the idea of self-direction and self- 
 government, in any of the Oriental races, except the Persians 
 (and that empire was a short-lived phenomenon) and the 
 
40 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Jews; and it is interesting to note that this strong sense 
 of personality existed, in both cases, side by side with an 
 intense monotheism. This fact suggests many thoughts 
 which would be here out of place. 
 
 The practical intelligence of the Egyptian race had an 
 immense field for its activity. They had to devise the 
 engineering works which enabled them to utilise the Nile; 
 and every year they had a recurring struggle to maintain 
 their supremacy over it. With comparatively little foreign 
 trade they had themselves to produce the articles of necessity 
 and luxury which a growing nation requires. Thus all the 
 industrial arts flourished, and, apart from the professions, 
 every boy had an industrial or technical education from 
 his own father. We are told in these days that manual 
 work is educative, but how much more educative the pro¬ 
 longed and careful training required for the acquisition of 
 a skilled trade with all its traditions! The Egyptian boy 
 had this. 
 
 On the spiritual side he was under powerful influences, 
 he breathed an atmosphere of mystery and awe, and lived 
 in the constant presence of gods, and in expectation of im¬ 
 mortality. His crude conceptions of the unseen were, it is 
 true, associated with magic and sorcery; 1 but has modern 
 Europe no superstitions equally absurd? We boast our¬ 
 selves of our religion, but it is difficult for us with all our 
 affected superiority to realise the extent to which the con¬ 
 stant presence of unseen powers pressed on the daily life 
 of a race like the Egyptians. We look hack with a feeling 
 akin to contempt on their faith in magic, sorcery and in¬ 
 cantations, forgetting that the more educated classes have 
 merely to give the word and one half of Christendom would, 
 even now, he plunged to the neck in similar beliefs. 
 
 In the bringing up of children there seems to have been 
 
 1 Mr. Flinders Petrie, in Ten Years' Digging, says that the modern 
 fellahin are a prey to gross superstition and worshippers of innumerable 
 local saints, and full of faith in magic and charms. This was equally true 
 of their ancestors 6,000 years ago, under a totally different religious system. 
 
THE HAMIT10 RACES 
 
 41 
 
 much kindliness. They had their toys and games and 
 nursery stories like other children all the world over. 
 
 Instruction of the People.— It is possible that the 
 facilities for obtaining school instruction in ancient Egypt 
 have been much exaggerated. 1 But, theoretically at least, 
 all that was known or knowable was open to all except 
 such esoteric doctrines (if any) as the higher priesthood may 
 have possessed. There is evidence that if there were not 
 numerous elementary schools scattered over the country, 
 yet teachers might always be had, and that reading and writ¬ 
 ing and the elements of arithmetic were accessible to those 
 who desired instruction. There is no evidence, however, it 
 seems to me, that the labouring class received any benefit 
 from these schools save in exceptional cases; but there was 
 nothing to prevent a clever boy, whose parents were well- 
 disposed, receiving elementary instruction. On the whole, 
 I cannot see that on this point modern exploration has 
 added much to the information given by Diodorus Siculus, 
 i. 81, who says, ‘A little reading and writing are taught, 
 but not to all; but to those engaged with the industrial 
 arts.’ At the chief provincial cities (in connection with the 
 Temple which was the centre of the civic life) more ad¬ 
 vanced instruction was obtainable, including the writing 
 and reading of the hieratic and hieroglyphic character and 
 mathematics. These higher schools doubtless supplied the 
 professions. 
 
 The Professions. — I have been speaking of the masses 
 generally; but outside and above the masses were the 
 professions. And the vital question connected with Egyp¬ 
 tian education is this. Were the professions open to all ? 
 It is now generally held that they were open; but the fact 
 that for long the caste-organisation was believed to be the 
 chief characteristic of the Egyptian social system must 
 satisfy us that, in all save exceptional cases, children fol- 
 
 1 The inferences drawn from incidental phrases by philo-Egyptians are 
 often more than questionable. 
 
42 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 lowed the occupation of their parents. Still I say the 
 way was open for clever boys, and this is the important 
 point. 
 
 The higher and professional education had for its chief 
 aim the Scribe. A young man who was a scribe would hold 
 in Egyptian society the position assigned to an university 
 graduate now, or to a literate in China. A scribe was not 
 necessarily also an architect or a physician or a priest, 
 although these professional men had of course the accom¬ 
 plishment of scribes. I would refer back to what I have 
 already said as to the function of the scribe, and the numer¬ 
 ous lucrative openings, conferring a certain social standing, 
 that awaited him. An accomplished scribe would have 
 acquired the cursive or demotic script in which the ordinary 
 affairs of life were transacted and also the hieratic in which 
 the records and traditions of all professions were written, and 
 finally, the ideographic or hieroglyphic. He would also be 
 an arithmetician, as then understood, and have an adequate 
 knowledge of the law as affecting ordinary affairs and busi¬ 
 ness contracts. What else he might study or acquire 
 depended on his aims and ambitions. I would point out 
 (subject to the correction of Egyptologists) that there must 
 have been two classes of scribes: first, there w~as a large 
 class, which, after a certain amount of preliminary educa¬ 
 tion, entered as apprentices the service of those scribes who 
 conducted commercial and family affairs. A hoy displaying 
 some intelligence would he sent to the village school at six 
 or seven, where some old pedagogue would teach him the 
 rudiments of the three B’s. If he did not find his way next 
 to a provincial school, he would enter an office that he 
 might become a * learned scribe.’ Occupied there in copying 
 letters, circulars, and legal documents, his master supervis¬ 
 ing his work and correcting it while the hoy rewrites it, he 
 gradually acquires a competent acquaintance with writing 
 and with business and legal forms of all kinds. If he aims 
 at a knowledge of the hieratic script he will have to copy 
 from books which contain examples. Having gone through 
 
THE HAMITIC RACES 
 
 43 
 
 this apprenticeship, he applies for a better post. 1 The com¬ 
 mercial or notarial scribe is described in the above passage: 
 and we also see indicated the higher class of scribe, who 
 studied at the central temple schools and became an expert 
 in all kinds of script and a student of law and administra¬ 
 tion. The latter might attain to a very high social position. 
 ' Neither descent nor family,’ says Brugsch, ‘ hampered the 
 rising career of the clever.’ The higher scribe schools were 
 connected with the royal court and also with the pro¬ 
 vincial courts, and were conducted by a high official. Baw- 
 linson says, 'Egypt provided an open career for talent such 
 as scarcely existed elsewhere in the old world, and such as 
 few modern communities can be said even yet to furnish. 
 It was always possible, under despotic governments, that 
 the capricious favour of a sovereign should raise to a high, or 
 even to the highest position, the lowest person in the king¬ 
 dom. But in Egypt alone, of all ancient states, does a 
 system seem to have been established whereby persons of all 
 ranks, even the lowest, were invited to compete for the 
 royal favour, and, by distinguishing themselves in the public 
 schools, to establish a claim for employment in the pub¬ 
 lic service. That employment once obtained, their future 
 depended on themselves. Merit secured promotion; and it 
 would seem that the efficient scribe had only to show him¬ 
 self superior to his fellows in order to rise to the highest 
 position but one in the empire.’ This is too rose-coloured 
 a view, but it has a considerable basis of fact. Maspero 
 (chapter i.) says, 'There is no sacrifice which the smaller 
 folk deem too great if it enables them to give their sons the 
 acquirements which may raise them above the common 
 people, or at least ensure a less miserable fate.’ 
 
 In addition to the profession of scribe, there was the 
 profession of architect, as distinct from builder. Here, 
 again, I must refer to what I have already said a few pages 
 back. The education of the architect in the Temple schools 
 of architects doubtless embraced much sacred as well as 
 
 l Maspero’s Ancient Egypt and Assyria , p. 11, 
 
44 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 historical learning, a knowledge of writing and mathematics, 
 and that part of engineering which concerns itself with the 
 strength of materials and practical dynamics. The archi¬ 
 tects were often priests, but not necessarily members of that 
 order. 
 
 The profession of physician demanded all the usual 
 learning of the upper class as well as special knowledge of a 
 vast tradition of curative agencies with their related magic 
 charms and incantations. I do not suppose it can be 
 doubted that this knowledge could be obtained only at 
 great Temple centres where the manuscripts could be 
 read; but it is rash to conclude that there were medical 
 ‘ schools/ It is much more probable that young men be¬ 
 came physicians by apprenticeship to established prac¬ 
 titioners. Those who desired to be fully accomplished 
 had to master the original treatises ascribed to Thoth and 
 Imhotpou with their subsequent interpretations and glosses. 
 
 There were professional singers, as well as dancers, 
 musicians, and jugglers, for all of whom a certain training 
 must have been provided. 
 
 The soldiers lived on the lands assigned to them and were 
 called out for regular training in military exercises and gym¬ 
 nastics. Generally speaking, the privileges of the army were 
 such that the lower classes were glad to belong to it. Music 
 also is said to have been taught in connection with the army, 
 but it does not follow that it was taught to all even of those 
 who aimed at the position of officer. It is more probable 
 that there was a regimental band. The music was of a 
 primitive and stereotyped kind and had descended from re¬ 
 mote antiquity. Plato in his ‘ Laws ’ (ii. 63, 7) praises the 
 Egyptian music because it was of a kind not to soften the 
 manners, but grave and serious. It was largely composed of 
 sacred chants. At the best period, education of a general 
 kind was essential to promotion in the army. There were 
 ‘ scribes ’ of the army. These educated officers were em¬ 
 ployed in connection with the engineering works of the 
 country. 
 
THE HAMITIC RACES 
 
 45 
 
 The priesthood was the highest order in the state, and 
 along with the monarch governed Egypt; the alliance of 
 state and church seems to have been in the main harmoni¬ 
 ous. All the learning of the Egyptians was to be found in 
 the higher orders of the priesthood, and their education 
 embraced an elaborate study of ancient religious documents, 
 a complicated ritual and ceremonial, the various kinds of 
 script, ethics, mathematics, astronomy, and astrology. The 
 royal family, and we may presume the children of court 
 dignitaries, shared to a certain extent in the education of the 
 young priests. The priesthood was not till comparatively 
 recent times wholly hereditary, and learned scribes might 
 find their way into it; but it is said that the more profound 
 doctrines (and therefore the highest education) were reserved 
 for those who were hereditary priests. 1 The chief priest col¬ 
 leges were situated at the great cities of Memphis, Thebes, 
 and Heliopolis. In these the highest instruction obtainable 
 in Egypt was given. 2 
 
 We have mentioned mathematics as entering into the 
 higher education of the Egyptians; but we are not to 
 imagine that mathematics was with the Egyptians a science 
 in the Greek sense. It was chiefly practical; but for that 
 very reason it must have been a study of a countless number 
 of practical rules and much more laborious than a study of 
 rational principles which carry practical rules with them as 
 deductions. 
 
 Women of the upper classes received a certain education 
 — probably from private tutors. 
 
 Let it be noted that there was no deliberate effort made 
 by state or church to raise the standard of intellectual life 
 and culture among the people generally. In so far as in¬ 
 struction went beyond the acquisition of reading and writing, 
 it had always a technical or professional purpose — except 
 
 1 Clement of Alexandria partially enumerates the books that had to be 
 studied by the Egyptian priesthood in his time. 
 
 2 I avoid using the word ‘University’ and generally I have exercised 
 my judgment in moderating the tone of some philo-Egyptians. 
 
46 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 perhaps in the highest Temple-schools of the priests. What 
 we call ‘ liberal ’ education was not dreamt of even for the 
 few. The idea of liberal education did not exist; on the 
 other hand, the course of instruction for the higher priesthood 
 comprehended the whole range of knowledge as then under¬ 
 stood, and as this was pursued for its own sake, and in the 
 interests of learning, it may, perhaps, he called liberal 
 education. 
 
 With these facts before us, I think we must admit that it 
 was not the want of education which restricted the continued 
 advance of Egypt, for it had an educational system as wide¬ 
 spread and as effective, relatively to the then state of know¬ 
 ledge, as Europe had up to the earlier decades of this present 
 century. Even the masses, spite of the poverty and monoto¬ 
 nous character of their lives, had the means of obtaining 
 from some scribe-pedagogue the elements of literature. They 
 were, however, chiefly educated by the family and national 
 tradition, by their training to technical arts, by the laws, and 
 the festivals and ceremonials of their religious system. It 
 cannot be said that they were educated by their political con¬ 
 stitution to anything but submission. Personal interest in 
 civic and political life, and personal responsibility for the 
 welfare of the state, were things alien to the Egyptian as to 
 the Oriental mind generally. It was left to Greece and 
 Rome, to modern Europe and America, to find, in a free com¬ 
 munity of political interests and responsibilities, a potent 
 element in the education of individual citizens better than 
 many schools. 
 
 Method and Discipline. — The methods pursued we 
 know little of. That dictation was largely resorted to we 
 can rightly infer from the school copies in the British and 
 French museums, as well as from the necessity of devoting a 
 large portion of time to learning the Egyptian character. 
 The copies were traced on wooden tablets or bits of stone, 
 and the pupil imitated them with a style on wooden tablets 
 covered with a layer of red or white stucco. The more 
 advanced were promoted to write extracts from good authors 
 
THE HAMITIC RACES 
 
 47 
 
 on papyrus, both by transcription and from dictation. The 
 master corrected the exercises by putting the true forms on 
 the margin wherever the pupil had made a mistake. 
 
 By giving passages to the boys to copy, caligraphy and 
 orthography were taught, and at the same time the rudiments 
 of composition. These passages were sometimes tales, and 
 extracts from religious or magical books. More frequently 
 the pupil had to copy an ‘ instruction.’ These ‘ instructions ’ 
 contained rules for wise conduct and good manners, ascribed 
 mostly to Ptah-hetep, the ancient writer of moral precepts. 
 The ‘ instructions * were often in the form of letters between 
 tutor and pupil, ‘ in which the former is supposed to impart 
 wisdom as well as to form an epistolary style.’ This accom¬ 
 plishment was of great importance to the scribe, as much of 
 the work of public administration seems to have been done 
 * in writing. 
 
 The difficulties of teaching must have been great, and, as 
 we know, the discipline was severe. ‘ The hawk is taught to 
 fly and the pigeon to nest; I shall teach you your letters, 
 you idle villain ! ’ is the utterance of an irate Egyptian 
 schoolmaster. There was also a pedagogic saying, ‘ A young 
 fellow has a back; he hears when we strike it. ’ A scholar 
 writing to his master, after having left school, says that ‘ his 
 bones had been broken like those of an ass.’ 
 
 Egypt was so long the land of wonder and mystery, that 
 there were men who dreamed that its records might yield 
 secrets of thought which might throw light on many of the 
 problems of life and destiny. As a matter of fact, it seems 
 to me, the race was incapable of great exploits in the region 
 of philosophy and religion. Practical sagacity and a pro¬ 
 found religious awe were curiously combined in them ; but 
 the analytic labour by which alone truth yields itself to the 
 earnest pursuit of man was alien to the Egyptian mind. 
 Their religion, moreover, held no idealising principle: their 
 morality was preceptive, not reasoned. Even their history 
 is only bald registration. Authority and antiquity governed 
 
48 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 the thought of each successive generation in every depart¬ 
 ment of human inquiry. This gave stability and continuity 
 to the kingdom ; but the stability was gained at the cost of 
 true intellectual progress. Hence, so far from contemplating 
 with astonishment the achievements of Egypt, we are rather 
 filled with wonder that 5,000 years of opportunity produced 
 so little. It is precisely its surprising failures as well as its 
 astonishing successes, which make Egypt so interesting and 
 instructive a chapter in the history of the human race. 
 
 Authorities: Herodotus; Diodorus Siculus ; Ranke’s History of the 
 World; Rawlinson’s Five Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World; Pro¬ 
 fessor Ebers’ appendices to novels; Strabo ; Maspero’s Ancient Egypt and 
 Assyria, also bis Histoire Ancienne and U Archeologie Egyptienne.; Brugsch’s 
 Egypt under the Pharaohs; Bunsen’s Egypt’s Place in History; Duncker’s 
 History of Antiquity; Dr. Birch’s Egypt; Professor Sayce’s Ancient Empires 
 of the East ; Le Page Renouf’s Hibbert Lectures on Egyptian Religion ; Wil¬ 
 kinson’s Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians; The Story of the 
 Nations (‘ Egypt,’ by Rawlinson) ; Mariette’s Outlines of the History of Egypt, 
 by Miss Brodrick; Professor Tiele’s Outlines of the History of Religions: 
 Records of the Past; Erman’s Life in Ancient Egypt , translated by Tirard ; 
 The Dawn of Civilisation in the East , by Professor Maspero ; The Booh of 
 the Dead, by Dr. Davis; Professor Menzies’ History of Religion. 
 
 Professor Flinders Petrie has issued a History of Egypt, and this will be 
 followed, I believe, by a book on its civilisation. These will doubtless be the 
 authoritative books when they are completed. Meanwhile I have had to 
 form my own conclusions from the evidence before me, the witnesses being 
 by no means always in agreement with each other or themselves. 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 A. — ARABS — BABYLONIANS — ASSYRIANS —PHOENICIANS 
 
 The Semitic races inhabited that central region of the old 
 world which extends from the Arabian and Persian Gulfs 
 and the Zagros Mountains to the Mediterranean and the 
 Taurus range. All the nations named at the head of this 
 chapter were Semitic; but, as was the case with every 
 other race we encounter in historic times, they were mixed 
 with prior populations or fresh immigrants. The greatest 
 of these races, from the point of view of general culture 
 and art, were the Babylonians, or, as they are sometimes 
 called, Chaldseo-Babylonians : the most warlike and ener¬ 
 getic were the Assyrians: among the Jews or Hebrews, 
 again, the Oriental religious spirit found its highest and 
 purest expression. The Semitic races generally were like 
 the Egyptians of a serious, prosaic, practical, matter of fact 
 character. The Hebrews alone exhibit a certain loftiness 
 of genius, but this within a narrow field. It is this portion 
 of the Semitic race that has influenced the education of the 
 world and is consequently of chief interest to us. But 
 before speaking of the Hebrews, we must advert for a 
 moment to the Arabs, and give some attention to the older 
 Semitic communities which grew up in the Mesopotamian 
 plains and highlands. 
 
 (1) THE ARABS 
 
 Owing to their geographical position the Arabs preserved 
 the Semitic character and blood in its purest form, and their 
 religious beliefs may probably be regarded as the primitive 
 Semitic religion. This religion was fetichistic, and varied 
 
52 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 among different tribes. All worshipped the sun and moon 
 and certain constellations, but the god of each of the numer¬ 
 ous clans was the chief object of devotion. He was the cap¬ 
 tain and master of the clan. Idolatry was of late introduction. 
 Sacred stones and mountains were objects of adoration, es¬ 
 pecially the Black Stone of the Kaaba which was at the 
 national centre, Mecca. They were essentially a nomadic race, 
 but there were settled kingdoms. The most recent explora¬ 
 tions speak of two kingdoms which probably in succession to 
 each other extended their power, or at least suzerainty over 
 the most of Arabia, viz. Saba (Sheba) and Ma’in. The 
 kingdom of Saba was flourishing before the time of Solomon 
 and there are inscriptions ascribed to that period showing 
 that writing was known. But as we know nothing about the 
 constitution of these kingdoms, no materials exist for a his¬ 
 tory of education. Among the Arabs generally, however, 
 there existed from a very remote period a considerable body 
 of poetry of a lyric kind, chiefly warlike and elegiac. These 
 were handed down by rhapsodists who recited them at 
 tribal meetings. Tradition gives the name of Lokman, a 
 contemporary of King David, as that of a celebrated poet, 
 and ‘ round his name/ says Duncker, ‘ is gathered a number 
 of proverbs, gnomes, and fables.’ The oral poetic literature 
 was, however, floating and unorganised. Even of the Arabs 
 in the century preceding the rise of Mahomet, Ibn Khallikan 
 (who wrote his biographical dictionary in the thirteenth 
 century) says, ‘ the people consisted of Arabs wholly igno¬ 
 rant of the mode by which learning is taught, of the art of 
 composing works and of the means by which knowledge is 
 enregistered.’ (Introd. to vol. ii.) While this was so, we 
 must still allow a certain educative effect to the floating 
 unwritten literature. In speaking of Oriental nations, we 
 must always remember that their memories were facile and 
 retentive to an extent which to the modern European is 
 almost incredible. When Mahomet arose, for example, the 
 Koran was learnt by heart and recited, and those who had 
 acquired this power were held in great respect as ‘ Beaders.’ 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 53 
 
 There can be no doubt that writing (on palm-leaves, leather, 
 and stone) was known long before the Christian era. The 
 writing introduced into Mecca a.d. 560 was a reformed 
 script. 1 
 
 But very few could write, and even these few seemed to 
 make little use of it. 
 
 (2) THE BABYLONIANS 
 
 The Babylonians were the primary centre of the Mesopo¬ 
 tamian culture and religion, they themselves, however, as we 
 shall see, resting on a still earlier civilisation. The true 
 greatness of Babylon as a city began about the eighteenth 
 century B. c. 
 
 It was from the southern Chaldaeo-Babylonian district 
 that the Assyrians of Nineveh in the north migrated. It 
 was only in the thirteenth century b. c. (about the time of 
 the death of Moses) that the Assyrians began to extend 
 their power over other races. In 1100 B. c. they were the 
 acknowledged masters north, south, and east of Nineveh. 
 The empire rapidly grew in the ninth century B. c., extend¬ 
 ing even to the Mediterranean. Nineveh was always more 
 warlike than the great centre of culture, Babylon; 2 and 
 after the middle of the thirteenth century b. c., the latter was 
 virtually in subjection to the Assyrians. In the middle of 
 the seventh century B. c., the loosely-jointed Assyrian empire 
 began suddenly to collapse, after it had extended itself to 
 Media in the East and Egypt and Arabia on the South. It 
 was an empire of violence; but it concentrated in itself and 
 raised to a historical world-importance, as Ranke says, the 
 martial vigour of the Semitic race. Nor were the Assyrians 
 only warriors : the ruins of Nineveh to this day testify to its 
 
 1 Sir W. Muir’s Life of Mahomet, p. 8. Caussin de Perceval does not deny 
 this, as Sir W. Muir seems to think. 
 
 2 The revival of letters and of the sciences and arts under the Moham¬ 
 medan conquerors in the eighth and subsequent centuries A. d. belongs to the 
 mediaeval period. The eminent men during this period were probably not 
 genuine Arabs at all. 
 
54 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 greatness and challenge the public works of Babylon and 
 Susa. It fell before the Medes (towards the end of the 
 seventh century) assisted by the Babylonians, who thus 
 avenged their own prior subjection. It had enjoyed an im¬ 
 perial existence of 250 years, and was the first conquering 
 power founding an empire which we meet with in the history 
 of the world. 
 
 Babylon was now the head of all the Western portion of 
 the former Assyrian empire, but only for a brief period. It 
 fell before the Medo-Persians (also including Elamites) in 
 538 b. c. 
 
 But though the Assyrian and Babylonian empires were 
 shortlived, Nineveh, and above all Babylon, had been for a 
 very long period the centres of Mesopotamian civilisation. 
 They had attained to political constitutions, religious sys¬ 
 tems, and laws, and to the highest degree of material wealth. 
 We may date the importance of Nineveh as a civilised centre 
 and a rising military power from 1400 B. c.; but Babylon 
 and the civilisation of the Babylonian and Chaldsean country 
 (the southern portion of Mesopotamia) have a much more 
 ancient record. 1 
 
 The Babylonian culture, in all its forms, rested on that of 
 the early occupants of the alluvial plains between the two 
 rivers — known as Accadians or Sumir-Accadians. 2 
 
 The Accadians had, it is commonly held, come from the 
 plains south of the Caspian Sea and entered the southern 
 Mesopotamian valley probably through Elam east of the 
 Tigris. After they had developed a certain civilisation here, 
 the wandering Semites took possession and were amalgamated 
 with the resident population — entering probably about 
 2200 B. c. Tiele (‘ Die Assyriologie, eine Bede ’) says that 
 
 1 As a help in taking a chronological and comparative view, it is of im¬ 
 portance to note that Solomon, who raised the power of the Israelites to its 
 highest point, died in 975 b. c., and that the date of the foundation of Rome 
 was 753 b. c. 
 
 2 The most recent information points to inhabitants of a Cushite type 
 prior to the Accadians. 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 55 
 
 the Semitic civilisation in the Mesopotamian plains cannot 
 be put further back than 2000 B. c., but we know that the 
 Accadian civilisation, including religion and science, was 
 developed long before that date. It would not now, indeed, 
 be considered an exaggeration to date the beginnings of 
 Sumir-Accadian civilisation in the lower Mesopotamian 
 basin from nearly 4000 B. c. 1 
 
 The Accadian religion was animistic and fetichistic. 
 There was an organised priesthood and temples. They 
 believed in multitudinous demons, good and evil, between 
 whom there was continual warfare. But this contest had 
 no ethical significance. Their priesthood, however (at least 
 after a certain date), believed in a supreme God among 
 the gods. The practice of magic and incantations, worked 
 out into the most elaborate detail, flourished. Evil spirits 
 had to be conciliated, and these were everywhere. But this 
 relation to unseen powers had among the Accadians no 
 moral meaning. As regards a future life, it was held that 
 the spirits of the dead lived an unhappy and dreary exist¬ 
 ence for ever in a gloomy Hades — a world of shadows — 
 the underworld ; subsequently, it was taught that the gods 
 received into pleasant regions all who served them well 
 during life. The ethical importance of this advance is 
 manifest. 
 
 A Semitic race, which seems to have entered the northern 
 portions of the Mesopotamian basin, amalgamated with 
 this primitive Accadian people, and the combined people 
 are thereafter known to history as Babylonians or Chal- 
 dseans. Gradually the religious conceptions to which we 
 have referred above, reached a still higher development 
 under the influence, one would be disposed to say, of the 
 specifically Semitic spirit. The nature-beings became gods, 
 truly governing the natural order; and the study of astron- 
 
 1 I follow the leading authorities. Maspero is much less confident than 
 many other writers, and would consider the above statement much too definite, 
 and in fact the most recent explorations show that the history prior to 2200 
 B. c. has to he reconstructed. 
 
56 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 omy and mathematics, by exalting men’s minds, gave to 
 the supreme deities a more relined and elevated character. 
 Above all the numerous gods, one was now placed whose 
 commands were absolute — the Lord of Lords. Without 
 throwing off the magic and augury and elaborate system of 
 incantations which they had adopted, they (i. e. the more ad¬ 
 vanced priesthood) exhibited in their worship ‘ a vivid sense 
 of sin, a deep feeling of man’s dependence, even of his noth¬ 
 ingness before God, in prayers and hymns hardly less fervent 
 than those of the pious souls of Israel’ (Tiele). As evidence 
 of this we may here cite an extract from one of the peniten¬ 
 tial psalms, merely premising that at the time it was written 
 there had grown up a belief that each individual soul had his 
 god — a belief which would easily be universalised and pass 
 into that of a one God who was truly the god of all human 
 spirits alike. The sense of a personal relation between God 
 and the human soul, so characteristic of the Semitic race, here 
 makes its appearance (but in a particular, not a universal 
 form), and suggests that the remains we now have of this 
 purer religion did not date prior to the amalgamation of 
 Semitic immigrants, or, indeed, prior to 2000 years B.c. 
 
 From a Penitential Psalm. 
 
 The heart of my Lord was wrath, to his place may he return; 
 
 From the man who sinned unknowingly, to his place may my 
 God return ! 
 
 And so on, frequently repeated in slightly altered forms; 
 then : 
 
 The transgression that I committed, my God knew it. 
 
 ••••••• 
 
 Oh, my God, that knowest that I knew not, my transgressions 
 are great, my sins are many. 
 
 • •••••# 
 
 God, who knew though I knew not, hath passed me. 
 
 • • • • • • • 
 
 I lay on the ground, and no one seized me by the hand. 
 
 I wept and my palms none took. 
 
THE SEMITIC FACES 57 
 
 And so forth. This is evidently part of a liturgy, as appears 
 from rubrical directions. 1 
 
 The following Address to the Sun illustrates the stage of 
 poetical culture which the higher type of Chaldseo-BabyIonian 
 mind had reached: 
 
 ‘ 0 Sun! thou hast stepped forth from the background of 
 heaven, thou hast pushed back the bolts of the brilliant 
 heaven — yea, the gate of heaven. 0 Sun! above the land 
 thou hast raised thy head! 0 Sun! thou hast covered the 
 
 immeasurable space of heaven and countries ! ’ 
 
 There are also many passages of poetic vigour in the Epic 
 of Izdhubar. 
 
 The Chaldaean priesthood, which was partly hereditary, 
 partly selected, conserved and developed the religious system 
 which we may call Accadian-Semitic, and maintained the 
 ceremonies of the temples. They handed down the tra¬ 
 ditions of the race and had an oral as well as a written 
 literature, which embodied their philosophy of life and 
 poetic conceptions. 
 
 Education.—All the arts of life that minister to com¬ 
 fort and luxury attained great perfection: the Babylonian 
 architecture was conceived and executed with a certain 
 vastness of imagination, and their canals and embankments 
 showed great engineering skill. All this implies a highly 
 developed technical instruction. Of education, however, in 
 any literary sense, or even of the ethical education of the 
 family, there can have been little or none. This must always 
 chiefly depend on the religious and ethical conceptions of a 
 nation as a whole, and not of a restricted order in a nation. 
 At the same time the people as a whole can, especially under 
 a despotic political system, be sustained at a certain level by 
 the convictions of the few. But, where the religion in its 
 popular form was a crude polydsemonism accompanied by 
 magic and incantation and the worship of arbitrary spirits 
 good and evil, the people could receive no education from a 
 spiritual ideal of life. Marriage was set about with great 
 
 1 From Records of the Past. 
 
58 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 formality and regarded as a social act of great importance; 
 but the husband was not restricted to one wife. Although 
 the wife in the middle and lower orders had great liberty of 
 action allowed her, her life was not much better than that of 
 a slave. It was impossible, accordingly, that domestic rela¬ 
 tions could furnish any moral basis for the family. Nor 
 could citizens who had no political status receive education 
 from the working of political institutions. Doubtless, had 
 the later religious conceptions, to which I have referred 
 above, been the possession of the people and not merely 
 of a class, their educative influence might have moulded the 
 Mesopotamian civilisation to a much higher form than it 
 ever attained; but there is no evidence that this was so. 
 
 Education of the upper classes. — The education of 
 the few, on the other hand, was by no means despicable. As 
 time advanced, the higher minds held monotheistic views, 
 the numerous gods being regarded as merely aspects of the 
 supreme divine Being. In the course of time, the gods were 
 resolved, under the influence of a speculative philosophy, into 
 elements and abstractions; and a cosmogony arose like that 
 given in the first chapter of Genesis, with this important dif¬ 
 ference, however, that the universe was regarded as a series 
 of emanations from the Supreme Being. This speculative 
 view passed even into Ionic Greece and neo-Platonism. 
 Charms, amulets, sorcery, divination, incantations, all con¬ 
 tinued, however, to flourish side by side with these higher 
 ideas, and the conception of man’s life as haunted by devilish 
 spirits (a survival apparently of the older Accadian religion), 
 who had to be driven off or appeased, had not been super¬ 
 seded even among the priesthood. 
 
 The literature which constituted the material of education 
 for the higher orders was extensive. Every great town had 
 its library on brick tablets, which were thrown open to the 
 public (Sayce). A great astronomical work, compiled for 
 Sargon’s library at Agade, is said to be of the early date of 
 3800 B. c. ‘ There were historical and mythological writings, 
 religious compositions, legal, geographical, astronomical, and 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 59 
 
 astrological treatises; magical formulae and omen tablets; 
 poems, fables, and proverbs; grammatical and lexical dis¬ 
 quisitions, beside archives 5 (Sayce, p. 170). There were 
 state observatories in the chief towns and astronomers-royal 
 were appointed who had ‘ to send fortnightly reports to the 
 king.’ The knowledge of arithmetic, mathematics, and me¬ 
 chanics also had made considerable progress, but only on 
 the practical, not the scientific, side. We have to add 
 the great Epic of Izdhubar, which belonged to the domain of 
 literature. 1 
 
 The interest of the Chaldseans in astronomy was not 
 strictly scientific. They made numerous observations and 
 had constructed many astronomical tables, but this not so 
 much with a view to a knowledge of the heavens as to astro¬ 
 logy. The position of the heavenly bodies indicated earthly 
 destinies, and to foretell these was the function of the Chal- 
 dsean priest. Diodorus tells us (ii. 29) that the sons of the 
 priestly class were carefully instructed from boyhood up, 
 and this, indeed, was necessary to their acquisition of the 
 detailed learning required of them. Astronomy and as¬ 
 trology alone demanded persevering study. Medicine was 
 not a subject of serious pursuit. As diseases were caused by 
 evil spirits, the medical art in Chaldaea confined itself to 
 
 1 It was Shargena or Sargon I. who (coming from the north or north-east 
 had conquered the Babylonian territories) flourished somewhere about 2200 
 b. c., to whom the institution or revival of libraries was due. A royal library 
 was collected by him in the town of Ourouk, hence sometimes called the Town 
 of Books, and the library contained the traditionary lore of the Chaldseo- 
 Babylonian priesthood, among which were histories, theology, elaborate trea¬ 
 tises on divination and magic, catalogues of beasts and minerals, medicine 
 (incantations chiefly, accompanied by a materia medica), astronomy, astrology, 
 and mathematics. Nor was this the only library ; there were several in the 
 Babylonian territory. Sargon was himself a modern, and the literature he 
 collected was the accumulation of probably 2000 years. There was another 
 Shargena I., 3800 B. c., who seems to be legendary (?). About B. C. 628 Assur. 
 bani-pal, king of Assyria, had bilingual copies of the Babylonian library made 
 and placed them in Nineveh, and a considerable portion are now in the Brit¬ 
 ish Museum. The authorities for the above quotations are numerous, but see 
 Maspero’s Histoire Ancienne, pp. 157-9. But doubtless all that has been said 
 of the first Shargena or Sargon requires reconsideration. 
 
60 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 the invention of magical formulae which should exorcise 
 the demons. 
 
 The higher education was not confined to the priestly 
 class (which, however, was itself a large and powerful body), 
 hut extended to the body of scribes. These men were not 
 held in such high social estimation as in Egypt. The work- 
 ins of the local and central administration was, however, 
 
 o 
 
 largely in their hands. ‘ We continually meet with them in 
 all grades of society, in the palace, in the temples, in the 
 storehouses, in private dwellings. In fine, the scribe was 
 ubiquitous at court, in the town, in the country, in the army, 
 managing affairs both small and great, and seeing that they 
 were carried on efficiently. His education differed but little 
 from that given to the Egyptian scribe; he learned the rou¬ 
 tine of administrative and judicial affairs, the formularies of 
 correspondence either with nobles or with ordinary people, 
 the art of writing, of calculating quickly and making out 
 bills correctly.’ 1 They wrote on slabs of fine plastic clay 
 with a stylus and then sent it to the potter to be baked or 
 put it into an oven of their own. Besides these clay tablets, 
 they sometimes used hollow cylinders on which they wrote 
 public events of importance. Forms of judicial decisions 
 and business contracts &c. are found written on these. The 
 writing was originally ideographic as in Egypt. It is to the 
 indestructible character of these baked tablets and cylinders 
 that we owe what knowledge we have of those remote times. 
 
 Nor was the education confined even to priests and scribes. 
 Many of the upper classes shared in it to a certain extent, 
 while the public libraries afforded the means of study to all 
 who had ambition to learn. That a portion of the upper 
 classes received instruction there can be no doubt. Among 
 Oriental races generally we find that young men, not of the 
 priestly order, were brought up in the royal court for the 
 service of the country; and there is no reason to doubt that 
 Nebuchadnezzar’s instructions as regards the Jewish children 
 were only the continuation of an ancient Babylonian prac- 
 
 1 Maspero, Dawn of Civilisation , p. 726. 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 61 
 
 tice. In the first chapter of Daniel the prophet, it is 
 narrated: 
 
 ‘ And the king spake unto Ashpenaz, the master of his 
 eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the children of 
 Israel, and of the king’s seed, and of the princes ; children in 
 whom was no blemish, but well favoured, and skilful in all 
 wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, 
 and such as had ability in them, to stand in the king’s palace, 
 and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of 
 the Chaldeans. And the king appointed them a daily pro¬ 
 vision of the king’s meat, and of the wine which he drank: 
 so nourishing them three years, that at the end thereof they 
 might stand before the king. Now among these were, of the 
 children of Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.’ 
 
 It is difficult, indeed, to see how the government of any 
 civilised country could have been carried on without a lay 
 royal school as well as priestly and scribe schools. The 
 palace school of Charlemagne in the eighth century was thus 
 a much more ancient institution than he himself imagined. 
 We may also conclude generally that, in a country which 
 erected monuments with inscriptions for all to read, not a 
 few of the population could read and write, outside the 
 priesthood, the scribes, and the royal court. 
 
 Of the schools and teachers we know nothing. Tablets 
 have been found in Babylon on which school-exercises are 
 written. Where learning and teaching existed there must, 
 of course, have been teachers, and we may conclude that 
 pedagogues (priests and scribes) were numerous, who pro¬ 
 bably gave individual, not class, instruction. Priest and 
 scribe would, of course, be careful to instruct their own chil¬ 
 dren who were, after the Oriental fashion, to succeed them in 
 their public functions. 
 
 (3) THE ASSYRIANS 
 
 The Chalckeo-Babylonian priesthood had attained to the idea 
 of one supreme God. The Assyrians accepted the religion 
 of the race, but emphasised the persmal character of the 
 
62 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 supreme God under the name of Asshur. As was natural 
 in a warlike people, they recognised the military leadership 
 and command of the God — the ‘ God of battles,’ who was 
 also king and father. The people as a whole were victims 
 of a debased superstition; religious, however, in the sense in 
 which they understood religion. 
 
 But for our purposes here there is nothing to be said 
 which has not already been said of the Babylonians, except 
 that, as befitted men living in a more elevated country, the 
 Assyrians exhibited many of the virtues of a vigorous and 
 conquering people. Hunting was a favourite amusement; 
 the chase of the lion, buffalo, gazelle, horse, and wild ass. 
 The Babylonian love of magnificence in architecture, sculp¬ 
 ture, and decoration was even exceeded in Nineveh, and the 
 Assyrians were famous for the art with which they adorned 
 their palaces and temples. Their technical and military 
 education must have been highly developed; but education 
 of the higher kind was restricted to the priesthood, the royal 
 court, and to the scribes. It was Chaldaeo-Babylonian in its 
 character. 
 
 The priesthood seems to have inherited those conceptions 
 regarding the personal relation of the soul of man to a, or 
 the, divine Being which we have found among the Baby¬ 
 lonians. I may cite, in illustration and evidence of this, the 
 hymn quoted in ‘ Records of the Past ’ by Mr. Talbot. 
 
 Oh, my Lord, my sins are many, my trespasses are great, 
 
 And the wrath of the gods has plagued me with disease 
 
 And with sickness and sorrow. 
 
 I fainted, but no one stretched forth his hand; 
 
 I groaned, but no one drew nigh. 
 
 I cried aloud, but no one heard. 
 
 0 Lord, do not abandon thy servant. 
 
 In the waters of the great storm seize his hand, 
 
 The sins which he has committed turn thou to righteousness. 
 
 The Assyrians, however, paid a tribute to learning in 
 having, like the Egyptians, a ‘ god of letters.’ It was to 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 63 
 
 an Assyrian monarch also (Assur-bani-pal) (p. 59, footnote) 
 that we owe the preservation of a great portion of Babylonian 
 literature. He had copies of the Babylonian brick tablets 
 made, both the Accadian text and a parallel Assyrian trans¬ 
 lation being given. These were placed in the great library at 
 Nineveh. In that library also were preserved numerous gov¬ 
 ernment despatches, letters, astronomical and astrological 
 treatises, and tables giving an account of the law, of legal 
 decisions, contracts of sale, records of tributes and taxes, &c. 
 
 So far as national religion, literature, and the arts were 
 concerned, there is no apparent reason why education should 
 not have been as accessible and widely diffused in Babylonia 
 and Assyria as in Egypt. But when we read of the constant 
 wars, we can see how it was that certain forms of civilisation 
 which could grow up and flourish in an isolated land like the 
 Nile valley, did not take root in a country so disturbed as the 
 Mesopotamian basin. 
 
 (4) THE PHOENICIANS 
 
 The narrow coast-line between Lebanon and the Mediter¬ 
 ranean (little more than 120 miles long and 15 broad), was 
 occupied by Semites famous in history for their commercial 
 enterprise. Tyre and Sidon were the two chief cities. 
 
 The Phoenician government was a monarchy tempered by 
 an oligarchy of wealth, the king being apparently only first 
 among a body of ruling merchant princes. When the mon¬ 
 archy disappeared, the chief magistrate was called ‘ judge,’ 
 and he held office for shorter or longer periods. 
 
 With the Phoenicians we find material aims and luxurious 
 living similar to those which marked the Assyrians and 
 Babylonians, but in a grosser form. The former owed their 
 wealth to trade, the latter found the basis of their material 
 civilisation in the fertile alluvial tracts of the Euphrates and 
 Tigris and in the well irrigated northern parts of the Meso¬ 
 potamian basin. Phoenicia was the gate of communication 
 between Europe and the Orient. With Phoenicia is associated 
 the invention of symbols for numbers and the elements of 
 
64 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 sound in words; but these seem originally to have been 
 drawn from Egypt where there was a large Phoenician set¬ 
 tlement. The necessities as well as the opportunities of com¬ 
 merce would naturally lead to the adoption and development 
 of what was derived from Egypt, with a view to facilitate 
 communication with foreign nations. Their buildings, their 
 harbours and ships, and the works of art which they pro¬ 
 duced, all point to a high efficiency in their technical instruc¬ 
 tion. They were manufacturers, merchants, and colonisers. 
 But commerce and money-making seem to have engrossed 
 their minds, and there is no evidence of any moral idea in 
 their civilisation. 1 
 
 And yet Phoenicia, as intermediary between East and 
 West, played an important part in the history of civilisation; 
 but only as intermediaries. Greek art owed its early Assyrian 
 character to it, and to it also the Greeks were indebted for 
 the alphabet and for many Oriental elements in their religion 
 and mythology. But it would have been better without 
 them. On the Israelites their influence was even more 
 marked. The Temple at Jerusalem was built by Phoenician 
 artists and workmen. They were also the founders of Car¬ 
 thage, which contested the sovereignty of the Mediterranean 
 with the rising power of Rome. Both as artists and crafts¬ 
 men they originally borrowed from others ; but they improved 
 on their Egyptian and Assyrian masters. 
 
 Their chief gods were the sun and moon. But they de¬ 
 graded what they received of the spiritual element from the 
 Mesopotamian priesthood, more than they improved on the 
 arts which they received from them and the Egyptians. 
 They were an impure and cruel people. They sought to 
 win the favour of Heaven by lascivious practices on festal 
 occasions. Destitute of literature, if we except historical 
 archives, and destitute also of an initiating or progressive 
 spirit in art, they were lost in a sensual materialism. 
 
 If it be true, as I think it is, that genuine progress in civ- 
 
 1 For a brilliant description of the wealth and occupations of the Phoeni¬ 
 cians, see Ezekiel xxvii. and xxviii. 
 
TEE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 65 
 
 ilisation is determined by the ethical and religious conceptions 
 of a nation, we can understand that Phoenicia has little to 
 teach us save by way of warning. Enterprising on the sea 
 and highly intelligent they certainly were. But for all else 
 they cannot arrest the attention of the historian. 
 
 B. — THE HEBREWS OR JEWS 
 
 Of the Semitic races by far the most famous was the Hebrew 
 which emigrated from the west side of the Euphrates to 
 Canaan or Palestine about 2000 B.c. Their centre of origin 
 was Ur of the Chaldees, where the Abraliamic religion is 
 understood to have arisen. Whether dissatisfaction with the 
 mixed character of the Chaldseo-Babylonian religion insti¬ 
 gated the migration or not it is impossible to say. 1 
 
 The history of this remarkable people, however, properly 
 dates from the emigration from Egypt under Moses about 
 1490 B. c. 2 After a period of wandering and many petty 
 wars, in which they exhibited no small violence and cruelty, 
 the land acquired on the east and west side of Jordan was 
 divided among the twelve tribes. The tribe of Levi, how¬ 
 ever, which represented the sacerdotal class, was scattered 
 throughout the country — the object of this being, it may 
 be presumed, the maintenance of religious life and historical 
 tradition among the people. For, Jewish history begins and 
 ends with a great historical deliverance and an exalted 
 religious idea. 
 
 ‘ It was the aim of Moses,’ says Banke, ‘ that the idea by 
 the power of which he had led them out of Egypt should 
 continue to form the central point of their spiritual and 
 political life. Moses is the most exalted figure in all primi¬ 
 tive history. The thought of God as an intellectual Being 
 independent of all material existence was seized by him 
 and, so to speak, incorporated in the nation which he led. 
 Not that the nation and the idea were simply co-extensive ; 
 the idea of the most High God as He revealed Himself on 
 
 1 The name Jew is strictly applicable only to the Hebrews of Judsea. 
 
 2 The date assigned varies from the above to 1320. 
 
 5 
 
66 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Horeb is one for all times and all nations: — an idea of a 
 pure and infinite Being, which admits of no limitation, but 
 which nevertheless inspires every decree of the legislator, 
 every undertaking of the captain of the host.’ 
 
 The religion of the Hebrews was Abrahamic: and by 
 this I mean that it was an outgrowth of certain Chaldsean 
 religious conceptions brought from Ur by the nomadic tribe 
 of which Terah, the father of Abraham, was the chief. But 
 when we have granted this, we must recognise that a fresh de¬ 
 parture was made under Moses. It matters not to us what the 
 date of the various books of the Pentateuch may have been: 
 there can be no reasonable doubt, it seems to me, that the 
 Mosaic tradition was preserved by a priesthood, although 
 this priesthood was not fully organised till the time of David. 
 The tradition took its departure from the idea of God and 
 the Law as delivered by the new founder of the nation ; 
 and amid all the narrowness and the aberrations of tribes 
 and parties, the tradition survived, and grew by logical de¬ 
 velopment till it reached its full expression in the prophets 
 — from Amos in the eighth century B.c. till after the Exile. 
 Moses was a remarkable man, and of a transcendent person¬ 
 ality ; for, cognisant as he was of the religion of Egypt, he 
 was yet able in his spiritual strength to set it aside, and to 
 bring a nation to the foot of Sinai. Neither Osiris, nor Isis, 
 nor Ptah, nor Ammon, was allowed to influence, much less 
 to dominate, his religious thought. God was One — the sole 
 creator of heaven and earth,— ultimate Being. The powers 
 of nature, and animals and men, were His work, and could 
 not be deified. He was a Spirit, and had to be worshipped 
 as a spirit, and in spirit. But above all, He was a God 
 supremely ethical, and demanded of men the service of 
 obedience to the moral law. It is impossible to exaggerate 
 the importance of this thought in the history of mankind. 
 It furnished a fresh point of departure for the whole human 
 race. Moses was the greatest of schoolmasters. Strange to 
 say, though familiar in Egypt with the idea of life after 
 death, he does not embody this idea in his teaching. 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 67 
 
 Where the ark of God was, there too was the centre of 
 Jewish faith and ritual. It was a golden-plated chest which 
 was said to contain (and why should it not contain ?) the 
 Mosaic tables of stone; but there were necessarily, especially 
 in pre-Davidic times, many local altars and open-air sanctu¬ 
 aries— ‘worship of the high places and under green trees’ 
 (by which is meant worship of stones or monoliths placed on 
 eminences and symbolic of Baal and frequently also the trunk 
 of a tree as representing the female deity) — where vows were 
 made and sacrifices offered; and these for the most part, of 
 an idolatrous kind. Round the central sanctuary, however, 
 whether at Shiloh or afterwards at Jerusalem, the best tradi¬ 
 tion gathered, and there seems to be no sufficient reason to 
 doubt that it was orally handed down by the priesthood 
 before writing was common. The ark along with the Taber¬ 
 nacle (subsequently represented by the Holy of Holies in the 
 Temple at Jerusalem) was the centre of national unity, as 
 well as of the national faith, in a much more real sense than 
 Delphi was the centre of Hellenic unity. That writing was 
 used much earlier than the ‘ higher criticism ’ admits is so 
 highly probable as to be almost certain. Why should we 
 imagine that the art of writing universal in Egypt and Baby¬ 
 lon was forgotten, especially when the Jews were in constant 
 intercourse with surrounding nations who all possessed the 
 art ? 
 
 For two or three centuries, the Hebrews held their own as 
 what might be called a loosely federated tribal republic (with 
 industries which were chiefly pastoral) under the occasional 
 guidance of local chiefs or judges, some of whom received 
 national, and not merely tribal, recognition, and the last and 
 greatest of whom was the prophet Samuel. It became neces¬ 
 sary to organise themselves as a monarchy in order to defend 
 their country against their enemies. Saul, the Benjamite, 
 was chosen 1095 B.c. and David succeeded him in 1055 b.c. 
 The incessant attacks of the Philistines were doing much, 
 while making a monarchy essential, to weld the Jewish 
 tribes into the unity of a nation, and the national idea natu- 
 
68 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 rally led David to organise the Priesthood. Under the long 
 reign of David’s magnificent successor Solomon, the Hebrews 
 reached their highest eminence as a secular polity, and ex¬ 
 tended their dominions to the Euphrates and the Red Sea. 
 After his death differences, partly political, partly religious, 
 brought about a civil war, led on the one side by Rehoboam, 
 Solomon’s son, and on the other by Jeroboam. The former 
 party represented the interests of Judah and Benjamin in the 
 south, while the latter represented Ephraim in the north. 
 Many of the original tribes, it is necessary to note, had by 
 this time become amalgamated with the more powerful ones, 
 and were largely mixed with Canaanitish elements. The 
 issue of this strife was two kingdoms — the southern, that of 
 Judah (including Benjamin) with its capital Jerusalem, and 
 the northern, Israel, with its capital Samaria. 
 
 This internal dissension led ultimately to the overthrow of 
 both kingdoms. First of all, the Israelites of the north, at¬ 
 tacked by the Assyrians, were subdued and carried off and 
 planted in Media, Assyrian colonists taking their place (720 
 B.c.). The Israelites of the northern kingdom, thus crushed 
 by the Assyrian king, are spoken of as the ‘ lost ten tribes/ 
 Those who remained (the larger number of the commonalty), 
 became mixed with immigrants, and in their religious life 
 seem to have differed little, for a time at least, from that of 
 other Semitic races round about, being especially influenced 
 by Canaanite conceptions. They ultimately organised a 
 Mosaic religion of their own based on the Law, but they 
 seem to have ignored the prophets. 
 
 The centre of Hebrew nationality was now Judah, 
 Jerusalem, and the Temple — the symbolic centre of the 
 Hebrew faith; there the true Mosaic tradition was pre¬ 
 served. But Judah did not for long escape the misfor¬ 
 tunes of her northern brethren. The Babylonian king, 
 Nebuchadnezzar, took Jerusalem, burned the Temple, and 
 carried off the leading inhabitants to Babylon (588 B.c.). 
 Cyrus gave the Jews permission to return (538), but only 
 the lower section of the people and the priests and scribes 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 69 
 
 took advantage of the permission. The Temple was rebuilt 
 516 B.c. and the priesthood began to reconstitute the doc¬ 
 trine and practice of the law. But it was not till the second 
 migration from Babylon under Ezra (458 B.c.), who was soon 
 followed by Neherniah, that the Mosaic tradition became 
 fully formulated and an elaborate ritual constituted. 
 
 The monarchy now gave way to the rule of the hereditary 
 priesthood. The real government of the Jews, accordingly, 
 was now in the hands of a senate of priests, scribes, and 
 elders called the Great Synagogue, 1 which as time went on 
 took more and more definite shape, and developed into the 
 famous Sanhedrin. The form of government was a natural 
 development of the governing idea of the Hebrew race, which 
 was a strictly religious idea. 
 
 It is a question whether any portion of the Pentateuchal 
 books was committed to writing before the time of Josiah 
 (640 B.c.), and certain critics maintain that the Law as a 
 whole was written under the direction of Ezra and ETehe- 
 miah. I think we may safely conclude that the Law could 
 not have been invented and suddenly sprung upon the 
 people. Its root ideas had been orally handed down from 
 Moses, and doubtless grew and expanded, partly as oral 
 tradition, partly as written documents, as generations suc¬ 
 ceeded each other until the time of the Exile. 
 
 The written as well as the oral law was now enforced, 
 and the beginning laid of an organised system of legal 
 formalism and of ecclesiastical ceremonial which in the 
 course of time became oppressive. All religious ideas 
 when reduced to a system by an official body have a ten¬ 
 dency to become formal and external. The formulation, 
 however, preserves the substance of the living doctrine ; and 
 so we find in the case of the Jews. The legal and cere¬ 
 monial system was not only conservative of past history 
 and religious tradition, but it secured the unity of the Jewish 
 race, and made that unity independent of a political nation¬ 
 ality. The Jews long before the Christian era were an 
 
 1 Probably not formally organised under this name. 
 
70 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 emigrating people and were dispersed over the cities of the 
 East and of the Mediterranean. 1 The body of doctrine 
 and ritual sustained them in their existence among the 
 nations as a ‘ peculiar people.’ 
 
 Mosaism and the Priesthood, Prophets, and Scribes, 
 as educational forces. — Whatever other gods might have 
 been worshipped by the Hebrews at local altars ( c liigh 
 places and under green trees ’) during the nomadic, and 
 even during the more settled agricultural period after Samuel 
 (and these gods were various, and increased in number under 
 the influence of neighbouring and immigrant populations), 
 they yet, as a nation, preserved a distinctive religious belief 
 and character which marked them off from other branches 
 of the Semites. From the time of Moses they had unques¬ 
 tionably a theology and a law. Deep in the traditional life of 
 the people, though often doubtless confined in its outward 
 manifestations to the conservative priestly order or the reform¬ 
 ing prophets, was the idea of Jahveh — Sole God. Hot merely 
 a God above other gods within the nation (for within the 
 nation he was alone God and a 'jealous’ God), but above all 
 gods recognised among the superstitious and idolatrous 
 cotemporary peoples. This God was One and Sole — Being 
 universal and yet personal — ‘ I am that I am ’; and he was 
 a God moreover of ethical attributes, comprehending in Him¬ 
 self the idea of moral law and proclaiming the duty of the 
 believer to the law. The Infinite God was thus in 'personal 
 relation to man as a moral finite being; — and, accordingly, 
 we may say with truth that it was among the Jews that God 
 first began to dwell with man. To Moses and the develop¬ 
 ment of his teaching the world owes, not perhaps the idea 
 of God as One and Sole Supreme Spirit (for the Zoroastrians 
 independently attained to this), but the more practical con- 
 v ception of God as a self-subsistent moral personality in 
 
 1 Alexander the Great and one of his generals who became king of Egypt 
 carried off many to people Alexandria Cyrene ; and these spread through 
 Egypt and along the northern coast of Africa. 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 71 
 
 direct relation with the finite spirit of the rational creature. 
 For this and the sublime expression of exalted spirituality 
 which by natural development arose out of it, the world 
 owes a permanent debt to the Hebrews. They had little 
 art and no science. The energy of the race was concentrated 
 on a great central thought and its logical issues; and with 
 this remarkable result, that the pure literature contained in 
 the Old Testament is as true an expression of the relation 
 of the devout soul to God to-day as it was 2500 years ago: 
 and, as such, it can never be superseded. The Mosaic idea 
 was a protest against idolatry and nature-worship on the 
 one hand, and Pantheism on the other. To trace the grad¬ 
 ual growth of the primary Mosaic conception is not our 
 business. Enough, from the point of view of the education 
 of the human race and specially of the Jews themselves, that 
 at the date of the canon of Ezra we not only have the final 
 formulation of the priestly tradition of the Law, but, above 
 all, the completed spiritual interpretation of the prophets. 
 
 The priesthood in the earlier times discharged the public 
 function of sacrificing (I say ‘ public ’ because private offer¬ 
 ings and sacrifices were common among the Israelites, 
 as among all nations, and did not require the official pres¬ 
 ence of a priest). It is not to be alleged against them, as 
 in any way detracting from the sacredness of their office, 
 as intermediaries for the ascertainment of the will of 
 Jahveh, that they shared the belief in magic and incanta¬ 
 tions common to all races of mankind, and that, by lending 
 themselves to the interpretation of dreams and the prediction 
 of events, they often prostituted their true function. Perhaps 
 the most important characteristic of the priesthood as educator 
 of the nation, was its relation to civil affairs. The priests gave 
 advice to the people, they issued judicial decisions on questions 
 brought before them, and gave shelter against oppression. 
 The unwritten Law (Torah) was gradually built up by them. 
 I am here summarising their functions, while of course 
 recognising to the full its irregular action and gradual devel¬ 
 opment. ‘They shall teach Jacob thy judgments and Israel 
 
72 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 tliy Law’ (Deut. xxxiii. 10) may have been written down, 
 for all I know, on parchment for the first time in the days 
 of Josiah or Ezra, but it was an ex post facto writing. Mr. 
 Montefiore quotes from Professor Stade as follows: ‘No one 
 in old Israel was more capable of protecting the unfortunate 
 from oppression, of punishing the injustice of the mighty, 
 and thus of strengthening the moral conscience, softening- 
 public manners, and educating society, than the priests. . . . 
 Their importance for the development of religion, justice, 
 and public morality cannot be too highly estimated.’ That 
 their full organisation did not take place till the time of 
 David does not affect the truth of this. Thus the close connec¬ 
 tion between religion, morality, and civil polity gave a posi¬ 
 tion of power to the priesthood much greater than that found 
 among other nations. At the same time it saved the priest¬ 
 hood from exclusive and esoteric beliefs, and from the proud 
 isolation of a class. Civil law and social practices were mere 
 n/ deductions from the Divine law. The banal distinction be¬ 
 tween sacred and secular, from which modern Europe suffers, 
 did not exist. The Levites were ministers to the Aaronic 
 priests, but could not themselves perform the highest functions. 
 
 In the Mosaic idea of God we have the Semitic mind on 
 its highest plane of religious possibility; however restricted 
 by national limits that God might be, it was still an ever- 
 potent educative force of a progressive kind. And we are 
 not surprised to find that, ere long, the higher minds of the 
 nation began to recognise its full significance. The masses 
 of the people accepted Jahveh as a great self-subsistent 
 moral being with whom they had a covenant of works very 
 much of the nature of a business contract. He was doubt¬ 
 less to the people, till post-exilic times, a mere God of the 
 Hebrews whose seat was Sinai, and the worship of Him 
 did not preclude the worship of other gods. But the more 
 thoughtful spirits evolved out of the whole a nobler and freer 
 spiritual life than any mere official priesthood could have 
 conceived. These men were called the prophets; they began 
 to prophesy a purely spiritual faith as early as the eighth 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 73 
 
 century B. c., although we are justified in holding that from 
 Samuel downwards the larger conceptions were steadily 
 growing, though probably confined to a restricted class. 
 The prophets, until post-exilic times, represent in their 
 teaching the highest education — an education which, in its 
 highest as in its lowest form, was always religious. They 
 maintained the idea of Jahveh in all its purity. They did 
 not disdain the ritual and ceremonials of the Law, hut they 
 represented the spirit and not the mere outward form of 
 Hebraism, and were distinguished by profound thought, theo¬ 
 logical and ethical. They thus exercised a powerful influence 
 on the life and polity of the Jews, recalling princes and peo¬ 
 ple alike to the worship of the true God, and that ‘ in spirit 
 and in truth.’ They held, even more than the priestly order, 
 the principles of the theocratic constitution of society, but in 
 a broader and more liberal sense. The gradually increasing 
 psalter was meanwhile giving lyrical expression to intense re¬ 
 ligious emotion, and supporting the high prophetic teaching. 
 
 During this prophetic period down to the Exile, the 
 class of scribes (bookmen is the translation of the Hebrew), 
 mostly, doubtless, belonging to the priestly, or at least Leviti- 
 cal, order, were growing in importance. Priests and scribes 
 do not seem, however, to have been strictly differentiated 
 till after the Exile. The chief function of the former was 
 the Temple services, of the latter the preservation and 
 teaching of the Law. Temple and Law, it has been said, 
 imply priest and scribe. The scribe always comprised many 
 members of the priest class, but the function was one 
 which was during the prophetic period, no less than in the 
 post-exilic, open to laymen as in Egypt. Their precise func¬ 
 tion before the exile is not ascertained; but we may infer 
 from the word itself and from the early traditional influence 
 of Egypt, that they were engaged in such transcriptions of 
 sacred and historical literature as were required. 1 They also 
 
 1 J have read much, merely as a layman desirous to get at the truth as 
 regards the Israelites, and it appears to me that to the historian it matters 
 little whether the Hexateuch was formulated after the Captivity or not. In 
 
74 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 acted as notaries among the people. After the exile, how¬ 
 ever, and the cessation of the Great Synagogue, those who 
 followed this function were the recognised Masters of the 
 ‘ law and the prophets ’ and continuators of tradition. They 
 thus constituted a learned and progressive lay order of stu¬ 
 dents and teachers, apart from, but not necessarily in opposi¬ 
 tion to, the sacrificial priesthood. I write of these things in 
 general terms because I cannot find that there is a consensus 
 
 O 
 
 of opinion as to the details of the organisation of priest and 
 scribe and their mutual relations after the Exile. The fact of 
 the rise of the scribes to importance as an academic class is 
 enough for the purposes of a student of education. 1 
 
 We thus find among the Jews three classes of men, all of 
 whom were engaged in the preservation and gradual develop- 
 
 countries like Egypt, where the people had a mania for recording all contem¬ 
 porary events on stone or papyrus, oral tradition was superseded; but in the 
 rise of other civilisations we find that the handing down orally of sacred doc¬ 
 trines with their ever-growing accretions, w r as common. Even in post-exilic 
 times we find this practice in Judaea when writing might have been alone 
 resorted to. It is only ignorance of the origins of the religious scriptures of 
 other nations which would make us doubt the possibility of the substantial 
 truth of a Jewish pre-exilic tradition of the Law. The formulation may have 
 begun in the reign of Josiah, say about 630 b. c., and have been completed by 
 Ezra; but it was the formulation of what already existed and had been pre¬ 
 served by the priesthood, partly at least in writing. No one, I suppose, asserts 
 that all the details of the ceremonial law are Mosaic. It is enough that we 
 recognise a growth out of a central idea and see the fruitful beginnings of the 
 Law carried out by the priesthood, and illuminated by the prophets, and at a 
 certain date (post-exilic) taking systematic written form. This is the com¬ 
 mon history of national religions ; and I do not see why we should be so 
 unhistorical, and therefore so unscientific, as to treat the organised Jewish 
 system very much as if it were an invention of Ezra and Nehemiah. In the 
 case of a tradition chiefly oral and only partly written and wholly edited 
 with a purpose, one would expect composite books. Of course, I cannot speak 
 as an expert, but the ‘ intelligent layman ’ has his rights. I would, in this 
 connection, direct special attention to Professor Robertson's Early Religion oj 
 Israel . 
 
 1 With scribes on one side of them in Egypt, and on the other in Babylon 
 and Assyria, it is surely quite in accordance with recognised historical prin¬ 
 ciples to regard the scribe organisation after the Exile as merely a develop¬ 
 ment of an order which had existed in some form or other from the time o! 
 Samuel at least. 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 75 
 
 ment of the Mosaic monotheism, the Sinaitic moral law 1 and 
 the civil law based on it. The literature of the country, 
 lyrical, historical, and theological, all gathered round the one 
 central thought of Jaliveh. The ‘ masses’ were continually 
 falling into idolatry and forgetting the best tradition of their 
 fathers; but under the influence of the ‘ classes,’ of whom we 
 have been speaking, the great tradition was always living 
 and gradually developing (especially from 800 B. c. onwards) 
 from a tribal religion with its tribal god who, though supreme, 
 admitted of the worship of other gods, into a religion of 
 genuine monotheism and of universal characteristics. The 
 God of the Jews, as conceived by the prophets and psalmists, 
 a God of justice, truth, and compassion, might indeed have 
 become the recognised God of the whole earth but for the 
 over-elaboration of religious observances and legal technical¬ 
 ities by the post-exilic scribes. 
 
 The tribe of Semites out of whom came Genesis, the Book 
 of Job, the Psalms, the eloquent utterances of the Prophets, 
 the Proverbs, and the post-exilic Book of Wisdom, stands 
 apart from all other ancient races, and was manifestly des¬ 
 tined for a special mission to the world. When we bear in 
 mind too, the concentrated intensity of the Jewish personal 
 character, and of their family life, we see in the very narrow¬ 
 ness which accompanied that intensity, the possibility of 
 going far. The ‘ I am that I am ’ of Moses, whether promul¬ 
 gated in these abstract terms by him or not, and, though to 
 the masses for centuries little more than a tribal God, as 
 was the case with the primitive gods of all nations, was yet a 
 spiritual God who brooked no equal. The idea had a power¬ 
 ful formative influence ; and this all the more because it was 
 possible for the primary conception to be identified in the 
 course of time with an Universal Unseen self-conscious Spirit. 
 Moreover, this God Jahveh, as I have pointed out, was not 
 
 1 I am quite well aware that the Decalogue, as we have it, is ascribed to 
 the reign of Josiah ; but I cannot but conclude that the elements of the Deca¬ 
 logue were contained in the Law imposed by Moses. Much of it may be 
 found in the Egyptian religion (Confession before Osiris). 
 
76 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 only a spiritual but an ethical Being, concerned in the moral 
 order and having personal relations to all His creatures. It 
 is true that the observances of thanksgiving and sacrifice and 
 of formal obedience to the law which this God demanded of 
 all had very much the air of a business contract, as I have 
 indicated above, in which each side was expected to fulfil his 
 respective obligations; but none the less was the idea moral¬ 
 ising, and itself sufficient to educate a primitive race, while in 
 the hands of the prophets it expanded into a pure spiritualism. 
 And are we not sane historians when we add that, whatever 
 might be the defections of the Israelites, however gradual their 
 religious growth, what may be called the Mosaic idea of 
 Jahveh must have contained the germ of such possibilities, 
 and, consequently, have been from the first a God unlike the 
 other gods of the Canaanites ? 
 
 EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG AMONG THE JEWS GENERALLY 
 
 If we take a general, and at the same time, it is to be 
 admitted, a somewhat ideal, view of the education of the 
 Jewish race, we shall find its beginnings and its specific 
 character expressed in the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy: — 
 
 ‘ Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And 
 thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and 
 with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, 
 which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and 
 thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt 
 talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when 
 thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and 
 when thou risest up.’ 
 
 The father and mother were thus the divinely appointed 
 teachers. As has been said, ‘ The dwellings of Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob were at once house, school, state, and 
 church.’ The family life was intense, and the more so that 
 the Law thus directly addressed parents and placed on them 
 the responsibility for the moral and spiritual well-being of 
 their children. To the Jews more than to any other race we 
 may apply the words of Shakespeare: 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 77 
 
 Let never clay nor night unhallowed pass, 
 
 But still remember what the Lord hatli done. 
 
 2 Henry VI. ii. 
 
 As might be expected, respect for parents and elders was 
 rigidly enforced. 
 
 Thou shalt honour thy father and thy mother, &c. 
 
 Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head. 
 
 The family bond, so potent among the Jews, embraced 
 God Himself, demanding, as Father of the race, implicit 
 obedience from His children. 
 
 If we may infer from the Proverbs of Solomon that max¬ 
 ims and reflections such as are collected in that book were 
 in general currency, we may further conclude that the 
 domestic education was powerfully reinforced by traditions 
 of practical wisdom. The Book of Ruth also could have 
 emanated only from a people sensitive to the finer and more 
 spiritual significance of domestic relations, while the post- 
 exilic Book of Wisdom gives us a religious philosophy of 
 life. Accordingly, we may say that a present God, whom to 
 fear was ‘ the beginning of wisdom,’ the honouring of par¬ 
 ents and elders, a sacred family life, the memory of a great 
 history, the practical wisdom of proverbs, and a gradually 
 growing lyric psalmody, constituted the elements of the 
 education of the masses down to the time of the Exile. 
 ‘ My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not 
 the law of thy mother ’ (Prov. i. 7). Ho special public 
 means, however, were taken by the Jews any more than by 
 other nations to give education to the people, so that the 
 fundamental conception of the ecpiality of all before God, a 
 thoroughly Jewish idea, remained a barren conception so far 
 as organised action to raise all to a certain level of intelli¬ 
 gence and moral life was concerned. In post-exilic times it 
 was otherwise. 
 
 Such, speaking generally , were the life and education of 
 the Jewish people; but to understand them more fully we 
 
78 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 must look at them in their historical development. The 
 domestic tradition varied, and, as generation succeeded gen¬ 
 eration, grew richer and fuller. It is true that among the 
 Jews, as among all other nations in pre-christian times, the 
 culture of the period, whatever it might be, was confined to 
 the upper classes of priest, scribe, prophet, and the lay aris¬ 
 tocracy. On the other hand, every nation, as a whole , lives 
 in a certain atmosphere of religion and morality, and all 
 participate, in part at least, in the life and thought of the 
 more educated. All are borne along in the main current. 
 I think we may say that this was the case among the Jews 
 more than in any other ancient nation. Their literature was 
 of a grave, thoughtful, and earnest type, and it might be 
 said that it was above the understanding of the mass; hut 
 none the less was it the expression of the true life and char¬ 
 acter of the people, permanent and enduring amidst all their 
 deviations from the path pointed out to them by Moses and 
 the prophets. 
 
 In truth, from Moses downwards even to this day, the 
 central religious conception of the Jewish mind was the 
 great educative force, both in its early rudimentary, and 
 later universalised, form. But in the case of a people which 
 had so long a history and encountered such varying fortunes, 
 it is necessary to look at their education as it existed at dif¬ 
 ferent periods of their civilisation. 
 
 EPOCHS OF JEWISH EDUCATION 
 
 We may distinguish four epochs of Jewish education. 
 
 The First Period 
 
 The first period extends from the emigration from Egypt 
 down to Samuel and Saul. Samuel died 1043 B.c. During 
 this period the Hebrews were still largely a pastoral and 
 wandering race, and were fighting for the conservation of 
 such permanent settlements as they had made. The differ¬ 
 ent tribes were very loosely connected. The centre of the 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 79 
 
 Mosaic teaching was to be found with the ark and the Tab¬ 
 ernacle, which were in the keeping of the Aaronic priestly 
 family. Local altars were erected by the people in various 
 places and sacrifices offered, not always to Jahveh alone; for 
 in very many cases the tribes had lapsed into idolatries. 
 And yet in the domestic teaching of the rising generation the 
 Mosaic ideas of “ God and Lord ” could not have been any¬ 
 where wholly lost. The effect of this tradition in moulding 
 the character of the Hebrews must have been great. The 
 existence and recognition of leaders or tribal captains, under 
 the name of judges, in whose hands lay the application to 
 the ordinary affairs of life of the Mosaic teaching, concurred 
 with the one central Tabernacle and its priesthood to main¬ 
 tain a certain unity of belief and life, spite of constant lapses 
 into idolatries. The movement favoured by Samuel which 
 led to the anointing of a king is itself evidence that notwith¬ 
 standing many backslidings, the national unity, as consti¬ 
 tuted by the idea of Jahveh, was profoundly felt. The 
 education of the people by this idea was going on. National 
 songs were handed down along with the national history and 
 religious festivals. Writing in the form of inscriptions on 
 stone was known, and writing, it is said also, on parchment 
 or paper; but this only as the accomplishment of a few. 
 
 Even the education of the priesthood must have been 
 entirely confined to preserving and extending the Mosaic 
 tradition. We must remember, however, that in the case of 
 the Jews this tradition, as I have shown, meant a great deal. 
 For the religious and civil polity were not dissociated. 
 Morality, civil law, and religion were one; and these, too, 
 were bound up with a great history. We find during this 
 period the existence of what survived even after the destruc¬ 
 tion of the Jewish nationality — the interweaving of religious 
 feeling with the moral law and the civil law. The distribu¬ 
 tion of the Levites among the tribes must have helped to 
 maintain the tradition of the law among the whole body of 
 the people. Some learned Jews who write on the education 
 of their race would claim a knowledge of mathematics, geog- 
 
PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 80 
 
 raphy, and history for the Levitic scribes during this early 
 period. But there is no evidence of this. 
 
 The Second Period 
 
 The second period extends from Samuel till 538 B.c. — the 
 return from the Babylonian Captivity. The Hebrews had 
 now become an agricultural, as well as pastoral, people, liv¬ 
 ing for the most part in villages and cities, from which they 
 went out to their daily work. They were consequently in 
 closer communication with each other. But as regards the 
 mass of the people there is not yet evidence of any instruc¬ 
 tion save that which oral tradition afforded. Sacrifices at 
 local altars (though often taking the form of idolatrous ser¬ 
 vices) doubtless helped to maintain this. Boys accompanied 
 their fathers to their daily labour at the field or workshop, 
 girls were trained at home in domestic arts, cooking, weav¬ 
 ing, and the making of garments. Music, dancing, and song 
 were practised, and there can he no reasonable doubt that 
 during this period many of the psalms were composed, and 
 influenced, while expressing, the life of a considerable portion 
 at least among the population. The erection of the Temple, 
 to which all citizens were required to repair at certain periods, 
 helped to give unity to religious belief, and intensify the 
 national feeling. 
 
 Education of the higher section of Society. — The 
 
 priesthood, as the depositary of the growing historical and 
 judicial literature, was daily extending the moral and civil 
 law which was studied as part of its function, while scribes 
 (generally Levites, if not priests of the higher order) seem to 
 have been employed to make transcriptions. The scribes 
 also acquired a certain knowledge of the law and acted as 
 notaries among the people and helpers in the adjusting of diffi¬ 
 culties. (For the early existence of scribes, vide Joshua 
 xviii. 9.) 
 
 But the most interesting fact during this period was the 
 rise of the prophets, who are mentioned as early as Samuel. 
 There can be little doubt, I think, that these bands of men 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 81 
 
 had, to begin with, a very loose organisation, and might be 
 regarded as religious revivalists — many of them wild, un¬ 
 educated, and fanatical. But from among them came the 
 greatest Jewish intellects. From the eighth century to the 
 fifth century B.C. we have such of their writings as have sur¬ 
 vived, and they constitute a permanent part of world-litera¬ 
 ture. The prophets were, as I have already said, cpiite 
 outside thg ceremonial priesthood, and as a body they had 
 for their aim the maintenance and purifying of the idea of 
 Jahveh in its monotheistic and ethical sense. Their text 
 was, * I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of 
 God more than burnt offerings/ That there were fortune¬ 
 tellers and hypocrites among those who assumed the name is 
 not to be doubted; that most of them believed in divination 
 and magic, is only to say that they belonged to their own 
 period of world-history; that many of them used their sup¬ 
 posed magical powers for their own pecuniary profit is only 
 to say that they were men. Take them as a whole, however, 
 the formative principle which entered into this new organisa¬ 
 tion was a spiritual one. They generally lived in community, 
 and tradition says that they occupied rude huts of their own 
 erection, and wore a characteristic dress. Confraternities 
 (sometimes called schools) arose in connection with this move¬ 
 ment ; we find them (though not as contemporary institu¬ 
 tions) at Gibea, Rama, Bethel, Jericho, and Gilgal. 1 Let us 
 specially note that the students in these schools were not nec¬ 
 essarily Levites. Prophets were essentially a lay order, and 
 it may almost be said that they stood to the religious and 
 social life of the time very much in the relation in which 
 some of the monastic orders stood to European society in the 
 eleventh and twelfth centuries. These prophets and ‘ sons of 
 the prophets ’ as (the aspirants were called) constituted (ac¬ 
 cording to Rabbinical tradition) colleges numbering from 
 fifty to four hundred which were somewhat of the nature of 
 
 1 I follow in all this the Jewish tradition. ‘ The higher criticism ’ rejects 
 mnch of what I say. In the pages that precede there is nothing inconsistent 
 with the best results of the ‘ higher criticism.’ 
 
 6 
 
82 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 theological institutions, and were presided over by a senior 
 member formally elected. Music and sacred poetry were 
 studied as well as the profounder aspects of theology. Out 
 of these ‘ schools/ or at least out of this class, came the 
 national poets and historians. As preachers, the prophets 
 promulgated the righteous government of the world ; they 
 inculcated morals and taught a spiritual life far transcending 
 the religion of mere Temple services, protesting also against 
 the idolatries and immorality often associated with worship 
 in the ‘ high places/ The existence of this class is the most 
 interesting fact in the higher education of the Jews. Whether 
 the tradition as given above is to be accepted or not in all its 
 details, it is substantially true. The actual organisation of 
 colleges may be more than questionable. 
 
 During this period, writing became customary, and priestly 
 decisions on questions of law were thus preserved while co¬ 
 temporary historical records were made, or added to. The 
 accumulation of legal decisions added to the learning and 
 importance of the sacerdotal class, many of whom were also 
 scribes. 
 
 While it cannot be said that the education of the people, 
 as a whole, had altered its domestic and traditionary form, 
 this is not true of the higher section of society from David 
 onwards. It is not to be supposed that the prophets spoke 
 to empty air : they had an audience, and such of their lofty 
 spiritual conceptions as found expression in lyrics would 
 easily find their way even among the masses. We are, in¬ 
 deed, quite justified in dating the fact and influence of the 
 prophets from Samuel onwards. For it is in direct contra¬ 
 diction of all the principles applied to historical investigation 
 to imagine that men like Amos and Hosea had no prede¬ 
 cessors. ‘ The condition we find prevailing at the time of 
 the first admitted literary compositions implies an antecedent 
 period of literary activity and religious education ’ (Professor 
 Robertson, p. 70). And the words of Amos and Hosea 
 themselves (see the passages quoted by Professor Robertson) 
 fully justify our conclusions, if it be the truth we seek and not 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 83 
 
 the cheap reputation of the man who is up to the fashion of 
 the hour in criticism. The existence of the prophets, I have 
 said, implies an audience and numerous sympathisers, while 
 the existence of written prophecies presumes that there were 
 people who can read them. That writing and reading were 
 pretty widely spread during the latter half of the period of 
 which I am speaking there can be no reasonable doubt. It 
 does not follow that there were ‘ schools ’ in our modern sense 
 of the word. Priests and scribes would, according to the uni¬ 
 versal Oriental custom, be taught at the Temple, or wherever 
 there were priests; and it is probable that the teaching was 
 individual teaching. 
 
 While it is doubtless correct to say that reading of MS. 
 rolls and writing were confined to the upper section of 
 society, we are not to conclude that the teaching of the grow¬ 
 ing literature of the nation did not reach the masses of the 
 people, and influence, if not mould, their lives. Amos himself 
 was one of the people. It is only the other day that the arts 
 of reading and writing were unknown to the masses in Eng¬ 
 land. 
 
 The Third Period 
 
 PERIOD OF THE SCRIBE AND THE SYNAGOGUE 
 (Decree of Cyrus 537 b. c. Ezra 458 b. c.) 
 
 After the rebuilding of the Temple (the dedication was 
 516 b. c.) and the return of Ezra (458 B. c.), we have a new 
 development. For a time, the Judaic organisation, never 
 fully expressed or stringently enforced owing to the constant 
 lapse of kings and people into Canaanitish and Phoenician 
 idolatries, had been broken in pieces. Semitic immigrants had 
 found their way into the southern as they had formerly done 
 into the northern kingdom, and the memory of the Mosaic 
 tradition and all that so signally differentiated the Hebrews 
 from other Semites had been imperilled. The most strenu¬ 
 ous efforts were now made to restore what had been lost and 
 to formulate the whole Jewish conception of theocratic tradi- 
 
84 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 tion. More than ever before, we now find a polity organised 
 on the basis of a common religious idea and administered by 
 religious functionaries. The high priest was now the true 
 king, and the council or senate of which he was president, 
 composed of elders and scribes as well as priests, governed 
 all things both civil and ecclesiastical. 
 
 The prophets now disappear, but they had left behind a 
 rich inheritance to the people. Their lofty utterances were 
 now, as written documents, accessible to all who could read 
 or listen intelligently to reading, and must have been in the 
 highest degree educative. For what had been their aim from 
 the time of Amos and Hosea in the eighth century B. c. ? To 
 abolish all idolatry and to purify and exalt the popular con¬ 
 ceptions of the national God, as the God of the human race, 
 who cared less even for Israel than for righteousness. They 
 taught that the right, the just, the good were the attributes 
 of Jehovah, and thus gave him an universal character. All 
 nations were to be brought to Him. He was no longer the 
 mere ‘ Hearer ’ of Israel. Priestly sacrifices were as nothing 
 in the eyes of the universal God of heaven and earth, com¬ 
 pared with integrity of heart and purity of conduct. In 
 truth, religious faith and philosophic contemplation of the 
 graver aspects of human life had reached in the writings of 
 the prophets and in the psalter to the highest expression 
 which the world had ever seen or, probably, ever will see. 
 These writings were now the possession of the nation, al¬ 
 though for want of schools they could influence them only 
 through the priestly and higher classes. Their teaching, 
 however, would receive confirmation and an ever-fresh im¬ 
 pulse from the prescribed periodical visits to the Temple. 
 
 Higher Education. — Meanwhile there was arising a 
 class of learned men side by side with the priesthood. The 
 scribes, who had been coming more into prominence even 
 before the Exile, had, before 300 B.c., become an important 
 order. As the name and function of scribe was open to all, 
 it is to be regarded as a lay order like the schools of the 
 prophets. A priest or Levite might be a scribe, but the pro- 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 85 
 
 fession was not confined to any order. Men of various occu¬ 
 pations were also scribes. Ezra, fifth century B.c., was both 
 priest and scribe. After the return from the Captivity the 
 scribe class gradually increased in number. They became 
 in fact the learned and legal class, and as such the more 
 eminent of them were teachers — expounders of the law. 
 They also extended the law by their glosses and interpreta¬ 
 tions. The prophets were thus practically superseded by a 
 written law and an authoritative oral interpretation, out of 
 which came the Talmud. 
 
 The legal tradition of the scribes, based on the law, was 
 oral, and the amount of memory work demanded of those 
 who would excel in this profession as teachers or advisers 
 was very great. They taught chiefly in the porches of the 
 Temple (the headquarters being Jerusalem) and in syna¬ 
 gogues, and gradually the whole law and its application to 
 the affairs of life fell into their hands. Unless they had pri¬ 
 vate means they did not always devote themselves exclusively 
 to study and teaching, but followed also some special indus¬ 
 try. These schools of the scribes were also headquarters of 
 disputation by which difficult points were settled. Their 
 teaching was for all, there being nothing esoteric in Judaism. 
 They came to be known in the beginning of the Christian 
 era as the ‘ Rabbinical ’ schools, and acquired gradually an in¬ 
 fluence with the people greater than that of the priests. The 
 heads of these schools were first technically called ‘ Rabbins ’ 
 (Masters) about the time of Christ. 
 
 It was a great fall, certainly, from the schools of the 
 prophets to the schools of the scribes — from the spiritual 
 life to the formal, legal, and external; but unquestionably 
 the gradual multiplication of legal dicta and prescriptions and 
 of ritual observances tended to preserve the Jewish nation in 
 its exclusiveness and in ‘ soundness of faith.’ The instruc¬ 
 tion of youth formed one of the chief functions of the order. 
 ‘ Every eminent teacher of the law . . . collected round him 
 a larger or smaller number of young men,’ says Schiirer, ‘who 
 desired to be educated by him so as to become capable scribes. 
 With this purpose in view there existed school-houses in 
 
86 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 which the law was methodically taught. In Jerusalem they 
 assembled in the outer porch of the Temple. Teachers and 
 scholars sat, the teacher being generally raised a little above 
 the level of his pupils. The instruction was oral and dispu- 
 tatory. The teacher asked, how must it be done (or deter¬ 
 mined) in this or that case. And the scholars had to answer. 
 They were also at liberty to put questions to the teacher/ 
 The great aim was to receive in the memory, and to reproduce, 
 what was taught; and this latter in identical terms. The 
 pupil, as was the general Oriental practice, hung on the lips 
 of his master. All this presumed a prior elementary instruc¬ 
 tion, but this must have been, largely at least, domestic, for 
 there is no evidence of the existence of elementary schools. 
 
 During the centuries immediately preceding the birth of 
 Christ, the growing power of the scribe (or Eabbinical) schools 
 threw the priesthood more and more into the shade, confin¬ 
 ing them to functions of sacrifice, ceremonial, and govern¬ 
 ment. After the destruction of the Temple by the Romans, 
 a.d. 70, the teaching scribes called Rabbins finally superseded 
 the priesthood. This development of a learned order is the 
 leading fact of this period of Jewish educational history. 
 Besides the interpretation of written statutes by common 
 sense, these teachers and expounders of the law believed that 
 they alone were the vehicles of the development of the Mosaic 
 law outside the Torah or Pentateuch. This unwritten and 
 ever-growing tradition (Massorah and Kabbala) gave them 
 great power. 
 
 In these schools of the scribes all learning was concen¬ 
 trated, but the priesthood and the higher laity generally 
 shared in the educational advance. The learning of the 
 time entered into the higher course of study — not only 
 mathematics and astronomy, but, from the third century B. c., 
 Hellenic literature and philosophy. 
 
 Popular Education. — But while the higher classes of 
 the community shared in the progressive movement which 
 was in the hands of the scribes, an educational change had 
 begun among the masses of the people of still greater sig¬ 
 nificance than the schools of the scribes. This was the 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 87 
 
 gradual institution, from the time of Ezra, of synagogues 
 throughout the land, where the law might be weekly read and 
 expounded to the people, and prayer and praise offered. We 
 can easily see that the influence of these local schools of re¬ 
 ligion must have been incalculable. Young and old benefited 
 by them. It was, doubtless, to the Central Council at Jeru¬ 
 salem constituted in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah that the 
 Jews owed these institutions—the prototype of the Christian 
 parochial system. Scribes read and taught in the synagogues ; 
 but it was competent for the elders of the people to conduct 
 service, so that here again as in the case of the prophets, we 
 have cropping out the essentially lay and unsacerdotal char¬ 
 acter of the most theocratic of races. All the people might 
 now be regarded as students of the law and the prophets. 
 In the fourth century B. c. there were synagogues in all 
 towns, and in the second century in villages also. 
 
 Dean Milman says, speaking of this movement: ‘ In ad¬ 
 dition to the central Temple and its ceremonial the Jew now 
 had his synagogue — where, in a smaller community, he as¬ 
 sembled, with a few of his neighbours, for divine worship, 
 for prayer, and for instruction in the law. The latter more 
 immediately, and gradually the former, fell entirely under 
 the regulation of the regular interpreter of the law, who, we 
 may say, united the professions of the clergy and the law — 
 the clergy considered as public instructors; for the law- 
 school and the synagogue were always closely connected, if 
 they did not form parts of the same building. Thus there 
 arose in the state the curious phenomenon of a spiritual 
 supremacy distinct from the priesthood, for though many of 
 these teachers were actually priests and Levites, they were 
 not necessarily so — a supremacy which exercised the most 
 unlimited dominion, not formally recognised by the consti¬ 
 tution, but not the less real and substantial, for it was 
 grounded in the general belief, ruled by the willing obedi¬ 
 ence of its subjects, and was rooted in the very minds and 
 hearts of the people, till at length the maxim was openly 
 promulgated, “ the voice of the Babbi the voice of God.” 
 Thus, though the high priest was still the formal and ac- 
 
88 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 knowledged head of the state, the real influence passed away 
 to these recognised interpreters of the divine word.’ (Mil- 
 man, ii. 410). The attendant or beadle of the synagogue, it is 
 said, taught the children during the week, and thus the syna¬ 
 gogues gradually became schools for the young as well as 
 the adult. But it is not to be inferred from this that even 
 so late as three centuries B.c., instruction in reading, writing, 
 and arithmetic reached any, save a small proportion of the 
 general population, except in so far as it was home teaching. 1 
 This proportion, however, went on increasing, and, it would 
 appear, with considerable rapidity, after the Maccabean re¬ 
 volt, 167 b.c. Still I think we may fairly conclude that for 
 about four centuries before Christ, elementary instruction 
 was generally accessible through individual public teaching 
 or parental teaching, and that clever and energetic boys 
 could thus raise themselves above the humbler ranks of 
 poverty. Popular education was, however, education by the 
 synagogue , which brought home to every small community 
 of Jews the central idea of their faith and the system of 
 morality, law, and ritual based on it. Speaking of the 
 synagogue Wellhausen says (p. 159), ‘ The Bible became the 
 spelling-book, the community a school, religion an affair of 
 teaching and learning. Piety and education were inseparable. 
 Whoever could not read was no true Jew.’ 
 
 The services of the synagogue were: 1. The recital of 
 what was substantially a Creed. 2. Prayer. 3. Reading 
 and expounding of Scripture. 4. The Blessing. And the 
 whole was under the general control of a Board of Elders 
 with a chief or president. Nor did the Reader merely read: 
 he expounded, following the example of Ezra and his friends, 
 of whom Nehemiah (viii.) says, ‘ They read in the book in 
 the law of God, distinctly: and they gave the sense, so that 
 they understood the reading.’ 
 
 Quite apart, then, from the educational and formative 
 influence of the great stream of religious tradition supported 
 
 1 There is no actual evidence of the existence of schools for children before 
 200 b.c. 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 89 
 
 by sacrificial acts and solemn festivals at Jerusalem, 1 we 
 must fix attention on the pre-exilic schools of the prophets 
 and the post-exilic organisation of the scribes as truly repre¬ 
 senting the higher education of the Jews. As to the former, 
 I have already said that many who attached themselves to 
 the prophetic communities had a low enough moral standard 
 and looked to divination and soothsaying as the source of 
 their power over the people and of profit to themselves. But 
 in all religious and academic orders, we find men who fail to 
 rise to the idea which first constituted the order and con¬ 
 tinues to maintain it in existence. With all their defects 
 they were all members of a voluntary religious community 
 out of which from time to time rose men of light and lead¬ 
 ing — many doubtless whose names have perished. The 
 prophetic studies apart from theology were (tradition says, 
 and as I have already mentioned) music and verse, mathe¬ 
 matics and Chaldsean astronomy, as well as the law and 
 its spiritual interpretation. I do not mean to say that all 
 this was thoroughly organised, but it was an operative 
 reality. Nor could these communities have existed without 
 finding a response in the minds of (at least) the higher 
 classes of the community, and influencing the tone of thought 
 among the common people. To enter into this field of reli¬ 
 gious and intellectual activity it was not, let me again point 
 out, necessary to be a priest or Levite, and this is an impor¬ 
 tant fact to the historian of education. The prophets were 
 a lay order, though not excluding Levites. 
 
 After the rebuilding of the Temple (516 B.c.) although 
 we still have one or two prophets, the intellectual life of the 
 Jews passed, as we have seen, into the keeping of the 
 organised scribes. (They w^ere frequently organised into 
 Guilds.) This organisation furnished men to read and inter¬ 
 pret the law and the prophets in every part of the kingdom 
 and also among the dispersed colonies ; while public worship 
 
 1 Doubtless this kind of education was common to all nations, but it is 
 the Jcmd and quality of the tradition that is all-important as a formative 
 power. (Compare the Aztecs.) 
 
90 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 and sacrifice and the offering of incense were still centralised 
 at Jerusalem with a view to the preservation of their purity 
 (although the ark of the covenant was now lost). The 
 scribes were literary men, learned in the law, and not only 
 teachers of the law but alive to all the educational influ¬ 
 ences of their time. Hellenic speculation and literature 
 gradually found their way among them. It is not to be 
 supposed that all of this order had wide intellectual interests; 
 but among them were many who studied the Greek language 
 and literature, mathematics, foreign tongues, geography, and 
 such science as was current, including astronomy. There also 
 grew up among them a belief in immortality and the resur¬ 
 rection of the body. 1 They were, moreover, as far as the law 
 was concerned, progressive; for they assumed the authority 
 of continuous oral tradition which enabled them, by interpre¬ 
 tations and glosses and artificial constructions, to adapt the 
 law to changing circumstances. A bad use unfortunately 
 was made of this freedom to multiply forms and ceremonies, 
 and to confound the petty with the important in morality and 
 religion. Prescription and proscription of certain outward 
 acts characterised these teachings — acts which in themselves 
 had no spiritual significance. The burden which they gradu¬ 
 ally imposed on the people (as did the Brahmans in India) 
 was greater than they could bear; although the more zealous 
 delighted in it. The point of interest for us, however, is 
 that they were an educated and studious and learned body 
 of men. They had to translate the Hebrew scriptures into 
 the Aramaic dialect, for the majority had by this time ceased 
 to understand the ancient Hebrew tongue. They also formed 
 the literature of the people; for out of their schools came 
 the Talmud. The Talmud began in the production of the 
 Mishnah, a paraphrase of the law. Then followed in future 
 generations commentaries, homilies, &c., which, with a large 
 mass of oral tradition, constituted the Talmudic literature, 
 
 1 The bulk of the nation were Pharisees accepting the doctrine of the 
 scribes. The small Essenic party were an offshoot of the Pharisees with 
 mystical and ascetic beliefs. The Sadducees were chiefly a political party. 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 91 
 
 all centring round the law and its interpretation and practi¬ 
 cal application. 
 
 As tradition accumulated, the schools of the scribes, as 
 depositaries of all learning, bearing alike on the great and 
 small affairs of life, became a dominating force in the life of 
 the nation. They made their power felt as guides in the 
 whole business of life and as deciders of cases among the 
 whole population, and exercised an intellectual despotism. 
 After the fall of Jerusalem, a.d. 70, they succeeded as Rab¬ 
 bins to the position and privileges of priesthood. So great 
 was the mass of oral and written tradition that to be a worthy 
 Rabbi demanded very great learning. [It was 190 a.d. be¬ 
 fore a critical edition of the Mishnah was issued, and 270 a.d. 
 before a critically edited authoritative commentary appeared.] 
 
 I have said that, in addition to the law and the prophets 
 and the mass of oral traditions and interpretations, the Greek 
 language, Greek philosophy, and mathematics were prose¬ 
 cuted by many at least from the third century B.c. Greek 
 was esteemed more highly than all other foreign tongues, 
 and next to Hebrew was considered the most beautiful of 
 all. ‘ The Torah (Law) may be translated only into Greek, 
 because only by this language can it be faithfully rendered.’ 
 It is further said, 'the Greek language may in every respect 
 be used.’ It is true that Greek philosophy was suspected 
 and denounced by the Rabbinical doctors for manifest rea¬ 
 sons ; but not more earnestly than by the Christian church 
 after the third century a.d. The sages say of the tongue of 
 Hellas, that the words ‘ there is no blemish in her,’ may be 
 applied to it, for ‘ it distinguishes itself by a keen sense of 
 that which is perfectly noble.’ ‘ There are four languages,’ 
 observes Rabbi Nathan, ‘ which are distinguished by superior 
 and special qualities. The Greek sounds beautifully in poetry 
 on account of its rhythm; the Roman in war, on account of 
 its sonorous masculine power; the Syriac in mournful songs, 
 on account of its numerous dull, hollow vowel-sounds ; the 
 Hebrew for its clear and articulate utterance in speech.’ 
 
92 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Instruction in Greek, indeed, became quite general before 
 the birth of Christ, and a knowledge of the language formed 
 an essential part of a good higher education. 1 But the na¬ 
 tional literature, i. e. the Scriptures, the Talmudic Mishnah, 
 Gemara, &c., continued to furnish the principal material for 
 teaching in the schools. The religious aim was always dom¬ 
 inant, if not exclusive. 2 
 
 Fourth Period 
 
 PERIOD OF THE RABBIN AND THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 
 
 (From the Birth of Christ onwards) 
 
 Notwithstanding the great advance in general education 
 in the upper half of society, the majority of Jews, it is said, 
 could neither read nor write in the generation preceding the 
 birth of Christ; but this fact is comparatively unimportant. 
 It was true of England less than 100 years ago. 
 
 The chief educational feature of the period after the 
 birth of Christ is the further extension and consolidation of 
 the Scribe schools now called Babbinical schools ; and, along 
 
 7 7 O 
 
 with this, the extension of the Rabbinical power. As the 
 body of law increased in bulk, the people became more 
 and more dependent on Rabbinical experts for advice and 
 direction in their social and business relations, as well as for 
 instruction in the ‘ acts ’ of religion. An order which was 
 at once preacher, teacher, and legal adviser could not fail to 
 exercise supreme power; and, as I have already said, it 
 became, after the cessation of the Temple sacrifice (a.d. 70), 
 the sole authority. 
 
 It was not till a few years before the destruction of 
 Jerusalem that primary schools became general, and these 
 do not concern us so closely as the pre-christian education, 
 for nothing later than the second century before Christ can 
 
 1 It is probable that schools of the Hellenic type existed at Jerusalem 
 200 years b.c. 
 
 2 The vessels of the Temple were marked with Greek letters. 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 93 
 
 be regarded as of purely Israelitish growth. Hellenic 
 influences had been long felt and acknowledged at the 
 headquarters of Judaism. The settlements scattered round 
 the Mediterranean coasts had, moreover, reacted powerfully 
 even on the hierarchy at Jerusalem, as well as on the schools 
 of the scribes and had probably led to schools of the Hellenic 
 type at Jerusalem nearly 200 years B. c. 
 
 In A.D. 64 elementary schools were first made obligatory 
 by the high priest Josu6 ben Gamala. One teacher was 
 to be employed where there were 25 children, an assistant 
 when the number exceeded 25, and two teachers where the 
 number of pupils exceeded 40. These schools were now 
 everywhere diffused in the countries inhabited by Jews — 
 indeed wherever there was a synagogue. The instruction 
 was gratuitous. The introduction of alien races and religions 
 among the Jews, and the dispersion of the Jews themselves, 
 made schools for children, as well as synagogues for adults, 
 essential to the protection and preservation of the true faith. 
 It was this necessity, and the example of the Greeks, which 
 led to the general diffusion of instruction among the people. 
 Without the synagogue and its school the national tradition 
 and law would have gradually disappeared under foreign 
 influences. 
 
 It is interesting to note, however, that the Jews were the 
 first to insist on the education of the whole people. All were 
 equal before God: the law was laid on each man and was 
 not the secret of a class. 
 
 The course of instruction was as follows. From the 
 sixth to the tenth year the law (Pentateuch) was the only 
 study, along with writing and arithmetic. From the tenth 
 to the fifteenth year, the pupil was instructed in that part 
 of the Talmud called Mishnah, substantially a paraphrastic 
 development of the law. After the fifteenth year the 
 Gemara was taught. Learning by rote was an inevitable 
 and leading characteristic of such teachings. We can 
 easily understand that instruction of this kind must have 
 inflicted a grievous burden on young minds and crushed 
 
94 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 out all spontaneity of life. Doubtless this was quite under¬ 
 stood and intended by the authorities: all were to be cast 
 in one mould. Up to the age of thirteen the boy was not 
 expected to either know or fulfil the whole law. He then, 
 at the presumed age of puberty, entered on the rights and 
 duties of a full-grown Israelite. 
 
 The pupils wrote on waxen tablets with a style, and 
 when advanced, on paper or parchment with a pen, like the 
 children of the Romano-Greek world generally. 
 
 In the higher schools Greek, mathematics, and such 
 science as was known were taught. 
 
 The sole aim of female education was the making of the 
 accomplished housewife, of whom we have a description in 
 the Book of Proverbs. 
 
 That the discipline, domestic and other, was in pre- 
 christian times severe might be inferred from the intolerable 
 nature of the instruction given and from the material re¬ 
 wards and punishments which were so prominent a charac¬ 
 teristic of the Jewish religion. It is in perfect consonance 
 with the Judaic code that pain of a bodily kind should be 
 the only correction which suggested itself to the early 
 Jewish writers when they touched on education. ‘ He that 
 spareth his rod liateth his son, but he that loveth him, 
 chasteneth him betimes.’ — Prov. xiii. 24. ‘ Chasten thy son, 
 
 seeing there is hope, and set not thy heart on his destruc¬ 
 tion.’ — Prov. xix. 18. ‘ Foolishness is bound up in the heart 
 
 of the child ; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from 
 him.’— Prov. xxii. 15. ‘Withhold not correction from the 
 child; for if thou beat him with the rod, he shall not die. 
 Thou shalt beat him with the rod and shalt deliver his soul 
 from Sheol’ — Prov. xxiii. 13. In Deuteronomy xxi. 18, we 
 find that if the rod fail, the son is to be stoned to death 
 ‘ at sight ’ of the elders of the city. This conception of dis¬ 
 cipline seems to have prevailed till about the time of Christ. 
 
 In so far as severity of discipline was modified after the 
 birth of Christ, it was under the influence of the Talmudic 
 writings, and not of the law in its purity. 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 95 
 
 The Talmud and Education 
 
 The Talmudic writings contain so much that bears on 
 education as understood by the Jew when brought under 
 humane Hellenic (and doubtless also Christian) influences, 
 that I shall add a few remarks on this stage of Jewish 
 educational history. 1 
 
 The School and the Schoolmaster. — That the work of the 
 school and the function of the teacher hold a high place in 
 the Talmud could be shown by numerous quotations. But 
 it would be to confound chronology to regard the Talmudic 
 precepts as indications of opinion among the ancient Israel¬ 
 ites. They are to be met with only after the Jews had 
 been in contact with the Greek and Roman civilisations, 
 while some of them belong to early mediseval history. ‘ It 
 is the breath of school children that sustains society,’ says 
 R. Jehuda Hanassi. ‘ He who studies and does not teach 
 others is like a myrtle in the desert.’ The teachers had to 
 be married men and not too young; for ‘ instruction by 
 young teachers is like sour grapes and new wine; instruc¬ 
 tion by older teachers, however, is like ripe grapes and old 
 wine.’ ‘ Your teacher and your father have need of your 
 assistance ; help your teacher before helping your father, for 
 the latter has given you only the life of this world, while 
 the former has secured for you the life of the world to come.’ 
 
 Method. — As regards method, the following text is wise: 
 ‘ If you attempt to grasp too much at once, you grasp 
 nothing at all.’ 
 
 The teachers, after the Oriental fashion, generally relied 
 on memory and slavish reproduction. ‘ First learn by heart 
 and then know ’ was the governing formula. On the sub¬ 
 ject of memory, it is well said: — ‘Four dispositions are 
 found among the disciples; he who comprehends quickly 
 and quickly forgets; such an one loses more than he gains: 
 he who with difficulty comprehends, but does not readily 
 
 1 I base what I here say on Spiers, and on Gelder’s Die VolJcschule des Jiid. 
 Alt., 1872, as verified by reference to other writers, including Dr. Samuel 
 Marcus. 
 
96 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 forget, gains more than he loses: he who comprehends 
 easily, but does not easily forget, has a good portion: he 
 who slowly comprehends and forgets quickly has an evil 
 portion.’ One of the instructions for learning by heart 
 deserves notice: — ‘ To speak out loudly the sentence which 
 is being learned strengthens the same in the memory.’ 
 ‘ Open thy mouth in order that thou mayest retain the 
 subject of thy study, and that it may remain alive within 
 thee.’ The wife of Eabbi Meir, on meeting a certain student 
 who was learning his lessons in a low tone, rebuked him, 
 saying that it was not the right way of learning. ‘ Eabbi 
 Elieser had a pupil who studied without articulating the 
 words of his lessons, and in consequence thereof he forgot 
 everything in three years.’ 
 
 With regard to the system of repetition Eabbi Akiba says : 
 ‘ The teacher should strive to make the lesson agreeable to 
 the pupils by clear reasons, as well as by frequent repeti¬ 
 tions, until they thoroughly understand the matter, and are 
 enabled to recite it with great fluency ’; but this was a pious 
 opinion, not the school practice. A certain Eabbi, it is stated, 
 ‘ had a disciple with whom he repeated the subject four hun¬ 
 dred times, until he became a thorough master of the same.’ 
 
 Special regard should be had to the child at the beginning 
 of his studies, it is said, because ‘ what is learned as a child 
 remains in his memory as ink written on new paper.’ 
 Nevertheless, as the faculties of boys do not always expand 
 with their advancing age, the Talmud advises in case the 
 boy does not make progress in his studies, to exercise for¬ 
 bearance towards him up to his twelfth year, but that hence¬ 
 forth he should be dealt with more severely. Experience 
 proves, it is said, that children do not begin to show much 
 mental capacity as a rule until their twelfth year. 
 
 Further, it is recommended to the teacher to have pauses 
 and periods in each subject. ‘The Almighty Himself,’ it is 
 said, ‘ did not impart the law to Moses all at once, but in 
 different divisions and pauses, so as to make it more intelli¬ 
 gible. How much more then ought not this to be done by 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 97 
 
 a human teacher ? ’ Again : ‘ He who studies hastily and 
 crams too much at once, his knowledge shall diminish ; hut 
 he who studies by degrees or step by step, shall accumulate 
 much wisdom and learning.’ 
 
 Brevity in imparting was likewise held to be an indis¬ 
 pensable qualification of the teacher. He should, as much as 
 possible, be concise and make use of few words. Far-fetched 
 digressions are to be avoided, and that which could be told the 
 pupil in one word should not be imparted in three. ‘ One 
 should instruct the pupils in the shortest manner possible.’ 
 
 Discipline. — The discipline included in the Talmud, un¬ 
 like that of the ancient Jews, is mild and was doubtless 
 largely influenced by the teaching of Christ; but corporal 
 chastisement is recognised. ‘ Although at first there should 
 be shown indulgence to the child, yet further on, if it should 
 prove stubborn and inattentive, a slight corporal punish¬ 
 ment and some restrictions may be adopted.’ The elder 
 pupils, however, should not have to undergo corporal pun¬ 
 ishment for two reasons: first, lest it should wound their 
 sense of honour; and secondly, lest it should arouse resist¬ 
 ance. The Babbins say, ‘ A man who strikes his grown-up 
 son should be earnestly reprimanded, because he transgresses 
 the commandment, “ Thou shalt not put a stumbling block 
 before the blind,” ’ which is thus explained by Bashi: 
 ‘ Because being grown up he might rebel against his father, 
 who would thus cause him to sin.’ Again, it is enjoined 
 that if it should be found necessary to apply corporal pun¬ 
 ishment, it must be inflicted very mildly and the master is 
 not to use a cane, but a light strap, in order not to injure 
 the pupils. In reference to this we read in the Talmud : ‘If 
 thou art compelled to punish a pupil, do it only with gentle¬ 
 ness ; encourage those who make progress, and let him who 
 does not, still remain in the class with his schoolfellows, for 
 he will ultimately become attentive and vie with them.’ 
 B. Samuel Edels, in his Commentary on the Agadotli, writes : 
 ‘Only those pupils should be punished in whom the master 
 sees that there are good capacities for learning and who are 
 
 7 
 
98 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 inattentive; but if they are dull and cannot learn, they 
 should not be punished.’ Just as punishment formed a part 
 of school discipline, so also did rewards. For we are told 
 in the Talmud that Eabba had in his school some dainties 
 of which he would occasionally make a present to his young 
 pupils. Again, there is a saying, ‘ Children should be pun¬ 
 ished with one hand and caressed with two.’ 
 
 The school hours were long. 
 
 To conclude: the subjection of the human spirit to the 
 conception of absolute Law and the prominence given to ex¬ 
 ternal observances in the conception of religion as a kind of 
 contract between God and man, gave birth among the Jews 
 to a barren formalism. The spiritual ideas which doubtless 
 underlay the whole and preserved the spirit of the ancient 
 prophets, were for the few. 
 
 The Jews were par eminence a race of theological genius 
 as the Greeks were a race of aesthetic genius. In their 
 writings, the personal relations of man to God as a god of 
 moral law, found a language for themselves which had 
 never been reached by any other nation. The universal 
 conception of God as Creator, and Preserver, and Father of 
 all His creatures, and as rejoicing in the work of His hands 
 which in its turn praised Him, transcended all other human 
 interpretations of the divine. But at this point all true 
 progress of the intellect and imagination ended. The scien¬ 
 tific and dramatic spirit were alike alien to the Jew. He 
 imbibed both from other races. The Judaic theory of life 
 required also that the past should be all in all. The 
 spiritual unity of the race was doubtless thereby secured, 
 but at an enormous sacrifice. 
 
 Christ opens out a wider vista to the eye of man, and at 
 no point checks his onward advance. In Him we have a 
 transition from the finite to the true infinite in the religious 
 conception. The moral ideal supersedes the prosaic morali¬ 
 ties of the understanding, and, seen in God, it becomes the 
 spiritual life. With the genuine Jew the personality of God 
 was too clearly defined, and His externality as a Law-giver 
 
THE SEMITIC RACES 
 
 99 
 
 too strongly emphasised, to admit of infinite ideas. Again, 
 while the identification of religion and the moral law was in 
 principle sound, the stereotyping of the latter in external 
 observances emanating from an unquestioned authority, 
 killed both. A free personal outlook on nature and life was, 
 under such conditions, impossible. We must trust human¬ 
 ity as an ever-progressive reason, and take our chance of the 
 incidental evils which may attend the practice of the 
 humanistic free Christian faith. 
 
 Indeed, we can scarcely say that among the Jews religion 
 and the moral law, as we now understand these, were one 
 (as they boast it was and is), but rather the Sinaitic voice 
 of God as despotic command and a corresponding legality — 
 a system in which external prescriptions tended to choke 
 the purely moral, and still more the spiritual, element of the 
 life of mind. The prophets live for all mankind; to the 
 Jew their spiritualism was lost in formalism. Externali¬ 
 ties of technical obedience being rigidly attended to, the Jew 
 performed his part of the covenant with God —a mere busi¬ 
 ness transaction. God thereupon was bound to perform 
 His part, which in early times was the granting of benefits 
 in this life; at a later period, in this life and the next. 
 There can be no spiritual or religious life save that which 
 the voice of God penetrates and sanctions, but, with the 
 ordinary Jew, this voice of God was, I repeat, an external 
 voice; and, practically, in the hands especially of post-exilic 
 priests and scribes, it became a detailed series of legal pre¬ 
 scriptions and observances. God stood apart, and, like a 
 schoolmaster, imposed rules, with rewards and penalties for 
 observance and non-observance. This was the Getter’ that 
 killeth. Christ swept it away and preached the ‘ Spirit ’ 
 that givetli life, and thus transformed a national into an 
 universal religion. On the other hand, it has to he observed 
 that in all national religions, ancient and modern, we find 
 two parties — those who, endowed with a deep religious 
 sense, live in the spirit of the religion they profess, regard¬ 
 ing all else as merely symbolic of the inner needs and 
 
100 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 history of the spiritual man, and those for whom the intel¬ 
 lectual dogma and the sensuous symbol and the religious rite 
 are all in all. In the case of the Jews, the former found a 
 pure and noble expression of their inner life in the Psalms 
 and the Prophets, the latter were represented by the scribes 
 and Pharisees.and the mass of the people. 
 
 It seems strange that a system of life so encumbered with 
 ceremonial and externalities should have attracted converts 
 in the heathen world. But, before and after the time of 
 Christ, Greek, Roman, and Oriental had lost faith in their 
 gods and were looking for God, and for a moral system sanc¬ 
 tioned by Him. This the Jew could give; and allow the 
 proselyte to accept as much or as little of the ceremonial as 
 he pleased. 
 
 Authorities. —Many of the books mentioned under ‘Egypt,’ especially 
 Records of the Past. Also History of Babylonia , by George Smith ; Professor 
 Tiele’s Die Assyriologie, eine Rede; Assyria , by George Smith; Maspero’s 
 Dawn of Civilisation in the East; Essai sur lliistoire des Arabes, par Caussin 
 de Perceval Sir W. Muir’s Life of Mahomet. 
 
 Scripture which ends 442 b. c. ; Ranke’s History of the World; Milman’s 
 History of the Jews; The School System of the Talmud , by Spiers; L’education 
 et Vinstruction des enfants chez les anciens Juifs, par J. Simon ; Geschichte der 
 Erz. u. des TJnt. bei den Israeliten, von B. Strassburger ; Van Gelder’s Die 
 Volkschule des Jiid. Alt. 1872 ; Schiirer’s Jewish People in the Time of Christ; 
 Tiele’s Outlines of the History of Ancient Religions; Duncker’s History of 
 Antiquity j Die Pddagogilc des Israelitischen Polices , &c., von Dr. S. Maicus, 
 1877 ; Wellhausen’s Israel und Judah; Montefiore’s Hibbert Lectures; Graetz’s 
 History of the Jews ; Professor Robertson Smith’s writings ; Professor Robert¬ 
 son (of Glasgow), Early Religion of Israel ; Lex Mosaica , recently published ; 
 Professor Menzies’ History of Religion. 
 
 Note. — I have endeavoured, not without great difficulty, to steer my way 
 among conflicting accounts. It is impossible to accept the rose-coloured views 
 of Jews or those who seem to hold a brief for them, when alleged facts are not 
 dated and guaranteed. On the other hand, the facts which are available, 
 combined with necessary and irresistible inferences from Jewish history make 
 it equally impossible to accept the views of those who would minimise the 
 educational work among the Jews themselves, and its significance in the edu¬ 
 cation of the whole race of mankind. 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN 
 
 RACES 
 

 
 
 
 . 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN 
 
 RACES 
 
 The races of mankind not Hamitic, Semitic, and Indo- 
 European have been classed as Turanian, or Uro-Altaic; 
 but this classification is so inadequate that it will doubtless 
 be modified as ethnology progresses. In the meantime, for 
 the Eastern Hemisphere it may be accepted. Omitting the 
 merged Accadians of the Mesopotamian basin of whom we 
 have already spoken, we have to go north and east to follow 
 the migrations of the Turanian races. 
 
 The Turanian, or Uro-Altaic, races (so called from the 
 Siberian range of mountains of this name) comprise the 
 Mongolians, Chinese, Manchus, Japanese, Turks, and Tartars, 
 the European Finns, and the original stock of the Hunga¬ 
 rians. Longer than other races they retained nomadic habits, 
 and in some districts of the East still retain them. The 
 inhabitants who occupied Chaldsea before the arrival of the 
 Semites in that region were called Accadians; and to these 
 we have referred in speaking of the Babylonian Semites who 
 absorbed them. 1 The Turanians generally have a mono¬ 
 syllabic and agglutinative language, and have never exhib¬ 
 ited a capacity for progress either in literature, arts, or 
 science beyond a certain fixed point, except under post- 
 christian influences. Their highest development is to be 
 found in China, where as a civilised power they have existed 
 for, certainly, 5,000 years; and what we have to say of the 
 Turanians must be confined to this the highest specimen of 
 their social organisation. 
 
 1 The most recent explorations would point to the conclusion that the 
 Turanian or Accadian civilisation itself also rested on a prior people. Dr. 
 de Lacouperie connects closely the Accadians and Chinese. 
 
104 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 As the education organised among this remarkable people 
 affords a curious contrast to that both of the Semitic races 
 and of the Asiatic Indo-Germans or Aryans, of whom we 
 shall afterwards speak, it is quite worth our while to en¬ 
 deavour to enter into some detail. The Chinese educational 
 development is indeed highly instructive both to the educa¬ 
 tional politician and the schoolmaster. 
 
 EDUCATION IN CHINA 
 
 CHAP. I. NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 China had a consciously organised scheme of education long 
 before any other Asiatic or European people. Egyptian 
 education existed from an earlier date, hut it was never an 
 organised system. The Chinese system is instructive as 
 well as interesting, because it suggests many considerations 
 as to the organisation of education by the State and also as 
 to authoritative modes of testing ability and learning which 
 bear very directly on European and American education at 
 the present day. 
 
 The Chinese empire embraces, besides China proper, 
 Manchuria, Mongolia, Turkestan, and Tibet. It is China 
 proper and a portion of the Burmese peninsula, however, 
 with which we have to do. The dependencies are in no 
 way so advanced in civilisation as China-proper. This por¬ 
 tion of the empire is itself 1,600 miles long and averages in 
 breadth 1,100 miles. The population is variously estimated 
 at from 300 to 400 millions. A remarkable evidence of its 
 early civilisation is to be found in the Great Wall which 
 was constructed in the third century before the Christian 
 era and extends up hill and down dale along the northern 
 boundary for 1,250 miles, is 20 feet high including the 
 parapet of 5 feet, 25 feet thick at the base, and strengthened 
 at intervals of 100 yards by square towers from 37 to 50 
 feet high. 
 
 In the north the land is elevated; in the centre it is an 
 alluvial plain through which the great rivers Hoang-ho and 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 105 
 
 Yang-tse-kiang flow. In the south the land is undulating 
 and interspersed with valleys and mountains. The middle 
 region is the centre of the rice, suar, and silk culture; in 
 the southern part of it the tea-shrub flourishes; in the north 
 we find the usual food grains. 
 
 The accepted history of China dates from 2,500 years B.C., 
 although it is far from trustworthy for long after this date. 
 As early as 2205 B.c. we find the country organised as a 
 feudal State, the system being somewhat similar to that 
 which prevailed in Europe in mediseval times. In the eigh¬ 
 teenth century b.c. there were seventy-two feudal States. In 
 403 B.c. the feudal princedoms had been reduced to seven 
 great States, and in 220 B.c. the whole was organised into an 
 Empire. There have been many changes of dynasties, hut 
 the imperial organisation has remained much the same for 
 more than 2,000 years. The present dynasty is Manchu and 
 dates from 1643 a.d. The native Chinese, however, are fully 
 recognised in the highest councils of the emperor as well as 
 in the whole administrative system. The imperial govern¬ 
 ment in Peking supervises and controls the administration of 
 all the provinces and exercises the power of removing all 
 officials. 
 
 Language-The speech of the Chinese is monosyllabic: 
 
 out of the radical they form compounds. There are no in¬ 
 flections — nay, the same root is retained to denote noun, 
 verb, preposition, adverb — the grammatical class to which 
 it belongs being indicated by tone, accent, or position alone. 
 The language is, in brief, inorganic, a mere aggregate of roots, 
 not of letter-sounds. In all speech there must of course be 
 organism, but in the case of the Chinese, I suppose we may 
 say that the organism is under stood j it is in the thought of 
 the speaker and hearer, and not embodied in the forms of the 
 language as in Latin or Greek. The speech of the Chinese 
 has been aptly compared to that of a child, which utters 
 words one after another without forming them organically 
 into a sentence. The letters, or shapes to denote words, were 
 
106 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 originally hieroglyphic or ideographic, the symbols gradually 
 losing their ideographic character; and this especially in 
 compounds. ‘ When letters were invented/ the Chinese say, 
 ‘ the heavens, earth, and the gods were all agitated. The in¬ 
 habitants of Hades wept at night, and the heavens, as an 
 expression of joy, rained down ripe grain.’ (Preface to 
 Morrison’s Dictionary.) There is evidence that writing 
 was practised 1,740 years b.c., and it is believed that it existed 
 in some form 3,000 years B.c. 
 
 It is important to note, as bearing on the question of 
 Chinese education, that the literary language, the language 
 of hooks, is different from the spoken dialects, which are 
 numerous; and that it differs to such an extent as to make 
 its acquisition by a native almost as difficult as a foreign 
 tongue. 
 
 If the unclassified elements of the language were indif¬ 
 ferent to position ‘ the labour of arrangement would be 
 nothing and style impossible. But most of them appear to 
 be endowed with a kind of mysterious polarity, which con¬ 
 trols their collocation and renders them incapable of com¬ 
 panionship except with certain characters, the choice of 
 which would seem to be altogether arbitrary. The origin 
 of this peculiarity it is not difficult to discover. In this, as in 
 other things among the Chinese, usage has become law. 
 Combinations which were accidental or optional with the 
 model writers of antiquity, and even their errors, have, to 
 their imitative posterity, become the jus et norma loquendi. 
 Free to move upon each other when the language was young 
 and in a fluid state, its elements have now become crystallised 
 into invariable forms. To master this pre-established har¬ 
 mony without the aid of rules is the fruit of practice and the 
 labour of years.’ 1 
 
 General Character of the Chinese.—The impression 
 made on a stranger by the character of the Chinese people is, 
 that it is as a whole child-like, gentle, kindly, and peaceful, 
 but it is equally apparent that these qualities are in union 
 
 1 Han Lin Papers. 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 107 
 
 with much cunning, suspicion, trickery, and immorality. 
 Their industry and contentment are marvellous, and their 
 personal habits temperate. It does not appear that respect 
 for self, and value for self as a personality, is a conception of 
 the Chinese mind. The ‘ person ’ is not of the same account 
 as among the Aryan races; the family is the governing 
 conception. The personality of the individual is not only 
 overshadowed by the family and the state-machinery, 
 but is oppressed also by the spirits of the dead which are 
 worshipped. 
 
 The Chinese have had their civil revolutions and modifica¬ 
 tions of belief like other people, but as a whole they have 
 made little or no progress for more than 2,000 years ; but 
 grind on as their fathers did before them. Their enormous 
 national self-conceit helps to prevent advance. Philosophic 
 speculation and physical science are absent. Literature is 
 in the ascendant, but it consists chiefly of a bald kind 
 of history, the literature of the sacred books and endless 
 commentaries on them. Lyric poetry is cultivated very 
 extensively, and the power of writing elegant verses in 
 good caligrapliy is the highest proof of learning and culture. 
 Art, in the higher sense, does not exist, although there is 
 much skill and delicacy of execution, and considerable imi¬ 
 tative power. 1 At one time the art of landscape painting 
 flourished. 
 
 The broad fact for us Europeans to recognise is that in 
 this portion of Asia we have a people of Mongolian ex¬ 
 traction, including about a third of the population of the 
 world, who, for at least 4,000 years, have had a settled 
 system of life and government, and with whom education 
 has always been a matter of national importance for nearly 
 3,000 years. 
 
 1 There are some men (who may he called Sinophils) who speak in lauda¬ 
 tory terms of the lyrical literature, just as they exaggerate the intellectual 
 power of the Chinese, but the specimens given, even allowing for the difficul¬ 
 ties of translation, do not justify their admiration. They read like the Latin 
 yerses of English schoolboys. See the collection of Romilly Allen, 
 
108 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 CHAP. II. KELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 
 
 Sacred Books. — To understand the Chinese attitude of 
 mind we should have to understand. Confucius ^the great 
 jmoral and political philosopher and reformer, who was born 
 551 years~RC j But the national life did not start with him. 
 The record of his life would itself show, even were there no 
 native historical treatises, tha t China was at the time of his 
 birth a civilised country and an organised government with 
 many subordinate governors. Confucius himself is most 
 careful to insist that he merely revives the customs and be¬ 
 liefs of his ancestors. He led a life of noble example him¬ 
 self : at one time held high hT honour, at another "dishonoured 
 and persecuted, always suffering grief and disappointment at 
 the failure of his great scheme of social reform. But he 
 professed no novelties; he rested all his teaching on the 
 sacred books which he edited with annotations. He did 
 not, however, alter them or digest them into their present 
 form (Legge). His chief addition to the practical philosophy 
 of preceding ages was his ‘ Doctrine of the Mean.’ The first 
 sentence of this work is as follows: ‘ What heaven has con¬ 
 ferred is called the nature: an accordance with this nature is 
 called the path of duty: the regulation of this path is called 
 instruction.’ (Legge, ‘Religions of China,’ p. 139.) 
 
 The earliest of the sacred books was attributed in its 
 original form to the first introducer of letters and philosophy 
 among the Chinese, Fu-hsi, to whom the date of 3,323 years 
 (less or more) B.c. is assigned. (This, of course, is legendary.) 
 The next continuator after Confucius of the philosophy of 
 the sacred books was Mencius, who died 317 B.c. Printing 
 from blocks of wood was invented in the tenth century of 
 our era. The issue of the sacred books was, as a matter of 
 course, then multiplied, and much intellectual activity was 
 the result, as was the case in Europe after the invention of 
 printing. But all this activity was still controlled by super¬ 
 stitious reverence for the past and merely took the form of 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 109 
 
 a further explication and evolution of accepted doctrines. 
 The man who seems to have gathered into a focus all the 
 intellectual activity of this time was Chow-Tsze. This truly 
 eminent philosopher exhibited great ability as an adminis¬ 
 trator, thinker, and writer, and the hooks issued by him, for 
 the most part as commentaries on, and introductions to, the 
 sacred books, numbered 23. On them, without derogating 
 from the primary authority of Confucius, the life of the peo¬ 
 ple is modelled. He died 1200 a.d. His writings are held 
 to contain the true interpretation of Chinese philosophy, but 
 by no means on that account to supersede Confucius and the 
 sacred books themselves. We must therefore, if we would 
 understand the Chinese people and their education, form to 
 ourselves some idea of the contents of these books. To 
 attempt an account here, in any detail, would be out of 
 place; but we may state, on the authority of Professors 
 Legge, Douglas, Tiele and others, all that is necessary to our 
 purpose as students of the educational system of China. 1 
 
 The sacred books or scriptures of China consist of ‘ Five 
 Classics’ and ‘Four Books.’ The five classics are (‘Encyc. 
 Brit.’): 1. ‘The Book of Changes’ (Yi-King) — seemingly an 
 effort at a kind of nature-system (obscure magic, says Tiele). 
 To this book the date 1150 b.c. is assigned ; 2. ‘ The Book 
 of History ’ (Shu-King) ; 3. ‘ The Book of Odes ’ (Shih-King). 
 At the time of Confucius there was an official collection of 
 3,000 odes, which he reduced to 311, preserving chiefly those 
 which had a moral and domestic tendency and classifying 
 them under four heads : (a) National airs; ( b ) The lesser 
 eulogies ; ( c ) The greater eulogies ; ( d ) The song of homage 
 sung by or before the emperor when he sacrificed in the 
 name of the State as its high priest. 4. ‘ The Book of Rites ’; 
 5. ‘ Spring and Autumn Annals,’ by Confucius. 
 
 The Four Books are of the nature of exposition and com¬ 
 mentaries. (1) The Great Learning; (2) The doctrine of 
 the .Mean, these two being continuous treatises; (3) Con- 
 
 1 I follow Legge where he differs from Tiele, and I have paid due attention 
 to Martin’s account. 
 
110 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 fucian Analecta, or sayings of the master; (4) The works of 
 Mencius, by a pupil of that philosopher. 
 
 Commentaries on the classics and books are very numer¬ 
 ous ; but all have the same characteristics as the originals, 
 that is to say, they are ‘ servile,’ ‘ iterative,’ ‘ cold,’ ‘ formal.’ 
 
 Philosophical Attitude~ofLAhe Chinese Mind. — Like 
 most moral reformers, Confucius w as too intent on the reno¬ 
 vation of the national life around him to concern himself 
 deeply with those metaphysical questions which form so 
 perennial an attraction for the Indo-European mind. It is 
 a mistake, however, to say he was an atheist, unless we are to 
 class as atheists men who, denying or doubting a personal 
 God, yet believe in a great but mysterious power which gov¬ 
 erns all.. /That Confucius believed in a personal God is not 
 apparent, and it is certain that he purposely declined to go 
 far into the discussion of such questions. Moralit y, social 
 order, and propriety of conduct alone interestedTnm, and this 
 ’so profoundly as to exclude from his system of practical 
 ethics all other subjects. There can be no doubt, however, 
 thaTlie believed in the Supreme One. It is worthy of re¬ 
 mark, and, indeed, full of interest, that, in the very sacred 
 books edited by him, there is the recognition of a Supreme 
 Being called ‘ Supreme Ruler,’ ‘ Heaven,’ and ‘ Supreme or 
 Sovereign Heaven,’ and Professor Legge has made it, I think, 
 evident that the Chinese were in the earliest times — that is 
 to say, the earliest historic times, Monotheists. Chow-tze 
 did not profess to originate a philosophy, hut to draw it from 
 the ancient books by interpretation. But it cannot he said 
 that even in his case the thought of a personal God ever 
 occurred. At the beginning of all things is what is called 
 the ‘ ultimate principle,’ or ‘ grand extreme,’ which is imma¬ 
 terial, which is spirit, which, in brief, is mind. It operates 
 to produce the world of nature and man according to an in¬ 
 variable process. Dr. Martin gives this exposition : ‘ The 
 Infinite [Great Extreme] produced the Finite, and the Finite 
 produced Light and Darkness.’ The ‘ ultimate principle,’ or 
 ‘ great extreme,’ is, however, frequently spoken of as if it were 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 111 
 
 an independent entity, and sometimes as punishing the evil 
 and rewarding the good. But these are evidently figurative 
 expressions, and the idea of the Supreme to be found in 
 Chinese philosophy is that of a causal principle existing from 
 all eternity along with the world or nature, also existing 
 from all eternity, the latter exhibiting the mode of operation 
 of the ultimate principle in accordance with fixed and un¬ 
 alterable laws. 
 
 Chinese philosophy does not affirm the great fact of Will 
 as entering into the scheme of creation. Nor has the ‘ ulti¬ 
 mate principle ’ ethical attributes. 1 Order is its chief char-j 
 acteristic, and this exhibits itself in the nature of man as 
 well as in other creations, and the holy man is he who has a 
 clear intuition of the ultimate principle and its ground-pro¬ 
 cesses. Seeing these clearly, he cannot err; knowledge is_ 
 virtu e. The nature o f man is, to begin with, good in itself, 
 for it is the true product of the heavenly order. Chow-tze 
 teaches that ‘ the bright principle of virtue man derives from 
 his heavenly origin, and his pure spirit when undarkened 
 comprehends all truth, and is adequate to every occasion. 
 But it is obstructed by the physical constitution and be¬ 
 clouded by the animal desires so that it becomes obscure.’ 
 The moral character, to begin with, is determined by the pre¬ 
 vailing influence (primordial harmony or gross matter), and 
 mankind are accordingly divided into three classes : ‘ those 
 who are good without teaching, those who may be made 
 good by teaching, and those who will remain bad in spite of 
 teaching * (Martin, p. 129). 
 
 Absolute truth is simply the course or way of nature, and 
 he who sees this has absolute truth. Virtue is the complete 
 possession of absolute truth by man ; and it is by knowledge 
 or study that man attains to truth, and so to virtue. Intel¬ 
 lect is thus the basis of virtue and morality. Private and 
 political morality are closely 
 the h ig her teac hing of Chi 
 conduct uf life and the art 
 
 1 I do not suppose Professor Legge would admit this. 
 
 connected. The whole aim of 
 
 - the—- 
 
 is, 111 
 
 of government. Though China 
 
112 
 
 PRE- CHRIST I A N ED UCA TION 
 
 lias produced men differing in opinion as to the foundation of 
 ethics, they have no speculative philosophy in the Aryan 
 sense. A very interesting chart of Chinese ethics will be 
 found in Dr. Martin’s book on education in China. This 
 shows considerable power of orderly tabular arrangement in 
 the classification of the virtues, but the Chinese mind is not, 
 even in this its own chosen sphere, analytic. 
 
 Religion.—There are three religions in China: 1. The 
 official or state religion, already described in the previous 
 section, viz. the ancient doctrine of China handed down from 
 remote antiquity, revised by Confucius and commented on 
 by him, by Mencius and by Chow-Tsze. It is essentially a 
 moral and political system, resting ultimately, however, on a 
 recognition of a Supreme God or Divine Order. It recognises 
 this Being or Order as a fact simply, and there leaves it, 
 lying outside daily life and remote from men. Connected 
 with this official religion, however, there is an annual cere¬ 
 monial of worship. It is the State not the individual, the 
 emperor, not as priest but as representative of the nation, 
 who then worships God. Provincial governors also perform 
 the service in the name of the State. This ceremonial is in 
 honour of the powers of nature and expresses the dependence 
 of man on the order of nature, the productivity of the soil 
 and the recurrence of the seasons. It is thus in perfect 
 harmony with Chinese religious philosophy, and recognises 
 the Supreme Spirit in the sense which I have already 
 explained. The remarkable prayers cited by Professor Legge 
 0 Religions of China,’ p. 43 et seq.), which were offered up at 
 the solstitial services of 1538 a.d., testify to a pure and 
 exalted Deism in the mind of the then emperor, approximat¬ 
 ing even to Theistic language. But with this solstitial cere¬ 
 monial the Deism as a factor in the life of the Chinese ends. 1 
 
 1 Professor Legge says, p. 114, that there are numerous passages in the 
 ancient books speaking of Heaven as approving and disapproving the acts of 
 man. But neither in the literature generally nor in the schoolbooks is account 
 taken of this. Even the verses quoted by Legge do not necessarily convey 
 anything save the general statement that Heaven is on the side of justice and 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 
 
 113 
 
 Confucian polity and the worship of ancestors constitute the 
 genuine religion of the educated Chinaman. 
 
 The official religion is acquiesced in by all; hut in addi¬ 
 tion, Taoism and Buddhism are professed by the masses of 
 the people. Buddhism practically occupies the field. It is 
 an importation from India, and as it entered only in 76 a.d., 
 it found the Chinese national character already formed. 
 Taoism, originally mystical and having affinities with primi¬ 
 tive Buddhism, has degenerated into a religion of spells and 
 incantations. The priests profess, like modern spiritualists, 
 to hold communication with the spirits of the dead. Bud¬ 
 dhism, again, seems to have degenerated into a system of 
 idol-worship. Indeed very early, Gautama Buddha, the 
 founder, was himself worshipped as a god. The doctrine of 
 transmigration which connects itself with the more popular 
 form of this religion would seem to exercise a powerful prac¬ 
 tical influence on the life of the Chinese. The doctrine of 
 immortality is blank and undefined. 
 
 Alongside, then, of the intellectual and purely politico- 
 moral and abstract deism of Confucius, we find the ceremonial 
 periodical nature-worship by the emperor as representing the 
 nation; the survival of primitive beliefs in various spirits 
 among the people; 1 along with ancestor worship (which 
 last is also an integral part of Confucianism) a widespread, 
 debased, and idolatrous Buddhism, and the magical practices 
 to which Taoism has degenerated. These religions, satisfy- 
 
 truth. Yon Strauss’s description of Chinese Theism on p. xxvi of Allen’s 
 translation of the ‘ Book of Chinese Poetry ’ seems to me to he a devout 
 imagination. 
 
 1 These beliefs are probably a survival of the primitive and prehistoric 
 religion of China, which, Tiele holds, was a purified and organised worship of 
 spirits, including the spirits of the dead. The spirits to be worshipped were 
 without number. They reside in visible objects, and also assume the form of 
 animals. A popular religion of this sort might easily run parallel with the 
 higher and better tradition represented by Confucianism, and, as a matter of 
 fact, it does so. The popular necessities have also found satisfaction in Bud¬ 
 dhism and Taoism, neither of which excludes the State religion. Even in the 
 State religion there is a curious mixture of pure Confucianism with nature- 
 worship and the worship of certain recognised gods. 
 
 8 
 
114 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 ing, as they do, by means of idols and communication with 
 the unseen world, the need of man for an ever-present power 
 interested and concerned in his destiny, are found to be 
 compatible with a belief in the governing intellectual theory 
 of life and society. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the ordinary Chinaman is a 
 Buddhist in the monastic sense. This philosophy of religious 
 ecstatic atheism is reserved for a few in those sequestered 
 monasteries and temples, where, in disdain of life, they 
 endeavour, by endless repetitions of liturgical pieces and a 
 strenuous thinking of Nothing, to realise a condition which is 
 neither life nor death, in the hope of ultimately attaining the 
 nothingness of Nirvana. The common man worships in the 
 numerous temples the goddess of mercy and many idols 
 besides, including the idols of the past and the present, hop¬ 
 ing through their aid and by works of merit to secure for 
 himself happy transmigrations, if nothing more. 
 
 The genuine Confucian Chinese believe that convulsions of 
 nature, epidemics, &c., are indications of something wrong in 
 the administration of government; but this not from any 
 belief that providence interferes to punish but purely from 
 the conviction that a disturbance of the natural order is 
 indicative of a disturbance in the social order. 1 
 
 Man, they hold, stands in the midst between heaven and 
 earth to preserve the equipoise of the whole and to bear the 
 burden of the moral world-order. By keeping the middle or 
 mean himself, he can alone succeed in discharging his world 
 functions. This religion of the more educated classes has 
 formed the character of the people. To take care that this 
 right mean is observed is the grand duty of the emperor, the 
 great son of heaven, the god on earth who as father of his 
 people, not as a despot, orders and governs all human institu- 
 
 1 Although it is true that there is no State priesthood, there are yet ‘ pro¬ 
 fessors of ceremonies * appointed and paid by the State to regulate public 
 ceremonial acts of worship, &c. Many such men also are employed by the 
 people on all important ceremonial occasions, that everything may be done in 
 order. They live by fees. 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 115 
 
 tions by means of laws which bear on every department and 
 act of life; and he is aided by a graded and countless num¬ 
 ber of subordinate administrators. 
 
 We see in all races that the higher form of their religion 
 is quite compatible with a worship of gods, demons, and 
 spirits, also with what might be called subordinate religious 
 beliefs which are considered not to conflict with the govern¬ 
 ing system. These are, doubtless, survivals of more bar¬ 
 barous times. This compatibility of the higher with the 
 lower is specially characteristic of the Chinese. But what¬ 
 ever may be the private superstitions of the people, this is 
 certain, that it is Confucianism which is the State church, 
 and that the whole life of the Chinese is not only influenced 
 but controlled by Confucian ideas. One result is that gods 
 and ancestors are worshipped with a view to material security 
 alone, and that there is no ideal of life possible higher than 
 prosaic prudential Confucianism. 
 
 Let us now endeavour to bring together the governing 
 conceptions which seem to constitute the motive-forces of 
 Chinese life. 
 
 CHAP. III. THE DOMINANT IDEAS OF CHINESE LIFE 
 
 (1) The brief survey which we have given justifies us, I 
 think, in concluding that the idea of Order as established 
 and maintained by a Supreme Principle or Mind, is the foun¬ 
 dation of all Chinese thought and life; and if we realise to 
 ourselves the influence which a conception so barren and 
 cold must exercise on political doctrines and social customs, 
 we have made one step towards the understanding of this 
 remarkable people. 
 
 (2) The next idea animating these masses of men is that 
 of reverence for the past , which exhibits itself in two forms, 
 a superstitious re gard for all past thought, and a reverence 
 for ancestors which Takes the form of worship.. Antiquity 
 Ts in fact the guarantee for truth — constitutes in itself an 
 infallible guide. Even the members of the Han-lin or Im- 
 
116 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 perial Academy, comprising the select men of the empire 
 and residing at Peking, ‘ do nothing to extend the bounda¬ 
 ries of human knowledge, simply because they are not aware 
 that after the achievements of Confucius and the ancient 
 sages any new world remains to be conquered.’ (Martin, 
 p. 24.) 
 
 (3) In a nation in which the idea of the worl d-order 
 seems to have first found expression in the sanctity of tire 
 fain i 1 y relationship, fa mily li fe, as the centre of all social 
 order and civic union, is held m the highest veneration. The 
 father has absolute power over his chil dre n^ and the children 
 must render unquestioning obedience. The f amily, indeed ^ 
 is the centre of the moral, as well as the social and_political v 
 l ife of the n ation. Uut of ik all virtues grow, and on it the 
 jxlea of the State is supposed to be modelle d., The Sta te is 
 only a largely developed family. The emperor is the head 
 of this large - family of officials and of citizens, and having, 
 like a father, the power of life and death, commands and 
 receives absolute obedience. Marriage, as might readily be 
 supposed, is held to be a sacred institution, and a civil duty 
 imposed on every man. (Concubines are allowed, but their 
 children have not the same family privileges as those of the 
 legitimate wife.) The relation of the wife to the husband 
 is that of practical slavery. 1 The family idea is, of course, 
 sustained and intensified by the worship of ancestors. There 
 seems, however, to be an element of fear in this quite as 
 much as of respect or affection. The dead spirits may 
 exercise a hurtful influence on their descendants if they are 
 neglected. They are supposed to continue their interest in 
 the affairs of their families, and may even be reborn into 
 them. The Chinaman as a member of a family is thus in 
 
 1 Even at birth the inferiority of the woman to the man is signalised. 
 When a boy is born, a bow and arrow are hung before the door and he is 
 wrapt in the finest clothes that can be had ; when a girl is born, the spindle 
 and yarn are hung up, and any old rags are considered good enough for 
 her. If a father is asked how many children he has, he counts only his 
 sons. 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 117 
 
 close union with the past and future of his race, as well as 
 with the present. 1 
 
 (4) Prudential virtue usurps the place of the ideal and 
 spiritual in the Chinese mind. The family idea, as may he 
 easily understood, enters into and powerfully influences the 
 system of morality. For, defective as some of the family 
 relations are, the family bond is intensely strong, and the 
 sentiment of the people gathers round the nearest and dearest 
 relations of life, and does not much extend to spheres beyond. 
 Thus it is said: ‘ If a man will attain to the completed per¬ 
 fection of his nature, he must begin with the five relations 
 of human society — king and subject, father and son, elder 
 and younger brother, husband, wife, friends — and practise 
 the usual daily virtues. When the customary and easy 
 virtues are neglected there is no possibility of attaining to 
 the completed perfection of our nature.’ 
 
 No exception can be taken to the moral teaching of the 
 authoritative books. ‘ Heaven produces all men, and points 
 out for them their duties, for the fulfilment of which also it 
 gives them the means.’ Again : ‘ He who renders obedience 
 to heaven will be sustained: he, on the other hand, who 
 
 Ife*. * 
 
 resists heaven will perish.’ Beasts have no spirit or mind 
 we are also told: man alone has spirit. ‘ All men,’ 'says 
 Mencius, ‘ have a compassionate heart; all men have a heart 
 which is ashamed of vice; all men have a heart naturally 
 
 1 Tablets, almost always pieces of wood, four to seven by two to three 
 inches, are fixed into niches in the wall of a room. The name of the father 
 is carved or painted on them, and to this the assembled family offer incense, 
 and on great occasions sacrifice food of various kinds. Other tablets of more 
 remote ancestors are similarly preserved and worshipped. Wealthy families, 
 who have large connections, erect ancestral halls, in which ancestral tablets 
 are placed, and to which at stated times worship and sacrifice are offered. 
 This illustrates well the intensity of the family idea. The worship of ances¬ 
 tors can only be conducted by the males (females may marry into other 
 families and cannot be depended on). Hence, partly, the superiority of boys 
 to girls. A man who has no boy adopts one rather than run the risk of hav¬ 
 ing himself and his ancestors neglected — a fate which seems to involve 
 absolute death or annihilation, and which is escaped as long as they are 
 worshipped. 
 
118 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 disposed to pay respect and reverence; all men have a heart 
 which can distinguish between right and wrong: these 
 virtues do not come from without, they are an essential part 
 of our constitution.’ ‘ If a man uses his understanding he 
 will find the right way: if a man does not use his under¬ 
 standing he will not find it. Let no one he afflicted because 
 of his want of strength ; the fault lies in failure to practise.’ 
 These moral propositions and many others are not allowed 
 to rest in the sacred books and the commentaries on them, 
 and he read when and where the people choose; they are 
 thoroughly mastered and, to a great extent, learnt by heart 
 in all schools, and by all candidates for the public service. 
 They constitute the national creed and the national con¬ 
 science. They have been the means of creating, and sustain¬ 
 ing for probably 4,000 years, a fairly efficient social system. 
 
 (5) A love of formalism is strong in the Chinese mind. 
 This is very prominent in the mass of ritual ceremonies in 
 which the moral and social life of the Chinese is enveloped. 
 The Book of Rites is one of the sacred hooks, and contains 
 directions for the acts of daily life in the family and in the 
 State, and is also a manual of etiquette. All this is carefully 
 mastered by those who affect to be educated. There can be 
 little doubt that forms and ceremonies tend to give perma¬ 
 nence to institutions, while they at the same time tend to 
 deprive them of true vitality. Hence, partly, the stereotyped 
 civilisation of China; practical virtue becomes almost iden¬ 
 tical with ‘propriety’ and convention. 
 
 As an explanation of the remarkable permanence of 
 Chinese life and polity we may point to the conservative 
 character of the dominant ideas and to the influence of an 
 ideographic language in restricting the free play of mind. 
 It may also be held that the longer the period during which 
 the same ‘ set ’ of mind, the same habit of thought and 
 action, continues in a nation, the more certain becomes the 
 tendency to repetition, unless some very powerful force 
 intervene. This doctrine of heredity in nations must never 
 be lost sight of. Again, it may be said that a nation so 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 119 
 
 large, if it once becomes the victim of a system, tends to 
 perpetuate itself in the future as it has been in the past, 
 because the dead weight of the whole is so great as to repress 
 the parts. This specially happens where the political form 
 of life is a highly centralised form: and a large empire is 
 necessarily centralised where it is not a mere federation. 
 Further, it is to be noted that the Chinese have been so 
 placed geographically as to be cut off from intercommunica¬ 
 tion with the rest of the world. The wonderful variety of 
 their climate and productions, moreover, has not made such 
 communication necessary. In so far as they have had inter¬ 
 course, it has been of a kind to drive them back on their own 
 national life, to hug (so to speak) their own form of civilisa¬ 
 tion. It is on the west and north that they had in old times 
 intercourse with others: this intercourse was of a very 
 unpleasant kind, and led, in fact, to their building the Great 
 Wall. 
 
 All these elements furnish, it seems to me, subsidiary 
 explanations of the prosaic continuity of the Chinese life. 
 However it may be, there can be no doubt that the supreme 
 rule of life among the Chinese is ‘ Walk in the trodden 
 paths/ that their philosophy of religion necessarily points 
 to a first principle of world-order, and presumes a Deity to 
 be invoked and thanked, but not propitiated and influenced 
 — a cosmic machine remote from and indifferent to man; 
 that their morality is a shrewd dogmatism, traditionary and 
 preceptive, not reasoned; and that their complicated ceremo¬ 
 nial is the outer garment of a fixed and imperious social 
 and political system. Everything thus tends to fixedness 
 and order, to a statical rather than a dynamical social and 
 civil life. 
 
 I am perfectly well aware that, if we take a period of 4,000 
 years, China has passed through many changes and has not 
 been unprogressive in politics or the arts. It is also true 
 that in ethics one or two sages have reached a higher level 
 than the traditionary creed. But one swallow does not 
 make a summer; and, taking China from the time of Con- 
 
120 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 fucius onwards, I fail to see any signs of progress in tlie 
 essential thought and life-standard of the nation. The grad¬ 
 ual development of the educational machinery will be 
 adverted to below. It appears to me, surveying the history 
 of nations, that there is a vital connection between constitu¬ 
 tional freedom and movement: whether that movement be 
 progressive or retrogressive is another question. 
 
 It is quite conceivable, however, that, spite of the potent 
 ideas which underlie and sustain the vast network of admin¬ 
 istration and its centralisation in an emperor, the unwieldy 
 social system might break up under a heavy strain and per¬ 
 haps revert to anarchy, were it not for two things: first, the 
 universal self-centredness and self-government of the family 
 and the consequent restricted view of life and its possibili¬ 
 ties ; and, secondly, the educational system which carefully 
 trains the people in the way they should go, and which pro¬ 
 vides a governing aristocracy of intellect that commands the 
 respect of the masses, while opening out a career to all who 
 have the capacity to enter on it. 
 
 CHAP. IV. THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 
 
 ‘ Employ the able and promote the worthy.’ — Old Chinese, Maxim 
 
 1. Its general character and aim 
 
 Let us now summarise the chief governing principles of 
 Chinese life. (1) The idea of order and static equilibrium. 
 (2) The idea of the family as sacred and inviolable, and 
 in connection with this of social duties as constituting the 
 
 o 
 
 sum of morality — a system preceptive, prosaic, and desti¬ 
 tute of all idealism. (3) The worship of ancestors, and, 
 as inherent in this, a profound reverence for the past system 
 of things. (4) An elaborate ceremonial (a kind of ritual of 
 social life) as tending to confirm and perpetuate the first 
 and second, and, in fact, essential to that end. The word 
 * propriety ’ seems to sum up the externalities of the moral 
 relation and, in fact, to be almost synonymous with moral- 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 121 
 
 ity itself. All these governing principles, it is evident, are 
 intensely conservative in their character and effect. 
 
 Now, the object of the Chinese government in construct¬ 
 ing its educational machinery was, doubtles s^ to p reserve all 
 these characteristics: but they had also in view the welding 
 together of fHe - vasF’ and varied mass of population in one 
 common interest, thereby satisfying the democratic instinct 
 under an absolute imperial system. While the chief object 
 of all learning in China is, as I have said t the art of govern¬ 
 m ent a nd th e art of life, it has to be admitted that a sub¬ 
 ordinate object wi th many of the emperors has also been 
 the cultivation of literary attainment for its own sake. 
 
 To accomplish their educational purposes the Chinese 
 did not institute schools. A State system of schools and 
 colleges diffused among 400,000,000 (?) of people would 
 have been a mighty administrative task. The governing 
 authorities thought that enough was done if they encour¬ 
 aged education by confining the whole civil service of the 
 country, and indeed all positions of honour, to those highly 
 educated. The old feudalism had given place to the practical 
 equality of each citizen under the emperor, and government 
 henceforth was to be through literate, not hereditary, chiefs. 
 
 The state contented itself, accordingly, with instituting 
 a board of examiners, the controllers of which were the 
 Han-lin or Academicians of Peking — an order of distinc¬ 
 tion and power, into which only the most learned could 
 hope for admission. The board organised periodical exam¬ 
 inations of all who chose to present themselves; and only 
 the sons of barbers and players, and one or two other classes, 
 were to be excluded from competition. 
 
 The present system was fully organised only a.d. 700 
 (Morrison); but from the time of Confucius education was 
 general throughout China. Nay, long before his time there 
 were schools, and education held a high place in the esteem 
 of all the thoughtful and governing men. (Plath, ‘ Ueber 
 Schulunterricht und Erzieliungbei den alten Chinesen, 5 1868.) 
 Biot gives an historical account of the fluctuations of the 
 
122 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 educational system of China. From this account we learn 
 that the Chinese from the earliest times, certainly from nearly 
 2,000 years B.C., attached the highest value to school educa¬ 
 tion. Colleges and schools were the care of the governing 
 powers; and to these (Professor Legge says) the sons of the 
 feudal lords were sent. It was at a period of degeneracy that 
 Confucius wrote. His aim, and that of his followers, was to 
 substitute personal merit for hereditary claims to office, and 
 to throw open all administrative positions to those who could 
 win them in open intellectual competition. This was a 
 democratic movement. The competitive system may be said 
 to date from the second century B.c. (p. 127, Biot), but it had 
 varying fortunes before it was finally organised 800 years 
 thereafter. It appears from old laws that the ruling dynasty 
 of Manchu was not at first favourable to the literary hierarchy. 
 So recently as 1726, indeed, the emperor stopped the ex¬ 
 aminations, because he said two of the literati had slandered 
 him; and in an edict passed on that occasion, he pointed out 
 that the object of government in supporting the literati was, 
 not to elicit ‘ skill in letters, but to teach the people to 
 recognise and obey their princes and fathers.’ 
 
 The following brief survey of the history of examinations 
 in China is, I believe, substantially correct: — ‘So early as at 
 the commencement of the Chow dynasty, B.c. 1115, the gov¬ 
 ernment was accustomed to examine candidates for offices; 
 and this time we are not left in doubt as to the nature of the 
 examination. The Chinese had become a cultivated people, 
 and we are informed that all candidates for office were re¬ 
 quired to give proof of their acquaintance with the fine arts, 
 viz. music, archery, horsemanship, writing and arithmetic, 
 and to be thoroughly versed in the rites and ceremonies of 
 public and social life, an accomplishment that ranked as a 
 sixth art. These six arts, expressed in the concise formula, 
 li, yo, shay , yu , shu , su, comprehended the sum total of a 
 liberal education at the period, and remind us of the trivium 
 and quadrivium of mediaeval schools. 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 
 
 123 
 
 ‘ Under the dynasty of Han, after the lapse of another 
 thousand (900 ?) years, we find the range of subjects for the 
 civil service examinations largely extended. The Confucian 
 ethics had become current, and a moral standard was regarded 
 in the selection of the competitors, the district magistrate 
 being required to send up to the capital such men as had 
 acquired a reputation for hiao and lien — filial piety and 
 integrity — the Chinese rightly considering that the faithful 
 performance of domestic and social duties is the best guaran¬ 
 tee for fidelity in public life. These hiao-lien , these “ filial 
 sons and honest subjects,” whose moral characters had been 
 sufficiently attested, were now subjected to trial in respect to 
 their intellectual qualifications. The trial was twofold, first 
 as to their skill in the six arts already mentioned, and 
 secondly as to their familiarity with one or more of the 
 following subjects, the civil law, military affairs, agriculture, 
 the administration of the revenue, and the geography of the 
 empire, with special reference to the state of the water com¬ 
 munications. This was an immense advance on the meagre 
 requirements of the more ancient dynasties. 
 
 ‘ Passing over another thousand (900 ?) years, we come to 
 the era of the Tangs and the Sungs, about 700 a.d., when we 
 find the standard of literary attainment greatly elevated, the 
 graduates arranged in three classes and officials in nine, a 
 classification which is still retained. 
 
 ‘ Arriving at the close of the fourth millennium, under the 
 sway of the Mings and Tsings of the present day, we find 
 the simple trials instituted by Shun expanded into a colossal 
 system which may well claim to be the growth of four thou¬ 
 sand years. It still exhibits the features that were prominent 
 in its earlier stages, the “ six arts,” the “ five studies ” and the 
 “ three degrees ” remaining as records of its progressive 
 development. 
 
 ‘ Scholarship is a very different thing now from what it 
 was in those ruder ages when books were few, and the harp, 
 the bow, and the saddle divided the student’s time with the 
 
124 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 oral instructions of some famous master. Each century has 
 added to the weight of his burden, and to the “ heir of all the 
 ages” each passing generation has bequeathed a legacy of 
 toil. Doomed to live among the deposits of a buried world, 
 and contending with millions of competitors, the intending 
 candidate can hardly hope for success without devoting him¬ 
 self to a life of unremitting study. True, he is not called 
 upon to extend his researches beyond the limits of his 
 national literature, but that is all but infinite. It costs him, 
 at the outset, years of labour to get possession of the key 
 that unlocks it, for the learned language is totally distinct 
 from his vernacular dialect, and justly regarded as the most 
 difficult of the languages of man. Then he must commit to 
 memory the whole circle of the recognised classics and make 
 himself familiar with the best writers of every age of a coun¬ 
 try which is no less prolific in books than in men. No 
 doubt, his course of study is too purely literary and too 
 exclusively Chinese, but it is not superficial. In a popular 
 “ Student’s Guide ” we lately met with a course of reading 
 drawn up for thirty years ! ’ 1 
 
 The competition is so close that it is impossible for those 
 under preparation to study any subject except that which the 
 State prescribes. 
 
 While it is generally correct to say that all State offices 
 are reserved for those who go through the complete Chinese 
 curriculum and pass the examinations, it has to be noted 
 that there is at Peking a State-supported college for the 
 special instruction of the sons of high officials and of the 
 Manchu governing and military class, and that the pupils of 
 this institution are afterwards employed in the public ser¬ 
 vice. Dr. Morrison says that the examination of members of 
 the imperial dynasty is a mockery. 
 
 It sometimes happens also that for eminent social position 
 or public services, a high degree and corresponding rank may 
 
 1 From Han Lin Papers; or, Essays on the Intellectual Life of the Chinese, 
 pp. 56-9, by W. A. P. Martin, D.D., LL.D., President of the Sungwen 
 College, Peking. 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 125 
 
 be conferred, although the recipient is not a literate. Pro¬ 
 fessor Douglas says that there is a large number of mandarins 
 of different grades who have received their titles for public 
 services. 
 
 Mr. Wells Williams 1 maintains that the examinations are 
 not always purely conducted, and that bribes are frequently 
 conveyed by wealthy candidates to the examiners. The 
 lowest degree, especially, is frequently obtained by influence. 
 There can be no doubt of this. Even the second degree is 
 sometimes obtained by bribery, and the smuggling of essays 
 into the examination halls connived at. Indeed, there is a 
 regular scale of charges for successful fraudulent assistance 
 or personation. 2 
 
 For the examinations which are graded, and which I shall 
 immediately describe, the people prepare themselves. It 
 would appear, however, that government public schools ex¬ 
 isted nearly 4,000 years ago, for in the Book of Bites it is 
 said that ‘ for the purposes of education among the ancients, 
 villages had their schools, districts their academies, depart¬ 
 ments their colleges, and principalities their universities.’ 3 
 Schools are set up by adventure teachers in every part of 
 China proper, many families, however, preferring to employ 
 private tutors. M. Simon, in a recent book, tells us that col¬ 
 leges under the direction of the central academy still exist, 
 but the people do not seem to take advantage of them. The 
 Chinese young man prefers coaching establishments to edu¬ 
 cational institutions; and, where a master has gained a 
 reputation for skill in teaching, many pupils gather round 
 him to prepare for examination. Such private colleges are 
 numerous. Nor are the public colleges so deserted as M. 
 Simon represents, if we are to believe others. The teachers 
 of these are paid by the State, and admission to training is 
 by competitive examination. Thus men and boys who are 
 too poor to pay for their education have a chance afforded 
 them (Doolittle). 
 
 1 The Middle Kingdom. 2 Doolittle. 
 
 3 Quoted by Mr. Williams, i. 421. 
 
126 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Education in any form whatsoever cannot be said to reach 
 the lowest stratum of the population. But, on the other 
 hand, it is certain that all have the opportunity (if they 
 have the pecuniary means) of acquiring the knowledge 
 requisite for the State examinations. 
 
 Given the stimulus in the shape of the wealth and rank 
 of official station, the practical results in China appear to be, 
 that the people find they can educate themselves better than 
 the government can educate them. Mr. Meadows holds 
 that the institution of public service examinations (which 
 have been always strictly competitive) is the cause of the 
 continued duration of the Chinese nation; it is that which 
 preserves the other causes and gives efficacy to their opera¬ 
 tion. By it all parents throughout the country who can 
 compass the means of imparting to their sons a knowledge 
 of their country’s literature do so. A most important result 
 is this, that the poorest man in China is constrained to say, 
 if his lot in life be lowly, that it is so by the 4 will of 
 heaven,’ and not through any unjust barriers or disqualifi¬ 
 cations erected by his fellow-men. 
 
 2. The external organisation of the examination-system 
 
 The so-called districts of China are about the size of an 
 average English county. These are presided over by a civil 
 mandarin. He is assisted by subordinate mandarins, among 
 whom are two educational mandarins. 
 
 Several districts together are grouped as departments (the 
 average being six districts to a department), at the head of 
 which is the departmental judge or prefect, and his resi¬ 
 dence is known as the departmental city. These depart¬ 
 ments again are grouped — usually three of them — into 
 circuits, at the head of which is a high officer called inten- 
 dant (Taou-tae) — the lowest official who has power over 
 the action of the military. 
 
 The officials above-named are all distributed through the 
 provinces, and at the head of each province is a viceroy. 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 127 
 
 The viceroy is not only at the head of the civil adminis¬ 
 tration of the province, but also controls the military, and 
 has a general supervision. In fact, the provinces are vir¬ 
 tually self-governing, but subject to the supreme imperial 
 authority. 1 The viceroy is empowered to communicate 
 with the emperor and the cabinet council direct, and he 
 has the power of suspending all the mandarins in the cir¬ 
 cuits, departments, and districts of his province. Under 
 this powerful viceroy there are three high officials: the 
 finance superintendent, the judicial head or chief justice, 
 and the provincial educational examiner. There are thus 
 (i), districts; (2), departments; (3), circuits; (4), pro¬ 
 vinces ; all under the emperor and his cabinet council. 
 
 The system of examination runs parallel, to a large extent, 
 with the civil divisions of the country; and at the head of 
 the whole educational administration is the Academy of 
 Han-lin at Peking, to which I have already adverted. ‘ It 
 numbers/ says M. Simon, ‘232 members recruited by them¬ 
 selves from among the literati. The State guarantees to 
 each of them the use of a house and garden, with a small 
 money allowance.’ There are also ancient endowments. 
 ‘It is entirely independent of the government, in spite of 
 the assistance rendered, which cannot be withdrawn.’ Not 
 only does this Academy control the educational examina¬ 
 tions of the country, but it is virtually a kind of privy 
 council advising the emperor. Forty of their number con¬ 
 stitute a court of censors and supervise (Simon) both the 
 public and private life of the emperor. Fifty-six censors 
 also are distributed through the country, says Douglas. 
 They are understood to expose all cases of maladministra¬ 
 tion. Members of the court are also sent on special mis¬ 
 sions to inquire into grievances, &c. Others have the charge 
 of the public records. 
 
 1 The provincial cities may have a population of from 500,000 to 3,000,000 
 people. 
 
128 
 
 PRE- CHRISTIAN EDUCA TION 
 
 3. The examinations 1 
 
 (1) Preliminary examinations are conducted in the dis¬ 
 tricts or counties by the educational mandarins. These 
 ‘ preliminaries ’ are two in number (Plath). 
 
 (2) Those who pass the preliminary examinations then go 
 forward to an examination held twice every three years in 
 the departmental city. This departmental examination is 
 conducted by the provincial examiner, who goes to the 
 departmental city for that purpose and is aided by the 
 departmental prefect. The candidates make their appear¬ 
 ance twice or oftener for examination, and those who stand 
 a fair chance of the degree are then required to appear and 
 write out from memory the whole of the Sacred Edict, a 
 treatise prepared by one of the emperors for the instruction 
 of his subjects in their moral duties (Doolittle). Failure in 
 this is fatal to a candidate’s chance, however high he may 
 stand in the other exercises. This departmental examina¬ 
 tion is the last of the primary examinations and confers on 
 those who pass it the designation of Sew-tzai, 2 ‘ flowering 
 talent,’ which Europeans have translated as the degree of 
 Bachelor. 3 The successful Bachelor can wear a button on 
 his cap and is raised above the common citizen. In fact he 
 is now subject, even in the case of criminal offences, to the 
 literary chief of the graduates of his district (Doolittle). 
 This might be regarded as being admitted ‘ to the benefit of 
 clergy.’ He now belongs to the lowest grade of Chinese 
 aristocracy. But only a fixed number receive the degree at 
 each examination, and consequently youths often go back to 
 their homes without public recognition of their attainments, 
 although in reality standing high. It is thus in the strictest 
 
 1 I have carefully read at least seven or eight accounts of the examinations, 
 and all differ in their details somewhat. I give the result of a careful 
 collation. 
 
 2 Spelt sometimes siu-ts-ai. 
 
 3 According to Doolittle, there are also certain intermediate or supple¬ 
 mentary examinations of Bachelors, to weed out those who are not fit to go 
 forward to the second degree. 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES ,129 
 
 sense a competition. Those who pass the examination are 
 received with great rejoicings by their friends. I have 
 already said that this B.A. is sometimes purchased, and 
 often obtained by bribery. Of this there can be no doubt. 
 According to Doolittle, it can be bought from the Imperial 
 authority itself. The purchaser can then compete for the 
 next higher degree. In any case, he has received a distinc¬ 
 tion of great social value. 
 
 (3) Every three years the Bachelors of each province have 
 an opportunity of being examined at the provincial city at a 
 great gathering presided over by two examiners sent from 
 Peking, who are assisted by a large local staff. These ex¬ 
 aminations extend over three sittings. Although the average 
 number allowed to pass in each province is only seventy 
 (Martin gives one in a hundred), the competitions are fre¬ 
 quently attended by from 7,000 to 8,000 Bachelors. There 
 may be in a provincial hall as many as 10,000 examination 
 cells: small and uncomfortable recesses. The candidates 
 take in their own provisions (the State allowance being 
 bad), and there are servants appointed to cook for them. 
 Two days and nights seems to be the minimum amount of 
 time spent in the examination hall. Martin gives three ses¬ 
 sions of nearly three days each. Compositions in prose and 
 verse are prescribed, and themes to test the extent and depth 
 of scholarship. Those who pass are designated ‘ promoted 
 men,’ Chii-jin, which in Europe has been translated ‘ Licen¬ 
 tiates/ or * Masters.’ They can now adorn their caps with a 
 gilt button of a higher grade. 
 
 (4) The Licentiates or Masters are now entitled to com¬ 
 pete for the metropolitan title of * entered scholars/ or (as 
 we have translated the degree) Doctor (Chin-tze) which is 
 conferred after a severe examination at Peking, the capital, 
 held triennially and conducted by the metropolitan Acade¬ 
 micians, members of the Han-lin. It lasts thirteen days 
 (Plath); but the percentage of elected men is now larger 
 than in the lower examinations. 
 
 The mere details of working so huge an examination 
 
 o o 
 
 9 
 
130 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 machine are enough to overwhelm the ordinary European 
 m ind — officers to marshal the students before entering the 
 examination hall; officers to paste down the corners of the 
 themes on which is the number corresponding to the candi¬ 
 date’s name ; servitors to wait on the candidates; examiners 
 and their numerous assistants. 
 
 The Bachelor's examination occupies only one day, the 
 candidates assembling before dawn, and being provided with 
 slate and paper. Though searched before entering they not 
 unfrequently, it is said, find means of eluding their searchers, 
 and instead of having the ‘Four Books’ at their fingers’ ends 
 have them, in the form of diamond editions, concealed up 
 their flowing sleeves. As soon as it is light enough, two 
 themes for prose essays and one for a poem are carried round . 
 on long poles and are copied down by all. 1 Then ensues 
 a struggle as to who shall finish first, a certain proportion of 
 marks being allowed for speed in composition, and by 
 degrees all the papers are handed in and the candidates dis¬ 
 perse. Some few days afterwards the list is issued. 
 
 Dr. Morrison summarises thus, in speaking of the Licen¬ 
 tiates examination. First day: three themes from the Four 
 Books, one for a verse composition. Second day: one theme 
 from each of the Five Classics; one of these, according 
 to most writers, being a verse composition. Third day: five 
 questions on the history and economics of China. The 
 theme-paper is printed with perpendicular and horizontal 
 lines, dividing it into squares, one square for each character. 
 Characters blotted out or altered must be numbered and 
 noted down by the student according to a prescribed form. 
 The number of characters for each essay is prescribed. It 
 will not be accepted if there are any heterodox opinions. 
 
 In a great centre like Canton there will be found as many 
 as 10,000 persons within the enclosure of the examination 
 building, and the public interest is intense. 
 
 For the military service a very small knowledge of liter- 
 
 1 Bishop Gray gives several days to this examination. 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN'RACES 131 
 
 ature is needed. The special examination consists of 
 physical exercises — the lifting of heavy weights, drawing 
 the long bow, and drill with the sword. 
 
 4. Rewards of success in the examinations 
 
 It is a joyful moment for those who find themselves 
 in possession of the first literary degree — a degree which 
 launches its owner fairly in a recognised career, entitles him 
 to wear official dress with a gilt button of the lowest grade, 
 and exempts him, as a prisoner or as a witness, from the 
 indignity of the bamboo — at any rate, until his case shall 
 have been reported to the higher authorities and his diploma 
 cancelled. From this moment he is nominally an officer 
 of the State, though doomed to remain for some time, and 
 possibly for ever, in the position of an unemployed and 
 unpaid attach^. He is, however, whatever may happen, a 
 member of the Chinese aristocracy. His own energy and 
 abilities must determine the rest. He may now either 
 obtain by purchase (not from the State but from the man¬ 
 darin in whose office the particular patronage is vested) or 
 by influence, subordinate employment as secretary, clerk, &c. 
 in some department of the provincial administration, and 
 trust to chance to work his way in the world: or he may 
 become a scribe or a teacher. 
 
 While Bachelors have no right to expect office, the 
 Licentiate may expect a post after waiting for one or two 
 years ; but much depends on personal influence at this stage. 
 The Doctor has, however, claim to a district magistracy at 
 once, and the career of civilian in all its grades is opened up 
 to him. Mr. Williams says (ed. 1857) that in his time, 
 partly in consequence of. the extensive sale of offices, 5,000 
 Doctors and 27,000 Licentiates were waiting for employment. 
 In any other country save China these men would be a 
 serious element of danger to the State. 
 
 ‘ Hard and successful study,’ says Mr. Meadows, ‘ alone 
 enables a Chinese to set foot on the lowest step of the 
 
132 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 official ladder, and a long and unusually successful career is 
 necessary to enable him to reach the higher rounds’; 
 and we may add, in the words of this same author, that ‘ the 
 administrative system into which learning thus secures an 
 access is the most gigantic and the most minutely organised 
 which the world has ever seen.’ 
 
 It has to be noted that the specialised liberal professions as 
 we understand them, do not exist in China, ‘ and a youth in 
 determining his calling in life has to choose between becoming 
 a scholar and a possible mandarin or teacher, and taking to 
 trade. This narrowing of future possibilities induces almost 
 every lad who possesses any talent whatever to throw in his 
 lot with the students. And this point being decided, he 
 devotes himself with all the industry of his race to preparing 
 for the public examinations by perfecting his knowledge of 
 the classics and by practising the art of .writing essays and 
 penning verses.’ (Douglas, p. 165.) 
 
 The few more distinguished Doctors may go forward to 
 still another and final examination which makes them mem¬ 
 bers of the Imperial Academy attached to the court at 
 Peking, which is entrusted with the function of poets and 
 historians of the empire, and the supervision of the State 
 examinations. At each triennial examination the emperor 
 designates the one consummate flower of the triennium, the 
 ‘ Senior Wrangler ’ (as they would say at Cambridge) of the 
 empire, and the city which has produced him becomes noted 
 in the eyes of all China. 
 
 To what end all this ? Not to promote philosophical 
 speculation, scientific investigation, or even literary excel¬ 
 lence, but merely with a view to ascertain fitness for the 
 public service by testing ‘the acquisitive, retentive, and 
 reproductive powers of the candidates. Any originality 
 would be fatal to the aspirant. We cannot shut our eyes 
 to the barren result of all this hard study and excessive 
 examination. The exclusiveness with which the Chinese 
 minds are fed on the facts and bald precepts of history, on 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 133 
 
 the poetical literature (mostly lyric and artificial) of the 
 past, and the demand made on them for an exact reproduc¬ 
 tion of the words of their sacred books and the classical 
 writers and commentators on them, has a tendency to con¬ 
 firm and perpetuate the Chinese peculiarities of mind, and 
 to repress all true progressive intellectual life. 
 
 At the same time such a system manifestly has high politi¬ 
 cal significance. The intellect of the whole empire is, so to 
 speak, captured and enslaved not merely to the learning of 
 the past but to the existing constitution of things. A system 
 which gives every man, who can attain even to the lowest 
 degree, a social status and the prospect of professional work 
 of some kind, can be upset only by some extraordinary social 
 upheaval. An aristocracy of intellect is in its essence a 
 democratic institution, and from the point of view of the 
 emperor and his cabinet, a very safe one. The system, more¬ 
 over, while producing men attached to the institutions by 
 which they have risen, acts as a check on the arbitrariness 
 of despotism. The emperor must so conduct himself as to 
 satisfy the conceptions of moral conduct and political justice 
 which the highest intellect of the country has formed and 
 formulated. 
 
 Great are the privileges, we see, belonging to those who 
 have an opportunity of obtaining education, but it is impossi¬ 
 ble that education in any sense can reach the masses of the 
 people. Time and money are needed to take advantage of 
 the education offered. Nor, indeed, would it seem possible to 
 give what we in the West call popular education save through 
 the local dialects, in which there is little or no native litera¬ 
 ture. The literary language is as far removed from these dia¬ 
 lects as Latin is from broad Scots. 
 
 5. Subjects of examination 
 
 To these I have already adverted. They are clearly defined, 
 and it is impossible for any one who means to succeed, to 
 allow his attention to be for a moment directed from the pre- 
 
134 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCA DION 
 
 scribed path. And yet, from the Chinese point of view the 
 course of study is comprehensive. Biot correctly says that the 
 competitive examinations are on principle founded on the 
 reading and explanation of a limited number of ancient texts, 
 and so far it is rightly called ‘ literary.’ But it has also an 
 intellectual character resulting from the fact that these texts 
 contain all the essential documents of morality, philosophy, 
 politics and history — the ensemble of rights and duties. The 
 Five Classics and Four Books do not amount in bulk to more 
 than our Old and New Testaments together. 
 
 But commentators have also to be studied, and these have 
 produced works of inordinate dimensions. ‘ Century after 
 century,’ says Professor Douglas, 1 ‘ has produced scholars who 
 have devoted their lives to the production of exegetical trea¬ 
 tises which since, as every grain of wheat has been long well 
 threshed out of the texts, have degenerated into trivial and 
 verbal technicalities.’ 
 
 6. Teachers: Schools: Course of Study: Methods 
 
 (a) Teachers and Schools. — The schoolmaster has 
 not to pass an examination and requires no permit from the 
 authorities, but I believe that the educational inspectors are 
 empowered, if they see fit, to close bad schools. Parents 
 choose for their children the teacher in whom they have con¬ 
 fidence and they exercise the greatest care in doing so. The 
 teachers are mostly Bachelors in arts who have not proceeded 
 to a higher degree, frequently men who have failed in the 
 competition for their bachelorship. But in the higher grades 
 of teaching, even Doctors will be often found to prefer school- 
 work to the public service. All instructors are much re¬ 
 spected ; no function is more highly esteemed, save that of 
 an administrator. They are engaged by the year. Their 
 remuneration varies. In ‘ private ’ schools they receive from 
 35Z. to 80Z. per annum; in country schools they are paid by 
 the fees of the scholars, usually from 2s. to 4s. per month, 
 besides presents and provisions. 
 
 1 Society in China , p. 164. 
 
THE UR0-ALTA1C OR TURANIAN RACES 135 
 
 The children of the towns and villages meet in some de¬ 
 pendence of a pagoda or temple or of some large commercial 
 establishment. Frequently mere sheds are used. It is rarely 
 that a building specially designed for a schoolhouse is to be 
 seen. 1 The rooms are generally hired by the teacher : some¬ 
 times he may have himself a house suitable for a school and 
 receive the children there. Private schools got up by a few 
 well-to-do families for their own children, are kept in the 
 halls dedicated to ancestors and are better provided than the 
 public schools. It is private interest, not zeal for the eleva¬ 
 tion of the people, that leads to the institution of schools; 
 but here and there schools have been set on foot by the per¬ 
 sonal benefactions of some rich man who looks for his reward 
 in some literary title. 
 
 In village schools, the number of pupils under one teacher 
 may be from 20 to 40. The school hours are usually from 
 sunrise to 10 o’clock, when the children go home to dinner, 
 and then from 11 to 5. The arrangements of the school are 
 very simple. The teacher has a table and arm-chair for 
 himself, and every scholar has to bring with him a writing- 
 table and chair. Every one has to provide himself, also, 
 with books, paper, Indian-ink and pencil. 
 
 The boy enters school about the age of seven. The first 
 going to school is a great occasion in the family. Admission 
 into the school is accompanied by a formal ceremony under 
 the name of Koi-hok, i.e., opening of studies. On first going 
 to school the scholar pays his devotions (which consist in 
 burning of incense and genuflexions) before the altar of Con¬ 
 fucius. If there is no altar, a bit of paper with Confucius’s 
 name on it will suffice (Doolittle). He next salutes his 
 teacher with great reverence. The boy is now a disciple of 
 Confucius and remains so till the day on which he takes his 
 final degree. Every day, when the pupils come to school, 
 they bow and offer incense to the picture of a god of knowl¬ 
 edge, 2 then bow to the teacher and take their places. Educa- 
 
 1 Wells Williams’s Middle Kingdom. 
 
 2 One of these I possess, and it is a hideous object. 
 
136 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 tion as well as instruction is understood to be comprised in 
 the teacher’s duties. Accordingly, he is required to train 
 the pupils in good behaviour and convey to them the rules 
 of decency and politeness, and, all through the school period, 
 moral instruction and becoming conduct according to the 
 rules of etiquette which regulate the relations of persons to 
 each other in China are understood to be kept in view. In 
 such matters nothing seems to be too minute for the Chinese 
 mind. 
 
 (b) The Course of Study. — The course of study is 
 rigid and the same for all: nothing in the whole of the long 
 curriculum is optional. 
 
 Speaking generally, there are three grades of instruction 
 
 — sometimes all within the same school. The primary, in 
 which mere memory work is done, and script acquired; the 
 middle, in which a translation is given of the canonical 
 books; and the higher, in which composition and commen¬ 
 taries are the leading studies. 
 
 The first schoolbook is described as the ‘ Pass to the regions 
 of classical and historical literature/ but this is not its name. 
 It is sometimes called the ‘ three-character classic ’ — also 
 the ‘ trimetrical classic/ 1 It begins with the necessity of 
 education. Then the importance of their duties to children 
 and brothers is impressed upon the pupils by precept and 
 example. Then follows a survey of the various branches of 
 knowledge in an ascending series: the three great powers 
 (heaven, earth, and man); the four seasons and quarters of 
 heaven ; the five elements (metals, wood, fire, earth) ; the 
 five cardinal virtues (love, justice, propriety, wisdom, truth 
 
 — faithfulness); the six species of grain (rice, barley, wheat, 
 beans, millet, and another kind of grain) ; the six domestic 
 animals (horse, ox, sheep, fowl, dog, swine) ; the seven pas¬ 
 sions (love, hatred, joy, sadness, pleasure, anger, and fear); 
 
 1 Quoting from the Abbe Hue, the Dictionnaire Pklagogique gives San-tze- 
 king as the Chinese title of this book. A copy before me, printed in Hong 
 Kong, reads Sam-tsz-King. 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 137 
 
 the eight notes of music; the nine degrees of relationship; 
 the social duties as between ruler and subject, father and 
 son, husband and wife, elder and younger brother, and 
 friends. After this survey come rules for a course of aca¬ 
 demic studies with a list of the books to be used, and a 
 general summary of the History of China with an enumera¬ 
 tion of the successive dynasties of the empire. 1 The material 
 is too compressed and too generalised for the youthful mind 
 to assimilate; but at this age no regard is paid to the 
 development of the thinking powers. The pupils are to 
 receive quite mechanically a store of valuable information, 
 till the time comes when their intelligence will be awakened 
 by the explanations of the teacher, and this happens only in 
 the case of those who propose to go forward to the public 
 degree examinations. The Primer — the contents of which 
 I have just summarised — begins thus (Eitel’s translation): 
 
 Man’s commencement of life is such that his nature is radically good. 
 But as to nature, men are mutually near each other 
 Whilst in practice they are mutually far apart. 
 
 Suppose, however, that no education were given to a man, 
 
 His nature would then be diverted. 
 
 Education’s rationale is such in its tendency 
 That the highest value is set on application. 
 
 The next five lines are from Bridgman’s translation: 
 
 To educate without rigour shows a teacher’s indolence. 
 
 That boys should not learn is an improper thing; 
 
 For if they do not learn in youth, what will they do when old 1 
 Gems unwrought can form nothing useful; 
 
 So men untaught can never know the proprieties. 
 
 Another extract, having reference to the books to be 
 studied, may be given: 
 
 Now in all cases when instruction is given to the ignorant, 
 Although it is well to explain characters orally and exhaustively, 
 Yet detailed moral instruction in the sayings of the ancients 
 
 1 See Eitel’s translation, published at Hong Kong, 1892, 
 
138 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Is just as necessary as precision regarding syntactic punctuation. 
 But as to [successful] practice of study, or rather that which con¬ 
 stitutes it, 
 
 It is indispensable to have a rational basis to begin with. 
 
 Starting therefore from a study of the filial piety classic, 
 
 We proceed to the study of the so-called Four Books. 
 
 And so on. 
 
 The concluding words of the book are these: 
 
 Whilst men leave behind them their sons, 
 
 And with gold fill their coffers, 
 
 I, Wong Poh-hen give an education to my sons, 
 
 Leaving behind nought but this one little book. 
 
 But diligence in the use of it will have its sure merits, 
 
 Whilst play is of no benefit at all. 
 
 Beware of that, do ! 
 
 It is of imperative importance for you to exert all your strength. 
 
 Observe the generalised and abstract character of the in¬ 
 struction given to mere infants. When we note further that 
 each notion is represented either by a distinct symbol, or a 
 symbol with more than one interpretation, we shall be able 
 to conceive the vast memory task which the Chinese child 
 has to face on the very threshold of learning. M. Genahr (a 
 missionary) affirms that a great many even of the teachers 
 do not understand the meaning of what they teach children 
 to read. 
 
 The boy now knows the shapes and sounds of upwards of 
 400 separate characters, representing upwards of 1,000 words, 
 and is considered sufficiently advanced to take the second 
 step upon the road to knowledge and to proceed to commit 
 to memory in like manner the ‘ Thousand Character Book ’ 
 — Ts’in-Tsz-man. This singular piece of composition is said 
 to have been the production of a man who was supplied in 
 prison with 1,000 different characters jumbled together and 
 to have been ordered to make out of them a poem. 1 He 
 accomplished the feat in a single night, but his hair turned 
 
 1 Giles’ Historic China. 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 139 
 
 white with the effort. This is legendary, of course. The 
 poem consists of 250 columns of four characters to each. 
 The subjects are varied, and rather inconsequent, as witness 
 the following specimen which I take from the beginning of 
 the book, as being the best part from a literary point of view 
 and also the most consecutive: 
 
 There is [father] Heaven above me and [mother] Earth below : 
 
 how dusky the former, how tawny the latter ! 
 
 And so there is the universe all around, with its aeons all along: 
 
 how vast the former, how limitless the latter! 
 
 Then there is sun and moon : even as the latter goes on to fulness, 
 the former declines. 
 
 And so there are the other planets, with all the stars: how scat¬ 
 tered they are, and yet how orderly the display! 
 
 [Hence it is that nature makes] the cold to come on, even as the 
 heat begins to depart, 
 
 And as autumn gathers things up [into maturity], so winter again 
 hides them all away. 
 
 [And hence also] men forming into intercalary months the surplus 
 [of their reckoning of days] have perfected [their calcula¬ 
 tions] of the year. 
 
 And likewise in music, having discovered the sharps and flats, they 
 have reproduced [in melodies] in harmonies of nature’s ex¬ 
 panding [and reverting] breath. 
 
 The book then goes on to treat of the beauty of natural 
 objects, the origin and progress of Chinese civilisation, in¬ 
 herited physical and mental constitution, moral self-culture, 
 moral reputation, filial piety, political loyalty, value of literary 
 studies, deportment, founders of Chinese polity, topography, 
 value of agriculture, advice and warning, natural gifts and 
 organised study, the flight of time, and concludes with a 
 warning against isolation. 
 
 Here again the chief object is to store the pupil’s memory 
 with the shapes and sounds of a large number of written 
 symbols; and by the time that the Thousand Character 
 Essay (or poem) has been mastered, it follows that 1,000 1 
 
 1 Unless the same characters frequently recur, which is probable. 
 
140 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 new characters will have been added to the boy’s stock-in- 
 trade ; besides which he ought to have acquired a knowledge 
 of a very useful cardinal series of numbers from 1 to 1,000. 
 But besides this, as the work is methodically constructed (a 
 fact which puts out of court the legend of the prisoner), the 
 children ought to have acquired a large amount of informa¬ 
 tion on history, geography, morality, and the domestic virtues. 
 I say ‘ ought to have acquired * advisedly; hut they acquire 
 nothing save the utterance of the literary words by rote, and 
 the formation of the literary characters. No attempt is 
 made to bring the intelligence to bear on the work done. 
 The object is simply to give the children a rote-knowledge of 
 the words and forms of the literary language. Still a certain 
 intellectual result must follow. 
 
 If any one doubts the effect of school education on the 
 character and life of a nation, let him consider with himself 
 the respective influence of these Chinese classical primers so 
 acquired, and the Shorter Catechism used as a school text¬ 
 book and as constituting the rule of faith and life in 
 Scotland. 
 
 One writer says, with manifest truth, that the Chinese 
 child is in a position similar to that in which an English 
 child would be who had to learn by heart Latin Grammar 
 and several Latin books without understanding a single 
 word. Rote-work, and this in what is practically a foreign 
 tongue, governs all. 1 
 
 The next step is an important one, analogous to the old 
 Grammar-school transition in learning Latin, viz. from the 
 ‘Delectus’ to Csesar and Yirgil — from the elementary to 
 the more advanced. The budding student now opens the 
 first page of the Four Books, which are of vital importance 
 in the great competitive tests to which he will hereafter be 
 subjected. These Four Books, to which are added the Five 
 Classics, are now committed, one by one, to memory, in pre¬ 
 cisely the same way as the two foregoing schoolbooks, 
 anything like explanation or consultation of the author- 
 
 1 I have also seen a short book of poetry sometimes used in schools. 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 141 
 
 ised commentaries being postponed until some progress 
 has been made in the arduous task of learning by heart. 
 (Giles.) The master, it is true, now translates and the 
 boys imitate him; but there is no independent effort to 
 get at the meaning. 
 
 Then come the commentaries, as I have before explained. 
 ‘ The memory work is prodigious, and is abnormally devel¬ 
 oped at the expense of all the higher mental faculties.’ 
 (Douglas, p. 165.) ‘ It is always easier to remember than to 
 
 think, and according to the current Chinese system, it is also 
 more profitable.’ 
 
 (c) Method of Instruction. Earlier stages. — There 
 are several highly esteemed books on the subject of education 
 in China, and they contain admirable maxims, but there has 
 been no attempt to discover a method of training. The most 
 celebrated perhaps is one called ‘ Complete Collection of 
 Family Jewels,’ in which there are also rules for school man¬ 
 agement (Morrison). There is no class system. It )s all 
 individual teaching. 
 
 The method of learning to read is the following. The 
 book is opened and the teacher begins to read. The pupils, 
 each of whom has his book, repeat the words after the master, 
 with their eyes fixed on the page, and following the words 
 with their fore-finger. Only one line is read, and this is 
 repeated by the pupils simultaneously in a loud voice till the 
 pupils have acquired the pronunciation of every symbol and 
 can read the line without the master. Then they go to their 
 seats and learn the line by heart; this they also do with a 
 loud voice, each one shouting out his task (the noise proceed¬ 
 ing from a Chinese school is frightful), till he has imprinted 
 it on his memory. When he is ready he goes to the master, 
 puts his book on the table before him, turns his back and so 
 repeats the lesson. Hence the phrase ‘ to back the book ’ is 
 equivalent to ‘ saying by heart.’ Then the teacher proceeds 
 to the next line, and goes on in the same way till the whole 
 book is committed to memory. The book is rhythmically 
 constructed, so that three symbols always form one sentence, 
 
142 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 •> 
 
 and lienee the name Sam-tz-King , or ‘the trimetrical or 
 three-character classic.’ We have here developed to its 
 fullest extent the universal Oriental custom of learning by 
 heart — a survival from the time when oral tradition was 
 the only possible way of learning and teaching. Before books 
 or rolls existed the teacher recited what the pupils were to 
 learn, and they repeated it after him till they knew it. The 
 understanding of what was acquired was not thought of, nor 
 indeed was the instruction graduated so as to fit the intelli¬ 
 gence of the young. The understanding of what was learned 
 was allowed to take care of itself. China, although it has 
 the printed page, is no exception to the crude Oriental con¬ 
 ception of instructing the young. 
 
 Besides the reading of the symbols, the only other subject 
 taught in the elementary school is writing. The scholars 
 receive a copy from the master, which contains in the first 
 instance the simplest symbols, and they gradually learn to 
 write those of more complex form. These copies are laid 
 under the paper on which the pupil is to write, and are traced 
 by him with the pencil. When he has obtained some facility 
 in tracing he begins to copy. 
 
 Many boys who -go to school never learn more than to 
 read and write, and do not attain to an understanding of the 
 characters ; so that even if one of them were capable of 
 reading and saying by heart a whole book fluently, he would 
 not be therefore able to give any account of what he had 
 read. Although regular instruction in arithmetic, geography, 
 history, natural history, or foreign languages is never thought 
 of, and no religious instruction is given, it has to be remarked 
 that the first and second books contain a great deal of geo¬ 
 graphical, historical, and naturalistic information of an ele¬ 
 mentary and crude kind. These things are set down, however, 
 in a highly abstract preceptive way, and are not understood. 
 But how long is it since in England Mangnall’s ‘ Questions ’ 
 and Pinnock’s ‘ Catechisms ’ were almost universal, and how 
 long since maps were considered essential to the teaching of 
 geography ? 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 
 
 143 
 
 Method of Instruction. Higher stages. — For the 
 
 mass, even of the educated, three or four years is the extent 
 of the school period. Those who wish to devote themselves 
 permanently to studies begin only after this to understand 
 what they read, and receive in the course of time a thorough 
 explanation of the classical authors. They are also exercised 
 in making verses according to prescribed rules, and in writing 
 themes in imitation of models. This higher training is con¬ 
 ducted by masters who have passed an examination, and 
 have graduated. 
 
 In the public and private colleges lectures are delivered 
 on the Four Books and the Five Classics. Four times in 
 the month compositions are written and verses made on 
 themes which have been previously discussed under the 
 guidance of the master. ‘ The first step in composition is 
 the yoking together of double characters. The second is 
 the reduplication of these binary compounds, and the con¬ 
 struction of parallels — an idea which runs so completely 
 through the whole of Chinese literature, that the mind of 
 the student has to be imbued with it at the very outset. 
 This is the way he begins: the teacher writes, “wind 
 blows,” the pupil adds, “ rain falls; ” the teacher writes, 
 “ rivers are long,” the pupil adds, “ seas are deep ” or “ moun¬ 
 tains are high,” ’ 1 &c. To acquire fluency and elegance in 
 composition, the Chinese students learn by heart a consider¬ 
 able number of essays which have been written by distin¬ 
 guished scholars in a masterly style; and these collections in 
 considerable numbers are sold in the shops. 
 
 It is on his literary proficiency, reproductive powers, and 
 attention to unalterable rules that the student’s ultimate 
 success wholly depends. A candidate receiving a given 
 theme, is not at liberty to sit down and write an essay in 
 the terms or sequence which unassisted fancy may dictate. 
 There must be no originality of either thought or style. He 
 must abide by fixed rules, introducing the subject in so many 
 balanced sentences, developing it in so many more, sum- 
 
 1 Education in China, p. 89. Martin. 
 
144 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 ming up his arguments, and finally reaching the conclusion 
 according to received principles of composition. The very 
 number of sentences is prescribed, frequently the number of 
 words. And so also with poems. These are invariably on 
 the same model — a stated number of characters to each line, 
 arbitrary rules of rhyme, trite similes and forced allusions to 
 the past. The book-shops of Chinese cities are flooded with 
 collections of essays and poems by famous authors of all ages, 
 and these are carefully studied by intending competitors in 
 the hope of borrowing therefrom something of their vigour 
 and refinement (Giles). 
 
 The most highly esteemed hook on composition is called 
 ‘ The Learner’s Bright Mirror.’ The steps of an essay as 
 prescribed in this book are: 
 
 1. The breaking open of the theme. 
 
 2. Beceiving the theme. 
 
 3. Beginning to discuss the theme. 
 
 4. Raising a branch or division. 
 
 5. The passing vein (passing from one idea to another). 
 
 6. The middle division (amplification, &c.). 
 
 7. The closing division (containing further elucidation). 
 
 8. The winding-up division (Morrison). 1 
 
 As regards school-discipline need I say that, with such aims 
 and such methods, the rod is freely and unsparingly used ? 
 
 It is, of course, impossible that there can he in China any 
 principles and methods of instruction and education in the 
 sense in which Europe uses these words, because there is no 
 scientific spirit and no psychology. But as I have said, 
 they are not without their books on the art of education 
 which contain very sagacious remarks and sound judgments. 
 Of these the most important is a ‘ Treatise on the Education 
 of Young Children,’ written in the twelfth century by a 
 philosopher named Tcliow-hi or Chow-tsze; I suppose the 
 
 1 Professor Douglas, in Society in China , expresses the rules differently, 
 but they are substantially the same. 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 145 
 
 eminent thinker referred to before (‘ Diet. Peel.’). In this 
 treatise we find such maxims as these: ‘ In teaching, a mas¬ 
 ter should not go too quickly from one subject to another, 
 and never explain several things at a time. If he observe 
 this rule, ideas will arrange themselves and combine of 
 themselves in the mind of the pupil. He ought to incite, 
 animate, and urge his pupils, but never press them, still less 
 force them.’ ‘ If a master teaches clearly he will make him¬ 
 self understood without dealing in vain and long discoursing.’ 
 He also says that the grand art of teaching is to get the 
 pupil to ask questions, and that he ought to correct the fault 
 of a pupil without letting him suspect it. Another collection 
 of educational precepts goes into great detail as to the duties of 
 teacher and scholar. But in China, as elsewhere, what is 
 axiomatic with the educationalist for the most part remains 
 with him, and is not part of the practice of the teacher, 
 because there is no school of didactics, and therefore no 
 rational tradition. 1 
 
 Women remain uneducated except among the wealthy. 
 Among these, an educated woman is highly respected for 
 her attainments. Her instruction has, of course, been private. 
 
 Conclusion. — I have spoken in a previous part of this 
 lecture of the barren results intellectually of the elaborate 
 educational curriculum of the Chinese, and this, indeed, is 
 one of the causes of the stereotyped continuity of life. The 
 poverty of results is due partly to the narrow range of the 
 studies, but much more to the purpose, character, and method 
 of them. 
 
 The highest intellectual employment of Chinese men of 
 culture, apart from the work of administration, is the repeat¬ 
 ing of passages from the Books, and exercising themselves 
 in the making of verses, in which perfect exactness in metre 
 and conformity to classical usage are all-important, but not 
 
 1 Bishop Gray says (p. 174, vol. i.) that bachelors become members of 
 universities, of which there is one in every walled city ! He must refer to 
 the Provincial State Colleges, if, indeed, he is not altogether wrong. 
 
 10 
 
146 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 more so than beauty of caligraphy. The celebrated novel 
 called Yu-Kiao-li, or ‘ The Two Cousins/ admits us to the 
 inner life of the Chinese, and gives us some idea of the 
 intellectual condition of its cultured men, and their most 
 elevated occupations. Intellectually there is great ability 
 and great acuteness, hut no originality — nay, a distrust of 
 all originating power. The study of poetry, which is so 
 largely encouraged, might be expected to exalt the imagina¬ 
 tion and stimulate thought among the Chinese, but even 
 where it is not highly artificial and hampered by ridiculous 
 rules, it is prosaic and preceptive. The following extracts 
 illustrate what I mean: 
 
 The cricket is in the hall. 
 
 And the year is drawing to a close. 
 
 If we do not enjoy ourselves now 
 
 The days and months will have fled. 
 
 But let us not go to excess; 
 
 Let us think of the duties of our position; 
 
 Let us not go beyond bounds in our love of pleasure. 
 
 The virtuous man is ever on his guard. (Legge.) 
 
 As a favourable specimen of the domestic odes I may cite 
 the following: 
 
 ‘Get up, husband, here's the day.’ 
 
 ‘ Not yet, wife, the dawn’s still grey.’ 
 
 1 Get up, sir, and on the night 
 See the morning star shines bright. 
 
 Shake off slumber, and prepare 
 Ducks and geese to shoot and snare. 
 
 All your darts and line may kill 
 I will dress for you with skill. 
 
 Thus a blithesome hour we ’ll pass, 
 
 Brightened by a cheerful glass; 
 
 While your lute its aid imparts 
 To gratify and soothe our hearts. 
 
 On all whom you may wish to know 
 I’ll girdle ornaments bestow, 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 147 
 
 And girdle ornaments I ’ll send 
 To anyone who calls you friend; 
 
 With him whose love for you’s abiding 
 My girdle ornaments dividing.’ 
 
 Again, as a specimen of another class of poetic imagery, the 
 following may be taken: 
 
 A Solitary Carouse on a Day in Spring 
 The east wind fans a gentle breeze, 
 
 The streams and trees glory in the brightness of the spring, 
 The bright sun illuminates the green shrubs 
 And the falling flowers are scattered and fly away. 
 
 The solitary cloud retreats to the hollow hill, 
 
 The birds return to their leafy haunts, 
 
 Every being has a refuge whither he may turn, 
 
 I alone have nothing to which to cling, 
 
 So, seated opposite the moon shining o’er the cliff, 
 
 I drink and sing to the fragrant blossoms. 
 
 There is not much of the ‘poet’s eye in a fine frenzy 
 rolling’ in all this. 1 
 
 As of poetry, so of literature generally: in our European 
 sense we may say confidently that it does not flourish: this 
 partly because it is taught, not for its own sake, but for 
 ulterior ends, and subject throughout to strict examination 
 tests, and to antiquarian fixed forms. The tendency of 
 competitive examinations, even among ourselves, is to crush 
 out originality and real interest in the very subjects in 
 which a student distinguishes himself. The Chinese drama 
 is realistic and photographic, and wanting in all the higher 
 qualities. 
 
 In the department of encyclopaedias and topographical 
 work the Chinese are strong. Their characteristic qualities 
 of mind have full scope in productions which demand chiefly 
 industry, detailed accuracy, and discriminating judgment. 
 
 1 I have read the Avhole of Romilly Allen’s ‘ Book of Chinese Poetry,’ and 
 the above (taken from the Encyc. Brit.) are very favourable specimens indeed. 
 
148 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 As to moral results, these unquestionably are very far 
 indeed from being so high as might be expected from a 
 nation whose whole energies are presumed to be set in the 
 direction of moral and political training and the supreme 
 virtue of propriety, while allowing the people to follow 
 their own fancies in religion. After all, is it reasonable to 
 expect a high moral result where instruction takes the 
 place of training and discipline ? 1 The supreme product 
 in China, if we found it, would be a supreme moral pedant, 
 just as the supreme product in the sphere of intellect is 
 an intellectual pedant. The surrounding of religion with 
 rites and ceremonies I have already remarked, while it 
 tends to give it permanence, tends also to deprive it of 
 vitality. This, indeed, is a trite saying. It is interesting 
 to note, however, that the same remark may be made with 
 equal truth when an attempt is made by means of an 
 elaborate and complicated social ritual to regulate the 
 moral and civil relations of men, and dogmatically to pre¬ 
 scribe rules of conduct. The result is a vast appearance 
 of ceremonious politeness, which, as it is enjoined and yet 
 cannot possibly be always felt, is necessarily accompanied 
 with a consciousness of its own hollowness. Hence the 
 disappearance of those very virtues which the Chinese 
 sages desired to cultivate — simplicity and truthfulness. 
 Hence also trickery and wiliness. Honesty is not a con¬ 
 spicuous virtue in China, and what Europeans call honour 
 does not, it seems to me, exist. The whole social fabric 
 would seem to depend for its easy working and for the 
 absence of violence between individuals, on the mainten¬ 
 ance of a false and elaborate show of mutual respect. Pro¬ 
 fessor Douglas, in the preface to ‘ Society in China,’ says: 
 ‘ There is no country in the world where practice and pro¬ 
 fession are more widely separated than in China. The 
 empire is pre-eminently one of make-believe. From the 
 emperor to the meanest of his subjects, a system of high- 
 
 1 Theognis, the old Greek, said this: diddcr/cuv ovirore Troirjtxeis tov kclkov 
 &vbp ayaddu. 
 
THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 149 
 
 sounding pretensions to lofty principles of morality holds 
 sway, while the life of the nation is in direct contradiction 
 to these assumptions. ISTo imperial edict is complete, and 
 no official proclamation finds currency, without protesta¬ 
 tions in favour of all the virtues. And yet few courts are 
 more devoid of truth and uprightness, and no magistracies 
 are more corrupt than those of the celestial empire/ 
 
 We must admit, however, that the political aim of the 
 educational system is, to a large extent, attained; and also 
 the social aim, for the Chinaman is, generally speaking, a 
 good son, and a good subject, an industrious labourer, a man 
 of gentle manners, contented and peaceable. On the other 
 hand, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that morally, as 
 well as intellectually, as measured by Aryan standards, the 
 education given leads, at best, to mediocrity. By crushing 
 out all initiative it prevents the growth of a free personal¬ 
 ity. Where this is wanting, we may expect to find, not 
 only the absence of all independent inquiry into new fields 
 of thought, but also the absence of the more manly virtues. 
 
 Perhaps we may say that the secret of failure lies in the 
 want of an ideal human aim, as opposed to a narrow political 
 or social aim. Man has to be trained ever in the light of a 
 type of manhood. All practical aims ought to be subordi¬ 
 nated to this. It cannot he said that the course of education 
 in China is illiberal or anti-humanistic; but restriction of 
 aim and intense personal competition can deprive even liberal 
 studies of their liberalising influence. The human ideal 
 which we desiderate as educational end is not possible except 
 where the spirit of man — of the individual man — is nur¬ 
 tured in freedom. God has in all history affirmed this, that 
 the highest is conceivable and attainable only through free¬ 
 dom. Many errors, many calamities • even, may flow from 
 the untrammelled play of human reason; hut these too are 
 of God. Changes, and the freedom of mind which is their 
 cause, are always hateful to the organising mind, which is a 
 tyrannous and levelling mind, whether it clothe itself in the 
 garb of a hard cold system like that of the Chinese, or of a 
 
150 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Catholic Church, a secular imperial bureaucracy, or a com¬ 
 munistic police. No such organisation can rest content until 
 it has achieved the enslavement of personality, whose essence 
 is always freedom. 
 
 There are among us who are enamoured of state-systems 
 which regulate education down to its minutest detail, and 
 leave no room for the free play of mind: in China we have 
 this indirectly accomplished and see it in all its necessary 
 rigidity, uniformity, and pedantry. There are who advocate 
 a secular system of education: in China we see this in full 
 operation. There are who think that all success in the 
 education of mind should be measured by external competi¬ 
 tive tests: in China we have this elaborated into an iron 
 system. There are who cling by the dogmatic and precep¬ 
 tive, and regard with suspicion the habituating of the mind 
 of schoolboys to ideals sesthetic and spiritual, including even 
 the simple elements of humanity: in China they will find 
 what they desire to see. There are who hold that teachers 
 and school-inspectors are heaven-born, and are above the 
 study of educational principles and methods (as the Emperor 
 Sigismund was supra Grammaticam ) : so China thinks. 
 
 I am not going to elaborate didactic parallels and compari¬ 
 sons, tempting as the field may be; but this I may say by 
 way of retrospect. I think we may find a similarity between 
 the ancient Egyptian and the Chinese mind. Both are 
 essentially creatures of the practical understanding, and of 
 merely preceptive morality,unfit or indisposed (unlike the 
 Aryan) to find the reason in things, and, consequently, essen¬ 
 tially unspeculative and unscientific. And yet how different 
 in some respects! The Egyptian had a profound sense of 
 the mystery of life, and of infinite possibilities hereafter. The 
 Chinese are essentially prosaic, and of the earth earthy. 
 The Egyptian was saved by having, like the Semite, a 
 divine standard and sanction, such as it was, and a corre¬ 
 sponding responsibility to the Unseen. The Chinese seem to 
 have no standard save the fit and the prudential and the 
 ‘ proper,’ and cannot, therefore, I venture to say, be deterred 
 
TEE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 
 
 151 
 
 from unworthy action towards either their fellow-citizens or 
 others by a sense of responsibility to ideal aims which con¬ 
 nect them with the gods or with God. 
 
 It is the intelligence with which we permeate all school 
 studies — that is to say, the free movement of mind which we 
 evoke in the young — that alone truly instructs: it is the 
 life of personality and personal responsibility which we infuse 
 into ethical training and discipline, and the infinite relations 
 with which we sanctify it, that can alone rear a people who 
 are to be vigorous, virile, and progressive. Mere memory 
 work in the sphere of intelligence, mere preceptive and dog¬ 
 matic teaching in the ethical sphere, can produce at best the 
 mere semblance of a true man or woman — the sterile con¬ 
 vention of outer obedience. 
 
 We pass now from the highest and most organised expres¬ 
 sion of Turanian or Uro-Altaic civilisation to the Aryan 
 races, to which we ourselves belong. 
 
 Note on Early Forms of Religion 
 
 Primitive religion (if it can be called religion) is known as Ani¬ 
 mism, that is to say belief in the existence of numerous souls or 
 spirits. Those spirits on which man imagines himself dependent 
 for material felicity and personal security naturally become objects 
 of worship as divine "beings. But the worship is the offspring of 
 slavish fear, and takes all sorts of forms with a view to appease the 
 reluctant spirits. Magic and various incantations are also resorted 
 to, with a view to control them. There may be also good spirits, 
 and among these the spirits of ancestors : to these offerings are also 
 made. When spirits enter into an object of nature as a permanent 
 residence, and these objects are worshipped, we have fetichism. 
 The first priests are those who have or pretend to have the power 
 of ingratiating men with spirits or demons by means of magical 
 incantations and spells and sacrifices. ‘ In the animistic religions/ 
 says Tiele, ‘ fear is more powerful than any other feeling; the evil 
 spirits receive more homage than the good, the lower more than 
 the higher, the local more than the more remote, the special more 
 than the general.’ There is nothing moral in the relations between 
 
152 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 men and such beings, since their favour or disfavour depends en¬ 
 tirely on the gifts offered or withheld. The doctrine of immortality 
 is, at this early stage, simply the doctrine of continuance, compen¬ 
 sation for good or evil deeds being a late development and probably 
 concurrent with a belief in a Supreme Spirit above all other spirits. 
 Where this idea of compensation enters, we have the beginnings of 
 the worship of a Being who takes note of moral conduct, though 
 not necessarily himself moral according to man’s notions. The 
 next step is a God who is Himself an ethical Being with human 
 relations. 
 
 We are not to depreciate the religion of a nation because we find 
 animistic and fetichistic practices existing side by side with a 
 higher doctrine, for we have to remember that a conquering race 
 may occupy a country with a religion higher than that of its first 
 inhabitants, while yet the lower form of religion continues to oper¬ 
 ate— nay even may infect the conquerors. 
 
 Authorities: Encyclopaedias (especially Encyc. Brit.), English, French, and 
 German; Dr. Morrison’s Dictionary; Doolittle’s Social Life of the Chinese , 
 1866 ; Giles’s Historic China Meadows’s China; Bishop Gray’s China; 
 Legge’s Religions of China; Williams’s Middle Kingdom ; Martin’s China, 
 Political, Commercial, and Social, 1847 ; Ueber Schule- Unterricht und 
 Erziehung bei den alten Chinesen, von Dr. J. H. Plath, 1868 ; Essai sur 
 Vhistoire de Vinstruction publique en Chine, Ac., par E. Biot, 1847 ; China, by 
 G. Eug. Simon, 1887 ; Tiele’s Outlines of the History of Ancient Religions ; 
 Dr. W. A. P. Martin’s Han Lin Papers, London and New York, 1880; 
 Society in China, by Professor Douglas, 1894. Book of Chinese Poetry (the 
 Shi-King) translated by Mr. Romilly Allen, 1891. Chinese School-books. 
 Many other books have been consulted. 
 
 Those who wish to read the Chinese sacred literature must, of course, 
 betake themselves to Legge’s monumental work entitled The Chinese Classics, 
 in seven volumes, 1861. 
 
 Note. — There are the remains of an old university at Peking, founded in 
 the fourteenth century, but now practically deserted. This institution sells 
 the lowest degree, thus giving a qualification to compete for the higher. Mr. 
 Martin says that there is a * formal ’ examination for the degree, and that 
 prior to the holding of the examination numerous students fill the old halls. 
 It is a great abuse. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN 
 
 RACES 
 

THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN 
 
 RACES 
 
 HINDUS: MEDO-PERSIANS : HELLENES: ITALIANS (ROMANS ) 
 
 ‘It was not only/ says Duncker (vol. iv.), ‘in the lower 
 valley of the Nile, on the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris, 
 and along the coast and on the heights of Syria, that inde¬ 
 pendent forms of intellectual and civic life grew up in the 
 ancient world.’ By the side of the early civilisations of 
 Egypt, the Semitic races, and the Chinese, we find forms of 
 culture developed among races very different in their nature 
 and temperament. The Medo-Persian civilisation is much 
 later, it is true, than the Egyptian or the Semitic, but the 
 branch of the Aryan race which crossed into India may 
 claim an antiquity for civilised forms of life second only to 
 that of Egypt and Babylonia. 
 
 The common characteristic of the Egyptian and Semitic 
 and Chinese religions, in so far as they touched the people, 
 was their externalism. In some of the highest utterances of 
 Egypt, it is true, we find ethical conceptions characterised 
 by sanity and humanity, but these did not emanate from 
 the acknowledged relation of man to God, but rather arose, 
 I think, out of the doctrine of immortality. The external¬ 
 ism of the Jewish religion was far in advance of that of 
 other nations, because it was an externalism of moral acts, 
 and not merely of ceremonies. The Semitic family gener¬ 
 ally have, it is true, through prophets and hymn-writers, 
 admitted all who choose to follow them to great theologico- 
 ethical ideas. But the popular religion of all these races 
 was an external system; and, in the case of all save the 
 Israelites, it was a superstition. The spirituality of religion 
 
156 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 was lost in ceremonial, and the practical ethics which the 
 religions might have yielded were choked by external observ¬ 
 ances. All externalism tends to superstition, it matters not 
 what form the externalism takes. Even in its very highest 
 Christian form, it tends towards what is little better than 
 an elevated and aesthetic fetichism. With superstition is 
 always associated fear, and that awe of arbitrary unseen 
 powers which produces slavish minds. In their political 
 relations, Egyptian and Semite and Mongolian were all alike 
 slaves rather than subjects. Further development was 
 impossible save by the introduction of a new principle — 
 the personal and free relation of the human spirit to an 
 ethical God. This, wherever it exists, moulds political 
 forms and social relations. It is in truth, the living unity, 
 or rather identity, of the religious idea with moral ideas 
 which alone can permanently lift religion out of the category 
 of superstitions. God must dwell with men and in each 
 man as a self-conscious person. Thus it is that Christ alone 
 makes nations free by making each man a son of God. 
 
 When we pass from the Egyptian and Semitic territories 
 to the home of the Aryan races, we feel like travellers 
 ascending from monotonous and oppressive plains to a cool 
 and invigorating table-land. The region east of the Caspian, 
 which is still, spite of recent scepticism, regarded as the 
 original seat of the Aryan or Indo-European race, sent its 
 Persian and Hindu emigrants to the south-east, and succes¬ 
 sive waves of Kelt, Sclave, Teuton, and Hellene (including 
 Italian) to the north and west. 
 
 It is a striking fact, however, that the fresh and virile 
 spirit of this vigorous race could not sustain itself on the 
 plains of India. The Hindus succumbed to the influences 
 of nature, which were too great and overwhelming to admit 
 of the free growth of the self-conscious personality so con¬ 
 spicuous in their brethren. These influences, and the habits 
 of thought and life of the pre-Aryan races who formed a 
 large proportion of the population, developed characteristics 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 157 
 
 in the Hindus somewhat akin to much that we find in the 
 Egyptian and Semite; and for this reason, as well as because 
 of their greater antiquity, we shall speak of them before we 
 ascend to the clearer atmosphere of the Medo-Persian hills, 
 where the true Aryan spirit which we inherit first clearly 
 declared itself. 
 
 (A) INDIA AND THE HINDUS 
 
 It is apparent enough from the preceding chapters on educa¬ 
 tional history, that it is quite impossible to give anything 
 approaching to a correct view of what constitutes the educa¬ 
 tion of a people, without first putting before the reader an 
 outline of that people’s civilisation. And civilisation re¬ 
 solves itself, for educational purposes at least, into the 
 religious and moral conceptions of a nation and its con¬ 
 sequent political (or at least social) organisation. At the 
 same time, as I have already said, to treat of the character¬ 
 istics of a nation’s life and civilisation in detail is to forget 
 the precise object of the educational historian, and even to 
 obscure it. Such a brief account of a people and their special 
 characteristics as is essential to the understanding of the 
 education which tradition and environment unconsciously 
 gave to all the members of it, is sufficient. This must always 
 be followed by a statement of the means which the State, 
 more or less consciously, took to bring up its children with a 
 view to maintain and perpetuate the national life, if any 
 record of this remain. 1 
 
 When we approach the education of a country like ancient 
 India, or rather that portion of it which was Hindu, we are 
 at once met by the great and all-influencing social fact of 
 caste. Of this we may be certain, that wherever in ancient 
 
 1 I may be allowed here to repeat the words of the Preface, that any attempt 
 to generalise in short compass the characteristics of a civilisation, must always 
 be inadequate ; and though not necessarily erroneous it must want balance 
 because of the absence of historical development and of many qualifying 
 considerations. 
 
158 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 times there was a distinct sacerdotal hereditary caste, the 
 higher education of the country was practically the educa¬ 
 tion of that caste. Even in Europe this was the case up to 
 the twelfth century, although the priestly order was open to 
 all. With the rise of the universities rose the differentiation 
 of the professions as lay spheres of intellectual activity ; and 
 it was only in so far as it destroyed sacerdotalism as an ex¬ 
 clusive representative of the Divine, that Protestantism in 
 the sixteenth century gained the kingdom of knowledge and 
 culture for the people as a whole. ‘ All are priests, all are 
 equal in the sight of God/ is of the essence of Reformed 
 Christianity: this was the new, or rather the revived, doc¬ 
 trine. In Egypt largely, and in Mesopotamia and India 
 wholly, the priestly order included what in modern times we 
 call the faculties of law and medicine, nay even sometimes 
 also the departments of architecture and music. It thus 
 comprehended all the learning of the time. In so far as 
 instruction outside this circle may be met with in a caste 
 society, it must inevitably he, so far as the great mass of the 
 people is concerned, of a very slight and perfunctory charac¬ 
 ter, and aim chiefly at putting in the hands of a limited por¬ 
 tion of the people the necessary mercantile arts of reading, 
 writing, and elementary arithmetic. All else is the education 
 of apprenticeship to arts: a training in itself, however, of 
 no mean character, although not aiming at the education of 
 mind as mind. 
 
 The earliest civilisation of India may be embraced within 
 2000 to 1400 B.c. —the period of plastic traditions and of 
 primitive Aryan survivals. 
 
 The books which embody the intellectual and moral faith 
 of the Hindus are the Veda, the six systems of philosophy, 
 the laws of Manu, and Buddhism. The Veda consists of 
 three parts, (1) prayer and praise, (2) ritualistic precept with 
 prose illustrations, (3) Upanishad or mystical and secret doc¬ 
 trine, written in prose, with occasional verse. The Code of 
 Manu is a collection of traditionary usages and customs of a 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 159 
 
 social and domestic kind, of practices of government and 
 legal procedure, penitential exercises and ‘ consequences of 
 acts.’ It abounds in excellent moral precepts. The other 
 treatises mentioned above are religious, theological, and meta¬ 
 physical, but even the code itself contemplated a religious 
 end — the transmigration of the individual soul and final 
 beatitude. All these books spring from ancient oral tradi¬ 
 tion, gradually accumulating and receiving as time went on 
 additions and critical expansion. The Yedic hymns of praise 
 and thanksgiving and adoration of gods we may place as 
 early as 1200 B.c. The recension of the law-book of Manu 
 dates only about 500 B.c., but, like all literature in Oriental 
 countries, it existed, in its essential parts at least, long before 
 as a tradition. 
 
 I do not propose to enter into the question of Hindu faith 
 and practice generally, but merely to bring into relief the 
 governing idea of the fundamental faith of the nation, what¬ 
 ever subordinate polytheistic forms the doctrine may have 
 taken. I accept this governing idea as moulding the true 
 life of the people, and also as itself primarily an expression 
 of their way of looking at life. 
 
 The Brahmanical caste-system gradually grew up between 
 1200 B.c. and 1000 b.c. The Buddhistic reformation began 
 about 500 B.c., but it was only from about 242 B.c. that 
 Buddhism formulated itself as a rival of Brahmanism. 
 Brahmanical religion had again gained ascendency in 500 
 A.D., and Buddhism was exiled to Ceylon, some portions of 
 the north of India, Burmah, Thibet, China and Japan. 
 
 The caste system, I have said, determined the area, as well 
 as the character, of the education. By caste we mean that kind 
 of social organisation by which the natural divisions of the 
 people are authoritatively fixed and made hereditary. These 
 divisions were into priests, including scholars and legislators; 
 warriors, including executive administrators; merchants, 
 including all industrial members of the community who 
 employed labour; and labourers. One of the Hindu legends 
 (invented by the priests) is that the supreme caste of Brah- 
 
160 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 mans proceeded out of the mouth of Brahma the creator; 
 the warrior (military executive caste) Kshatriyas, out of the 
 arms ; the industrial and mercantile Vaisyas, from the thigh ; 
 and the servile class or Sudras, from the foot. Besides these, 
 there is a still lower class, standing outside the pale of the 
 Brahmanical social organisation, called Pariah in Southern 
 India, and Chandalas in other districts. The Sudras and the 
 other lowest caste are understood to have been the aboriginal 
 inhabitants of India prior to the Aryan Hindu invasion and 
 conquest. 
 
 Mixture of castes was not absolutely forbidden, except as 
 regards the marriage of men with women of a higher caste; 
 hut it entailed (and still entails) disadvantages, especially on 
 the children. Indeed, it would appear that the caste organi¬ 
 sation was never quite so iron as has been sometimes 
 represented, although the Brahmans naturally did all they 
 could to perpetuate it. In the post-Buddhistic reformed 
 Brahmanism a more liberal doctrine was recognised; for it 
 is held that the humblest member of the lowest caste might 
 
 O 
 
 attain to union with Brahma, the supreme all-embracing 
 Spirit, and this fact must have largely influenced the way 
 in which the castes gradually came to regard each other. 
 The following verses from the great Sanskrit epic, the 
 Mahabharata, are in this relation interesting. 
 
 THE PATH OF SALVATION 
 
 A spirit ( YaJcsha ) asks : 
 
 What is it makes a Brahman ? Birth, 
 
 Deep study, sacred lore, or worth 1 
 
 King Yudhishthira answers : 
 
 Nor study, sacred lore, nor birth 
 
 The Brahman makes ; ’t is only worth. 
 
 All men — a Brahman most of all — 
 
 Should virtue guard with care and pains. 
 
 Who virtue rescues, all retains; 
 
 But all is gone with virtue’s fall. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 161 
 
 The men in books who take delight, 
 
 Frequenters all of learning’s schools, 
 
 Are nothing more than zealous fools; 
 
 The learn’d are those who act aright. 
 
 More vile than one of Sudra race 
 That Brahman deem whose learned store 
 Embraces all the Yedic lore, 
 
 If evil deeds his life disgrace. 
 
 That man deserves the Brahman’s name, 
 
 Who offerings throws on Agni’s flame 
 And knows his senses how to tame. 1 11 
 
 In the earlier Yedic thought we find characteristics which 
 connect the primitive religion of the Hindus with the Medo- 
 Persian, which found finally its highest expression in Zoroas¬ 
 trianism. The worship of Mithra the Sun and of fire was 
 universal among the Aryans, and the recognition of three 
 powerful gods along with an innumerable number of good 
 and evil spirits. The climatic influence of India, however, so 
 different from that of Medo-Persia, told on the primitive 
 genius of the people, and as Brahmanism developed (1200 
 B.c. onwards), we find in it elements wholly antagonistic to 
 the Zoroastrian individualism and the continual personal 
 contest between light and darkness, good and evil, which that 
 religion teaches. The old Yedic gods were retained by the 
 Hindus, and sacrificial services to them, both domestic and 
 public, were numerous. In all the Yedic hymns there is a 
 pure worship of several gods — worship of nature and the spirit 
 of nature. They are also highly ethical and personal. In 
 the course of time this simple religion, influenced doubtless 
 by the aboriginal tribes, who were by no means savages, de¬ 
 generated into idolatry, and a religion of rites and ceremonies 
 divorced from ethics. At the same time there gradually 
 emerged among the more intelligent, the idea of the supreme 
 god Brahma, who was universal, not merely national. In 
 
 1 Translated by the late Dr. Muir. 
 
 11 
 
162 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 connection with this theological conception arose a mystic 
 philosophy; but philosophy and religion had in India their 
 history and development as well as elsewhere, which here we 
 cannot attempt to follow. 
 
 After a certain date, however, we find that through the 
 whole system of thought there runs one general governing 
 idea as the reflection of the mind of the race. Except in so 
 far as it is atheistic, that idea is pantheistic — forms of 
 belief which tend to the same ethical results. The practical 
 effects of the pantheistic temperament are conspicuous ; for 
 the highest moral aim of the Hindu is not self-sacrifice in the 
 sense of the sacrifice of all desires to the duties of this life, 
 which is the true Christian idea, but it is rather the abnega¬ 
 tion of life itself with a view to the absorption of the indi¬ 
 vidual into the ‘ All.’ The dominating idea in the conception 
 of God is that of Absolute Being; inmost essence of all 
 things. Being is quiescent: it is the negation of activity. 
 The personal immortality of some of the Yedic hymns ceased 
 under the influence of this mystic theology to be an operative 
 faith. Transmigration was only a step in the process of 
 absorption. It is manifest that the idea of perfect repose, a 
 repose amounting to the death of personality, could not but 
 largely influence daily conduct. Before the All-One, the 
 particular and the individual are in truth of no moment, 
 mere passing shows, and all that fills the senses is essentially 
 illusory (Maya). What a contrast to the Hebrews! Such 
 an idea, if rooted in the nature of a people, is an effective 
 check to all self-reliant activity, weakens all sense of indi¬ 
 vidual responsibility, and destroys what may be called the 
 ambition of excellence. Even the daily duties of life are not 
 done as the act of a free individual, seeking thereby the good 
 of others and the growth of himself in virtue; and moral 
 conduct, though it may be in itself unexceptionable, finds it¬ 
 self placed on the same level as sacerdotal prescriptions and 
 sacrificial acts. Withdrawal from life and an ascetic contem¬ 
 plation become the supreme virtues. The idea of fatalism, 
 also, though it may not find formal expression, inevitably 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 163 
 
 underlies the lives of men whose abstract conceptions of the 
 end of life are such as we have indicated. Wuttke very well 
 says that people of a strong personality pray, ‘ Thy kingdom 
 come; * the Chinese pray, ‘ May thy kingdom remain ; ’ the 
 Hindus,‘ May that which thou has created perish : ’ that is 
 to say, ‘ May all existence he swallowed up in Being/ 
 
 It may he said that the above is, strictly speaking, the 
 Buddhistic conception; but in truth the highest form of 
 Brahmanism which contemplates ultimate absorption in 
 Brahma has the same essential characteristics as Buddhism. 
 The latter was in antagonism to the former, inasmuch as it 
 preached salvation through the efforts of the individual soul 
 after perfection in Nirvana, the futility of prayers and sac¬ 
 rifices and ceremonials, and ignored the divisions of caste. 
 But it was itself a Brahmanical development; ethical and 
 universal instead of national, doctrinal, and ceremonial. The 
 Buddhistic return of the imperfect soul to other visible forms 
 was similar to the Brahmanical transmigration, though not 
 identical with it. The goal of Brahmanism again was a 
 union with Absolute Being not to he distinguished from 
 absorption, while the goal of Buddhism was the extinction of 
 the empirical self or individual, 1 and a state of Nirvana from 
 which non-existence is not to he distinguished, because indi¬ 
 viduality is gone. Nothing, in fact, is left but an atom of 
 soul-stuff; at best, the continuity of the evolution of 4 Truth ’ 
 towards which as a cosmic process the soul which has 
 attained Nirvana may be said in some way to contribute. 
 At the same time the increasing mass of followers could not 
 do without a god and Buddha became exalted to that posi¬ 
 tion and the usual degradation of religion followed. 
 
 The educational significance of the mystic doctrine of the 
 highest state of the man-spirit on this earth and its ultimate 
 goal hereafter, lies not so much in the effect such a system 
 of thought would have on the Hindus, but in the fact that it 
 
 1 I say ‘ empirical self’ because Gautama seems to me never to have 
 properly distinguished between the empirical self of individuality and the 
 self-conscious ego of personality. 
 
164 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 was a natural and full expression of the genuine Hindu 
 mind which was at once religious, dreamy, and metaphysical. 
 Not only the Brahman and Gautama-Buddha, hut the ration¬ 
 alist philosopher Kapila, were all equally impressed with the 
 nothingness of the world of sense and the misery of human 
 life; and all alike contemplated escape from the conditions 
 of earthly existence. With the two latter there was no 
 God; and this gave the Brahman his advantage when 
 Buddhism had to be fought and crushed. At the same time 
 the epics show that the Hindu mind was not insensible to 
 the charm of nature and life; but this in a passive way. 
 Natural forms filled them with wonder and yielded a mass 
 of legendary fable. And yet, as Duncker says, nature was 
 essentially a ‘ magical illusion.’ The general sentiment of 
 the thoughtful Hindu, irrespective of sect and party, may 
 perhaps be fairly summed up in the following verses: 
 
 THE PRIEST OF BRAHMA TO HIS DYING 
 
 DISCIPLE 
 
 ‘ Boy ! to fear death which only means 
 That body and soul, twin life in bonds, 
 
 Part and go forth their several ways ! ’ 
 
 ‘ But I no longer am ; my individual self dissolved.’ 
 
 ‘ That may be so : and yet, if so it be, 
 
 What then 1 Thy soul goes gladly forth 
 To mix with God, sole Being, and live in Him, 
 
 Yielding its tribute to Universal Mind — 
 
 A spirit atom in the Eternal One — 
 
 Serving the more (high destiny !) to swell 
 The bliss of Being, which alone can be.’ 
 
 ‘ This pleasing body to the grave so grim h ’ 
 
 ‘ Not so. Say rather to the arms, the kindly arms 
 Of gracious mother earth from whence it sprang, 
 
 Who turns it quick into her vital sap 
 That it may pass into a million forms 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 165 
 
 Of unreality that mock the sense, 
 
 Yet constitute the beauty of this world; 
 
 No longer but a part, as now ; but interfused, 
 
 And dwelling in the life of grass and trees, 
 
 Made glorious in the budding flowers of spring, 
 
 Melting into the green of tidal caves, 
 
 Rolling in thunder and the ocean storm, 
 
 Gracious and tender in the light of eve, 
 
 And splendid in the rise and set of suns. 
 
 For soul and body such the rapturous end.’ 
 
 It is worthy of note that the Hindu religion was not in 
 its essence and Yedic origin a religion of externalism. It 
 was the inner life of the soul that was of moment, and when 
 this was lost sight of, Buddhism arose as a Brahmanical sect. 
 It was because sacrifice, ceremonial, and penance began at 
 a certain period to supersede the intellectual and ethical 
 elements of Brahmanism that reform was inevitable. 
 
 Into the popular form of Brahmanism, both prior and 
 subsequently to Buddhism, all sorts of corruptions entered. 
 Superstitions and idolatries always abounded, and numerous 
 sects arose. The uneducated mind must always have gods 
 that are accessible, and pantheism can yield thousands of 
 these. New gods, moreover, were authoritatively recognised 
 from time to time to meet the wants of the people. The 
 post-Buddhistic doctrine of a ‘ Trinity ’ of gods (as it is 
 incorrectly called) who were emanations of Absolute Being 
 had no national and popular influence in pre-christian times. 
 
 Concurrently with this popular degradation of religion 
 the abstract and metaphysical development went on in 
 the hands of the intellectual few. And, in addition to a 
 metaphysical religion, with its hymns and prayers, active 
 philosophical schools, and a school of singularly acute 
 grammarians, we also find a literature in the modern sense. 
 The tales of heroes, which were traditional, reach a literary 
 consummation in the great epics — the Ramayana, which 
 presents in a continuous story a high type of human life; 
 
166 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 and the Mahabharata, which has been called an ‘encyclo¬ 
 paedia of tradition/ and is of great length. 1 These epics are 
 the highest literary expression of the Hindu mind and have 
 exercised a great influence on the life of the people. They 
 have reference to an early state of society; but they took 
 their present form only about 200 B.c. These epics (probably 
 to meet the Buddhistic heresy) teach transitory incarnations 
 of the Divine Being. 
 
 The ethical virtues of a race whose deepest convictions 
 were pantheistic and whose highest hope was personal 
 absorption in the Universal, were, as we might expect, tem¬ 
 perance, peaceableness, patience, docility, gentleness, and 
 resignation. These virtues are naturally accompanied by 
 politeness, respect for parents and elders, and obedience to 
 the civil and ecclesiastical powers. But duty in our com¬ 
 manding sense of the word, and the virtues flowing from a 
 strong personality that controls circumstances and shapes 
 the life of each man, were not to he expected. Contrast the 
 Hindu conception and its effects on national character with 
 the Medo-Persian: the former stands as far above the latter 
 in metaphysical profundity as the latter over the former in 
 its ethical simplicity and truth and in its virile acceptance of 
 life and its duties as a privilege. And yet both alike are de¬ 
 velopments of the same Aryan primitive religious conceptions. 
 
 EDUCATION AMONG THE HINDUS 
 
 Aim, organisation and materials of education. — 
 
 The end of the higher education is thus expressed in Manu’s 
 ‘ Book of Laws ‘To learn and to understand the Yedas, to 
 practise pious mortifications, to acquire divine knowledge of 
 the law and of philosophy, to treat with veneration his natural 
 and his spiritual father [i.e. the priest] these are the chief 
 duties by means of which endless felicity is attained.’ And 
 endless felicity is absorption. 
 
 The brief summary we have given of the Hindu philosophy 
 
 1 Seven times the length of the combined Iliad and Odyssey. See Monier 
 Williams’s Indian Wisdom for an account of these poems. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 167 
 
 of life would have led us to expect such words as these. 1 
 We may with advantage here contrast the Chinese and Hindu 
 educational end. 4 The Chinese,’says Wuttke, ‘educate for 
 practical life, the Indians for the ideal: those for earth, these 
 for heaven [individual blessedness or absorption] ; those 
 educate their sons for entering the world, these for going out 
 of it. Those educate for citizenship, these for the priesthood 
 [i.e. as the ideal of life]. Those for industrial activity, these 
 for knowledge. Those teach their sons the laws of the state, 
 these teach them the essence of the godhead. Those lead 
 their sons into the world, these lead them out of the world 
 into themselves. Those teach their children to earn and to 
 enjoy, these to beg and to renunciate.’ This may be a strong 
 way of stating the case, but it has in it a large element of 
 truth. The writer has, however, omitted to note the promi¬ 
 nence given to certain kinds of virtue, and to social obliga¬ 
 tions generally, in the ancient tradition of the Hindus and 
 the code of Manu. The ethical teaching of the Yedic hymns 
 was as pure, though by no means so exalted, as that of the 
 Jewish prophets. Although not enforced by a like definite 
 divine sanction, yet, on the other hand, there was perhaps 
 greater inner moral freedom in the Yedic system in its purity 
 than in the Jewish, and less of mere externalism, until the 
 development into Brahmanism. It taught a doctrine of 
 personal immortality. Morality and religion were closely 
 connected, and the doctrine of transmigration had not yet 
 been thought of. In this respect, as in his more profound 
 philosophy, the Hindu vindicated his Aryan ancestry. This 
 is substantially true, spite of the multitude of ceremonial acts 
 which the Brahman ultimately imposed on the people, the 
 reaction against which so powerfully aided the new teaching 
 of Buddha in the fifth century B.c. 
 
 Only the other day we found in a philosophical treatise an 
 
 1 I use the past tense in speaking of India ; until it was modified by the 
 British power, native education seemed to remain essentially unchanged in 
 its main characteristics till this century. It has to be noted that the Moham¬ 
 medans who preceded the British in India have their own schools and colleges. 
 
168 
 
 PRE- CIIRIS TIAN ED UCA TION 
 
 interesting evidence of the persistent continuity of the Hindu 
 point of view, 1 spite of European influences. ‘ The knowledge 
 of the supreme soul is the ultimate aim of science. The 
 supreme soul is one Infinite Lord of All, and is the dispenser 
 of reward and retribution.’ The ethical conception finds 
 expression thus: ‘ Right knowledge is calculated to give an 
 insight into the motives of human conduct, teach the exer¬ 
 cise of sound discretion in all matters, and lead to the attain¬ 
 ment of final beatitude.’ 
 
 If we may trust Dutt’s ‘ Civilisation in Ancient India,’ 
 there early arose (probably 1,000 years B.c.) Bralimanic 
 settlements called Parishads, which approximated closely to 
 what we should call collegiate institutions of learning. 
 These Parishads were in later times understood to consist of 
 twenty-one Brahmans well-versed in philosophy, theology, 
 and law; but, in their beginnings, three able Brahmans in a 
 village, learned in the Vedas and competent to maintain the 
 sacrificial fire, constituted a Parisliad. (Dutt, i. 249.) To 
 these centres men who wished to devote their lives to learn¬ 
 ing and who belonged to the caste might go and receive 
 instruction in the Vedas, and in such traditionary law and 
 astronomy and philosophy as was current. Private schools 
 also existed, conducted by scholarly men at their own venture, 
 and to these many boys were sent for training, giving per¬ 
 sonal and menial service in return for instruction. These 
 boys did not necessarily belong to the Brahmanical caste. 
 
 Prior to the above rudimentary form of educational organ¬ 
 isation it would appear that at the period of transition from 
 the Vedic to the Brahmanic stage of religious development 
 (say about 1200 b.c.), the courts of the kings were the centres 
 of such culture as existed. Priests, of course, were attached 
 to these courts, and in connection with them there grew up 
 what may be called * schools ’ for the study and handing down 
 of the sacred hymns and sacrificial practices. 
 
 1 Kalyana Majusha , or the Casket of Blessings, an exposition of the prin¬ 
 ciples of Hindu logic, by B. Swami (Calcutta, 1893). 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 169 
 
 Megasthenes, the Greek, who lived in North India three 
 centuries before the Christian era, and indeed all the Greeks, 
 spoke of the Brahmanical priests as the ‘caste of philoso¬ 
 phers ; ’ and with truth, for metaphysics played as large a 
 part in the forming of the Hindu religion as the Yedic 
 hymns did. We are not, consequently, to look on the 
 Brahmans as if they w^ere, in the narrow sense, a priestly 
 order. They were a caste, and men of Brahmanical descent 
 constituted the aristocracy of India — an aristocracy with 
 which learning and character were closely associated. The 
 Chinese aristocracy, after the abolition of feudalism, was, 
 as we found, not only associated with, but founded on, 
 intellect, and renewed itself in every successive generation. 
 This large Brahmanical body was, on the contrary, heredi¬ 
 tary, but the members of it always received the highest 
 education which India could afford. Among them were 
 the recognised chiefs of all learning as well as of religion, 
 and they discharged many important functions in the State. 
 In every Brahmanic family it still is, we are told, the 
 custom to study and learn by heart a particular Veda. 
 Those who desired to prosecute the higher studies were 
 attached to particular Brahmans who devoted themselves 
 to the work of instruction. A thoroughly equipped Brah¬ 
 man was understood to acquire by heart all the sacred 
 books mentioned a few pages back. And when we consider 
 that the Brahmanic colleges taught all the astronomy and 
 mathematics known, and frequently carried their pupils into 
 the elaborate linguistic treatise of Panini, we must recog¬ 
 nise in the substance of the highest Hindu education a fully 
 adequate course of liberal study, embracing as it did theology, 
 philosophy, language, and science, while including the whole 
 of the national literature as that gradually took shape. 1 
 
 I think it desirable to emphasise the fact that while the 
 memorial acquisition of the sacred writings, and this with 
 scrupulous fidelity, was the chief object of Brahmanical 
 
 1 The Brahmanical schools existing from the earliest times developed into 
 important colleges, such as that at Benares, 
 
170 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 instruction, the minds of the young Brahmans were brought 
 into contact with philosophical systems and the general 
 literature of the country. In such a course of study there 
 was both discipline and culture. A similar system of in¬ 
 struction we found in China, but with this difference, that 
 the young Chinese had the printed book to help them. The 
 distinction between the education of the Chinese and the 
 Hindus lies in the matter of their sacred works, their philo¬ 
 sophical and literary tradition, and the prescribed goal of 
 their studies. 
 
 We are told 1 that there was a scheme of life laid down 
 for the higher castes which involved continuous study, and 
 was divided into four stages, viz. studentship, married life, 
 retirement, and forest life. But it is impossible that the 
 scheme could be carried out by any save the very devoted 
 Brahman. It is chiefly to the concluding period that the 
 words in the Manu Code apply, ‘ Let him not desire to die; 
 Let him not desire to live; let him wait for his time, as a 
 servant for the payment of his wages/ 
 
 As to the rest of the nation, it would seem certain that the 
 teaching and schools of the Brahmans were not only open to 
 the caste of warriors and the industrial caste, but that they 
 were expected to take advantage of them. There was no 
 esoteric doctrine. The only exclusive privilege of the Brah¬ 
 mans was, not doctrine but, the functions of priest and 
 teacher. Advantage was taken by many in the two castes 
 next in order of this freedom to learn. The warriors, more¬ 
 over, had a course of discipline in martial exercises. 
 
 Of the industrial caste, while some of these studied por¬ 
 tions of the ancient books, we do not find that as a class they 
 had any special instruction in reading, writing, and arith¬ 
 metic. Boys followed the occupations of their parents, and 
 received domestic training in these. Megasthenes, the Greek, 
 speaks about 300 b.c. of the absence of the art of writing 
 among the Indians. The art of writing certainly existed 
 long before the time of Alexander’s raid into India, but the 
 
 J Max Muller, Lectures on the Origin of Religion, p. 343. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 171 
 
 habit of relying on oral teaching and memory was inveterate, 
 and the writing down of traditionary literature was even 
 looked upon with some suspicion. 1 In the transactions of 
 ordinary life, as well as in learning, there can be no doubt 
 that great reliance was placed on the memory. The remark 
 of Megasthenes, however, puts it beyond doubt that among 
 the population generally, writing was little known. 
 
 I can find no evidence of arithmetic being taught to the 
 industrial class, but we have to remember that the very ele¬ 
 mentary arithmetic required in each occupation would be 
 acquired under his master as part of the apprentice work of 
 every boy. 
 
 The lowest caste did the menial work of the nation, and 
 learned nothing. 
 
 Speaking generally, then, we may say that for 1,000 years 
 B.c. the Brahmanical education was extensive and thorough, 
 and that it was shared in to a certain extent by a consider¬ 
 able number in the second and third castes. It was, how¬ 
 ever, entirely oral in the earlier centuries; but later, it em¬ 
 braced reading and writing, and an introduction to the epic 
 literature as well as to the sacred books : probably also to 
 mathematics. 2 
 
 Apart from such literary and religious education as the 
 more ambitious might gain for themselves by the help of the 
 Brahmanic teachers, the members of the second and third 
 castes received their education from the laws, tradition, and 
 customs of their country as handed down through the family. 
 It seems to me, however, that it was to the village commune, 
 so universal a feature of Indian social organisation, that the 
 young chiefly owed the education which is elsewhere chiefly 
 
 1 Yirgil (AEn. vi. 74) expresses well this objection to the written word 
 common to all the Oriental races : 
 
 ‘ Eoliis tantum ne carmina manda, 
 
 Ne turbata volent rapidis ludibria ventis : 
 
 Ipsa canas, oro.’ 
 
 2 I think that to say more than this is to infer more than the actual facts 
 
 justify. 
 
172 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 given by family tradition. These communes have always 
 exercised a potent influence: and I am the more disposed 
 to substitute the commune for the family as the vehicle and 
 organ of the education of tradition, because of the position of 
 woman among the Hindus, of which I shall shortly speak. 
 But what was the nature of this traditionary oral village 
 teaching ? Apart from religious and ceremonial acts and the 
 settlement of questions moral and legal arising among them¬ 
 selves, we may safely say that the teaching was of a kind 
 that naturally would find acceptance among a religious, con¬ 
 templative, and ethically disposed people — the teaching of 
 fables, allegories, and parables. These fireside tales seem to 
 have been numerous. And that this must have been so we 
 find from two works published in post-christian times which 
 contain popular stories embodying the moral faith of the 
 people. Their oldest collection of fables and proverbs is 
 called the ‘ Pantschatantra; ’ it dates from the fifth century 
 after Christ, and was translated in the sixth century into 
 Persian under the name of ‘ The Friend of Knowledge then 
 from Persian into the Arabic, from the Arabic into the 
 Greek, Turkish, Syrian, Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, English, 
 French, and German. In that book we find such utterances 
 as the following; and when we consider that the book is full 
 of fable and allegory, and consider further its poetic feeling, 
 we become alive to the spirit that animates Hindu life and 
 education among the masses of the people. 
 
 1 As the tree shades the man who is about to cut it down, and as 
 the moon shines in the hut even of the lowliest Chandala, so must 
 a man love those who hate him.’ 
 
 ‘Be humble, for the tender grass bows itself unhurt before the 
 storm, while mighty trees are shattered to pieces by it/ 
 
 4 Virtue, after which man ought to strive, needs a mighty effort, 
 for a cocoanut falls not through the shaking of a crow.’ 
 
 ‘ A knowledge of arms and of learning are both equally very 
 famous, but the first is in an old man folly, the second is worthy 
 of honour at every period of life.’ 
 
 ‘A man without knowledge, though he possess youth and 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 173 
 
 beauty and high birth, does not excel, like the odourless Kinchuka 
 flower.’ 
 
 ‘ Education is higher than beauty and concealed treasures. It 
 accompanies us on our journey through strange places and gives us 
 inexhaustible strength.’ 
 
 ‘ The wise man must strive to gain knowledge and wealth as if 
 he were not subject to death, but the duties of religion he must 
 fulfil as if death were hovering already on his lips.’ 
 
 ‘ Like as figures on a new vase are not easily washed out, so is it 
 with wisdom of youth, through the charm of fable.’ 
 
 Such are some of the sentiments on which the Indian 
 youth was reared — all conveyed through a mass of fable and 
 allegory. The Hitopade§a is a subsequent collection (see 
 Fritze’s German translation) of a similar kind. What a con¬ 
 trast they present to the popular literary inheritance of the 
 Egyptians and Chinese! 1 
 
 Woman 
 
 The position of the woman among the Hindus was always 
 that of subordination and subjection to the man. The esti¬ 
 mate of female character and possibilities was low. ‘ A female 
 child, a young girl, a wife, shall never do anything according 
 to their own will, not even in their own house. While a 
 child she shall depend on her father; during her youth on 
 her husband; and, when a widow, on her sons.’ (Manu, v. 
 147.) Women were regarded as essentially inferior to man, 
 and having for the sole purpose of their existence the bear¬ 
 ing of children and the tending of the husband. As might 
 be expected from this view of the place of woman, she was 
 excluded from all instruction. So strong, indeed, was the 
 prejudice against the education of women, that the power to 
 read and write was regarded as a reproach to them. The 
 only exception was in the case of the dancing girls — these 
 being daughters of various castes devoted, when yet children, 
 
 1 I see just advertised (1895) a series of translations of Hindu tales which 
 formed part, and probably a large part, of the educational material of the 
 people, 
 
174 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 to the services of the temple. As servants of the temple and 
 ‘ maidens of the god/ the dancing girls had to cultivate their 
 intelligence; mothers of households, on the contrary, their 
 heart only, lest they should be drawn away by intellectual 
 cultivation from domestic duties. The female servants of the 
 temple were instructed in reading, writing, music, dancing, 
 and singing. Their duties were to sing the praises of the 
 god they served, and to dance on festive occasions. They 
 were divided into two classes — the better class being con¬ 
 fined within the temple, and restricted to temple services; 
 the second and lower class being allowed greater freedom, 
 and permission to perform at marriage festivities and the 
 banquets of the nobility. 
 
 It is because of the position occupied by women that I 
 have assigned more influence to the commune than to the 
 family in the education of the young Hindu. It has to be 
 noted, however, that in early Yedic times, the authorship of 
 hymns and songs was ascribed to women, as in the case of 
 the Israelites. 
 
 Method and Discipline. Teachers. — We are told 
 that the teacher must himself have passed through the 
 recognised curriculum, and have fulfilled all the duties of a 
 Brahmanical student ( brcihmakarin ) before he is allowed to 
 become a teacher, and he must teach such students only as 
 submit to all requirements imposed by usage. The method 
 of instruction was, as I have said, oral tradition, and the 
 memory was consequently called upon to bear a burden 
 which to a European would be intolerable. The rote char¬ 
 acter of the teaching began from the beginning; for the boy 
 learned the alphabet by heart and some ten or twenty pages 
 of Sanskrit before he could understand a word. Thereafter, 
 explanation came (more or less) ; but the main object was to 
 learn the sacred books accurately by heart, not from a printed 
 page but from the mouth of a teacher. The following is 
 from Max Muller’s ‘ Lectures on the Origin of Keligion/ p. 
 159, and are the directions given in an authoritative Sanskrit 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 175 
 
 book. The teacher, we are told, should settle down in a 
 proper place. If he has only one pupil or two, they should 
 sit on his right side : if more, they must sit as there is room 
 for them. At the beginning of each lecture the pupils em¬ 
 brace the feet of their teacher and say: ‘ Bead, sir.’ The 
 teacher answers: ‘ Om’ (yes), and then pronounces two 
 words, or, if it is a compound, one. When the teacher has 
 pronounced one word or two, the first pupil repeats the first 
 word, but if there is anything that requires explanation the 
 pupil says ‘ Sir ’; and after it has been explained to him 
 ‘ Om (yes), sir.’ 
 
 ‘In this manner they go on till they have finished a 
 prasna (question), which consists of three verses, or, if they 
 are verses of more than forty to forty-two syllables, of two 
 verses. If they are pankti-verses of forty to forty-two sylla¬ 
 bles each, a prasna may comprise either two or three; and 
 if a hymn consists of one verse only, that is supposed to form 
 a prasna. After the prasna is finished they have all to 
 repeat it once more and then to go on learning it by heart, 
 pronouncing every syllable with the high accent. After the 
 teacher has first told a prasna to his pupil on the right, the 
 others go round him to the right and this goes on till the 
 whole lecture is finished; a lecture consisting generally of 
 sixty (?) prasnas. At the end of the last half verse the 
 teacher says “Sir,” and the pupil replies “ Om (yes), sir,” 
 repeating also the verses required at the end of a lecture. 
 The pupils then embrace the feet of their teacher and are 
 dismissed.’ 
 
 Only those, it is said, whose heart and speech are ever 
 pure and attentive, can enjoy the full fruit of the study of 
 the "Vedas: and it was considered a great offence to study 
 them without an authorised instructor. We thus see that 
 before the introduction of writing, and for centuries after, the 
 pupil learned by rote from the recitation of the master, a 
 laborious and prolonged process. And when they had MSS. 
 they were read aloud until they were known by heart, with¬ 
 out bein^ necessarily understood. Thus, the receiving of 
 
176 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 tradition from the lips of a master was necessarily the form 
 of all teaching, and the attitude of the learner was servile 
 acceptance. This notion of instruction both as regards 
 method and the relation of pupil to teacher was, as I have 
 frequently said, characteristic of the Oriental generally, and 
 still is so, spite of printing and books. 
 
 The discipline among the Hindus generally seems to have 
 been gentle, and only in the extremest cases was there any 
 severity. Manu says: ‘ Good instruction must be given to 
 pupils without unpleasant sensations, and the teacher who 
 reverences virtue must use sweet and gentle words. If a 
 scholar is guilty of a fault, his instructor may punish him 
 with severe words, and threaten that on the next offence he 
 will give him blows; and, if the fault is committed in cold 
 weather, the teacher may dowse him with cold water.’ 
 
 The elementary schools (adventure schools) of post-chris- 
 tian times, were, like many in ancient Greece and Italy, held 
 in the open air, the pupils sitting round the teacher under 
 trees in front of a house ; and when the weather was bad, in 
 a covered shed. In arithmetic, only the merest elements 
 were taught. Writing, with which instruction in reading 
 was closely connected, was first practised in the sand, then 
 with an iron style on palm leaves ; and finally on plane-tree 
 leaves with a kind of ink. But all this elementary education 
 (as far as I can ascertain) belongs to the period after the 
 birth of Christ. In the school, it was a common practice for 
 a more advanced pupil to point out the letters to a beginner. 
 They also heard each other their lessons. It was thus largely 
 a system of mutual instruction. Dr. Bell took his monitorial 
 system from what he saw at Madras. 
 
 Note.— The education of India by Great Britain can of course 
 teach us little which is not better taught by the system of instruc¬ 
 tion in our own country. It is simply an attempt to plant British 
 education in a foreign soil. It is an exotic. The native dialects 
 are taught and natives largely employed. This British system is 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 177 
 
 based on a despatch of Sir Charles Wood, dated July 19, 1854. 
 The main principle of the despatch was that European knowledge * 
 should be diffused through the languages understood by the great 
 mass of the people, but that the teaching of English should always 
 be combined with careful attention to the study of the vernacular 
 languages. With regard to the wealthier classes, it was declared 
 that the time had arrived for the establishment of universities in 
 India, conferring degrees, and based on the model of the University 
 of London. They were not to be places of education, but to test 
 the value of education obtained elsewhere, and to confer degrees in 
 arts, law, medicine, and civil engineering. Such universities have 
 accordingly been established in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay ; 
 and since 1859 Government schools have been opened for the 
 instruction of all classes of the Indian people. In each Presidency 
 there is now a director of public instruction, assisted by school 
 inspectors, one of whom has under his care one circle or subdivision 
 of the province. There are also colleges (both government and 
 missionary) which prepare for the university examinations. Normal 
 schools for the training of teachers have also been established, and 
 attempts are being made to spread female education. 
 
 It is stated in Chambers’ ‘ Cyclopaedia ’ (1892) that there are 
 now in all 134,000 educational institutions of one kind or another 
 in India. 
 
 Authorities : In addition to encyclopaedias and references to various authors, 
 
 I have relied largely on Dutt’s History of Civilisation in Ancient India; 
 Hegel’s Philosophy of History; Duncker’s History of Antiquity ; Monier Wil¬ 
 liams’s Indian Wisdom; Max Muller, On the Origin of Religion , and refer¬ 
 ences to his other writings ; Tiele’s Outlines of Ancient Religions ; The Gospel 
 of Buddha , by Paul Carus ; References to the writings of Rhys Davids. 
 
 12 
 
(B) THE MED O-PEBSIANS 
 
 In dealing with ancient Persia, we have to include as part of 
 the same nationality — Media to the north-west and Bactria 
 to the north-east of Persia proper or Iran, both of which 
 after a period of independence formed part of the Persian 
 empire. As the word Iran denotes, the race was Aryan; 
 and indeed it is this fact which gives the Medo-Per- 
 sians special interest to us. 1 They are called Eranians to dis¬ 
 tinguish them from the Hindu branch of the primitive 
 Aryans. 
 
 Speaking without minute regard to geographical limits, 
 this branch of the Aryan race occupied the country lying 
 between the Caspian Sea on the north and the Persian Gulf 
 on the south, and they were bounded on the east and south¬ 
 east by modern Afghanistan and Beloochistan, while on the 
 west the mountain range of Zagros separated them from 
 the Mesopotamian valley within which the Babylonian 
 and Assyrian empires had their seats. The country is 
 a table-land intersected with beautiful and rich valleys. 
 Where it descends to the sea on the south it is desert; on 
 the north, where it descends towards the Caspian, it is moist 
 and warm and abounding in vegetation. Eich and various 
 as are the products of much of Medo-Persia, a great part of 
 it is barren. Its rivers are rapid and many of them pour 
 down a great volume of water, but scarcely one can be said 
 to he navigable. Physically, then, we find here a home for 
 a race in which there are necessarily — owing to the exist¬ 
 ence of a high table-land and numerous deep valleys and 
 the decline towards seas on the north and south — much 
 variety of climate, production, and scenery, and at the same 
 
 1 Media was the leading power up to 558 b.c., when it was conquered by 
 Persia, of which it long remained the most important province. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 179 
 
 time not of so large an area as to exclude any portion of the 
 inhabitants from the various influences of the whole and 
 from that sense of unity which is essential to all successful 
 polities. 
 
 If the physical characteristics of a home can influence the 
 character of a people we may safely say that irregularity of 
 surface and climatic variation will have a potent effect. In 
 a country, too, much of which called on man for a struggle 
 with nature — a struggle, however, by no means hopeless — 
 the seeds of an originally vigorous and vivacious character 
 would be nurtured. Nature was not so large and oppressive 
 as in India where man lived in a moist, torrid, and relaxing 
 climate, and was overpowered by the mass and prodigality 
 of natural forms. Although the physical circumstances 
 of a nation are powerless to make it, they must largely 
 modify its natural racial predisposition, while they profoundly 
 influence the character of its industrial activities and much 
 of its political history. 
 
 But it is the breed of men which occupies any portion of 
 the earth’s surface that determines the historical drama which 
 is to be there enacted far more, probably, than any other 
 fact. The Medo-Persians belonged to our own blood: that 
 is to say, they were Aryans, and gave this name to what are 
 otherwise called the ‘ Indo-European ’ races. On the north¬ 
 west the Medes, and on the north-east their fellow-Aryans of 
 Bactria constituted, with the Persai of the table-land and the 
 rich valleys, the Persian 1 people ethnologically: these three 
 must he regarded as racially one; but all were mixed with 
 prior Turanian or Uro-Altaic tribes. 2 
 
 ‘ The first great wave of Aryan emigration,’ says Professor 
 Sayce, 3 * which had resulted in the establishment of the 
 European nations, had been followed by another wave which 
 first carried the Hindus into the Punjab, and then the 
 
 1 I use the word Persian to include all these. 
 
 2 To what extent the Aryan element had overpowered the Uro-Altaic ele¬ 
 ment in Media is as yet uncertain. 
 
 8 Ancient Empires of the East. 
 
180 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Iranian populations into the vast districts of Bactria and 
 Ariana. Mountains and deserts checked for a time their 
 further progress, but at length a number of tribes, each under 
 its own chiefs, crept along the southern shores of the Caspian 
 to the northern coast of the Persian Gulf, and these tribes 
 were known in later history as the Aryan Medes and 
 Persians.’ 
 
 The Persai spoke an Aryan tongue — called Zend, philo- 
 logically connected with the tongues of Europe. The sacred 
 writings were in this tongue and are known as the Zend- 
 Avesta. What remains of these is only part of a large body 
 of sacred literature. When the Persian empire, as distinct 
 from the kingdom of Persia, rose into power, on the ruins of 
 the Assyrian empire in the sixth century B.c., the pure 
 original language was already greatly modified. 1 
 
 The accounts of the rise of the Persian empire are very 
 difficult to understand, especially since the discovery of the 
 inscription by Cyrus, the founder. It would appear, how¬ 
 ever, that Persia had been gradually consolidating itself while 
 yet under the suzerainty of Media, and that a portion of 
 Elam on the west, called Anshan, had been incorporated with 
 Persia. When Cyrus arose, and as king of Elam, but him¬ 
 self of Persian descent, conquered Media, he with singular 
 rapidity reduced not only Media but Bactria, and also the 
 ancient seats of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. He 
 then carried his conquests to the west of Asia Minor, and 
 even to the Scythian country of the Oxus where, it is said, 
 he met his death. 2 
 
 1 A further stage of degeneration dated from the conquest of Alexander 
 the Great in 331 b.c. onwards; and now we have modern Persian so power¬ 
 fully influenced by the Mohammedan conquest in 651 a.d. as to consist largely 
 — to the extent, it is said, of nearly one-half—of Arabic vocables. We have 
 to do only with ancient Persia. 
 
 2 The rapid rise of the Medo-Persian empire is one of the most remarkable 
 facts in Oriental history. But it can be partially understood if we bear in 
 mind that the Medes had been long growing into a commanding position as 
 a military power. They had united with the Babylonians to overthrow 
 Nineveh and break the Assyrian power for ever. Meanwhile they had been 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 181 
 
 During the absence of Cambyses confirming his father’s 
 conquests, the non-Aryan element in Media rebelled. After 
 the suicide (?) of the king in Egypt, Darius Hystaspes and 
 the leading Aryan nobles extinguished the revolt, re-estab¬ 
 lished the reformed Aryan religion — Mazdeism or Zoroas¬ 
 trianism, b.c. 521, and rebuilt the temples of Ormazd. After 
 putting down numerous revolts of the people that had been 
 conquered by Cyrus, Darius was able to establish the head¬ 
 quarters of his empire at Susa and to organise it. Mean¬ 
 while the extension of the empire went on rapidly till it 
 touched the Punjab on the east and Macedonia on the west. 
 At the latter point and on the shores of Asia Minor, the 
 Persian and Greek met in conflict with ultimate results 
 known to all. The empire, however, sustained itself in full 
 vigour till its subjugation by Alexander in 331 B.c. It was 
 a despotism governed by means of satraps ; but local autonomy 
 was everywhere conceded — the satraps merely representing 
 the Great King, and having a military colleague and a 
 council with an army. Centralisation of government was 
 an almost unmixed blessing in those times, because it was 
 only under one supreme sovereign that nations could live in 
 peace and civilisation advance. So regarded, the Medo- 
 Persian empire was a boon to the nations from the Mediter¬ 
 ranean to Afghanistan, and from the Oxus to the Persian 
 Gulf, and an important factor in the general history of the 
 world. It was an immense advance as a humane and mor¬ 
 alising agency on the barbarous empire of the Assyrians. 
 
 One of the most suggestive indications of the Persian 
 natural disposition was to be found in that characteristic of 
 their imperial administration to which I have adverted 
 above — the recognition of local autonomy. They did not 
 
 extending their own influence to the west, and were virtually masters of the 
 country as far as Asia Minor. Then Nebuchadnezzar had revived the ancient 
 Babylonian greatness, and had subdued the south and west as far as Egypt 
 and the Mediterranean. Accordingly, when Cyrus, at the head of the 
 Elamites and Persians, came on the field, the subduing of Media and Babylon 
 carried with it, as a consequence, a large empire already reduced to 
 subjection. 
 
182 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 impose themselves unduly on subject nations. They organ¬ 
 ised a fixed tribute, and forbore to make arbitrary exactions. 
 They had great toleration of foreign customs and of other 
 religious systems than their own. This characteristic of the 
 Persian imperial sway is worthy of notice as contributing to 
 a true estimate of the character of the governing race. In 
 repressing rebellions they were severe, but not so in other 
 circumstances. 
 
 Among themselves there were seven tribal princes under 
 the king, and next to them seven supreme judges and a large 
 staff of officials. The government was essentially bureaucra¬ 
 tic, and all were subject to the despotic authority of the 
 Great King. 1 
 
 Social and Civil Relations.—Passing from the politi¬ 
 cal to the social system, note first that here in Persia caste, 
 if we except the hereditary Magian priesthood, was not 
 recognised as it was among the fellow-Aryans of India. All 
 may move freely, and, subject always to the absolute author¬ 
 ity of the Great King, work out their own lives. The policy 
 of the king was, it is said, to gather the great nobles round 
 his court and to reward generously all who did service to the 
 State. Every one, even the meanest, was kept conscious of 
 the national unity and felt himself to have a share in the 
 national activity. This community of feeling was strong; 
 for example, in their prayers when offering sacrifices the 
 Persian asked blessings on the Persian people generally, and 
 on himself only as included in the nation. The Persians were, 
 as compared with other Oriental races, virtually a free people, 
 though under a despotic form of government. 2 
 
 1 I rely (not wholly, but largely) on the Greek writers, because there are 
 no other sources. Have not some contemporary Orientalists occasionally 
 shown a want of discriminating judgment in discrediting the Greeks ? 
 
 2 Doubtless Herodotus is not always to be trusted, but his description of 
 the Persians seems to me, with all due respect to Professor Sayce, to ring true. 
 We may discredit his history of Persia without doubting the impression the 
 people and their customs made on him, even although he never reached as far 
 as the Persian capital. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 183 
 
 Persian Character. — The disposition of the Persian was 
 towards equity, mercifulness of administration, and mildness 
 of character. ‘ The king/ says Herodotus, ‘ shall not put 
 anyone to death for a single fault; and none of the Persians 
 shall visit a single fault in a slave with any extreme penalty; 
 but in every case the services of the offender shall be set 
 against his misdoings, and if the latter be found to outweigh 
 the former, the aggrieved party shall then proceed to punish¬ 
 ment.’ They were also a kindly and domestic people. Chil¬ 
 dren had to yield absolute obedience to their parents, just as 
 citizens had to their rulers, it is true; but so convinced were 
 they of the sacredness of the family tie as founded in love 
 and reverence that they maintained ‘ that never yet did any¬ 
 one kill his father or his mother, but in all such cases they 
 are quite sure that, if matters were sifted to the bottom, it 
 would be found that the child was either a changeling or 
 else the fruit of adultery, for it is not likely, they say, 
 that the real father should perish by the hands of the child.’ 
 (Herod.) We see here a strong family feeling resting on 
 humane conceptions. 
 
 Further, when we contemplate the Persian at his best (in¬ 
 cluding, as we here may, under that designation, the Medes 
 and Bactrians), we cannot but be impressed with a certain 
 freshness and nobility of mind among them. A high spirit 
 and a pleasant and affable temper are conspicuous: in these 
 respects they form a marked contrast to the Egyptian, Semi¬ 
 tic, and Chinese races, and even to their cognates the Hindus. 
 We seem suddenly, at a point not more than a few hundred 
 miles west from the basin of the Indus, and as we reach the 
 bracing table-land, to encounter a new phase of humanity 
 altogether — surpassingly interesting to us because we recog¬ 
 nise in it a distinctive European type. The air we breathe is 
 no longer stagnant as in China, no longer heavy with mois¬ 
 ture and warmth as in India, nor so dry, stimulating, and 
 exciting as among the Semitic races, but breezy and health¬ 
 ful. We already feel half way to Greece; for along with 
 their greater freshness of mind, nobility of nature, and equity 
 
184 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 of disposition, we find in the Persian a friendliness and a 
 Hellenic grace of courtesy which charm us, and of which 
 Herodotus thus speaks: ‘ When they meet each other in the 
 streets, you may know if the persons meeting are of equal 
 rank by the following token. If they are of equal rank, then, 
 instead of speaking, they kiss each other on the lips. In the 
 case where one is inferior to the other, tlie kiss is given on 
 the cheek; where the difference of rank is great, the inferior 
 prostrates himself on the ground.’ A mark of their openness 
 of mind is to he found in the readiness with which they 
 accepted foreign customs. ‘There is no nation which so 
 readily adopts foreign customs. Thus they have taken the 
 dress of the Medes, considering it superior to their own, and 
 in war they wear the Egyptian breastplate. As soon as they 
 hear of any luxury they immediately make it their own.’ 
 ‘ Of the family of mankind,’ says a historian, 1 ‘ which claimed, 
 not unjustly, the distinctive name of “noble” (Arya), 2 the 
 Persians formed one of the finest types. When we first meet 
 with them in history they are a race of hardy mountaineers, 
 brave in war, rude in manners, simple in their habits, abstain¬ 
 ing from wine, and despising all the luxuries of food and 
 dress. Though uncultivated in art and science, they, at a 
 more advanced period of their national life, were distinguished 
 for an intellectual ability, a lively wit, a generous, passionate, 
 and poetical temperament — qualities, however, which easily 
 degenerated into vanity and want of perseverance. Their 
 military spirit was kept in full vigour by their hardy moun¬ 
 tain life, their simple and temperate habits, and the strict 
 discipline in which they were trained from their youth up.’ 
 
 ‘ In the reign of Cyrus,’ says Plato Q Laws,’ iii. 694) ‘ the 
 Persians were freemen and also lords of many others: the 
 rulers gave a share of freedom to the subjects, and being 
 treated as equals, the soldiers were on better terms with their 
 generals, and showed tnemselves more ready in the hour of 
 
 1 Philip Smith in his History of the Ancient World . 
 
 2 Derived from the ancient name of the territory Ariana. 1 am not aware 
 that nobility has anything to do with it. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 185 
 
 danger. And if there was any wise counsellor among them, 
 he imparted his wisdom to the public, for the king was not 
 jealous, but allowed him full liberty of speech, and gave 
 honour to those who were able to be his counsellors in any¬ 
 thing, and allowed all men equally to participate in wisdom. 
 And the nation waxed in all respects because there was free¬ 
 dom, and friendship, and communion of soul among them/ 
 (Jowett’s trans.) 
 
 Religion and Ethics. — The religion of the Persians 
 when they first appear in history in connection with the 
 conquests of Cyrus probably differed little from the Yeclic 
 form of Hinduism. The elements were worshipped as 
 spirits. The specific North Aryan development which is 
 called Mazdeism or Zoroastrianism came from Media, accord¬ 
 ing to Darmesteter (more probably Bactria, according to 
 Tiele) and was in the hands of a sacerdotal tribe called the 
 Magi. The conquest of Media led to the adoption of Maz¬ 
 deism by the ruling family or families in Persia. It may 
 be said with truth that the mass of the people never rose 
 to a conception of the principles of Mazdeism — at least 
 during the period which concerns us here. On the other 
 hand, it was practically the belief of the leading families, and 
 through these it influenced the people and determined the 
 general current of religious faith among them. In auto¬ 
 cratic societies the belief of the few dominates the mass 
 much more than in countries possessing what we call a 
 free constitution. We are entitled accordingly to speak of 
 Mazdeism as a powerful educative force among the Medo- 
 Persians long before 521 B.c. down to the fall of the Persian 
 empire in 333 B.c., and as exhibiting the mental tendency 
 of the Persian race. 
 
 The fundamental idea of the national and State religion 
 of Medo-Persia was that a pure One Spirit was creator and 
 sustainer of all. We see in this a resemblance to the 
 higher and later form of Judaism. Ahura-Mazda or Lord 
 all-knowing (Ormazd), was the name of the Supreme God. 
 
186 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 But even after he was recognised as supreme, much of the 
 Aryan belief in spirits of the elements, and in other spirits 
 good and evil, remained active among the people. The good 
 spirits were now, however, regarded as subordinate agencies 
 of the Supreme God: the evil spirits were the offspring of 
 Ahriman, the evil one. Ahriman, the source of evil, was not 
 self-originated, hut arose out of the conflict of forces when 
 Ormazd created the material world out of nothing. Ormazd 
 is all-wise, creator of the spiritual as well as the earthly life, 
 the lord of the whole universe who will ultimately van¬ 
 quish the evil that is incidental to creation. He is know¬ 
 ledge, and the ‘ One that knows,’ he is ‘Weal’ and the 
 ‘ One that is beneficent/ This lofty religious conception was 
 attributed to a religious reformer, Zarathustra or Zoroaster, 1 
 and handed down by the hereditary priesthood or tribe called 
 the Magi, already referred to. Among the good spirits were 
 the gods of light and fire, and the latter appeared in all Maz- 
 dean worship both in its priestly and popular form. The 
 sacred writings are known as the Zend-Avesta. 2 
 
 ‘ The Persian religion,’ says Hegel, 3 ‘ is the religion of 
 light. The source of light is not identified with nature as 
 one with it, but is rather regarded as that which creates 
 and vitalises. In its human mental relations this light is 
 wisdom, goodness, virtue, purity, truth — in its physical 
 relations it is that which vitalises and makes beautiful — 
 
 1 It cannot be said that the ancient hymns which survive show that 
 Zoroaster taught the doctrine of Ahriman as a Being, but this was the natural 
 outcome of his cosmic view. 
 
 2 ‘Avesta’ means the law; ‘Zend,’ commentary or explanation. We 
 ought, strictly speaking, not to talk of the Zend language, but of the Avesta 
 language. The Zend-Avesta — the collection of fragments which we now 
 have — consists of the Yendidad, a compilation of religious laws and mythical 
 tales ; the Visperad, a collection of litanies for the sacrifice ; and the Yasna, 
 also composed of litanies and of five hymns or Ga (written in a special 
 dialect older than the general language of the Avesta). As a whole, the 
 Zend-Avesta bears more likeness to a prayer-book than a Bible. It is 
 only fragments that remain to us of the old original text and of what was 
 added from time to time by the Magian priesthood. (From Darmesteter in 
 Max Muller’s series.) 
 
 3 In his Philosophy of History . 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 187 
 
 physical light — the light of the sun, which is still wor¬ 
 shipped by the Parsees — the modem representatives of the 
 Zend religion — as the symbol of intellectual, and the source 
 of physical, light.’ Ormazd, the lord of life and light, him¬ 
 self emerges as pure spirit from the ‘ unlimited all,’ and with 
 him there is also Ahriman, the spirit (or principle) of dark¬ 
 ness, decay, and death, spirit of evil, source of all wrong as a 
 necessary incident of the act of creation. Ahriman is not 
 the equal of Ormazd — only for a time does he maintain a 
 seemingly equal warfare, to be finally subdued. Men as 
 individuals are engaged in this warfare, and have to fight 
 for light against darkness, good against evil, truth against 
 falsehood, purity against impurity; but not hopelessly. 
 Ormazd was above all. We see in this religion an expres¬ 
 sion of the highest type of Persian thought which could 
 not fail to react on the individual life powerfully. 
 
 The doctrine of personal immortality was taught. After 
 death the wicked fall into the underworld, there to be tor¬ 
 mented by evil spirits, the good are received into the Abode 
 of Song, the dwelling place of Ormazd and the saints. But 
 a day of renovation even for the wicked will come, when, 
 by the discipline of fire, all creatures will be refined. 
 
 It is easy to understand that even a religion as pure as this 
 in conception might degenerate into a worship of the ele¬ 
 ments, or rather retain an ancient element worship and spirit 
 worship as a parallel and popular system. The Magi — a 
 powerful hereditary class, represented, as priests in those 
 ancient nationalities necessarily did, the philosophy, science, 
 and wisdom of their nation. Among them, as interpreters of 
 the ancient writings, there seem to have been schools of 
 thought — some inclining to the concrete and elemental 
 primitive religion, as opposed to the pure and Eranian spirit- 
 doctrine. But even among the former was an absence of all 
 that savoured of idolatry. Herodotus, who saw and under¬ 
 stood only the popular side of the Persian religion which 
 contained some old Aryan elements, says: ‘ The customs 
 which I know the Persians to observe are the following. 
 
188 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 They have no image of the gods, nor temples, nor altars, and 
 consider the use of them a sign of folly. This comes, I 
 think, from their not believing the gods to have the same 
 nature with men, as the Greeks imagine. Their wont, how¬ 
 ever, is to ascend the summits of the loftiest mountains, and 
 there offer sacrifice to Jupiter, which is the name they give 
 to the whole circuit of the firmament. To these gods the 
 Persians offer sacrifice in the following manner. They raise 
 no altar, light no fire, pour no libations: there is no sound 
 of the flute, no putting on of chaplets, no consecrated barley- 
 cake; hut the man who wishes to sacrifice brings his victim 
 to a spot of ground which is pure from pollution and there 
 calls upon the name of the god to whom he intends to offer. 1 
 It is usual to have the turban encircled with a wreath, most 
 commonly of myrtle. The sacrificer is not allowed to pray 
 for blessings on himself alone, hut he prays for the welfare 
 of the king and of the whole Persian people, among whom 
 he is of necessity included. He cuts the victim in pieces, 
 and having boiled the flesh, he lays it out upon the tenderest 
 herbage he can find, trefoil especially. When all is ready 
 one of the Magi comes forward and chants a hymn, which, 
 they say, recounts the origin of the gods. It is not lawful to 
 offer sacrifice unless there is a Magus present. After wait¬ 
 ing a short time, the sacrificer carries the flesh of the victim 
 away with him, and makes whatever use of it he pleases.’ 2 
 
 1 There was a fire, but the victims were not burned in it but before it, and 
 afterwards eaten. 
 
 2 At what date Zoroastrianism reached its full development is uncertain. 
 The gradually-growing writings and traditions were formulated, though still 
 in a rudimentary form doubtless, probably about 521 b.c. Some would 
 assign a more modern date: on the other hand, inscriptions have come to 
 light only two or three months ago (1895) which bear the name of Ormazd 
 and Ahriman and must have been cut out on stone about 480 b.c. The Zoroas- 
 trian reformation of the old Aryanism must have begun about 900 b.c. (some 
 experts say 1400 B.c.) the sacred writings gradually growing in bulk till for¬ 
 mulated at the date just given. The Zend-Avesta, as we now have it, dates 
 from about the 4th century A.D. The Medes at the time of their conquest by 
 Cyrus seem to have followed the primitive Aryan religion, mixed with Semitic 
 and Turanian elements, the worshippers of Ormazd being only a party in the 
 nation. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 189 
 
 What chiefly concerns us, as students of the education of 
 a people, especially where we have no specific educational 
 institutions, is to bring into view the religious idea as the 
 ultimate expression of the national life. That a religious 
 system such as we have briefly described affords a marked 
 contrast to that of other nations is evident. It was supremely 
 ethical and also free from idolatry. It gave a distinct value 
 to the individual personality, and this, though it might be 
 hut imperfectly apprehended by the masses. Absorption or 
 annihilation of his personality in Brahma is the last idea of 
 perfected bliss which would have occurred to a genuine Per¬ 
 sian ! ISTor would the idea of stern divine law and a rigid 
 moral contract with God oppress him as it did the Jew, who 
 realised in God an infinite personality meeting his own finite 
 personality on certain definite legal terms. On the contrary, 
 the Persian seems to have been a happy, easy-going mortal: 
 his birthdays were days of festivity. His life was to be a 
 struggle to extend the kingdom of Light, but withal, a cheerful 
 and a hopeful struggle. 
 
 The supreme virtues were — as we might expect where 
 the personality was strong and the religion was a religion of 
 light and truth as opposed to darkness and error — truth¬ 
 speaking, and courage, Hot only were they required to 
 practise these virtues, but they were enjoined to guard their 
 tongues. In the words of Herodotus : ‘ They hold it unlaw¬ 
 ful to talk of anything that it is unlawful to do. The most 
 disgraceful thing in the world, they think, is to tell a lie; 
 the next worst to owe a debt, because, among other reasons, 
 the debtor is obliged to tell lies.’ Personal purity and the 
 preservation of the purity of water were also incumbent on 
 the Persian. ‘ They never defile a river, nor even wash their 
 hands in one; nor will they allow others to do so, as they 
 have a great reverence for rivers.’ 
 
 We know so little of the educational methods of the Per¬ 
 sians that it would be unjustifiable in me to dwell so long 
 on their national characteristics were it not that in the edu¬ 
 cation of the human race generally, and as marking a step 
 
190 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 in its progress, the Persians are to be regarded as a potent 
 factor, and were it not also that the current beliefs, religious 
 and ethical, constituted their education. 
 
 EDUCATION OF THE ANCIENT PERSIANS 
 
 There was no educational system in Persia ; but after what 
 I have said above, we can easily conceive the national result 
 at which the education of family life and public institutions 
 aimed. This it is easy to infer from the sketch I have given 
 of the manners, life, and ethical religion of the people. 
 Perhaps the following view of the life of the boy may be 
 accepted as substantially correct. 1 
 
 The education of a Persian was considered to begin at 
 his fifth (some say his seventh) year and continue till his 
 twenty-fourth. To the seventh year the child was left 
 entirely in the hands of the women of the household. ‘ Up 
 to the fifth year,’ Herodotus tells us, ‘ they are not allowed 
 to come into the sight of their father, hut pass their lives 
 with the women. This is done that if the child die young, 
 the father may not be afflicted with the loss.’ Of good and 
 bad the child was not supposed to he capable of knowing 
 anything. Obedience was his sole duty. It was considered 
 wrong to beat a child before his seventh year. The family 
 upbringing seems to have been genial and kindly. 
 
 From the fifth year, Herodotus says, the public instruction 
 of the boys began. There is no evidence that any class, save 
 what would correspond to our upper or wealthier classes, had 
 any education beyond that which national customs, institu¬ 
 tions, and religious beliefs and rites would necessarily give 
 to all citizens. We are not to accept what Xenophon tells 
 us in his romance. We know, however, from Strabo and 
 
 1 Some write with fluency and confidence on the ancient Persian educa¬ 
 tion, having apparently in their eye Xenophon’s Cyropcedia (especially i. 9), 
 forgetting that it is a romance, to be accepted perhaps in its spirit but cer¬ 
 tainly not in any other respect. Much might be extracted from the Avesta 
 as to the regulation of domestic life, but it is difficult to date what has sur¬ 
 vived, and we are concerned only with the pre-christian. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 191 
 
 the general evidence of antiquity that the boys of the higher 
 classes were brought up together under men of gravity and 
 reputation at the court of the great king, and also at the 
 lesser courts of the great nobles and provincial governors. 
 In these central and departmental court-schools they were 
 trained in shooting with the bow, riding, the use of the jave¬ 
 lin, and other military exercises, and in the course of this 
 instruction great attention was paid to their education in 
 truthfulness and self-control. The story of noble deeds was 
 conveyed through the national traditions. The young men 
 were rendered hardy by the severity of their physical exer¬ 
 cise. We may perhaps see in such schools an anticipation 
 of the mediaeval schools of chivalry. In the first book of the 
 ‘ Anabasis ’ (which is not to be rejected because the ‘ Cyro- 
 psedia’ is a romance) Xenophon says of Cyrus the Younger, 
 that ‘ when he was receiving his education with his brother 
 and the other youths, he was considered to surpass them all 
 in everything.’ ‘ All the sons of the Persian nobles,’ he 
 adds, ‘ are educated at the Royal palace, where they have an 
 opportunity of learning many a lesson of virtuous conduct, 
 but can see or hear nothing disgraceful. Here the boys see 
 some honoured by the king and others degraded, so that in 
 their very childhood they learn to govern and to obey. Here 
 Cyrus first of all showed himself most remarkable for mod¬ 
 esty among those of his own age, and for paying more ready 
 obedience to his elders than even those who were inferior to 
 him in station, and next he was noted for his fondness for 
 horses and for managing them in a superior manner. They 
 found him, too, very desirous of learning and most assiduous 
 in practising the warlike exercises of archery and hurling 
 the javelin. When it suited his age he grew exceedingly 
 fond of the chase and of braving dangers in encounters with 
 wild beasts.’ Plato, again, in his ‘ Alcibiades,’ speaks of the 
 instruction of the sons of the kings in the wisdom of Zoro¬ 
 aster as well as in justice, temperance, and courage. 
 
 Prayer and the holy doctrines of the priests were learned 
 (doubtless from oral and personal teaching, not from writ- 
 
192 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 ings) ; and somewhere about fifteen years of age the boys 
 were invested with the holy girdle (made out of seventy-two 
 threads of camel hair or wool, and never laid aside day or 
 night, as a protection against the Devas or evil spirits) with 
 many ceremonies. On this occasion the young Persian, after 
 reciting portions of the Avesta which he had been care¬ 
 fully taught, took upon himself a vow to follow the law of 
 Zoroaster. It was at the fifteenth year that the boy was 
 held to enter youth, that the family bands were relaxed, and 
 that he became a servant of the State. In his twenty-fifth 
 year the youth was looked upon as a man and citizen, and 
 was subject to all duties in peace and war, till his fiftieth. 
 
 The highest education was for the hereditary Magian 
 priesthood alone, but it does not seem to have embraced much 
 more (so far as we know) than the traditionary religious 
 writings which were numerous. The Persians were not an 
 intellectual people like the Egyptians, Chaldees, Hindus, and 
 Chinese. Life, with all its activities, was dear to them. But 
 it might he held that it was precisely this want of abstract 
 intellectual interest that helped to make their imperial power 
 so short-lived. 
 
 The Semitic and Hamitic races were religious and devout. 
 Their religions were their political and social bonds. But 
 they all were characterised by a subjection of the spirit 
 of man to divine powers — powers, too, not always of very 
 humane attributes. Being superstitious, these races were 
 slaves to the unseen; and they were all, save the Jews, 
 idolaters. It was otherwise with the Persian. Morality 
 and virility were the governing ideas. Personality and the 
 responsibility of each individual for the diffusion of good 
 might not be national characteristics, hut they underlay the 
 national character. Their religion taught them reverence — 
 a reverence extended to the great king who was governor 
 under Auramazda; hut this reverence, while unquestionably 
 it was subjection, was not slavishness. The individual had 
 to fight with and for Auramazda and the kingdom of Light. 
 Truthfulness, justice, and courage were accordingly, as I have 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 193 
 
 said, the cardinal virtues, and by these characteristics the 
 Persians were, if we may believe history and tradition, gen¬ 
 erally distinguished: in these they educated their children. 
 The distinctive characteristic of the Persian education is its 
 devotion to physical and ethical training. Education in our 
 modern sense did not exist, either as instruction or discipline, 
 outside the physical and ethical elements. It does not appear 
 that the women had any save domestic training, but it is 
 important to note that they held a higher position in the 
 family life than was usual in the East. 
 
 As to method. — Where there is no instruction in litera¬ 
 ture, &c., there is no room for method as applied to intellec¬ 
 tual acquisition and discipline. The method of moral training 
 was the mingling of the young with their seniors, on which 
 Crete and Sparta and early Rome also mainly relied. 
 
 This is all that can be said, with even an approximation to 
 accuracy, about the educational machinery of the Persians. 
 It was manifestly only the well-to-do who participated fully 
 in the national training — possibly only the leading tribe of 
 the Pasargadse. All others would be dependent on domestic 
 life and the current of religious and ethical belief and 
 tradition. 
 
 The significance of Persian life and education lies in the 
 combination of a free personality with an intense national 
 feeling. I am not at all disposed to accept the sweeping 
 estimate of their character which approves itself to Professor 
 Sayce, in face of the universal tradition regarding them, sup¬ 
 ported as that is by the doctrines of their religion and the 
 statements of the Greeks. In the mere fact of personality 
 we have the beginning of an ideal aim for the personal life. 
 Individual courage, truthfulness, and purity were constituents 
 of this ideal; and the ideal of man was based on the attri¬ 
 butes of God. Man becomes, under the Persian conception, 
 a personal factor in the world-order. Caste, with its depress¬ 
 ing and restrictive influences and superstitions and their 
 accompaniment of slavish fears, is not compatible with these 
 
 13 
 
194 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 conceptions. Accordingly, I am disposed to regard the Per¬ 
 sian as the true starting-point of the specifically Aryan char¬ 
 acter, and as marking the transition from the Semitic-Oriental 
 to the Hellenic type of life. With a sense of personality 
 there comes into existence freedom and many consequent 
 virtues. The Persian thus seems to bridge the gulf between 
 the Oriental and the European. And yet he was an 
 Oriental. 
 
 It is not our business to trace the brief history of the 
 Medo-Persian empire. When one considers, however, the 
 high military and healthy ethical characteristics of the Per¬ 
 sian when he was an all-conquering force, it is permitted to 
 us to wonder at lii£ rapid degradation and fall. With so 
 excellent an ethical basis of national life, how came it that 
 the court, in less than one hundred years from the death of 
 Cyrus, had developed all the vices which are popularly asso¬ 
 ciated with Oriental despotisms ? The imperial organisation 
 was perhaps too lax to be permanent, but the degradation of 
 the Persian character wants explanation. Personal vanity 
 and love of luxury do not seem to explain everything. May 
 we not believe that had there been an organised education of. 
 a considerable section of the people on the basis of Mazdeism, 
 the empire, if reduced to manageable limits, might have held 
 its own even against Alexander, who gave it its final blow ? 
 Or was it that the religion itself had become debased, and 
 that the degeneracy was due to a light-hearted unbelief, 
 generated by luxury, which prepared the way for political 
 dissolution ? 
 
 To conclude : — The nation which was most nearly allied 
 to the Persian in its religious conceptions was the Jewish, 
 and it is not impossible that the tribes deported to Media in 
 the first exile may have influenced Zoroastrianism. But 
 spite of a certain community of belief, there was all the con¬ 
 trast which the Aryan and Semitic race-characters would 
 lead us to expect. On the one hand we see slavery to a tech¬ 
 nical legalism, a sacred covenant; on the other personal free¬ 
 dom and a freely discharged responsibility. We may even say 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 195 
 
 that the Persian idea of God and his relation to the world 
 and the life of man was purer, more universal, and more 
 pleasing than the Jewish. God attracts and does not coerce 
 with threatenings. On the other hand we have in the edu¬ 
 cated Jew a far more intense conception of the moral element 
 in God and of the absoluteness of Duty to Law. With the 
 Persian the actual personality of God is lost in a principle, 
 and the moral relation of God to the world and man is more 
 generalised and less definite, and yet quite capable of being 
 appropriated by an intelligent community. In the Persian 
 idea there was a possibility of progress, and it is difficult to 
 understand why the nation did not advance. 
 
 The reader who has accompanied us thus far will see that 
 new elements of life enter the world with the Aryan race. 
 The two branches of that race of which we have been speak¬ 
 ing exhibit the two leading characteristics of their European 
 brethren; in the one we find a certain simplicity of faith 
 and morals accompanied with freedom of spirit, freshness, 
 and * go ’; in the other, profound philosophic contemplation 
 and literary excellence. Both these characteristics we find 
 united in the race which now compels our attention, and 
 which must arrest it much longer than any other; for in it 
 we find the genesis of all subsequent human activity in phil¬ 
 osophy, literature, and the arts that adorn and elevate the life 
 of man. 
 
 Authorities :— Anabasis and Cyropcedia of Xenophon ; Herodotus ; Plato ; 
 Strabo; Sir H. Rawlinson’s appendices and discussions in his translation of 
 Herodotus ; Ranke’s History of the World; Rawlinson’s Five Eastern Mon¬ 
 archies ; Schmidt’s History of Education; Hegel’s Philosophy of History; 
 Sayce’s Ancient Empires of the East; Yaux’s Persia; Tiele’s Outlines of 
 Religions ; Duncker’s History of Antiquity; with references to many other 
 sources, such as Darmesteter — especially his introduction to the translation 
 of the Zend-Avesta. 
 
C. —THE HELLENIC RACE 1 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 GENERAL HELLENIC CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 Assuming that the reader has already a fair acquaintance 
 with Hellenic history, I here restrict myself to the exhibition 
 of those great and leading characteristics of life, religion, and 
 art, to which it is absolutely necessary to refer if we would 
 understand the education of the Greeks. 
 
 I have in view the highest type of the Hellenic spirit — 
 the Athenian. 
 
 Look first at the map of the Eastern Mediterranean. The 
 physical characteristics of the home of the Hellenic races — 
 the variety of scenery which was to be found in a land 
 broken up, as theirs was, by mountain, stream, and sea, and 
 the pure and hilarious influences of the atmosphere, were all 
 of a kind to promote the development of a cheerful, bright, 
 life-loving people. The early separation of the common 
 stock into tribes speaking different dialects (Doric, iEolic, 
 Ionic, and Attic), and the establishment on the shores of the 
 Mediterranean of numerous autonomous little kingdoms 
 tended to establish a difference, and in many cases a mutual 
 antagonism, of interests. Hence, in consequence of the 
 
 1 Important Dates in the History of Greece. —Trojan War, 1183 b.c. (?) ; 
 Homer about 950 and Hesiod about 850 b.c. ; Spartan power dominant in the 
 Peloponnesus, 650 b.c. Athens — Legislation of Solon, 590 b.c. ; Persian in¬ 
 vasion and Battle of Marathon, 490 b.c. ; Invasion by Xerxes, burning of 
 Athens, and battle of Salamis, 480 b.c. ; battle of Platfea, 479 b.c. Suprem¬ 
 acy of Athens. Peloponnesian war, 431 to 404 b.c. ; Defeat of Athens and 
 supremacy of Sparta, 404 b.c. ; Spartan wars with Persia and Darius : divi¬ 
 sions of Greece: ascendency of Philip of Macedon over Greece, 338 b.c.; 
 Alexander the Great. Greece made a Roman province, 146 b.c. 
 
TIIE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 197 
 
 numerous centres of civic life, that rapid growth of independ¬ 
 ence and of the spirit of freedom which characterised the 
 Greek, and which was, in fact, the beginning of the idea of 
 liberty for the whole human race. This tendency to civic 
 and personal self-assertion was strengthened by the island 
 character of many of the settlements and the activity and 
 energy called forth by contest with the sea. It is true that 
 freedom and the spirit of independence were innate in the 
 Hellenic character; but they were undoubtedly fostered into 
 an almost feverish activity by social, geographical, and 
 political conditions. What a contrast do they present to the 
 Egyptian, Chinese, and Semitic national communities, and to 
 the dreamy and abstract Hindus, their cousins by race ! 
 
 Here among the Greeks you have all the grace and human¬ 
 ity which are noted in their fellow-Aryans the Persians, their 
 courage and manliness, their enjoyment of life and of moral 
 freedom; but all these issuing from a deeper nature, instinct 
 with a broader human sympathy and, above all, animated by 
 an intense intellectuality. In Homer 1 — the first and great¬ 
 est literary representative of the Hellenic spirit — you have 
 all these characteristics so early as about 1000 years b.c. ; for 
 Homer seems to have sung somewhere about 180 years after 
 the Trojan War, to which the date of 1183 B.c. is usually 
 assigned. These poems (which, as has been truly said, form 
 the end not the beginning of a poetical period), so rich in 
 their humanity, so full of character, of simple and naive, yet 
 penetrating, reflection, so abounding in romance, so magnifi¬ 
 cent in their conceptions of the virility of man, so touching 
 in their pathos and so overflowing with fulness of life and 
 energy, give the key to the Hellenic character. They formed 
 the basis of all Greek literature ; nay, we may say of all 
 European literature. They were committed to memory by 
 the Hellenic boys and studied by the Hellenic youth, who 
 
 1 It does not matter to us, of course, whether one man wrote the Iliad and 
 Odyssey or not. But, I suppose no one now doubts that these poems were the 
 product of many singers, and, if so, their interest and value as the expression 
 of the life of a race are increased. 
 
198 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 saw in Achilles a type of free -and warlike Greece, learned 
 to revere age and experience in Nestor, to recognise, in the 
 portraiture of the great Agamemnon, the necessity of leader¬ 
 ship even for free men and democrats, and to appreciate the 
 oratory and the astute policy of Ulysses — a foreshadowing of 
 a potent factor in the life of the interplotting Hellenic States. 
 A people with such a start in national life could not but he 
 great in arts, literature, and arms, if their racial genius was 
 truly represented by their great epos. The teaching fell, as 
 we know, on fruitful soil; and the poems were received and 
 cherished as divine, inspired utterances. 
 
 We take the Homeric epos then, as we took the Confucian 
 books in the case of China, the Rig-Veda and Code of Manu 
 in the case of the Hindu, and the Zend-Avesta in the case of 
 the Persian, to he the starting-point of the inner life of the 
 Greeks. A natural humanity broad and various, instead of 
 religious conceptions, lies at the heart of Greek genius. 
 Homer was the first expositor of this humanity, and through 
 all Greek and even Roman education, the Iliad and Odyssey 
 formed the minds of the young. ‘Boys,’ says Professor 
 Jebb, 1 ‘ learned Homer by heart at school, priests quoted him 
 touching the gods, moralists went to him for maxims, states¬ 
 men for arguments, cities for claims to territory or alliance, 
 noble houses for the title deeds of their fame.’ Even so late 
 as Quintilian, in the first century of the Christian era, we 
 find the use of Homer and Vergil in the elementary schools 
 recommended by the most competent of all educational 
 authorities. ‘ It has accordingly been an excellent custom,’ 
 he says (i. 8), ‘ that reading should commence with Homer 
 and Vergil, although to understand their merits there is need 
 ®f a maturer judgment; but for the acquisition of judgment 
 there is abundance of time, for they will not be read once 
 only. In the meantime let the mind of the pupil be exalted 
 with the sublimity of the heroic verse, conceive ardour from 
 the magnitude of the subjects, and be imbued with the 
 noblest sentiments.’ 
 
 1 Primer of Greek Literature. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 199 
 
 It is in the Homeric epos also that we find the earliest 
 indications of Hellenic education. In* the 9th Book of the 
 Iliad, Phoenix, when supplicating Achilles to lay aside his 
 wrath, recalls that his father, Peleus, when he sent him to 
 the war, committed him to his care. 
 
 I, whom thy royal father sent as orderer of thy force 
 When to Atrides from his court he left thee for this course, 
 
 Yet young, and when in skill of arms thou didst not so abound, 
 Nor hadst the habit of discourse that makes men so renowned. 
 
 In all which I was set by him t’ instruct thee as my son, 
 
 That thou mightst speak when speech was fit, and do when deeds 
 were done; 
 
 Not sit as dumb for want of words; idle, for skill to move. 
 
 Iliad , ix. 443, Chapman’s translation. 
 
 If we would understand Greece, then, we must start from 
 Homer. If we do not read, and, while reading, are not 
 quick to feel the charm of the great epics, we shall never 
 know anything about the great Hellenic race, or the vital 
 element in their lives whether in school or at home. 
 
 The most remarkable outcome of Greek genius in political 
 and social institutions as well as in art and literature was 
 to be found in Athens — ‘ the eye of Greece.’ It is of 
 Athens and the Athenians that Thucydides thus speaks 
 through the mouth of Pericles, giving us a picture of an 
 ideal civic community, which it is not difficult to connect 
 with the Homeric conceptions of life: 
 
 ‘ It is true that we are called a democracy, for the admin¬ 
 istration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. 
 But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their 
 private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognised; 
 and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is pre¬ 
 ferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, 
 but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but 
 a man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity 
 of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public 
 
200 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 life, and in our private intercourse we are not suspicious of 
 one another, nor angry with our neighbour if he does what 
 he likes; we do not put on sour looks at him which, though 
 harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained 
 in our private intercourse, a spirit of reverence pervades 
 our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by 
 respect for authority and for the laws, having an especial 
 regard to those which are ordained for the protection of 
 the injured, as well as to those unwritten laws which bring 
 upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general 
 sentiment. 
 
 ‘And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary 
 spirits many relaxations from toil; we have regular games 
 and sacrifices throughout the year; at home the style of 
 our life is refined; and the delight which we daily feel 
 in all these things helps to banish melancholy. 
 
 ‘ Because of the greatness of our city the fruits of the 
 whole earth flow in upon us, so that we enjoy the goods 
 of other countries as freely as of our own. 
 
 ‘ Then, again, our military training is in many 'respects 
 superior to that of our adversaries. Our city is thrown 
 open to the world, and we never expel a foreigner or pre¬ 
 vent him from seeing or learning anything of which the 
 secret, if revealed to an enemy, might profit him. We 
 rely not upon management or trickery, but upon our own 
 hearts and hands. And in the matter of education, whereas 
 they (the Spartans) from early youth are always undergoing 
 laborious exercises which are to make them brave, we live at 
 ease, and yet are equally ready to face the perils which they 
 face. 
 
 ‘ Then, we are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our 
 tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness. 
 Wealth we employ, not for talk and ostentation, but when 
 there is a real use for it. To avoid poverty with us is no 
 disgrace; the true disgrace is in doing nothing to avoid it. 
 An Athenian citizen does not neglect the State because he 
 takes care of his own household; and even those of us who 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 201 
 
 are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. 
 We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public 
 affairs not as a harmless but as a u eless character; and if 
 few of us are originators, we are all sound judges, of a policy. 
 The great impediment to action is, in our opinion, not dis¬ 
 cussion, but the want of that knowledge which is gained by 
 discussion preparatory to action. For we have a peculiar 
 power of thinking before we act and of acting too, whereas 
 other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon 
 reflection. And they are really to be esteemed the bravest 
 spirits who, having the clearest sense, both of the pains 
 and pleasures of life, do not on that account shrink from 
 danger. 
 
 ‘ I say that Athens is the school of Hellas, and that the 
 individual Athenian in his own person seems to have the 
 power of adapting himself to the most varied forms of action 
 with the utmost versatility and grace. This is no passing 
 and idle word, but truth and fact ; and the assertion is veri¬ 
 fied by the position to which these qualities have raised the 
 State. For in the hour of trial Athens alone among her con¬ 
 temporaries is greater than her fame.’ (Jowett’s translation.) 
 
 Contrast for a moment this picture of a State with that of 
 the nations we have been passing under review! These 
 words of Thucydides portray an almost ideal political com¬ 
 munity, towards which, indeed, we hope that our modern 
 life is tending. Strange it may seem that a civic constitu¬ 
 tion even though falling short of this ideal, as Athens most 
 certainly did, could not sustain itself for ever. The decline 
 and fall of Greece, manifest as were the causes, yields 
 probably as profound political lessons as the 'Decline and 
 Fall of Rome’ even in the hands of the stately and all- 
 comprehending Gibbon. 
 
 In connection with the Greek polity, however, let us never 
 forget that when we talk of the Greeks, we talk not of the 
 whole of the inhabitants of Hellas who spoke Greek, but of the 
 aristocracy of free citizens. These rested on a large body of 
 slaves who performed all manual and menial work — captives 
 
202 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 in war, or persons purchased at slave markets or the descen¬ 
 dants of slaves. Though well treated, they had no civic 
 rights to speak of. 
 
 Religion.—The earliest Greeks brought with them the 
 Aryan religion and there is nothing in the Vedic hymns 
 which they would not have accepted. But how different was 
 the evolution of the religious sentiment from that which we 
 have seen in the Persian and Hindu! The sacerdotal 
 element was in abeyance, and religion partook of the 
 humanity of their civil life. There was here no Semitic 
 fear, no Egyptian awe, no abasement of human personality 
 before an unseen power of possibly sinister intentions. It 
 was a worship of the beautiful — of Art, i.e. the ideal in 
 nature and human life. Their gods did not symbolise the 
 mere powers of nature, and the worship was not an element 
 worship, though doubtless it rested on a primaeval adoration 
 of the forces and forms of nature — earth, sun, moon, dawn, 
 spring, and so forth. The gods as we find them in their 
 specific Hellenic development were the perfect expressions 
 of human thought regarding the powers that worked in nature 
 and in man. They were ideals; and in these ideals they 
 truly worshipped the divine element in man; and so they 
 may be, in a sense, said to have worshipped a glorified and 
 superhuman, but not supernatural, humanity. 
 
 On this subject Hegel says in his ‘ Philosophy of History ’: 
 ‘ It must be observed that the Greek gods are to be regarded 
 as individualities, not abstractions, like Knowledge, Unity, 
 Time, Heaven, Necessity. Such abstractions do not form 
 the substance of these divinities: they are no allegories, no 
 abstract beings to which various attributes are attached like 
 the Horatian [e.g. dir a et sceva necessitas]. As little are 
 the divinities symbols, for a symbol is only a sign, an adum¬ 
 bration of something else. The Greek gods express of them¬ 
 selves what they are. The eternal repose and clear intelli¬ 
 gence that dignify the head of Apollo is not a symbol, hut 
 the expression in which spirit manifests itself and shows 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 203 
 
 itself present. The gods are personalities, concrete individu¬ 
 alities : an allegorical being has no qualities, but is itself one 
 quality and no more. The gods are moreover special char¬ 
 acters, since in each of them one peculiarity predominates as 
 the characteristic one; but it would be vain to try to bring 
 this circle of characters into a system. Zeus perhaps may 
 be regarded as ruling the other gods, but not with substantial 
 power — so that they are left free to their own idiosyncrasies. 
 Since the whole range of spiritual and moral qualities was 
 appropriated by the gods, the Unity which stood above them 
 all necessarily remained abstract; it was therefore formless 
 and unmeaning Fate (the absolute constitution of things) — 
 Necessity, whose oppressive character arises from the absence 
 of the spiritual in it; whereas the gods hold a friendly rela¬ 
 tion to men, for they are spiritual natures. That higher 
 thought — the knowledge of unity as God the One Spirit — 
 lay beyond that grade of thought to which the Greeks 
 had attained.’ (Hegel, ‘The Greek World,’ page 256.) The 
 only exception that can be taken to this statement is as to 
 the ‘ substantial ’ power of Zeus. See Iliad, viii. 1-27, &c., 
 &c. Moreover, the tendency of the intellect of Greece was 
 ever more and more to assign supremacy to Zeus. 
 
 Mr. J. Brown Patterson 1 also well says : ‘ The distinguish¬ 
 ing characteristic of the religion thus created by the free 
 operation of the human faculties was naturally the freedom 
 and the fulness of the display which it contained of human 
 nature. It sought the causes of all being and all change in 
 moving principles similar to those which operate in human 
 breasts, and in doing so it seems to have had no principle 
 of selection either metaphysical or moral. Whatever was 
 palpable in man it made ideal in the divinity. Accordingly 
 we find the fulness and richness of human nature in the 
 gods—the Hellenic worship was in truth the worship of 
 humanity. To the Hellenic conception everything beautiful 
 was holy; everything pleasant to man was acceptable to the 
 gods.’ 
 
 1 Essay on the Character of the Athenian 
 
204 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 The pervading spirit of the Hellenic religion has been best 
 expressed in Schiller’s famous poem entitled ‘The Gods of 
 Greece/ of which I may quote a few verses: 
 
 When o’er the form of naked Truth 
 The Muse had spread her magic veil, 
 
 Creation throbbed with life and youth, 
 
 And feeling warmed the insensible. 
 
 Then Nature, formed for love’s embrace, 
 
 The earth in brighter glory trod; 
 
 All was enchanted ground, each trace 
 
 The footstep of a god. 
 
 % 
 
 But Nature now, undeified, 
 
 Unwitting of the joys she gives, 
 
 Unconscious of her former pride 
 And of the soul that in her lives, 
 
 Regardless of her Maker’s praise 
 And dead to human sympathy, 
 
 Like a dull pendulum obeys 
 The law of gravity. 
 
 Your gay religions knew no sadness: 
 
 They banished each austere emotion ; 
 
 What bosom could but throb with gladness, 
 
 When gladness was the best devotion ? 
 
 Whate’er u r as sacred then was fair; 
 
 No pleasure feared the eye of God 
 Where roamed the blushing Muses, where 
 The Graces still abode. 
 
 Your temples smiled like palace-halls; 
 
 And there ye held your dazzling court 
 On many-wreathed festivals, 
 
 Midst thundering cars and hero-sport; 
 
 And oft the soft soul-breathing sound 
 Of dance begirt your altars fair, 
 
 Each brow with bright love-garlands bound, 
 Deep-wreathed in dewy hair. 1 
 
 1 Translated by John Brown Patterson. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 205 
 
 That there was a deeper vein of religions thought in the 
 Hellenic mind is, however, true. The Eleusinian mysteries, 1 
 the lyrical poets, and the tragic drama, give sufficient evi¬ 
 dence of this; but it does not seem to have touched the 
 popular heart deeply. Their instinctive apprehension of 
 ideal forms seemed to satisfy their religious needs. The 
 true and all-pervading God of the average Greek was, in 
 truth, neither Zeus nor Athena, but Apollo, whose chief 
 shrine was at Delphi, the centre of Hellenic religious unity. 
 He truly expressed their art-loving and ideal tendencies in 
 all forms of mental activity, and through his oracles con¬ 
 nected them with the superhuman world. The recently- 
 discovered Delphian hymn to Apollo may he here quoted. 
 
 Fragment T. * Thee, son of great Zeus, famous in minstrelsy, 
 I will celebrate, since by the side of this snow-capped hill 
 thou dost show forth divine oracles to all mortals, after thou 
 didst seize the prophetic tripod which the hateful dragon 
 guarded, when thou didst pierce with thy darts the sheeny 
 twisted shape.’ 
 
 Fragment II. ‘ Ye fair-armed daughters of loud-thunder- 
 ing Zeus, who have had deep-wooded Helicon assigned to 
 you for an abode, come hither, that you may chant in song 
 the praises of your kinsman, golden-haired Phoebus, who, on 
 his twin-peaked abode of the Parnassian rock, along with the 
 
 1 Doctrines of a mystico-religious kind, believed to have been introduced 
 from Egypt and preserved by a priestly family or families at Eleusis. The 
 chief temple was afterwards in Athens, but Eleusis never lost the distinction 
 which associated the mysteries specially with it. Any Greek might be 
 initiated who was prepared to go through all the necessary ceremonies. The 
 precise nature of the doctrine revealed is not known. I am not aware that 
 modern research has gone beyond Thirlwall’s conclusion: ‘ They were the 
 remains of a worship which preceded the rise of the Hellenic mythology and 
 its attendant rites, grounded on a view of Nature less fanciful, more earnest, 
 and better fitted to awaken both philosophical thought and religious feeling.’ 
 (History of Greece , ii. 140.) Some more recent inquirers seem to think that 
 there was little in the so-called ‘mysteries.’ On the other hand, it is not im¬ 
 possible that they had Semitic or Hamitic relations, and Thirlwall’s judgment 
 on the matter is probably still the soundest. The Greeks seemed to be, in some 
 cases, becoming alive to the sense of sin and the consequent need of personal 
 salvation. To this the mysteries as well as the Orphic rites would appeal. 
 
206 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 famous Delphic maids, visits the rills of the gushing Castalian 
 spring, presiding over the oracular hill upon the Delphian 
 headland. Come with thy prayers, 0 famous Attic race, 
 blest with mighty cities, dwelling on the inviolate soil of 
 panoplied Tritonis; on holy altars, fire wraps in a blaze the 
 thigh-bones of young bulls, and therewith Arabian vapours 
 spread through it upwards to the sky; the flute with thrill¬ 
 ing notes pipes its lay in varied melodies ; the golden, sweetly- 
 sounding lyre wakes music for triumphal songs, and the 
 whole swarm of spectators to whom the Attic land has been 
 assigned as a dwelling-place.’ 1 
 
 The growing idealism and the essentially aesthetic and joy¬ 
 ous character of the Hellenic religion is already visible little 
 more than half way from Homer to Pindar and iEschylus, 
 in the hymn to Apollo, referring to the Ionian festival there, 
 and in existence as early, probably, as 730 B.c.: 
 
 'There, in thy honour, Apollo, the long-robed Ionians 
 assemble with their children and their gracious dames. So 
 often as they hold thy festival, they celebrate thee, for thy 
 joy, with boxing and dancing and song. A man would say 
 that they were strangers to death and old age evermore who 
 should come on the Ionians thus gathered; for he would see 
 the goodliness of all the people, and would rejoice in his soul, 
 beholding the men and the fairly-cinctured women, and their 
 swift ships and their great wealth, and, besides, that wonder 
 of which the fame shall not perish, the maidens of Delos, 
 handmaidens of Apollo the Far-darter. First they hymn 
 Apollo, then Leto and Artemis delighting in arrows: and 
 then they sing the praise of heroes of yore and of women, 
 and throw their spell over the tribes of men.’ (Jebb’s 
 translation.) 
 
 To quote again from Hegel. ‘ The essence of the Greek 
 religion is the spiritual itself, and the natural is only the 
 point of departure. But, on the other hand, it must be 
 observed that the divinity of the Greeks is not yet the abso¬ 
 lute free spirit, but spirit in a particular mode fettered by the 
 
 1 Fragment translated by Dr. Dunn, H.M.I.S., Scotland. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 207 
 
 limitations of humanity — still dependent as a determinate 
 individuality on external conditions. Individualities objec¬ 
 tively beautiful are the gods of the Greeks.’ The Aryan 
 nature-worship had here evidently fallen into the hands of 
 an aesthetic and idealising race, and spite of the traditional 
 tales of the gods, against which philosophy protested, the 
 recognition of the gods reacted on the moral life of the 
 Greeks by virtue of the mere fact of idealisation. 
 
 The earliest formulated conception of the Hellenic religion 
 after the race had emerged from a primitive element-wor- 
 ship, is to be extracted from the Homeric poems supple¬ 
 mented by Hesiod’s ‘ Theogony.’ It was in the human 
 attributes of their gods, and the rich legendary tales about 
 them and the heroes, that the Hellenic race first separated 
 itself from the religious and intellectual life of other races. 
 As time went on, these primitive conceptions became more 
 and more idealised and more and more ethical, till we find 
 that even the profound mind of an ZEschylus and a Sophocles 
 has room for the more important of the subordinate gods 
 alongside their unquestionable monotheism. 
 
 It is to the philosophers and dramatists of Greece that we 
 owe those deeper thoughts as to the origin of things, the 
 nature of man, and the moral order of the world, which else¬ 
 where were a derivation from sacred books and the monopoly 
 of a priestly order. In Greece the lay spirit always dominated 
 — the sacerdotal was almost non-existent. But even from 
 the time of Homer, as I have already indicated, the Greek 
 recognised a supreme God among the gods — Zeus, the father 
 of gods and men : the all-powerful. In his supreme hands 
 lay the order of the world and absolute justice. Homer rep¬ 
 resents Zeus as executing vengeance by making the trans¬ 
 gressions of men fall heavily on themselves or their children. 
 ZEschylus, rising to a lofty conception, calls him all-causing, 
 all-sufficing, all-seeing, all-accomplishing, Lord of lords, most 
 Holy of holies: and Sophocles gives utterance to similar 
 thoughts. Certainly from the time of Homer monotheism, 
 or at least henotheisnq lay at the basis of the Greek religion; 
 
208 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 this, however, among all races has been found compatible 
 with a belief in gods. Blue-eyed Athena was a great god¬ 
 dess, but she was only the idealised expression of Jove’s 
 wisdom, and to her consequently he yields: ‘ She only of 
 gods may know that chamber’s keys where sleeps the sealed 
 thunder of her sire.’ 1 Bright-haired Apollo, again, was the 
 expression of the oracular decrees of the father of gods and 
 men — Apollo, who was the god of light, saviour, purifier, 
 and redeemer, and ‘ whose cultus,’ says Tiele, ‘ exercised on 
 the religious, moral, and social life of the Greeks so profound 
 and salutary an influence.’ 2 
 
 The fact of death inevitable and of human suffering, so 
 often to all appearance unjust, was a deep problem for the 
 Greeks, as it has been for the thoughtful of all races. 
 Behind the awful throne of Jove himself the Greek recog¬ 
 nised the dark and fateful form of destiny, working out, for 
 gods as well as for men, their lives and fortunes — answer- 
 able to no other power, caring for none. 3 A thread of mys¬ 
 tery and awe accordingly ran through the web of Greek life ; 
 the pathos of human existence was in their hearts (Iliad, 
 xxiv. passim), but their joyous and active nature, their con¬ 
 stant struggles in politics, war, literature, art, and philosophy, 
 accompanied by an all-prevailing gymnastic, enabled them 
 practically to ignore the thought of the essential evil in life; 
 and to treat all ultimate questions, chiefly through the imagi¬ 
 nation, and not as supreme and urgent realities in the prob¬ 
 lem of existence. ‘ Forasmuch as men must die,’ says Pindar, 
 ‘ wherefore should one sit vainly in the dark through a dull 
 and nameless age, and without lot in noble deeds ? ’ 4 What 
 a contrast to the Brahman and the Buddhist! 
 
 Sacerdotalism, I have said, was alien to the Hellenic cast 
 
 1 iEsch. Eum. translated by E. Myers. 
 
 2 ‘Ne’er spake I yet, from my oracular throne, of man, of woman, or of 
 commonwealth, answer unbidden of the Olympian sire.’ — Eum. 616. 
 
 3 And yet it sometimes appeared that Zeus was powerful enough to be him¬ 
 self a factor in fate. 
 
 4 Olymp. i. 82, quoted by Professor Butcher, p. 105 of Aspects of the 
 Greek Genius. 
 
THE ARYAN OF INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 209 
 
 of thought and life. The temples were simply the house of 
 the god to whom they were dedicated, and the priest (except 
 in the case of some families that had hereditary rights) was 
 elected and might be changed from time to time, returning, 
 after he had served his period, to the civil life from which 
 he had been taken. The priest’s duty seems to have been, 
 in fact, chiefly that of a caretaker and of a regulator of the 
 manner of offering sacrifices on special occasions : he assisted 
 also in the offerings and sacrifices which others came to 
 make. The oracular utterances at certain temples like 
 Dodona and Delphi (for centuries the centre of Greek relig¬ 
 ious thought and guide of its political life), revealing the will 
 of the god or future events, and the magical cures in some 
 iEsculapian temples would seem to be the only character¬ 
 istics of religion which connect the Greeks with the magical 
 in religion. The most recent inquiries, it is true, point to 
 both a Semitic and Hamitic element* in the religion of the 
 Greeks, but these elements were themselves Hellenised. 
 
 But although there was no priesthood or church in the 
 modern sense, to the Greek, nature was full of deity ; holy 
 were the haunted forest boughs, holy the air, the water, and 
 the fire ; but whereas other races accepted the belief of an 
 animated nature in a prosaic, and generally suspicious, spirit, 
 with the Greeks the belief was characterised by amity and 
 joyousness. There was also a full recognition of the gods 
 in the great incidents of domestic life — birth, marriage, 
 and death ; and, even at banquets, the libations always con¬ 
 nected the banqueters with present gods. All these cere¬ 
 monies, however, seem to have had an artistic quite as much 
 as a religious character, in the sense which other nations 
 understood religion. The relation of the Greek to his gods 
 was an easy, pleasant, and friendly one. Natures so bright, 
 joyous, and high-spirited were not likely to dwell on the 
 mysterious and awful in religion. ‘ Truth and self-control,’ 
 says Tiele (p. 218), * without self-mortification or renuncia¬ 
 tion of nature, a steady equilibrium between the sensible 
 and the spiritual, moral earnestness combined with an open 
 
 14 
 
210 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 eye for the happiness and beauty of life, such are the charac¬ 
 teristic features of the Delphic Apollo worship in which the 
 Greek religion almost reached the climax of its development.’ 
 
 As regards a future state, Tiele points out that it was a 
 mark of the ethical character of the Delphic religion that it 
 spoke of a future state of retribution ; but this was never a 
 definite popular belief, though taught by the poets. That it 
 was an article of faith among the more thoughtful is estab¬ 
 lished by many passages in Greek literature, although few 
 may have shared the conviction of Antigone when she says: 
 
 ‘ When I come there into the other world, such is the hope 
 I cherish, I shall find love with my father, love with my 
 mother, and love with thee my brother’ (Soph. ‘Antig.’ 
 897). 
 
 Art. — The religion of the beautiful, joyous, and ideal 
 received fit expression in the sacred houses, the remains of 
 which are still a wonder and joy to mankind because of their 
 severe charm and refined simplicity. It is easy to see that 
 Greek art and Greek religion were necessarily one: both 
 were the expression of the same ideal conceptions : 
 
 ‘ How grand and chaste is the Greek temple! ’ says 
 Hettner, ‘ so simple in its beauty, so solemn in its repose, 
 so divine in its serenity! It is not like our churches — a 
 place of assembly for the devout congregation; it contains 
 only the statue of the god to whom it is consecrated, and his 
 sacred treasures and votive offerings. It stands, therefore, 
 quite apart from every profane environment. An encircling 
 wall guards a wide, sacred precinct; and in the midst of this 
 rises, with far-seen splendour of marble and of gold, the 
 house of the god. Nor may it stand on the common earth, 
 trod by the feet of mortal man. Broad and mighty it is true, 
 the fair structure stretches along the ground as the natural 
 basis of existence: but three mighty strata of steps lift it 
 above the level of everyday reality, and bear it, like a great 
 votive gift, towards heaven. The god who dwells within the 
 cella is no dark forbidding deity; he is a god of joy and 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 211 
 
 perpetual serenity — a god of light. To embrace the light 
 and air, the portico throws itself wide ; and all round runs a 
 colonnade, connecting the narrow dwelling of the god with 
 the happy outer world. Joyous in their living, elastic 
 strength, rise these pillars. The counterpressure of the 
 superstructure which it is their purpose to support, receives 
 and checks them as they ascend. Above them rest the 
 superincumbent beams of the ceiling; and over these spreads 
 the lofty roof drooping on both sides its broad overshadow¬ 
 ing wings as if to warn and compel the soaring and aspiring 
 pillars to remain contented with the solid sufficient earth, 
 the fair divine Now, and seek no beyond. It is this solution 
 of opposing forces, this aspiration which with glad and will¬ 
 ing self-control returns within its natural limits, this living, 
 satisfied, and harmonious repose which reflects on the mind 
 of the beholder such a grateful calm. The enjoyment we 
 have in the intelligent contemplation of a Greek temple is a 
 homage to and a celebration of the divine, eternal Sophrosyne.’ 
 A speaker representing Egypt in one of Professor Ebers’ novels, 
 says: ‘ There is such a great difference between the Greek 
 and Egyptian works of art. When I went into our own 
 gigantic temples to pray I always felt as if I must prostrate 
 myself in the dust before the greatness of the gods, and en¬ 
 treat them not to crush so insignificant a worm ; but in the 
 temple of Hera at Samos I could only raise my hands to 
 heaven in joyful thanksgiving that the gods had made the 
 earth so beautiful. In Egypt I always believed as I had 
 been taught: “ Life is a sleep; we shall not awake to our 
 true existence in the kingdom of Osiris till the hour of 
 death: ” but in Greece I thought: “ I am born to live and to 
 enjoy this cheerful, bright, and blooming world.” ’ 
 
 In statuary also the religious idea found expression. 
 Pheidias, the greatest of Greek artists, wrought statues 
 designed to give a moral, lofty idea of deity. ‘ In the 
 Athena of the Parthenon,’ says Tiele, 1 ‘ and the Zeus of 
 Olympia and the ancient tragedy, the religion of the Hellenes 
 
 1 Outlines of the History of Ancient Religions , p. 224. 
 
212 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 readied the climax of its development. The ideal humani¬ 
 sation of deity for which the way was prepared by the cultus 
 of the Delphic Apollo was perfected at Athens by iEschylus, 
 Sophocles, and Pheidias.’ The great Pericles ‘ was led/ says 
 Ranke, 1 ‘ in promoting art to strengthen religion.’ 
 
 Such, concisely summed up, was the Greek religion as 
 realised in architecture and the plastic arts — the natural 
 and necessary expression of their religious sentiment. 
 
 Art in literature distinguished the Hellenic race no less 
 than their work in marble and stone. They created a 
 language subtle, far-reaching, and flexible, and fit to give 
 expression to every form of literature. These forms, lyrical, 
 epic, dramatic, historical, philosophical, they indeed created ; 
 and they still are the teachers of mankind. Their attitude 
 to all knowledge was open and receptive. Nothing was 
 common or unclean. What a contrast to the nations we 
 have spoken of in past chapters! ‘ The Greeks/ says Pro¬ 
 
 fessor Butcher of Edinburgh, 2 ‘before any other people of 
 antiquity, possessed the love of knowledge for its own sake. 
 To see things as they really are, to discern their meanings 
 and adjust their relations, was with them an instinct and a 
 passion. Their methods in science and philosophy might be 
 very faulty, and their conclusions often absurd, but they had 
 that fearlessness of intellect which is the first condition of 
 seeing truly. Poets and philosophers alike looked with un¬ 
 flinching eye on all that met them, on man and the world, 
 on life and death. They interrogated Nature, and sought to 
 wrest her secrets from her, without misgiving and without 
 afterthought. They took no count of the consequences. 
 “ Let us follow the argument whithersoever it leads,” may 
 be taken not only as the motto of the Platonic philosophy, 
 but as expressing one side of the Greek genius.’ Ranke, 
 again, says (‘History of the World/ viii. 7): ‘There is 
 something almost miraculous in this simultaneous or nearly 
 
 1 History of the World, p. 229. 
 
 2 Some Aspects of the Greek Genius. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 213 
 
 simultaneous appearance of such different types of genius 
 accomplishing in poetry, philosophy, and history the greatest 
 feats which the human mind has ever performed. Each is 
 original and strikes out his own line, but all work in har¬ 
 mony. By one or the other of these masters are set forth all 
 the greatest problems concerning things divine and human. 
 Athens rejoiced in the possession of a theatre the like of 
 which, for sport or earnest, has never been seen in any other 
 city. The people lived in the constant enjoyment of the 
 noblest dramatic productions. Sophocles was not dispos¬ 
 sessed by Euripides : their works appeared at the same time 
 on the stage. The history of Herodotus was read aloud in 
 public meetings. Thucydides was reserved for more private 
 study, but his works had a wide circulation in writing.’ 
 
 Manhood.—Observe, next, how Hellenic idealism en¬ 
 tered into their conception of man himself. If gods were 
 human, men might be divine. A perfect body, the easy and 
 unencumbered vehicle of a free and happy spirit, was the 
 object of their admiration. The Olympic dust was the richest 
 treasure which a young Greek could gather. Speaking of the 
 harmonious athletic of the Greeks, Hettner says, ‘ Let us 
 follow all Greece to the great centre of national unity, the 
 plain of Olympia.’ Here the victor was raised to the eleva¬ 
 tion of the gods themselves. ‘ Poets like Simonides and 
 Pindar sang immortal songs of victory in his praise; the best 
 cities were anxious that he should be enrolled among their 
 citizens ; and when he reached his home, the gate and part of 
 the city wall were pulled down in token that a city which 
 produced such men needed not the protection of walls. The 
 conqueror entered in festive procession drawn by four white 
 horses, proudly clad in purple and wearing on his head the 
 olive wreath he had won. . . . Putting these wonderful facts 
 in array before our minds, we cannot fail to feel deeply how 
 wide is the difference between the moral basis on which 
 Greek antiquity rests and our modes of life and thought in 
 modern times. We men of to-day can hardly even see how 
 
214 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 the Greeks, the most intellectual nation the world has seen, 
 could make their highest national festival a gymnastic one, 
 far less can we sympathise with or imagine ourselves actually 
 taking part in this truly Bacchic enthusiasm for the Olympic 
 victor.’ 
 
 And for what did they contend ? Not for money rewards, 
 but for glory alone — their success being signalised by a 
 reward in itself worthless: ‘ at the Olympic games, an olive- 
 crown or garland; at the Isthmian, one of pine; at the 
 Nemean, one of parsley; at the Pythian, apples from the 
 trees sacred to Apollo; and at the Panathensea, olives from 
 the tree of Minerva.’ (Lucian, ‘ Anach.’) ‘ If we look at the 
 inner nature of these sports,’ says Hegel, ‘ we shall first 
 observe how sport itself is opposed to serious business, to 
 dependence and need. This wrestling, running, contending, 
 was no serious affair; bespoke no obligation of defence, no 
 necessity of combat. Serious occupation is labour that has 
 reference to some want. I or nature must succumb; if the 
 one is to continue, the other must fall. In contrast with this 
 kind of seriousness, however, sport presents the higher seri¬ 
 ousness : for in it nature is wrought into spirit, and although 
 in these contests the subject has not advanced to the highest 
 grade of serious thought, yet, in this exercise of his physical 
 powers, man shows his freedom, viz. that he has transformed 
 his body to an organ of spirit.’ Nor do these pertinent 
 remarks exhaust the significance of the great games : for 
 they were always accompanied with Temple services and 
 were j)leasing to the gods. They thus stood out as the great 
 events of the year, which symbolised the religious as well as 
 political unity of the Hellenic races. 
 
 The statues of the gods were themselves Greek men. It 
 is a grave blunder to look on them as idols. Idols are mere 
 symbols, and often hideous symbols, of the human fears and 
 hopes of those races who believe that they live in a hostile 
 world. The Greek gods on the contrary were the idealised 
 and artistic expression of the Greek himself. Apollo and 
 Hermes as well as the demigod heroes Achilles and Theseus 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 215 
 
 are simply glorified Greeks. ‘ The benign and simple lines 
 of the countenance, the large eyes, the short forehead, the 
 straight nose, the refined mouth, belonged to the race and 
 were their natural characteristics: their harmony of propor¬ 
 tion was a marked feature of the Greek physique. . . . The 
 physical, however, was itself only an expression of the 
 spiritual. The innate love of freedom and independence, and 
 the living consciousness of human dignity shone forth in the 
 erect bearing which distinguished the Greek from the bar¬ 
 barian.’ (Curtius, ‘ Griech. Gesch.’ i. 25.) 
 
 The Greek exaltation of courage, their love of country, 
 their intense personality, their freedom of political life, pre¬ 
 pared them for a great world-task which it fell to them to 
 perform in the interests of civilisation and human progress. 
 Even in the time of the great Cyrus they endeavoured to 
 throw their shield over their brothers on the Asiatic coast. 
 They subsequently drove back the whole Oriental power led 
 against them by Xerxes in person, and by so doing laid the 
 whole future of humanity under eternal obligations. Mara¬ 
 thon, Thermopylae, and Salamis are imperishable names. 
 
 ‘ Thus was Greece freed,’ says Hegel, ‘ from the pressure 
 which threatened to overwhelm it. Greater battles unques¬ 
 tionably have been fought, but these live immortal, not in 
 the historical records of nations only, but also of science and 
 art — of the noble and the moral generally. For these are 
 world-historical victories ; they were the salvation of culture 
 and spiritual vigour, and they rendered the Asiatic principle 
 powerless. How often, on other occasions, have not men 
 sacrificed everything for one grand object! How often have 
 not warriors fallen for duty and country ! But here we are 
 called on to admire, not only valour, genius, and spirit, but 
 the purport of the contest — the effect, the result, which are 
 unique in their kind. In other battles a particular interest 
 is predominant; but the immortal fame of the Greeks is 
 none other than their due, in consideration of the noble 
 cause for which deliverance was achieved. In the history of 
 
216 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 the world it is not the valour that has been displayed, nor 
 the so-called merit of the combatants, hut the importance of 
 the cause itself, that must decide the fame of the achieve¬ 
 ment. In the case before us, the interest of the world’s his¬ 
 tory hung trembling in the balance. 1 Oriental despotism — 
 a world united under one lord and sovereign — on the one 
 side, and separate states — insignificant in extent and re¬ 
 sources, but animated by free individuality — on the other 
 side, stood front to front in array of battle. Never in history 
 has the superiority of spiritual power over material bulk — 
 and that of no contemptible amount — been made so glori¬ 
 ously manifest. This war and the subsequent development 
 of the states which took the lead in it, is the most brilliant 
 period of Greece. Everything which the Greek principle in¬ 
 volved then reached its perfect bloom and came into the 
 light of day.’ (Hegel, ‘The Greek World,’ p. 268.) It may 
 be added that the contest was also one between the spirit of 
 centralisation and that of decentralisation. 
 
 When we first come in contact with the Hellenic race in 
 history, we at once recognise the loftiest, and deepest, and 
 richest expression of the genuine Aryan spirit. A strong 
 and joyous personality, and its free and beautiful develop¬ 
 ment, meet us. We are not surprised to read Aristotle’s 
 words in which, speaking for all Greece, he tells us that 
 the aim of life is ‘ living happily and beautifully.’ (‘ Pol.’ 
 iii. 9. 14.) They believed in the essential beneficence of 
 Nature and thought life well worth living. Adamantius, 
 the physician, says, ‘ they were the most beautiful eyed of 
 all races,’ and we can well believe it. Above all other 
 races before or since they seem to have lived. It was their 
 intense sense of life and the joy in life that lay at the 
 bottom of their ‘ zeal for activity,’ as the German historian 
 Curtius well says. Humanity, in short, in all its breadth 
 and variety, was represented in this wonderful race, free 
 from the overshadowing idea of God as eternal law and 
 
 1 So with the battle of Chalons, when Aetius drove back the Huns in 
 455 a.d. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 217 
 
 stern judge, as a being of exacting claims if not of hostile 
 intent. 
 
 But, let us now for a moment try to get rid of the 
 Hellenic glamour and contemplate the other side of the 
 picture. 
 
 I think we must admit that the Greeks, and above all 
 the Athenian Greeks, were light-minded and frivolous, easily 
 swaved hither and thither, vain, of a shallow, because merely 
 aesthetic, morality; talkative, untruthful, scheming, and 
 pleasure-loving, with a strong tendency to licentiousness. 
 Brilliant comrades, I should say they were doubtful friends. 
 
 Again, if we set aside the philosophers and dramatists 
 who represented the highest religious thought of the Greeks, 
 it can scarcely be said that the Greeks as a race were, in 
 any sense in which we now use the term, a religious people. 
 The tales of the gods which Plato would have banished 
 from education were unquestionably an expression of the 
 riotous and imaginative spirit of the Greeks, and could not 
 possibly have influenced their lives to virtue. That religion 
 consisted in a personal ethical relation to God and gods was 
 certainly recognised by them but did not very profoundly 
 influence them, although all were so far restrained by the 
 fact that Zeus punished iniquity. The gods generally had 
 to be honoured and offerings made to them; but that was 
 substantially all. Wanting in a deep religious sense and 
 not distinguished by any high conception of abstract duty, 
 they were consequently deficient in reverence. Nor were 
 they capable of that feeling of obligation to supreme law 
 which marked the Roman. Their true religion was Art: 
 the becoming, the fit, and the beautiful were truly their 
 gods. The Greek conception in truth fell far short of the 
 Judaic and Zoroastrian and Hindu conceptions of a Supreme 
 Being and man’s relations to him. The moral force which 
 sustained the inner life of the Greek was his idealising 
 tendency which found expression in art. This was quite 
 compatible with their acceptance of the popular stories about 
 those whom they idealised. 
 
218 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Further, the position of Athenian women was far from 
 being what we should have expected to grow out of the well- 
 known scene between Hector and Andromache, and many 
 domestic incidents in the Iliad and the Odyssey. It fell 
 short of the Doric conception, and seems utterly incompatible 
 with the women of the great dramatists. The women spent 
 their time in looking after their domestic concerns and sat in 
 a room set apart for them — the gynseceum — which was half 
 boudoir, half a day-nursery. They sewed, wove, and em¬ 
 broidered. There is something Oriental in the conception of 
 the wife’s position among the Ionic Greeks. The chief glory 
 of an Athenian woman was that she should not be talked 
 about. The husbands regarded their wives as quite inferior 
 creatures, fit only to look after the house and bear children. 
 They themselves spent their time in the streets, gymnasia, 
 and places of public resort, or in banquetings at each other’s 
 houses, or visiting purchasable women (who seem to have 
 been numerous in all Greek towns except Sparta), and some 
 of whom, like Aspasia, were women of high accomplishments 
 and held ‘ salons,’ frequented by all the literary, artistic, and 
 political men who could secure invitations. 1 The position of 
 women in Sparta was much higher, and it is interesting to 
 note that the Greek poetesses were for the most part of the 
 Doric stem. 
 
 Finally, democratic equality, notwithstanding the over¬ 
 shadowing influence of the Areopagus (powerful as a restrain¬ 
 ing influence even after the democratic reforms of that council 
 by Pericles), and the presence of powerful hereditary families 
 who endeavoured to lead the mass, led to quarrelsomeness 
 and jobbery within their own cities and constant little wars 
 with their fellow Greeks. They could not sacrifice their 
 narrow civic interests even to the idea of Hellenic nationality, 
 except for brief and uncertain periods. Delphi and the 
 Olympic games were their only living points of unity — the 
 former religious, the latter gymnastic. Their town and tribal 
 
 1 They were always foreigners or freed women, never daughters of citizens, 
 it is said. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 219 
 
 confederacies were loose associations held together by the 
 worship of a common tutelary deity, Demeter, Apollo, or 
 Poseidon. 
 
 It would almost seem as if Lycurgus saw the kind of 
 creatures he had to deal with, and resolved to discipline them 
 tightly and to subject them at Sparta to a civic system which 
 was at once school and camp, and thus to mould, out of the 
 facile Greek nature, the stern and upright Spartan. And for 
 a time he succeeded, but it was a moulding from without, 
 not from within. 
 
 Let us not forget, however, that it was these very Hellenic 
 characteristics, and above all the personal freedom in which 
 they had their roots, which made it possible for the Greeks 
 to be artists, historians, and bold, speculative inquirers into 
 all things human and divine. It was probably only char¬ 
 acter of the versatile Greek type, and under Greek conditions, 
 that was compatible with the work they did for humanity. 
 They had all the faults of the artistic temperament, but then 
 they had the latter with its virtues and vitality in all its ful¬ 
 ness. They had to pay the price of their defects that they 
 might gain Art and Philosophy for themselves and mankind. 
 They were gifted with a genius for perception and expression, 
 and this in every kind of human emotion and every depart¬ 
 ment of intellectual activity, and whatever they attempted 
 they succeeded in doing in the best possible form. To them 
 we owe our logic and philosophy, the beginnings of science, 
 the advancement of mathematics, and the finest forms of 
 history, poetry, and the drama, as well as the arts of sculpture, 
 architecture, and painting. It is when contemplating the 
 vast and various contributions which the Hellenes made to 
 the life of humanity that Shelley beautifully says : 
 
 Within the circuit of this pendant orb 
 There lies an antique region, on which fell 
 The dews of thought, in the world’s golden dawn, 
 Earliest and most benign; and from it sprung 
 Temples and cities and immortal forms, 
 
 And harmonies of wisdom and of sonr* 
 
220 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair: 
 And when the sun of its dominion failed, 
 
 And when the winter of its glory came, 
 
 The winds that stript it bare blew on and swept 
 That dew into the utmost wildernesses, 
 
 In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed 
 The unmaternal bosom of the North. 
 
 From the Prologue to Hellas. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE GREEK IDEAL OF MANHOOD AND THE CONSEQUENT 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF HELLENIC EDUCATION GENERALLY 
 
 As a necessary introduction to the understanding of the 
 Hellenic ideal let me point out what is little more than a 
 logical deduction from what we have already said. The 
 genuine Greek did not make any real distinction between a 
 virtuous life and a beautiful and happy one. Virtue doubt¬ 
 less was the condition of happiness ; but virtue itself meant 
 a nature in harmony with itself and its external relations. 
 It was essentially aesthetic. Thus we may truly say that 
 it was not the abstract good of Plato which governed the 
 ethical conceptions of the Greeks, hut the beautiful as 
 another expression for harmony. Hence the compound 
 word halohagathia. But inasmuch as the Greek mind was 
 essentially concrete, it included in the idea of human 
 excellence the outer aspect and bearing of the individual 
 man. 
 
 The oldest form of Greek life was the Dorian. (We may 
 here omit the iEolic.) The chief representatives of the Doric 
 tribes were the Cretans and Spartans, and consequently we 
 are justified in looking among them for the primitive laws, 
 customs, and beliefs of the Hellenic race. If the Dorians 
 were the first to form civic communities, we can easily 
 understand that whatever their national temperament and 
 unconscious life-aims might be, these would be subordinated 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 221 
 
 to the necessity of maintaining the existence of their rising 
 communities in the midst of hostile races. Hence the pure 
 Hellenic spirit would be subordinated in them to military 
 requirements. 
 
 In the education of the Dorians it is Sparta with which 
 we have chiefly to do. Unlovely as at first sight the Spartan 
 character and constitution seem, we must never forget that 
 the Spartans were yet Hellenes, and that the Greek spirit, 
 which reached its finest expression in Athens, animated them 
 also — only subdued in their case by a sterner sense of duty, 
 by an arbitrary state-supremacy over the individual citizen, 
 and a conservative attachment to the older and simpler con¬ 
 ceptions of the Hellenic race. They were of the past, and 
 in their political system it is doubtful if they possessed the 
 possibility of progressive development. Among them we 
 find supreme attachment to the state, as the central motive 
 force in the individual life, much more strongly expressed 
 than among the Athenians; but it is still held by them in 
 union with a deep sense of personal freedom — achieved 
 through the state and (so to speak) contra mundum. For 
 the fundamental characteristics of the Hellenic mind were 
 not here wanting. ‘ In the genuine Doric form of govern¬ 
 ment/ says Muller (‘Dorians/ ii. p. 6),‘there were certain 
 predominant ideas, which were peculiar to that race, and 
 were also expressed in the worship of Apollo, viz. those of 
 becomingness or graceful expression ( euJcosmia ); of self- 
 control and moderation ( sophrosyne ); and of manly virtue 
 (arete). Accordingly, the constitution was formed for the 
 education as well of the old as of the young; and in a Doric 
 state, education was, upon the whole, a subject of greater 
 importance than government. And for this reason all 
 attempts to explain the legislation of Lycurgus from partial 
 views and considerations have necessarily failed. That 
 external happiness and enjoyment were not the aim of these 
 institutions was soon perceived/ Again he says (ii. 3. 1): 
 ‘We may say that the Doric state was a body of men, 
 acknowledging one strict principle of order and one unalter- 
 
222 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 able rule of manners ; and so subjecting themselves to this 
 system that scarcely anything was unfettered by it; but 
 every action was influenced and regulated by the recognised 
 principles.’ But in carrying out his scheme of discipline 
 Lycurgus was not, Plutarch says, ‘ himself unduly austere; 
 it was he who dedicated, says Sosibius, the little statue of 
 Laughter or Mirth, which was introduced occasionally at 
 their suppers and places of common entertainment, to serve 
 as a sort of sweetmeat to accompany their strict and hard 
 life.’ 1 The ultimate aim of the state-regulations, however, 
 was such as we have quoted from Muller, and had a con¬ 
 scious ideal of personal as well as civic manhood in view. 
 Muller maintains that up to the time of the Persian Wars 
 (let us say even up to 450 b.c.) all mental excellence flour¬ 
 ished at Sparta, and it lias to be remembered that it was to 
 the Dorian branch of the Hellenic race that we owe some of 
 the lyrical poets. 
 
 We must recognise the Cretan and Spartan education as 
 the oldest to take shape among the Hellenic races, and we 
 would, accordingly, fain find among them the ideas which lay 
 at the root of all Hellenic life. I think we do find them as 
 summed up in the three expressions I have already quoted 
 from Muller, arete , sophrosyne, and eukosmia. Indeed, I seem 
 to see in these the basis of all Greek life whatsoever, even in 
 its finest forms; and, as the basis of their life, they must 
 also have been, more or less consciously, the aim of their 
 education. The Athenian to /caXov KayaOov simply summed 
 up these characteristics in different words. This was the 
 Greek ideal of conduct. But all was subservient to the state, 
 and the Hellenic ideal of man, both as body and mind, was 
 thus inseparable from his state-ideal. 
 
 The Greek child, speaking generally, was brought up for 
 the service of the state. The individual existed for the state. 
 The civic idea was dominant, just as in China the family idea 
 was and is dominant, and in India the caste idea, in Egypt 
 
 1 Life, of Lycurgus. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 223 
 
 the class idea, among the Jews the theological idea, and 
 among the Persians the virile military idea. But we must re¬ 
 member that, whatever might be the local form of government 
 the numerous separate states of Greece were free; and that 
 if there was, among the Dorians, an apparently arbitrary 
 moulding of the mind of youth, what was done was done 
 by the citizens themselves, in a free Greek spirit. In Sparta, 
 such was the instinctive capacity of the race for the 
 ideal, that the conditions of qualification for citizenship 
 were necessarily good, inasmuch as they were determined 
 by the ideal. Even the importance of bodily training 
 was recognised with a view to a true manly product apart 
 from the relation of gymnastics to the national defence, 
 although this latter object was necessarily more pronounced 
 among the Dorian than among the Ionic races. But even 
 among the Dorians we must not concentrate our attention 
 so exclusively on the gymnastic side of their training as to 
 lose sight of its moral element. The aim of the severe dis¬ 
 cipline under which they were brought up was to produce 
 obedience, self-sacrifice, courage, promptitude, self-reliance, 
 and a single-eyed concentration on the immediate purpose of 
 all action. 1 Thus was produced a self-controlled and vic¬ 
 torious man. Accordingly, I conclude that while the de¬ 
 fensive requirements of the state among the Doric races 
 dominated and controlled the processes of education; yet 
 the requirements of the state, inasmuch as they could only 
 he satisfied by the rearing of citizens who were virtuous, self- 
 controlled, and possessed of the graces of manner and physi¬ 
 cally well-grown, were also the highest possible even in the 
 interests of each man. Thus, free development of the indi¬ 
 vidual and the service of the state were within certain limits 
 harmonised. 
 
 Among the Athenians also, and, in truth, in all Hellenic 
 communities, the citizens lived for the state which was 
 supreme; but it is necessary here to emphasise a distinc¬ 
 tion between the races. 
 
 1 This reads like a quotation. 
 
224 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Among the Doric races, and notably in Sparta, the state 
 existed as a great educational institution, and citizens were 
 deliberately formed after a certain pattern. Among the 
 Ionic races, and especially the Attic branch, on the other 
 hand, the education was not state-education in any proper 
 sense: there was no state-system, and the idea and aims of 
 the state consequently did not rigidly control the education 
 given. The individual was educated in the first instance for 
 himself — with a view to his own full and free development 
 — and only secondarily for the state. The best possible 
 product in manhood is better than a second-rate manufac¬ 
 tured citizen, even from the point of view of public policy. 
 In short, a development of body and mind, so that the one 
 should serve the other, and both work in subjection to the 
 ideas of ‘ self-control, moral excellence, and the becoming/ 
 and thus give to the state a harmonious man, was the Attic 
 idea of education. The Dorian thought, on the contrary, 
 first of the state in its integrity, and only in the second 
 place of the man. But, as I have pointed out, his require¬ 
 ments for the man were conceived in a true Hellenic spirit. 
 
 It would appear, then, that it is among the Hellenic 
 races, above all in Attica, that we find arising, for the first 
 time in the history of the world, a wholly new conception 
 of human life, and, consequently, a new conception of the 
 end of education. The Chinese was trained in obedience to 
 precepts and customs with a view to civic order and the 
 more common social and prudential virtues; the Persian 
 was trained to be truthful, generous, and brave for himself 
 as well as for the state, and with these virtues there was 
 a spirit of free individualism, but it was boyish and un¬ 
 thoughtful : other races of antiquity were held down by 
 despotic tradition and overawed by the. dogmatism of a 
 (presumably) divine teaching; the Ionian Greek, however, 
 formed a conception of the ideal for each man, which 
 ideal was to be freely sought — an ideal much higher than 
 any that had preceded it, because it aimed at manly dignity 
 and harmony of the whole nature — mind and body. All 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 225 
 
 authority of the state proceeded from the individual citizen 
 in his free development and activity. The very laws were 
 a counterpart of the life. 
 
 Another distinction between the Dorian and Attic is 
 worthy of mention. The laws of Lycurgus imposed the 
 education of the free citizen as a duty on the state, just as 
 the laws of Solon at Athens imposed it as a duty on each 
 father of a family. The difference is significant. 
 
 The Hellenic races generally, both Dorian and Ionian, 
 endeavoured to realise their ideal by means of two educa¬ 
 tional instruments — music and gymnastic. Under the 
 head of music was included literature as well as music in 
 its narrower sense; and I would further point out that 
 music, even in its narrower sense, embraced (among the 
 Dorians especially) religious training, because of its con¬ 
 nection with choral singing and the worship of the gods. 
 
 Such being the general character and aim of Greek life 
 and Greek education, let us now consider in detail the 
 means that were taken to train the youth of the country, 
 beginning with the oldest Greek system — the Doric, as 
 exemplified in Crete and Sparta — a system towards which 
 both Xenophon and Plato, weary of licentious democracies, 
 were disposed to look back with some longing. And yet, 
 spite of Plato and Xenophon, it is in the Ionic-Attic life 
 and education that the modern world must ever recognise 
 the true Hellenic spirit. 
 
 But before going further, it is necessary for us to bear in 
 mind that national education did not mean in any part of 
 Hellas what it means in Europe now. Those who were free 
 citizens or burgesses were alone regarded as forming integral 
 parts of the state, the larger number of the inhabitants — 
 composed of foreign residents and slaves — being excluded. 
 In Sparta, for example, at its best period, the subject resi¬ 
 dents, including the Helots, were three times as numerous as 
 the true citizens. In Attica, again, the total population was 
 about 500,000, and of these only 100,000 were citizens. It 
 
 15 
 
226 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 has also to be premised that the education which was given, 
 both at Sparta and Athens, was the instinctive product of the 
 life of the people, not the deliberate result of educational 
 discussion and theory. 
 
 To fix the date of the first schools in Greece is difficult, 
 but we do not go too far back when we fix it at 600 b.c. in 
 Athens. This was a period of intense Hellenic activity. 
 According to Plutarch, almost every free citizen received at 
 least elementary instruction so early as the time of Aristides, 
 who died 467 b.c. The Spartan education, if organised along 
 with the Spartan state, must have dated from about 850 b.c. 
 
 I would, however, here emphasise what I have already 
 frequently indicated — that we must not measure the educa¬ 
 tion of a nation by its schools. These arise only where there 
 is a written literature. But long before their existence, oral 
 literature, religious and heroic, not to speak of customs and 
 laws, were educating the people. And again, I would point 
 out that we are not to conclude from the non-existence of 
 schools that children were not, in a considerable number of 
 cases at least, taught to read and write in their own homes 
 in so far as these arts were necessary for the conduct of the 
 ordinary business of life. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 EDUCATION AMONG THE DORIAN GREEKS 
 I. CRETAN EDUCATION 
 
 The manly vigour of the Dorian, his simplicity and natural¬ 
 ness, were reproduced in the education to which he subjected 
 the young. The Hellenic idea of the supremacy of the state 
 was recognised more fully than among the Ionians, who (as 
 pre-eminently in Athens) allowed more individual freedom, 
 and were characterised by more variety, flexibility, and 
 subtlety of nature — elements necessary to bring to fruition 
 the artistic genius of the Hellenic mind. With the Dorians 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 227 
 
 the state was the schoolmaster: the state itself was, in truth, 
 an organised educational polity. 
 
 In Crete the boys were retained in the family till their 
 eighteenth year. At this age they were required to enter 
 themselves (some say these associations were voluntary) 
 as members of hands or troops to be trained in a severe 
 course of gymnastic including archery, hunting, and mili¬ 
 tary exercises. At this age also they were admitted to the 
 public meals and allowed to listen to the conversation of the 
 grown men. 
 
 These bands, each with its own head, were under the 
 general superintendence of an overseer appointed by the 
 state. There was no gymnastic ‘ specialist * employed as 
 teacher — at least in the earlier times. Their literary 
 education, so far as reading, writing, &c., were concerned 
 received little or no attention. But in connection with the 
 Doric music, which all learnt, they became thoroughly 
 versed in the laws. These they chanted. They also sang 
 hymns to the gods, and recited tales of heroes, and narra¬ 
 tives of the great achievements of their ancestors. Their 
 literary education thus really comprised music, religion, civic 
 economy, history, and poetry in their rudimentary forms. 
 
 As to the JEolic stem of the Hellenic race, I may say in 
 passing that it was more nearly allied in its educational 
 practices to the Doric than to the Ionic-Attic. Thebes in 
 Boeotia was the representative town of this Hellenic branch. 
 In music, both the lyre and the flute were taught at Thebes, 
 and the influence of Athens was so far felt that literary 
 schools existed there before the time of Socrates. The 
 slaughtering of the children of the school of Mycalessus by a 
 band of Thracians is narrated by Thucydides (vii. 49). 
 Plutarch also tells us that Epaminondas, the great Theban, 
 occupied himself with philosophic studies, and it is well- 
 known that rhetoricians and philosophers taught at Thebes 
 when Philip of Macedon was a boy. 1 
 
 1 The various colonies of the different Hellenic races in Asia Minor and 
 throughout the Mediterranean followed each the customs of their mother city. 
 
PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 228 
 
 SPARTAN EDUCATION 
 
 The Cretan principles of education received their full de¬ 
 velopment in Sparta. ‘ This is one point/ says Aristotle, ‘ in 
 which the Lacedaemonians deserve praise: they devote a 
 great deal of attention to the educational needs of their chil¬ 
 dren, and their attention takes the form of action on the part 
 of the state/ (‘ Polit.’ v. 1.) 
 
 The position of Sparta in the centre of a hostile population 
 compelled its statesmen to give prominence to the gymnastic 
 and military side of education. The state had to hold its 
 own, and it could only do so through the vigour and prowess 
 of its individual citizens. Sparta, accordingly, was little 
 more than an organised camp. 1 We are not to suppose that 
 Lycurgus invented the Spartan civic system. He gave form 
 and definite purpose to those traditionary Doric customs and 
 tendencies which we find partially operative in Crete. Nor, 
 according to Plutarch (i. 125), was it his intention to rear a 
 conquering race. ‘ He thought rather that the happiness of 
 a state, as of a private citizen, consisted chiefly in the exer¬ 
 cise of virtue and in the concord of the inhabitants. His aim 
 in all his arrangements was to make and keep the people 
 free-minded, self-dependent, and temperate.’ The state rested 
 
 1 The Dorians effected a settlement in the Peloponnesus in the eleventh 
 century b.c. Sparta was, before the time of Lycurgus, a double monarchy. 
 Lycurgus about 850 b.c. still further weakened the monarchical authority, so 
 that the two kings became little more than presidents of the senate. The 
 senate consisted of thirty members, including the kings. The free inhabitants 
 of Sparta alone had political rights. With few exceptions, they were owners 
 of the soil and lived on their rents. The Periceci— inhabitants of the sur¬ 
 rounding country and towns | were free, but had no political rights. They 
 were engaged in actual farming and in various industries and commerce. The 
 Helots, again, were in the position of slaves or rather serfs, and were com¬ 
 posed of captives taken in war, or rebels who had submitted. They did 
 menial work in Sparta and cultivated the lands of the free citizens, paying a 
 fixed rent of one-half the produce. Sparta was regarded as a leading power in 
 Greece from 555 b.c. In b.c. 510 it began to interfere north of the Pelopon- 
 nese and as the supporter of the oligarchy to incur the hatred of Attica. The 
 Peloponnesian War was waged, b.c. 431-404, resulting in the triumph of 
 Sparta and of oligarchic versus democratic principles. Macedonian domina¬ 
 tion of Greece dates from 335 b.c. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 229 
 
 on the idea that each citizen must be prepared to sacrifice 
 himself to the whole. 
 
 1. Infancy 
 
 The governing conception in education was the production 
 of a hardy spirit in a hardy body. To ensure this, the dis¬ 
 cipline began from the day of birth. The babe was bathed 
 in water mixed with wine, because (it is said) the Spartans 
 believed that only strong and healthy children could endure 
 such a bath, and that the sickly must die of it. After this, 
 the council of the elders of the tribe Qgerousia') decided in 
 the public place of meeting as to whether the child should 
 die or live. The healthy and strong boy was preserved, but 
 the sickly and weak one was ‘ put away.’ It used to be held 
 that it was thrown down a precipice on Mount Taygetus; 
 but the custom seems rather to have been to expose it in a 
 defile of Taygetus or some outlying district round Sparta and 
 allow it to grow up, if any one among the subject population 
 chose to save it. All rights of citizenship were for ever 
 denied to it. Healthy children alone could be of service to 
 the state. 
 
 Up to the seventh year the child belonged to the mother, 
 by whom it was brought up, the health of the body being 
 her chief care. In early times the Spartan mother nursed 
 her child herself. After the Persian wars, however (b.c. 479), 
 in the houses of rank, we hear of wet-nurses and nursery 
 maids (hired women of the class of the Perioeci), who were 
 noted in Sparta for special carefulness and ability. They 
 were on that account much prized by the citizens of other 
 Greek states. The child was not wrapped in swaddling-bands 
 ( sjpargana ). The Spartans held that its limbs should be free, 
 so that the natural growth might be unimpeded. It was 
 made hardy by fasting, and trained (it is said) to overcome 
 fear by being left alone in the dark. Screaming was pre¬ 
 vented as much as possible, for the Spartan, as a rule, was 
 not allowed to cry out. The discipline of self-control thus 
 began very early. 
 
230 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 2. The Education of the Boys 
 
 (a) Gymnastic. — In their seventh year the legitimate sons 
 of citizens were entrusted by the ephors to a state official, 
 who was responsible for their upbringing. He was called 
 the Fcedonomus. The cost of education for all free citizens 
 was defrayed from the revenues of the public lands and from 
 the taxes of the Perioeci. The object of this public educa¬ 
 tion was to promote a feeling of equality among citizens of 
 all ranks, and to implant in the youth of the state the feeling 
 of a common interest. The Spartan youth, accordingly, were 
 brought up in school-rooms, dormitories, gymnasia, and 
 music-rooms, shared by all. The heirs-apparent of the kings 
 were alone exempted. No Spartan was allowed to be edu¬ 
 cated in a foreign state. The pcedonomus w T as assisted by 
 officers called bidicei. 
 
 When received into the public boarding schools, the boys 
 were formed into small companies ( agelai or ilai) and these 
 formed portions of larger companies, called bouai. The 
 older and abler boys were set over the younger and weaker 
 ones as superintendents and leaders in their gymnastic exer¬ 
 cises, as captains of the ilai and bouai (ilarchai and bouagores ). 
 ‘ The governor/ says Plutarch, ‘ set over each of the bands, 
 for their captains, the most temperate and boldest of those 
 they called Irens (youths) who were usually twenty years 
 old — two years out of the boys’ (i. 107). These monitors 
 and captains were responsible to the pcedonomus alone. 
 
 The pcedonomus (under whom were the bidicei), who was 
 supreme, punished the boys on the spot for any offence, superin¬ 
 tended their moral training and their gymnastic exercises. He 
 also regulated the stories which the children were allowed to 
 hear. ‘ Lycurgus/ says Plutarch, ‘ would not have masters 
 bought out of the market for his young Spartans, nor such 
 as should sell their pains: nor was it lawful for the father 
 himself to breed up the children after his own fancy; but as 
 soon as they were seven years old they were to be enrolled 
 in certain companies and classes, where they all lived under 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 231 
 
 the same order and discipline, doing their exercises and taking 
 their play together. Of these, he who showed the most con¬ 
 duct and courage was made captain; the others had their eyes 
 always upon him ; obeyed his orders, and underwent patiently 
 whatsoever punishment he inflicted ; so that the whole course 
 of their education was one continued exercise of a ready and 
 perfect obedience.’ 1 (i. 106.) 
 
 The age of the boys regulated the classification into differ¬ 
 ent groups and classes. Up to the period of youth there 
 were three classes to be gone through, from the seventh to 
 the twelfth year, from the twelfth to the fifteenth, from the 
 fifteenth to the eighteenth ; and there were probably as many 
 more from the period of youth to that of full manhood — in 
 the thirtieth year. 
 
 Immediately on his entrance the boy’s hair was cut short. 
 The beds consisted of hay and straw, without blankets; from 
 the fifteenth year of rushes, which the boys were required to 
 collect for themselves, without a knife, on the banks of the 
 Eurotas. In summer and in winter they went without shoes 
 and but slightly clad: till their twelfth year in petticoats 
 (scanty woollen ones) ; after that age they had only one gar¬ 
 ment, a kind of plaid. This plaid was a square piece of cloth, 
 which was laid upon the left shoulder, passed round the back, 
 drawn under the right arm, and then again thrown back over 
 the left shoulder. 
 
 To accustom them to endure hunger in war, food was sup¬ 
 plied to them but sparingly, and that they might be trained 
 to overreach the enemy and provide their own food when 
 campaigning, they had permission to steal provisions, but 
 with the reservation that they did not allow themselves to be 
 caught in the act. Whoever caught a boy stealing was re¬ 
 quired to punish him or to inform the pcedonomus , who then 
 ordered punishment to be inflicted by the whip-bearers 
 ( [mastigophori ) who always accompanied him. The disgrace 
 of the boy lay essentially in the fact that he had shown so 
 little cunning and foresight. The ignominy of being dis- 
 
 1 I quote always from Clough’s Plutarch. 
 
232 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 covered was greater than that of the blows, for blows were 
 looked on as a means of hardening the young for the bearing 
 of pain. Indeed, the boys had on certain great occasions to 
 pass what might be called ‘ whipping-examinations.’ On the 
 annual festival of Artemis-Orthia youths were whipped to 
 the drawing of blood. ‘Nor must one be offended/ says 
 Solon to Anacharsis in Lucian, ‘ when you see their young 
 men whipped at the altar and streaming with blood, whilst 
 their fathers and mothers stand by entreating them to suffer 
 it courageously and even proceed to threats if they do not 
 hear it with patience and resolution. Many have died under 
 this discipline rather than acknowledge themselves unequal 
 to it before their friends and relations. Statues of them have 
 frequently been erected at the public expense.’ The custom 
 is referred to by Pausanias, and Plutarch in his Life of 
 Lycurgus says — ‘ I myself have seen several of the youths 
 endure whipping to death at the foot of the altar of Diana 
 surnamed Orthia’ (i. 109). 
 
 Led by the ilarchai and bouagores the boys went through 
 the gymnastic curriculum under the direction of the pcedono- 
 mus and his subordinate bidicei. Gymnastic exercises, indeed, 
 formed the chief instrument of education in Sparta. The 
 Dorians had cherished them from time immemorial, and 
 Lycurgus, who is said to have been one of the founders of 
 the Olympic games, had regulated them by law. It was an 
 organised and graduated gymnastic system. The exercises 
 were meant neither to form athletes, nor to promote acrobatic 
 dexterity, or beauty of form, but solely to develop qualities 
 serviceable in war. They were performed in the gymnasia 
 (probably in the morning before breakfast and in the after¬ 
 noon before the evening meal), and generally naked. The 
 exercises consisted principally in running, leaping, fighting, 
 riding, swimming, throwing the discus, and (as the boys 
 grew older) hunting. 
 
 The little boys began with running and leaping. At the 
 same time they practised playing at ball to strengthen the 
 arms. In the advanced classes the principal exercises were 
 
TEE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 233 
 
 military evolutions; also wrestling, throwing the quoit, and 
 hurling the spear. Some say that the pancratium — a personal 
 contest in which any means might be taken of defeating an 
 opponent — was discouraged, because it might disfigure the 
 face and cause such serious injuries of other kinds as to unfit 
 for war. But there can, I think, be no doubt that it existed 
 and was encouraged. Not to speak of other authorities, we 
 find it referred to in Plato’s ‘ Laws,’ and even so late as 
 Cicero it might be seen. In the ‘ Tusc. Disp.’ v. 27, he says: 
 —‘ Adolescentium greges Lacedsemone vidimus ipsi incredi- 
 bili contentione certantes pugnis, calcibus, unguibus, morsu 
 denique, quum exanimarentur priusquam victos se fateren- 
 tur.’ Pausanias also speaks of the personal contests which 
 were carried on in the island of Platanistas. He tells of the 
 eyes being torn from their sockets in these encounters. 
 
 With the gymnastic exercises were conjoined exercises in 
 dancing. The chief kinds of dance in use in Sparta were 
 war-dances. When the hoys had learned to march to the 
 time of the cithara and wind instruments, instruction in the 
 rudiments of the war-dance soon followed. This Pyrrhic 
 dance (which Thaletas had brought from Crete to Sparta), 
 according to Plato, represented the cautious movements 
 necessary for avoiding blows and assaults of an enemy, as 
 well as all movements suited to attack, e.g. springing to the 
 side, drawing back, bending dowm to the earth, and springing 
 up again. The Pyrrhic was also danced in armour, and in 
 companies, in which case the movements of attack and de¬ 
 fence were gone through in whole masses to the rhythm of 
 the music. In addition to war-dances there were also the 
 choral dances, which formed part of divine worship, repre¬ 
 senting mythical events and giving expression to religious 
 feelings. The Caryatic dance was danced annually by the 
 maidens in honour of Diana, and the Bibasis by hoys and girls 
 together. In this dance they sprang into the air and struck 
 themselves behind with the feet. 
 
 We must never forget, however, that even the Spartan 
 Greek looked with contempt on athletic training for its own 
 
234 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 sake. He did not, as has been already remarked, aim at 
 making athletes. Men trained simply to run, and others 
 trained only to box, could give only a disproportionate 
 development to the human frame. The Spartans, it is said, 
 had no separate institutions called gymnasia; but in truth 
 their whole system was gymnastic, and they pursued every 
 kind of physical exercise which could give activity to the 
 body and power of endurance. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the tendency of the excessive 
 gymnastic training of the young Spartans, while hardening, 
 must have been at the same time brutalising, unless power¬ 
 fully counteracted by intellectual and moral influences, which, 
 as we shall see, it was not. The Spartan was, indeed, always 
 hard and cruel. Aristotle sums up this whole question in 
 his ‘ Politics: * ‘At the present day the states which enjoy 
 the highest repute for care in the education of children 
 generally produce in them an athletic condition whereby 
 they mar their bodily presence and development; while the 
 Lacedaemonians, although they avoided this mistake, render 
 them brutal by the exertions required of them in the belief 
 that this is the best means to produce a valorous disposition. 
 Yet, as we have several times remarked, valour is neither the 
 only virtue nor the virtue principally to be kept in view in 
 the superintendence of children; and even if it were, the 
 Lacedaemonians are not successful in devising the means to 
 attain it. For neither in the animal world generally nor 
 among uncivilised nations do we find valour associated with 
 the most savage characters, but rather with such as are 
 gentle, like the lions. There are many uncivilised nations 
 who think very little of slaying and eating their fellow- 
 creatures, e.g. the Achseans and Heniochans on the shores of 
 the Black Sea, and other nations of the mainland in those 
 'parts, some of whom are as savage as these, and others more 
 so; yet, although their existence is one of piracy, they are 
 absolutely destitute of valour. Hay, if we look at the case 
 of the Lacedaemonians themselves, it is well known that, 
 although they maintained their superiority to all other 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 235 
 
 peoples so long as they alone were assiduous in the careful 
 endurance of laborious exercises, they are now surpassed by 
 others in the contests both of the wrestling-school and of 
 actual war. The fact is that their pre-eminence was due, not 
 to their disciplining their youth in this severe manner, but 
 solely to their giving them a course of training, while 
 other nations with whom they had to contend did not. Now 
 it is right that we should base our judgment not upon their 
 achievements in the past but at the present day; for at 
 present they have competitors in them educational system, 
 whereas in past times they had none. We may conclude, 
 then, that it is not the brutal element in men but the ele¬ 
 ment of nobleness which should hold the first place — for 
 the power of encountering noble perils must belong, not to a 
 wolf nor to any other brute, but only to a brave man — and 
 that to give up our children overmuch to bodily exercises 
 and leave them uninstructed in the true essentials, i.e. in the 
 rudiments of education , is in effect to degrade them to the 
 level of mechanics by rendering them useless in a states¬ 
 man’s hands for any purpose except one, and, as our argu¬ 
 ment shows, not so useful as other people even for this.’ 1 
 (‘ The Politics of Aristotle,’ Book V. page 229.) 
 
 (b) Intellectual and Moral Education. — Intellectual, 
 moral, and aesthetic education were all included by the 
 Greeks under the general designation music. ‘ Gymnastic 
 for the body, music for the mind,’ says Plato. This term, 
 however, was frequently used (I think, always by Aristotle) 
 in the narrower sense in which it is now employed. Gram- 
 mata and mousike (in its narrower acceptation) together 
 constituted Mousike in its larger sense. Now the training 
 of the mind was in Sparta, as we might expect, essentially 
 and almost exclusively represented by the instruction in 
 music in the narrower acceptation of the word. Music was 
 practised in order by its means to rouse the mind to bravery 
 and patriotism. But it was always married to words — 
 poems celebrating the glory of the gods, and also the deeds 
 
 1 In quoting from Aristotle I take Welldon’s translation. 
 
236 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 of heroes. It is generally said that the hoys and youths 
 learned to play the cithara, hut I cannot reconcile this with 
 Arist. ‘ Polit.’ v. 5, where it is said that the Spartans took 
 pleasure in music and could judge it, but did not themselves 
 learn it. They certainly sang. The songs were chiefly 
 choric and were national, rather than personal, in their sen¬ 
 timent. It was the custom, according to Plutarch, to call on 
 the hoys to sing after supper. The chants that were 
 approved by the ephors, sung in the manly and grave Doric 
 style, were meant to instil into the hearts of the young 
 citizens the moral elements of the Spartan life, viz. courage 
 and discipline, a noble pride, contempt of cowardly and 
 servile ways, the seriousness of existence, and the worthiness 
 of effort. The laws of Lycurgus also, which Thaletas had 
 set to music, were committed to memory and chanted, just 
 as the Cretan laws were chanted in Crete. But the music 
 had ever to remain grave and measured. Plutarch says: 
 ‘ Their songs had a life and spirit in them that inflamed and 
 possessed men’s minds with an enthusiasm and ardour for 
 action; the style of them was plain and without affectation; 
 the subject always serious and moral; most usually it was in 
 praise of such men as had died in defence of the country, or 
 in derision of those that had been cowards: the former they 
 declared happy and glorified; the life of the latter they 
 described as most miserable and abject. Indeed, if we will 
 take the pains to consider their compositions, some of wdiich 
 were still extant in our days, and the airs on the flute to 
 which they marched when going to battle, we shall find that 
 Terpander and Pindar had reason to say that music and 
 valour were allied. The former says of Lacedaemon : 
 
 The spear and song in her do meet 
 
 And Justice walks about her street; 
 
 and Pindar: 
 
 Councils of wise elders here, 
 
 And the young men’s conquering spear, 
 
 And dance, and song, and joy appear ; 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 237 
 
 both describing the Spartans as no less musical than war¬ 
 like ; in the words of one of their own poets: 
 
 With the iron stern and sharp 
 
 Conies the playing of the harp. 
 
 For, indeed, before they engaged in battle, the king first 
 sacrificed to the Muses, in all likelihood to put them in mind 
 of the manner of their education and of the judgment that 
 would be passed upon their actions, and thereby to animate 
 them to the performance of exploits that should deserve a 
 record.’ (112 and 113.) We must not forget, too, that 
 some of the most celebrated lyric poets were Spartans or at 
 least Dorians. 
 
 The music of the Spartans was, however, very limited in 
 its range. It is said that when the musician Phrynis came 
 from Lesbos to Sparta with a new-stringed citliara, the ephor 
 then in power cut off* two of the strings. And in the same 
 way, the eleven-stringed cithara is said to have been taken 
 by the ephors in Sparta from the pupil of Phrynis, Timotheus 
 of Miletus, and hung up in the music-hall in the market 
 place. They remained as constant to the seven-stringed 
 cithara of Terpander as to the Doric style of melody. All 
 this contradicts Aristotle’s opinion. 
 
 The power of music in forming the character was recog¬ 
 nised by the ancient Egyptians, and still more by the Greeks, 
 to an extent which to us moderns is almost unintelligible. 
 Of this Grote (ii. 190) says: ‘ The Doric mode created a 
 settled and deliberate resolution exempt alike from the 
 desponding and impetuous sentiments. . . . The marked 
 ethical effects produced by these modes in ancient times are 
 facts perfectly well attested, however difficult they may be to 
 explain on any general theory of music.’ The tradition 
 regarding Pythagoras is that he had organised melodies and 
 harmonies so as to suit different affections and passions of 
 the soul. Milton’s well-known lines in the first book of 
 ‘ Paradise Lost ’ naturally occur to us here: 
 
238 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Anon they move 
 In phalanx perfect to the Dorian mood 
 Of flutes and soft recorders ; such as raised 
 To height of noblest temper heroes old 
 Arming to battle, and instead of rage 
 Deliberate valour breathed, firm and unmoved 
 With dread of death, to flight or foul retreat. 
 
 Reading and writing formed, as may be supposed, no 
 necessary part of the Spartan system of education, although 
 no one was forbidden to acquire skill in them, and there were 
 adventure schoolmasters in Sparta for boys. Plutarch says : 
 ‘ Reading and writing they gave them just enough to serve 
 their turn: their chief care was to make them good subjects 
 and to teach them to endure pain and to conquer in battle.’ 
 (i. 106.) But the boys had to learn by heart the laws and 
 pieces of poetry, which they sang; and also Homer. The 
 majority of boys, we cannot doubt, learned to read and write 
 after manuscripts came into use, but freemen could find a 
 truly worthy occupation only in gymnastic, war, and hunting. 
 Professor Ussing (p. 78), resting on a passage in Isocrates 
 (‘ Panathen.’ 209), says that many could neither read nor 
 write even in the fourth century B.c. In truth, we find that 
 all states, while engaged in moulding their civic life and 
 holding their own against enemies, necessarily look on 
 literary pursuits with a certain contempt. The mediaeval 
 Baron was proud to be able to say that his sons could not 
 write: 
 
 Thanks to St. Bothan, son of mine 
 Save Gawain ne’er could pen a line. 
 
 Marmion , vi. 15. 
 
 The only literature acceptable in the earliest stages of 
 social life is, first, war-songs and ballads descriptive of 
 personal prowess, and, secondly, hymns to the gods, and, 
 thirdly, songs of lamentation and joy. These, and Homer 
 to boot, the Spartan boy knew although he could not read. 
 We are apt in these days to forget that we may have a 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 239 
 
 highly civilised people without schools of instruction, and, 
 on the other hand that schools may cover a country and 
 the people yet remain uncivilised. 
 
 Foreign systems of training and the sciences, were, as 
 might be expected, not admitted, with the exception of 
 mental arithmetic for practical purposes. And, although 
 after the Peloponnesian War (b.c. 431-404) grammarians 
 and rhetoricians are found, yet the statement (whether it 
 be fact or fable) is characteristic, namely, that Cephisophos 
 was banished from the town because he declared that he 
 could speak the whole day long on any given subject. 
 Ehetoric had no home in Sparta. Tragedies and comedies 
 were also forbidden. All purely scientific and learned occu¬ 
 pations were held in low esteem. 
 
 In brief, the idea of discipline, bodily and mental, gov¬ 
 erned the education of the Spartans; but a certain religious 
 and civic training was obtained through their songs and 
 tales and their rhythmical laws. 
 
 3. The Education of the Young Men 
 
 On entering their eighteenth year, the youths left the 
 public school-houses for boys. It was the practice for 
 grown men to choose boys or youths as favourites, and to 
 be responsible for their training. They were expected to 
 set an example of all manly excellence to their pupils. For 
 their acts, it is said, the man was even punishable. From 
 the eighteenth till their twentieth year they were called 
 melleirenes (budding youths), and were allowed to let their 
 hair and beard grow. They were now principally exercised 
 in arms, and occupied with drill and in skirmishing. From 
 the twentieth to the thirtieth year their name was eirenes , 
 youths; they lived in separate barracks and were compelled, 
 under superintendence of the bidicei to apply themselves to 
 the prescribed bodily exercises. The more specific military 
 training was now begun. The most distinguished youths 
 were admitted into the troop of 300 knights, who, in peace, 
 
240 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 were at disposal of the ephors, and in war accompanied each 
 king into the field, by a hundred at a time. 
 
 An inscription found in Crete shows that the Cretan 
 and Spartan youth took a public oath to serve the state 
 (probably similar to that which we shall quote in the 
 chapter on Athenian education). At what age they took 
 the oath is not stated — doubtless when they were twenty 
 years of age and were called Irens. 
 
 * The discipline of the boys,’ says Plutarch, ‘ continued 
 still after they were full-grown men. No one was allowed 
 to live after his own fancy, but the city was a sort of 
 camp in which every man had his share of provisions and 
 business set out, and looked upon himself as not born to 
 serve his own ends but the interest of his country. There¬ 
 fore, if they were commanded nothing else, they went to 
 see the boys perform their exercises, to teach them some¬ 
 thing useful, or to learn it themselves of those who knew 
 better. And, indeed, one of the greatest and highest bless¬ 
 ings Lycurgus procured his people was the abundance of 
 leisure, which proceeded from his forbidding to them the 
 exercise of any mean or mechanical trade. . . . All their 
 time, except when they were in the field, was taken up by 
 choral dances and festivals, in hunting and in attendance 
 on the exercise grounds and places of public conversation.’ 
 
 The Spartan youth was not considered a full-grown man 
 and a member of the public assembly till his thirtieth year. 
 
 At certain festivals there were public exhibitions of the 
 exercises which the youth had practised in the gymnasium, 
 and of their attainments in music. On the Platanistas (to 
 which I have already referred, an island formed by two 
 small rivulets, and shaded by plane trees) the melleirenes 
 annually fought a battle. At the Karneia, the chief festival 
 in honour of Apollo, which the Spartans celebrated in 
 August, the youth in a body had to make a display of the 
 entire round of their musical, orchestric, and gymnastic ac¬ 
 complishments. On a special spot in the market-place they 
 year by year danced the choral dances in honour of Apollo ; 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 
 
 241 
 
 here were heard the chants of Thaletas and Alcmseon; here 
 gymnastic games were celebrated in presence of the kings 
 and all the authorities. On such festal days the chorus of 
 old men sang: ‘We once were men full of vigour !’ and the 
 chorus of the men answered, ‘ But we are so now; if you 
 care, try it.’ Whereupon the chorus of the boys repeated, 
 ‘ We shall one day be still more vigorous.’ This fragment, 
 attributed to Tyrtaeus, is preserved in Plutarch (‘ Lyc.’ 21). 
 
 The social customs of the free citizens were part of the 
 education of youth from the first, and for a long period the 
 men dined at common tables. On this point Plutarch says, 
 ‘ They met by companies of fifteen, more or less, and each of 
 them stood bound to bring in monthly a bushel of meal, 
 eight gallons of wine, five pounds of cheese, two and a half 
 pounds of figs, and some very small sum of money to buy 
 flesh or fish with. Besides this, when any of them made 
 sacrifice to the gods, they always sent a dole to the common 
 hall; and likewise, when any of them had been hunting, he 
 sent thither a part of the venison he had killed: for these 
 two occasions were the only excuses allowed for supping at 
 home. The custom of eating together was observed strictly 
 for a great while afterwards, insomuch that King Agis him¬ 
 self, after having vanquished the Athenians, sending for his 
 commons at his return home because he desired to eat pri¬ 
 vately with his queen, was refused them by the polemarchs, 
 and this refusal he resented so much as to omit next day the 
 sacrifice due for a war happily ended: they then made him 
 pay a fine. They used to send their children to these tables 
 as to a school of temperance; here they were instructed in 
 state affairs by listening to experienced statesmen; here they 
 learnt to converse with pleasantry, to make jests without 
 scurrility, and take them without ill-humour.’ (i. 97, 98.) 
 He also says: ‘ After drinking moderately, every man went 
 to his home without lights, for the use of them was, on all 
 occasions, forbid, to the end that they might accustom them¬ 
 selves to march boldly in the dark. Such was the common 
 fashion of their meals.’ 
 
 16 
 
242 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 On the subject of good manners Plutarch says: ‘ Nor 
 was their instruction in music and verse less carefully 
 attended to than their habits of grace and good-breeding in 
 conversation.’ 
 
 As regards conversational training, an interesting state¬ 
 ment is made by Plutarch (p. 108) : 
 
 ‘ The iren, or under-master, used to stay a little with them 
 after supper, and one of them he bade to sing a song, to an¬ 
 other he put a question which required an advised and delib¬ 
 erate answer: for example, who was the best man in the 
 city — what he thought of such an action of such a man. 
 They used them thus early to pass a right judgment upon 
 persons and things, and to inform themselves of the abilities 
 or defects of their countrymen. If they had not an answer 
 ready to the question who was a good, or who an ill-reputed 
 citizen, they were looked upon as of a dull and careless dis¬ 
 position, and to have little or no sense of virtue and honour; 
 besides this, they were to give a good reason for what they 
 said, and in as few words and as comprehensive as might 
 be: he that failed of this or answered not to the purpose, 
 had his thumb bit by his master. Sometimes the iren did 
 this in the presence of the old men and magistrates, that 
 they might see whether he punished them justly and in 
 due measure or not; and when he did amiss, they would 
 not reprove him before the boys, but, when they were gone, 
 he was called to account, and underwent correction, if he 
 had run far into either of the extremes of indulgence or 
 severity.’ 
 
 The brief pointed question and the concise but incisive 
 answer is still known among us as ‘ laconic ’ and specimens 
 are preserved by Plutarch in his ‘ Apophthegmata.’ To give 
 a practical training to the understanding, to have the art of 
 pointed and concise (hence laconic) expression, to grasp the 
 kernel of every affair quickly, to move towards an object 
 with directness — this was the ideal of the intellectual 
 education of the Spartans, and in this the men were expected 
 to train the youths and boys, while they showed them by 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 243 
 
 their conversation liow they ought to think of affairs and to 
 treat them. 
 
 Education in Sparta, as we see, was a public education, 
 from childhood up to full manhood. Each citizen was con¬ 
 cerned in the proper upbringing of his fellow citizens. 
 Every man was a teacher of the boy; every youth had in 
 every man, and in every old man, to give heed to his teacher. 
 Every man, and especially every old man, was authorised 
 and enjoined to chastise the erring* boy and youth, not with 
 words only, but with the rod, wherever he found him, in the 
 street or in the exercise grounds. The boy or youth who 
 resisted the warnings of an old man was visited with dis¬ 
 grace and double punishment. Age, indeed, enjoyed in 
 Sparta a respect which is unique in history. The young 
 man stood to the old man in the moral relation of obedience, 
 emulation, and reverence. The younger were required to 
 give way to the old in the streets and to stand up in their 
 presence. ‘ Only in Sparta is it pleasant to grow old,’ could 
 on this account a foreigner once exclaim, when he witnessed 
 this veneration of the youth toward old age. ‘The other 
 Greeks know what is becoming — the Spartans alone practise 
 it,’ said an old man, who, at Olympia and Athens, was 
 attended to by no one, was mocked by many, and before 
 whose grey head the Spartans reverentially rose up. (Cic. 
 ‘de Sen.’ 18.) 
 
 To conclude: an iron sceptre ruled over the Spartan from 
 his seventh to his thirtieth year. Flogging was the universal 
 punishment; and every boy as well as every youth had to 
 dread the stick of every Spartan, besides the official chastise¬ 
 ments of the pcedonomus, who, as ‘ provost-marshal,’ went 
 with his whip-bearers through the streets and the exercising 
 grounds. Moreover, the ephors went on circuit every tenth 
 day to inspect the youth, to see whether their clothing, 
 dormitories, and beds were according to the regulations; 
 whether the appearance and growth of the boys was com- 
 formable to the required development; and they would even, 
 
244 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 it is said, whip any one who had grown broader and stouter 
 than he ought to he according to the standard applied. For 
 every offence, for every negligence of the hoys, strokes with 
 a cane or lashes with a whip were inflicted; for the Spartans 
 thoroughly believed that the strictest discipline produced the 
 best men. 
 
 The Spartan education was public in the ordinary sense 
 of the word. It was public also in the sense that it was 
 open equally to all free-born children. ‘There are/ says 
 Aristotle, ‘many people who endeavour to describe the 
 Lacedaemonian polity as a democracy because of the many 
 democratical elements in its constitution. We may instance, 
 first, the education of children. The children of the rich are 
 brought up in the same way as those of the poor, and receive 
 an education which would not be beyond the children of 
 poor parents. And the same is true of the years succeeding 
 childhood; and again afterwards, when they reach man’s 
 estate, there is no distinction between rich and poor. So, 
 too, they all fare alike in the common meals, and the rich 
 wear a dress which any poor man would be able to procure.’ 
 (Arist. ‘ Pol.’ vi. 9.) 
 
 4. The Education of the Women 
 
 The education of the Spartan women was, like that of the 
 men, a public one. To make the young women as fit as pos¬ 
 sible to he vigorous mothers of robust children, which was 
 considered the most important function of free-born women, 
 a gymnastic course was on the part of the state prescribed 
 for the girls. In separate gymnasia, divided into different 
 classes according to their different ages, they exercised them¬ 
 selves in hopping, dancing the Spartan fling, in running, 
 wrestling, leaping, throwing the quoit and hurling the spear. 
 Like the boys, they also wore the woollen under-garment, 
 although a little longer, yet in their exercises slit up on one, 
 if not both, thighs. 1 They were practised, besides, in melodies 
 
 1 On which account the poet Ibycus calls them the ‘ thigh displayers.’ 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 
 
 245 
 
 of many kinds. On particular festivals the young men and 
 maidens danced their choral dances and sang their chants in 
 company. ‘ Lycurgus ordered,’ says Plutarch, ‘ the maidens 
 to exercise themselves with wrestling, running, throwing the 
 quoit and casting the dart, to the end that the fruit they con¬ 
 ceived might, in strong and healthy bodies, take firmer root 
 and find better growth; and withal that they, with this 
 greater vigour, might he the more able to undergo the pains 
 of child-hearing. And to the end he might take away their 
 over-great tenderness and fear of exposure to the air and 
 all acquired womanishness, he ordered that they should go 
 naked 1 in the processions,’ &c. They thus grew up, through 
 vigorous exercise of their muscles, exposed to the sun and 
 the free air, so sturdy and strong, that an Athenian woman 
 in Aristophanes was forced to exclaim in regard to one of 
 Sparta: ‘ How lovely thou art, how blooming thy skin, how 
 rounded thy flesh: what a chest; thou mightest strangle a 
 hull! ’ In spite of this masculine upbringing, the Spartan 
 women were attached wives and good housekeepers, and 
 there is no evidence, in the opinion of most writers, of a lack 
 of propriety and modesty among the young. On the other 
 hand, Plato in his ‘ Laws ’ and Aristotle in his ‘ Politics ’ (ii. 
 9) point very distinctly to a different conclusion. 
 
 It is true the Spartan women did not know how to spin 
 and weave well, hut they knew how to rule the house well, 
 and at the same time, as members of the state, having a just 
 view of their own position, to speak with freedom in presence 
 of the men. Their dress was simple and unadorned. After 
 their marriage they were veiled when they went from home. 
 They seem to have been thoroughly alive to what the state 
 required from all those who belonged to it, and they exer¬ 
 cised upon son and husband a deep and lasting influence. 
 Their opinion was respected, their censure dreaded, their 
 commendation sought. On the great festal days to which 
 we have already referred, the young women used to stand 
 
 1 I imagine ‘ naked ’ meant destitute of any outer garment, but not posi¬ 
 tively nude. 
 
246 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 round, criticising and encouraging the youth. ‘ Those who 
 were commended/ says Plutarch, ‘ went away proud, elated, 
 and gratified with their honour among the maidens; and 
 those who were rallied were as sensibly touched by it as if 
 they had been reprimanded; and so much the more because 
 the kings and the elders, as well as the rest of the city, saw 
 and heard all that passed.’ And in later years the husband 
 by the thought of his wife, the son by the remembrance of 
 his mother, were spurred on to all that was esteemed worthy 
 of honour. All have heard of the heroic women of Sparta 
 who offered thanks to the gods in the temples when their 
 husbands and sons had fallen gloriously in battle for their 
 country (as at Leuctra, B.c. 371). One such mother slew 
 her son with her own hand, because he had turned back like 
 a coward from the battle ; and another — Gorgo — the wife 
 of Leonidas, delivered to her son his shield with the words, 
 ‘ Either with this or upon it.’ ‘ If the root is good/ says 
 Plutarch, ‘ the plant also grows the better/ and puts the ques¬ 
 tion, ‘Why should we not in the case of men have as much 
 regard for a good breed as in that of dogs and horses ? ’ 
 
 We find two poems in the Greek Anthology illustrative 
 of this feature of the Spartan female character: — 
 
 Eight sons Dsemenata at Sparta’s call 
 
 Sent forth to fight : one tomb received them all. 
 
 No tears she shed, but shouted ‘Victory ! 
 
 Sparta, I bore them but to die for thee.’ 
 
 Again: 
 
 A Spartan, his companion slain, 
 
 Alone from battle fled : 
 
 His mother, kindling with disdain 
 That she had borne him, struck him dead ; 
 
 For courage and not birth alone 
 In Sparta testifies a son. 
 
 Of the women, then, as of the men, we are entitled to say 
 that the Spartan system demanded the unconditional subjec¬ 
 tion of the individual will to the will of the community as 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 247 
 
 determined by law. The freedom of the individual had no 
 existence as opposed to the freedom of the whole, or rather 
 in the freedom of the whole the individual had to find his 
 freedom. 
 
 Now, what was the result of all this exclusiveness of 
 national life and severity of discipline ? Precisely those 
 results which we see flowing from an over-severe system of 
 education in families and schools in these days. So long as 
 the Spartan remained at home, he was all that Lycurgus 
 could have desired him to be — grave, severe, brave, self- 
 controlled, self-sacrificing, long-enduring, full of respect for 
 his elders, full of devotedness to the state. But take the 
 Spartan away from the arbitrary system under which he 
 lived, and we are told that he was lax and licentious, and a 
 prey (curiously enough) to that very vice of avarice against 
 which so many precautions had been taken. How was this ? 
 Because his morality was a state-morality, not a personal 
 and individual free growth from within. There was no per¬ 
 sonal and inner idea of morality up to which he was to live. 
 Instead of this there was a civic, in truth little more than 
 a tribal morality and a tribal virtue, imposed by external 
 authority and maintained by severity. The Hellenic spirit 
 was unquestionably there, but it had forged fetters for itself. 
 When Sparta got the better of Athens and had to lead 
 Greece, it could not do it. (Spartan Supremacy, B.c. 405- 
 371.) Nay, it was disloyal to the Hellenic idea. It wanted 
 that breadth and elasticity of mind, that humanity of spirit, 
 which could alone enable it to understand, and, by under¬ 
 standing, to control, others. How else than by a sympa¬ 
 thetic understanding of the rights and feelings of others can 
 justice ever be done among men ? And when justice is not 
 done, a state is doomed. 
 
 In view of certain modern opinions, it is interesting to 
 note that we have in Sparta as near an approach to state- 
 socialism as the history of mankind has yet exhibited — 
 socialism, moreover, in the most favourable circumstances, 
 because it was the socialism of an aristocracy supported by 
 
248 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 a slave system. The state regulated the individual life, and, 
 by so doing, crushed out individuality, personal initiation, 
 literary and scientific activity, and ethical freedom. Sparta, 
 as an interesting educational experiment, is a valuable con¬ 
 tribution to the history of education, but it is no less in¬ 
 structive to the political philosopher. 
 
 CHAPTEK IV 
 
 ATHENIAN AND IONIC-ATTIC EDUCATION 
 
 We turn now to the chief representative of the Greek 
 spirit — the Athenian. All that we have said of the Hel¬ 
 lenic mind and of the Hellenic life-ideals, in introducing 
 the subject of Hellenic education, found its finest and fullest 
 expression in Attica. As in the case of Sparta, we find 
 that with the Athenian, as with all true Greeks, the state or 
 city was the object round which gathered all their interests 
 and all their moral sentiment. Nay, we may even say 
 that the city was the object of their worship, for their 
 very gods were gods to them as protectors and lovers of 
 the beautiful abode which their artistic hands had reared. 
 But the Athenian state, in the narrow sense of the governing 
 body or executive, did not unduly predominate over the lives 
 of the citizen. Their democratic constitution and popular 
 assemblies brought the governing body into perpetual con¬ 
 tact with public opinion — variable and fickle, doubtless, but 
 yet full of ever-fresh suggestion. The despotic socialism of 
 Sparta had no place. The state did not impose its abstract 
 conception of life on the citizen, it was rather the citizen in 
 his free activity who voluntarily gave his life to the state. 
 The individual had, it is true, no ultimate rights as against 
 the state organism ; but it was felt that the state itself gained 
 most by the free development of the individual. (See Peri¬ 
 cles’ speech already quoted.) Accordingly, while up to the 
 fifth century B.c. we might say that even in Athens the 
 morality of the individual was a civic or political mo- 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 249 
 
 rality, the elements of personality and of a free ethics ex¬ 
 isted even before Socrates, and were powerfully expressed 
 in literature 
 
 The Athenian education was in this, as in other respects, 
 a reflex of the Athenian life. ‘ It is evident,’ says Professor 
 Wilkins, ‘ that a national system of education in the strictest 
 sense of the term would have been wholly foreign to the 
 genius of the Athenian state. To force every citizen from 
 childhood into the same rigid mould, to crush the play of the 
 natural emotions and impulses, and to sacrifice the beauty 
 and joy of the life of the agora or the country home to the 
 claims of military drill, were aims which were happily ren¬ 
 dered needless by the position of Attica, as well as dis¬ 
 tasteful to the Athenian temperament.’ At the same time 
 the state, while leaving the education of the citizen by the 
 parents free, prescribed certain general rules. All had to 
 be instructed in gymnastic and music. The Court of the 
 Areopagus, moreover, as censor morum and guardian of 
 the ancient constitution, exercised supervision and enforced 
 certain laws, as we may learn from Plato among others. 
 But the main controlling force seems to have been public 
 opinion. 
 
 1. INFANCY 
 
 Gentle and kindly as the Athenian care of infants was, 
 yet there is no doubt that they were often taken from un¬ 
 willing mothers to be exposed: the father — not the state, as 
 in Sparta —determined this. But we must note that Sparta 
 exposed none but the physically incapable : the Athenians 
 were more heartless. These exposed infants were sometimes 
 picked up by dwellers outside the walls and brought up ; or 
 sold as slaves. Socrates refers to the grief of a mother 
 deprived of her infant for the first time, and Plato, as we all 
 know, recommends exposure in his ideal state. Aristotle, in 
 his ‘Politics,’ iv. 16, considers it unnecessary to expose chil¬ 
 dren with a view to keep down the numbers of the popula¬ 
 tion, because other means, such as abortion, &c., can be 
 
250 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 resorted to, but he maintains ‘ there should be a law against 
 rearing any cripple.’ 
 
 On the tenth day after birth, all the friends of the family 
 assembled and brought presents. The child was named by 
 the father. There had been a previous ceremony of sacrifice 
 and of purification on the seventh day. The infant was 
 carried several times round the burning hearth by the nurse, 
 followed by the mother, and hence the ceremony was called 
 Amphidronia or ‘running round.’ There was much eating 
 and drinking and congratulation, enlivened by music and 
 dancing. On the fortieth day the mother paid the customary 
 devotions at the temple. The child was then formally regis¬ 
 tered by the father as a member of the city ward. 
 
 The first care of the infant fell to the mother and the wet- 
 nurse (titthe), and thereafter the ordinary nurse ( tithene ). 
 In the best period of Athens the mother always nursed her 
 own child. Later, wet-nurses were general. As a rule 
 peasant women or female slaves were chosen for this service, 
 as it was long esteemed dishonouring for free women to 
 engage in such occupations; but the slaves when engaged 
 were treated as free, and as members of the family. But 
 free women from the country, and even free Athenian citi¬ 
 zens, sometimes undertook the duty ; especially after the 
 Peloponnesian War, when, owing to the death of their 
 husbands, they were reduced to great poverty. The noble 
 and the rich Athenians usually preferred to get their wet- 
 nurses from Laconia, that their children might have healthy 
 and vigorous foster-mothers. The cradles consisted of simple 
 trays, or wicker cots, hung like hammocks, but these are now 
 considered to have been of late introduction. 1 When the 
 work of the wet-nurse— it lasted from a year to a year and 
 a half — was ended, she was followed by the ordinary nurse, 
 usually an elderly woman. She gave the child its food, 
 which consisted largely, along with milk, of a kind of broth 
 sweetened with honey. She carried the child out to get the 
 
 1 See references in Becker’s Charicles, p. 24, English edition, 1886. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 251 
 
 air, and with it accompanied the mother on her visits, and 
 even to feasts. 1 
 
 To put the child to sleep, cradle-songs and lullabies were 
 sung. Theocritus has preserved or rather given his own idea 
 of one of these, as sung to the twins Herakles and Iphicles: 
 
 Tender she touched their little heads and sang : 
 
 Sleep, baby boys, a sweet and healthful sleep ; 
 
 Sleep on, my darlings, safely through the night, 
 
 Sleep, happy in your baby dreams, and wake 
 
 With joy to greet the morning’s dawning light . 2 
 
 Theoc. Id. 24, 6. 
 
 To pacify and amuse the children, they used a rattle 
 invented by the Pythagorean Arcliytas, a vessel of metal 
 or wood with small stones in it. Aristotle condescends to 
 refer to the rattle ( 4 Polit.’ viii. 6, 2): ‘ It is also very neces¬ 
 sary that children should have some amusing employment: 
 for which purpose the rattle of Archytas seems well-contrived 
 which they give children to play with to prevent their break¬ 
 ing those things which are about the house, for, owing to 
 their youthfulness, they cannot sit still.’ 
 
 The nurses had the bad habit of many modern nurses and 
 mothers of frightening children by threatening them with 
 bogies. The tales which the children heard from the lips of 
 these uneducated women constituted their earliest education. 
 Plato, Aristotle, and Chrysippus urged that care should be 
 exercised that the tales of the nurses and pedagogues were 
 such as ought to be told to the young. 
 
 The ball was a universal plaything. As the children grew 
 older there came the hobby-horse, the game with dice (made 
 of the knuckle-bones of animals cut into square pieces) and 
 spinning-tops both in the house and in the open air. Toys 
 and go-carts and ‘ mud-pies ’ engaged the interest of Athe- 
 
 1 The child was not allowed to be exposed to the influence of the moon ; 
 and from the day of its public acknowledgment by the father, it was provided 
 with amulets hung round the neck that it might be protected against magical 
 arts and the evil eye. 
 
 2 Hallard’s translation, slightly altered. 
 
252 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 nian children as of the children of all European nations. 
 Then followed, at a somewhat more advanced age, a game 
 which consisted in throwing slantingly into the water small 
 smooth stones and counting how many leaps they made before 
 sinking (which we call ‘ skimming ’ or ‘ ducks and drakes ’), 
 blind man’s buff, trundling hoops, and all kinds of games 
 with the hall, walking on stilts, leap-frog, kite-flying, see-saw¬ 
 ing on logs and swinging, &c., &c. Girls had dolls made of 
 wax or clay, and painted. Blind man’s huff was played thus. 
 The hoy with his eyes bandaged moved about calling out ‘ I 
 will catch a brazen fly.’ The others answered, * You will 
 hunt hut you won’t catch it ’ — all the while striking him 
 with whips till he managed to catch one of them. 
 
 At an early age the children wore shoes. Great attention 
 was paid to their personal appearance generally. Their hair 
 was twisted into artistic curls and drawn together over the 
 forehead with a splendid comb, according to the fancy of 
 mother and nurse. In the case of the girls a slender make 
 was aimed at by the use of stays, &c. 
 
 From all this we see that the early childhood of the 
 Athenian hoy and girl was easy and pleasant. The amuse¬ 
 ments seem to have been substantially the same as those 
 which prevail among civilised races at this day. The 
 mother’s influence practically ceased from the day the boy 
 went to school. Indeed, the want of education among the 
 Athenian women precluded their exercising much influence 
 over the boys. But during the first seven years the mother 
 and the nurse really laid the foundation of the child’s educa¬ 
 tion. Nursery rhymes, stories in which animals played a 
 part, thereafter the rich legendary, heroic, and mythical lore 
 of the Hellenic races were imparted to the child. 1 A poetic 
 and dramatic cast of mind was thus given, to he nourished 
 in future years by the school teaching and by the public 
 drama and civic festivals. 
 
 1 Quintilian says (i. 1. 16) : Chrysippus thinks that no part of a child’s life 
 should he exempt from tuition, and that even the three years which he allows 
 to the nurses might be turned to good use. There is no evidence that the 
 Spartan child had nursery stories told to it. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 253 
 
 2. CHILDHOOD AND BOYHOOD 
 
 The play-time ended with the seventh year. Ussing says, 
 however, that the age at which the boy was handed over 
 to the slave-pedagogue was determined by the age at which 
 he was able to receive instruction, and consequently might 
 he long before seven. The place of the female attendant was 
 now taken by the pedagogue, who did not impart instruction, 
 but had only a moral oversight of his young charge both in 
 and out of the house, and whose business it was to accom¬ 
 pany him to the schoolmaster (grammatist) and gymnastic 
 master (psedotribe). For this service they generally em¬ 
 ployed a slave whom they considered specially adapted for 
 such work, but still oftener one whom on account of age and 
 weakness, or some other defect, they could not profitably 
 employ otherwise. Pericles is reported to'have said, when he 
 saw a slave fall from a tree and break his leg, ‘ Lo, he is now 
 a pedagogue ! ’ The necessary consequence of this pernicious 
 custom was that the free-born boy had but small respect for 
 his pedagogue, and often grew unruly. The pedagogue had 
 charge of the boy at all times. His business was to train 
 him in morality and good manners, and he was granted the 
 power of beating him, if necessary. The rules as to the 
 external bearing of boys in the street and at table were 
 extremely strict in Athens no less than in Sparta. Doubt¬ 
 less the view the pedagogue took of his duties would not 
 always be very lofty. There were, of course, many excep¬ 
 tions. The answer of one pedagogue who had a high con¬ 
 ception of his function and was asked what his work 
 precisely was, is worth recording: ‘ My duty is to make the 
 good pleasant to boys/ 
 
 3. STATE SUPERVISION AND SCHOOLS 
 
 In what branches of knowledge the father should cause 
 his child to be instructed, stood at his own discretion. By 
 law he was bound only to instruction in gymnastic and 
 music. This is laid down in the laws ascribed to Solon. 
 
254 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 The first of these laws, as quoted by Grasberger (i. 2. 215) 
 is: ‘ Every citizen shall see to it that his son is instructed 
 in gymnastic and music with grammar (i.e. literature). 
 Parents who disobey this law are culpable. Only those 
 parents shall be supported (in their old age) by their 
 grown-up sons, who have given them due education.’ 1 
 
 The instruction was not provided by the state: the 
 schools were private undertakings. But they were sub¬ 
 jected not only to a certain moral control, but also, as I 
 have already stated, to the general superintendence of the 
 public authorities. Although, in obedience to the general 
 order of the state, all Athenian free citizens sent their 
 children to the day-schools, the length of their stay there 
 must have been determined, as it is among all nations, by 
 the social position of the parents. We do not need elabo¬ 
 rate archseological inquiries to convince us of this. Eor 
 the poorer class a little reading, writing, and arithmetic 
 would suffice. But there can be no doubt that whoever 
 wished to be accounted as a truly worthy citizen of Athens 
 must have passed through a certain gymnastic course under 
 the psedotribe (gymnastic master) in the palaestra, the 
 music course in its narrower sense under the citharist 
 (teacher of music), and the literary course under the gram- 
 matist. But most of the time seems to have been spent 
 in gymnastic and play. 
 
 Nor did the state provide school-buildings any more than 
 it prescribed the details of instruction. But, notwithstand¬ 
 ing this, schools ( didaskaleia ) were spread over the various 
 ‘ wards ’ of the city and were to be found in all Greek 
 towns. It was not unusual to teach even in the open air 
 in some recess of a street or temple. It is probable that 
 these open air schools were frequented by the poorer classes 
 chiefly or solely. Of the younger Dionysius in Corinth, 
 Justin, xxi. 5, says: novissime ludi magistrum professus 
 
 1 Monsieur Girard thinks this applied only to instruction in some trade. 
 But if Grasberger’s quotation is correct the reference was to education 
 generally. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 255 
 
 pueros in trivio docebat. Almost universally, however, there 
 were buildings devoted to school purposes. The misfortune 
 that befel the school in the little Boeotian town of Myca- 
 lessus related by Thucydides is well known (vii. 29). The 
 Thracians fell upon a boys’ school, which was a large one, 
 and slaughtered all the children. In 500 B.c. the school at 
 Chios fell in, as Herodotus tells us, and killed 119 out of 120 
 children. Pausanias also tells a story of a Greek who went 
 mad after losing a prize at Olympia, and, returning to his 
 native place, entered a school, and pushing the pillars that 
 sustained the roof, brought it down on the heads of 60 chil¬ 
 dren, burying them under the ruins. But even such schools as 
 were held in buildings did not receive any state-support, and 
 were, strictly speaking, ‘ adventure schools ’ supported by fees. 
 
 The precise extent of the state supervision of schools, to 
 which I have referred above, is in doubt. The Court of the 
 Areopagus existing before Solon’s time but reconstructed by 
 him on a more popular basis, exercised great powers over all 
 questions of morals and conduct; and this power there can 
 be no doubt they exercised, when necessary, in the ordinary 
 schools as they did in the gymnasia of the ephebi or youths. 
 The mere fact that there was no organised school-system 
 would make them all the more ready to exercise their large 
 and undefined powers as occasion presented itself. They 
 were ‘ superintendents of good order and decency,’ and under 
 cover of this it would be hard to say what they might not 
 do. They were a check on the licence of the democracy, 
 and the extent of their power would depend on the prudence 
 with which they exercised it. This Areopagitic Council was 
 shorn of much of its political power in the time of Pericles ; 
 but we may presume that there would be little objection to 
 its continued supervision of morals and conduct. Among 
 much that is uncertain we may safely conclude generally 
 that, through the agency of either the Sophronists or Strategi 
 the authorities in Athens kept a watchful eye on schools — 
 especially the gymnastic schools, but without vexatious 
 interference. 
 
256 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Instruction began in the early morning, and by law tbe 
 schools had to be closed before sunset. The schools of 
 the better class were generally ornamented with statues of 
 the gods, busts of heroes, and pictorial illustrations of inci¬ 
 dents in Homer. There is a fragment of such a pictorial 
 table in the Capitoline Museum at Rome — the Tabula Iliaca 
 of Theodorus. On entering, the boy saluted the master and 
 his schoolfellows. The master sat on a high seat from which 
 he taught; the pupils on benches: but whether the teaching 
 was individual or collective (in classes) does not seem quite 
 clear, probably both. 
 
 4 . EDUCATION OF THE SCHOOL 
 
 ( a ) Primary instruction and methods — literary 
 
 education 
 
 The Music curriculum was divided into two parts, one 
 specially literary, and one specially musical. 
 
 In the literary course, under the grammatist, the first ele¬ 
 ments of reading, writing, and arithmetic were learned. 
 
 Reading. — In learning to read, children learned synthet¬ 
 ically, i.e. they learned the individual letters first by heart, 1 
 then their sounds, then as combined into meaningless sylla¬ 
 bles, and then into words. The analytic method of taking 
 words first and analysing the various sounds in them, and 
 teaching these on phonic principles, is held by some to have 
 been practised, but of this there is no sufficient evidence. 
 ‘ We/ says Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who died about the 
 beginning of the Christian era, ‘ learn first the names of the 
 elements of speech, what are called grammata: then their 
 shape and functions, then the syllables and their affections : 
 lastly, the parts of speech, and the particular mutations con¬ 
 nected with each, as inflexion, number, contraction, accents, 
 position in the sentence; then we begin to read and to write, 
 at first in syllables and slowly, but when we have attained 
 
 1 Athenseus gives a metrical alphabet, and probably it was chanted 
 (Becker’s Chctricles, p. 232). 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 257 
 
 the necessary certainty, easily and quickly. 1 'De Compos. 
 Verb.’ c. 25. 
 
 Plaques of baked earth on which the alphabet was written 
 or painted were frequently used. 
 
 The chief difficulties to be encountered by the child when 
 lie began to read were the learning of the proper accents, as 
 these were not indicated by signs, and the separating of one 
 word from another, as words were written continuously with¬ 
 out a break. 2 There was moreover no punctuation. It is 
 possible that, inasmuch as good, nay merely intelligible, 
 reading, was in these circumstances, possible only when the 
 sense was fully grasped, the want of separation of words and 
 of punctuation may have contributed largely to mental dis¬ 
 cipline as well as to good elocution. The manuscripts were 
 either folded or rolled. If the interpretation of Dionysius is 
 correct, parts of speech, &c. were taught orally before begin¬ 
 ning to read. 3 
 
 After the pupil was able to read, beautiful reading was 
 practised — special attention being paid to the length and 
 shortness of syllables and to the accentuation. Purity of 
 articulation and accent were specially regarded. The pupils 
 were taught the raising and lowering of the voice, and to 
 bring out the melody and rhythm of the sentences, and all 
 this with distinct enunciation and expression. Homer 
 served as the usual reading-book; then Hesiod, Theognis, 
 Phocylides, and Solon, as well as the fables of iEsop, and 
 generally ‘ poems in which,’ as Protagoras says in Plato, 
 ‘ were contained many admonitions and illustrations of con¬ 
 duct, also praise and eulogy of distinguished men, that the 
 boys might admiringly imitate them, and strive themselves 
 also to become distinguished.’ At an early period collections 
 of the most choice specimens of the poetic art (anthologies) 
 
 1 This translation is after comparison of the original with the parallel pas¬ 
 sage in De Admir. Vi Die. in Demosth. c. 52. 
 
 2 If MSS. were always written as inscriptions were written. 
 
 3 ra irepl raOra iradr]. This must mean either the changes which may 
 be rung on syllables, as when we say cat , pat, rat , or the noun-inflexion 
 endings. 
 
 17 
 
258 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 were used. These poems, especially Homer, Hesiod, and 
 Theognis, served at the same time for drill in language and 
 for recitation, whereby on the one hand the memory was 
 developed and the imagination strengthened, on the other 
 the heroic forms of antiquity and healthy primitive utter¬ 
 ances regarding morality, and full of homely common sense, 
 were deeply engraved on the young mind. The poems were 
 explained to the pupils and questions were asked. Homer 
 was regarded not merely as a poet, but as an inspired moral 
 teacher, and great portions of his poems were learned by 
 heart. The Iliad and the Odyssey were in truth the Bible of 
 the Greeks. There was also much practice of dictation and 
 learning by heart of what the pupils wrote down from the 
 master’s dictation — a practice which continued in all schools 
 and universities till after the invention of printing. In the 
 Greek schools the master recited and the scholar repeated 
 after him until he could say the passage by himself. The 
 scarcity of books had its advantages, as it must have com¬ 
 pelled the masters to resort, more than they would otherwise 
 have done, to oral teaching in which mind meets mind with¬ 
 out the interposition of the printed page. 1 
 
 Arithmetic.—In arithmetic only so much was taught 
 (owing, doubtless, to the cumbrous system of notation) as 
 was necessary for the reckonings of the market-place. The 
 Greeks attained great proficiency within these limits. An 
 abacus or calculating-board was in use (but not the same 
 as our modern frame), the balls having different values 
 assigned to them as in the East generally, and to this 
 day in China. The fingers were freely used to assist in 
 calculation. 
 
 Writing. —Eor writing they used in earlier times tablets 
 covered with wax and a stylus or graver, one end of the style 
 being flattened for rubbing out what was written. These 
 tablets were often diptychs and triptychs. For the children 
 who could not yet write, lines were drawn and a copy set 
 with the stylus; they imitated the copy writing on their 
 
 1 See an interesting passage in Plato’s Phcedrus. Jowett’s Plato, p. 614. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 259 
 
 knees, there being no desks. Some say they began by trac¬ 
 ing letters which had been first lightly written by the master 
 (the master guiding the hand) ; and this is highly probable. 
 Sometimes they carried the stylus over letters cut in wooden 
 tablets. They drew straight lines with a ruler to keep the 
 writing regular. Plato thought very little of writing and 
 considered that not too much time should be given to it. It 
 was enough in his opinion, I presume, to he able to write 
 legibly. When older, the pupils wrote with pen ( calamus ) 
 and ink on papyrus or parchment. Owing to the cost of 
 parchment they practised on the hack of leaves already 
 written on on one side. 
 
 Drawing. — Drawing was much insisted on by Aristotle 
 (‘ Polit.’ viii. 3). It was not till his time that it began to be 
 taught in the ordinary schools. But in the course of the 
 fourth century B.c. it entered largely, if not always, into the 
 general education, according to Grasberger and others. It 
 was first introduced from Sicyon. The drawing was on 
 smooth boxwood surfaces — white on a black ground, or red 
 and black on a white ground. The instrument used was a 
 pencil. 
 
 Geometry. — Highly as both Aristotle and Plato es¬ 
 teemed geometry as a school subject, it would appear that 
 it was not till the later period of Athenian education (end 
 of the fifth century B.c.) that it was introduced into the 
 schools. 
 
 Geography was sometimes taught, and maps began to come 
 into use about the time of Plato. 
 
 (b) Secondary education 
 
 The grammatist was the name of the elementary teacher. 
 (The word didaskalus was used in a generic sense.) Those 
 boys who could afford to continue their education went in 
 Romano-Hellenic times, hut not (so far as I can find) during 
 the purely Hellenic period, to a grammaticus; hut it must 
 be understood that the line of demarcation between these 
 teachers was by no means, till later times, clear. The ‘ sec- 
 
260 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 ondary ’ instruction, such as it was, was doubtless given by 
 grammatists of more than usual learning, until the two func¬ 
 tions were differentiated. In Scotland we have had a similar 
 experience. 
 
 In what did the ‘ secondary ’ education of the young 
 Athenian consist before secondary schools taught by gram- 
 matici took definite form: this probably not till about 350 
 b.c. ? 1 It is difficult to say. It was not till he was about 
 thirteen years of age that a boy began to learn to play a 
 musical instrument, and this, with the lyric poetry with 
 which music was always associated and the continued read¬ 
 ing and recitation of poetry, seems to me to have constituted 
 ‘secondary’ instruction — at least till about 350 b.c. After 
 that date we know that drawing and geometry, and (a little 
 later) grammar as a philological study, began to enter into 
 the curriculum of those who continued at school after the 
 primary period. It would be at this time that the differen¬ 
 tiation between primary and secondary schools would natu¬ 
 rally arise. We shall see the distinction clearly marked, 
 nay emphasised, in Eome (which followed Greece in all 
 educational matters) certainly not later than 150 B.c. In 
 the secondary school of the grammaticus when it was finally 
 recognised, grammar and literary criticism were leading 
 studies, and the foundations were thus laid for subsequent 
 instruction in rhetoric and oratory, into which studies, in¬ 
 deed, the grammaticus frequently carried his pupils. 
 
 The youths after obtaining such secondary instruction as 
 was available went (from about 400 B.c.) to the sophists in 
 order to study rhetoric, &c. These were the highest instruc¬ 
 tors. I shall speak of them in the sequel. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the system of education 
 above sketched was in any way formally organised. It 
 was a voluntary and natural growth, and doubtless under¬ 
 went all the fluctuations that are inherent in voluntary 
 institutions. 
 
 1 Isocrates assumes a certain amount of what we call secondary instruction 
 in the case of his pupils. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 261 
 
 (c) Music in the narrower sense of the word 
 
 Music, that is to say the chanting and singing of songs, 
 was, I am disposed to think, the primary basis of all Greek 
 literary education. It was common to the Doric and Ionic 
 races. The music was always subservient to the words. It 
 is not improbable that it was the musician, as being the 
 traditionary channel for ballad and lyrical literature, who 
 first (in the earliest times) added reading and writing to his 
 ordinary instructions. For a considerable time, and until 
 MSS. were accessible, the instruction must have been oral. 
 The functions of the music teacher and the grammatist were 
 afterwards separated. For a considerable period, however, if 
 not always, the music instruction seems to have been given 
 in the same buildings as the literary instruction. 
 
 In the special music course, which did not begin, it would 
 appear, till the thirteenth year, the Athenian youth were taught 
 by the citharist to play on musical instruments, especially 
 the lyre, a seven-stringed instrument (originally four strings). 1 
 For a time, after the Persian wars, instruction was also given 
 on the flute, which became very fashionable, the name being 
 given to any instrument played with the mouth, such for ex¬ 
 ample as our flageolet. It was this instrument which was 
 popular in Boeotia. Plutarch relates that Alcibiades refused 
 to play on the flute, partly on account of the contortions of 
 the face to which it gave rise, partly because he who played 
 it could neither speak nor sing while so doing, and that he 
 also begat in others a most decided aversion to the iristru- 
 
 O 
 
 ment, which on this account fell at last into contempt. The 
 true cause, however, of its falling into disuse was probably 
 the exciting character of the music it produced and the im¬ 
 possibility of accompanying the music with the voice. The 
 Greek flute had not the soft sentimental tones of the modern 
 flute. The object of the musical instruction was educational, 
 
 1 The cithara was more of a professional instrument, and is discoun¬ 
 tenanced by Aristotle. It had a sounding-board and was played with a 
 plektron. The most recent authority on Greek music is Dr. Munro, of 
 Oxford, in his book entitled Modes of Creek Music. 
 
262 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 but also to enable all to take part in religious services and 
 in friendly social entertainments. ‘ Music,’ says Aristotle, 
 Book V., ‘ was introduced by our forefathers for the rational 
 enjoyment of leisure.’ 
 
 The boys were instructed in rhythm and melody, and 
 their ear trained to a feeling of the measure. This would 
 be necessary to good elocution. The Greeks believed that 
 by music the spirit of the young was elevated, and that they 
 became rhythmical and harmonious in mind and manners. 
 At the same time table-songs were learned by heart with a 
 view to increasing the pleasure of social meetings. These 
 songs pithily and wittily enforced homely sentiments and 
 the principles of morality, patriotism, and worldly wisdom. 
 The Doric strain (a minor scale) was that usually adopted 
 for such purposes, and they gave it the preference because it 
 was characterised by a dignified repose, and more than any 
 other seemed to give expression to high spirit and to manli¬ 
 ness. The soft and voluptuous Lydian measure (a major 
 scale) was denounced as immoral in its tendency, while the 
 Phrygian (also a minor scale) was passionate. 1 In the earli¬ 
 est stage of instruction, the citharist dictated to the children 
 simple songs, which they were required to learn by heart. 
 Then they had to learn the sustained and chant-like airs to 
 which they were set. One of the first poems which they 
 learned, is said to have been : 
 
 Pallas, dread destroyer of cities, 
 
 Thou war-din-raising goddess, 
 
 Holy, enemy-averting daughter of Jove, 
 
 I call on thee, 
 
 Horse-taming, noblest virgin. 
 
 The boys were not meant to attain professional skill in 
 singing and playing: their musical ability was only to be 
 so far developed as to enable them, when grown up, to take 
 part in choruses and sing table-songs, &c. This was the 
 direct practical aim of the instruction under the citharist; 
 
 1 The Ionian and iEolian had also their specific characters. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 263 
 
 but the main purpose of teaching music was unquestionably 
 to produce harmony and balance of soul, while at the same 
 time introducing the boy to the lyrical literature of his 
 country. The music teaching was never dissociated from 
 verses — lyric poems or hymns. ‘ The poetry and music 
 together formed a single work of art.’ In the 4 Protagoras ’ 
 Plato says: ‘ They make rhythm and harmony familiar to 
 the souls of boys, that they may grow more gentle and 
 graceful and harmonious, and so be of service both in words 
 and deeds; for the whole life of man stands in need of grace 
 and harmony.’ And Aristotle and Plutarch utter similar 
 sentiments; and to these we may add Polybius. That the 
 aim of music teaching was ethical is further shown by the 
 stress which both Aristotle and Plato lay on the importance 
 of the state controlling school-music in order to secure sound 
 moral results. In short, the boy was taught music, not that 
 he might be a musician, but that he might be musical. 
 
 It was always, indeed, the education of mind and body as 
 a unity which the Athenian kept constantly in view — not 
 technical facility in any art whatsoever. ‘ To be always in 
 quest of what is useful,’ says Aristotle, ‘ is not becoming to 
 high-minded men and freemen.’ Even as regards gymnastic 
 and music the ‘ professional ’ was not highly esteemed. 
 Plutarch says that when Alexander played and sang on one 
 occasion with particular skill, his father Philip said, ‘ Are 
 you not ashamed to play so well?’ 
 
 Taking the literary and musical education together, we 
 must conclude that ‘ the mental culture was but plain and 
 simple, yet it took hold of the entire man; and this all the 
 more deeply and thoroughly because the youthful mind was 
 not distracted by a multiplicity of subjects and could there¬ 
 fore more closely devote itself to the mental food and to the 
 materials of culture offered to it.’ (Curtius, ‘History,’ ii. 416.) 
 
 The young Greek had a rich literature to draw on. The 
 intellectual and aesthetic education of the children of a nation 
 is necessarily governed by its literature. The Egyptians and 
 
264 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Babylonians, even if they had had an organised system of 
 schools, could have made little of them. The literary mate¬ 
 rials of Greek national education were on the other hand ex¬ 
 traordinarily various and abundant. To Homer is generally 
 assigned the date of about 1,000 years before Christ, and he 
 is closely followed by Hesiod, while the number of unnamed 
 rhapsodists and handers down of national traditions of reli¬ 
 gion and conduct and of heroism must have been great. In 
 the seventh century before Christ we have in the elegiac and 
 lyrical poets a natural development of the heroic rhapsodist 
 and religious hymn-writer. (Callinus, Archilochus, Tyrtseus, 
 Aleman, and Sappho.) The sixth century again is especially 
 the period of gnomic or ethical poetry — Solon, Theognis, 
 Phocylides, and the sayings of the Wise men. At the end 
 of this century and the beginning of the fifth we have again 
 the lyrical poets Anacreon and Pindar; and about the same 
 period, tragedy — a combination and evolution of the gnomic, 
 the heroic, and choral lyric — was firmly established by 
 iEschylus. In education, as indeed in public life, the poets, 
 let us remember, were regarded by the Greeks as teachers of 
 wisdom and as moral guides. The end of the seventh and 
 the beginning of the sixth century also saw the rise of specu¬ 
 lative philosophy, which reached its highest point in the 
 fifth and the fourth centuries B.c. Oratory also reached its 
 highest and finest development in the fourth. I mention 
 these things because it is impossible for us to understand the 
 literary side of Greek education without realising the immense 
 mass of literary material by means of which the education 
 could be conducted — literary material existing more or less 
 (but always growing from generation to generation in quan¬ 
 tity and excellence) for 500 if not 600 years before the birth 
 of Plato in 430 B.c. 
 
 (d) Gymnastic 
 
 About the eighth year, physical education was begun with 
 gymnastic exercises under the psedotribe (boys’ gymnastic 
 master) after preparation had already been made for it by 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 265 
 
 means of easy games in the paternal home. After the 
 age of fourteen or fifteen, gymnastic took precedence of 
 literary instruction. It is doubtful whether the gymnastic 
 instruction of children began at the same time as the literary 
 instruction or after some progress had been made in learning 
 to read and write. The gymnastic exercises had for their 
 object in Athens the discipline of the body with a view to 
 giving it a healthy development and a noble carriage. 
 
 The poedotribe, as I have said, was not appointed by the 
 state. Like the teacher of the day-school, he opened a palaes¬ 
 tra or wrestling school; but he was in all cases under state 
 supervision, and subject to certain state-regulations which 
 had in view mainly the moral demeanour of the boys. The 
 paedotribe himself gave the gymnastic instruction, but there 
 were present also in the arena the moral superintendent or 
 censor who had the oversight of morals, and the anointers 
 who arranged and superintended the dietetic regimen and 
 anointed or saw to the anointment of the body with oil, 
 which after exercise had to be scraped off. 
 
 The palaestra was reserved for boys and the gymnasium 
 for the ephebi (youths of eighteen years) and full-grown 
 men. Plato, and the Athenians generally, looked with most 
 favour on games which gave room for the exhibition of the 
 moral qualities of spirit (or as we should say, pluck) and in¬ 
 telligence — mere animal force being regarded as of compara¬ 
 tively small account. 
 
 The exercises were graduated from the easier to the more 
 difficult, and aimed at forming the body in -all its stages of 
 development. During the exercises the boys were arranged 
 in two or three divisions. These were united at festivals, 
 especially at the Hermtea. Lively games, especially games 
 with the ball, appear to have been first taken up. Swim¬ 
 ming was practised very early. 1 Among the first exercises 
 
 1 On this point Professor Mahaffy, I notice, throws doubt. Why he does 
 so I cannot understand, as swimming is especially mentioned in the earliest 
 laws. There was also a common phrase applied to an uneducated man, ‘ he 
 can neither swim nor say his alphabet.’ (See also Krause, p. 100, for an apt 
 authority.) 
 
266 
 
 PRE-CURISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 were: standing on tip-toe, while performing certain active 
 movements of the arms; jumping; hanging and climbing on 
 the rope; holding a weight with extended arms; the simple 
 race; boxing, wrestling, &c. After sufficient training, more 
 advanced exercises were undertaken. There was a contest 
 called the pentathlon, in which five exercises performed in suc¬ 
 cession by the same person were included, viz. leaping, run¬ 
 ning, throwing the discus, throwing the spear, and wrestling. 
 This had a place even at the Olympic games. The pancra¬ 
 tium , in which wrestling and boxing together, and the use of 
 feet as well as hands was allowed, seems to have been toler¬ 
 ated, but was reserved for the elder boys; and, always at 
 Athens, under certain regulations which distinguished it 
 from the pancratium of the professional athlete. In the 
 palaestra, attention was paid to the deportment of the boys, 
 and the rod was as little spared here as under the citharist. 1 
 At one time music was associated with gymnastic exercises. 
 Our recently introduced musical drill is consequently only a 
 revival. 
 
 Dancing formed part of the physical training; but by 
 dancing was not meant the rhythmical movement of the feet 
 alone but of the whole body: and this to music. But this 
 exercise, admirable as it is, did not form part of the regular 
 training of the young Athenian. Thorough training in danc¬ 
 ing was confined to the trained choral bands who performed 
 at festivals and in the temple and theatre. The dances culti¬ 
 vated that grace and delicacy of movement to which the 
 Athenian had already in himself a natural bent. Indeed, it 
 was of common knowledge in the ancient world that even a 
 poor Athenian citizen distinguished himself among all other 
 men by his easy carriage and graceful bearing. The dances 
 were of various kinds, religious, warlike, and Corybantean. 
 Popular dances were also handed down in which all took 
 
 1 The proportion of time given to the palaestra and the day-school is not 
 known, nor is it quite certain at what hours of the day the palaestra was 
 chiefly frequented. It is understood, however, that it was visited twice a day 
 — jn the morning before breakfast; and again before sunset. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 267 
 
 part, but (as I have said above) the training in dancing was 
 not a part of the regular education, 1 though what we now 
 call ‘ musical drill ’ was practised. 
 
 The ephebi — youths of eighteen years (now of age and 
 capable of bearing arms) — no longer attended the palaestra 
 but the gymnasium, and received there instruction from the 
 gymnast (trainer of professional athletes) and other teachers. 2 
 Full-grown men also were expected to continue the exercises 
 which as boys and youths they had practised. And on 
 occasion of sacrifices at the Panatlienma — special wrestling 
 matches were arranged for them. 
 
 (e) Moral education 
 
 An ideal aim and a moral purpose ran through the whole 
 of Athenian education. Lucian thus sums up the teaching 
 which the young Athenian received: — ‘We commit our 
 children first to the care of mothers, nurses, and school¬ 
 masters, to instruct them properly in their early years; but 
 as soon as they begin to understand what is right and good, 
 when fear, shame, and emulation spring up in their minds, 
 we then employ them in studies of a different kind, and inure 
 their bodies to labour bv exercises that will increase their 
 strength and vigour. We do not rest content with that 
 power of mind and body which nature lias endowed them 
 with, but endeavour to improve it by education, which 
 renders the good qualities that are born with us more con¬ 
 spicuous, and changes the bad into better; following the 
 example of the husbandman who shelters and hedges round 
 the plant whilst it is low and tender, but when it has gained 
 strength and thickness takes away the unnecessary support, 
 and by leaving it open to the wind and weather, increases its 
 
 1 Ussing, however, seems to think it was. 
 
 2 The precise distinction between the palaestra and the gymnasium is matter 
 of debate, but I have given the general conclusion. It would appear that in 
 the latter period of Greek history the distinction was not observed as in the 
 earlier. As to the age of the ephebus, some say eighteen and some seventeen, 
 It probably varied. 
 
268 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 growth and fertility. 'W 1 e teach them, therefore, first, music 
 and arithmetic, to write letters, and to lead aloud cleaily and 
 distinctly ; as they grow older, we give the maxims, sayings, 
 and opinions of the wise men, and the work of the ancients, 
 generally in verse, as easier for the memory. "When they 
 read of the great and noble actions thus recorded, they are 
 struck with admiration, and a desire of imitating them, 
 ambitious of being themselves distinguished, admired, and 
 celebrated by the poets of future ages as their predecessors 
 were by Homer and Hesiod.’ (‘ Anacharsis. ) 
 
 Again, in Plato’s ‘ Protagoras ’ we find a better account of 
 the training of the young Athenian than any that could be 
 constructed by the collation of many passages from Greek 
 authors; and from it we shall see that in his view the aim 
 throughout was a moral one — an aim to be attained through 
 literature, music, and gymnastic. ‘ Education,’ he says, ‘ and 
 admonition commence in the very first years of childhood, and 
 last to the very end of life. Mother and nurse and father 
 and tutor are quarrelling about the improvement of the 
 child as soon as ever he is able to understand them; he 
 cannot say or do anything without their setting forth to him 
 that this is just and that is unjust; that this is honourable, 
 this is dishonourable; this is holy, that is unholy; do this 
 and abstain from that. And if he obeys, well and good, if 
 not, he is straightened by threats and blows, like a piece of 
 warped wood. At a later stage they send him to teachers 
 and enjoin them to see to his manners even more than to his 
 reading and music; and the teachers do as they are desired. 
 And when the boy has learned his letters and is beginning to 
 understand what is written, as before he understood only 
 what was spoken, they put into his hands the works of 
 great poets, which he reads at school; in these are contained 
 many admonitions and many tales, and praises and encomia 
 of ancient and famous men, which he is required to learn by 
 heart, in order that he may imitate and emulate them and 
 desire to become like them. Then, again, the teachers of 
 the lyre take similar care that their young disciple is steady 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 269 
 
 and gets into no mischief; and when they have taught him 
 the use of the lyre, they introduce him to the works of other 
 excellent poets, who are the lyric poets; and these they set 
 to music, and make their harmonies and rhythms quite 
 familiar to the children, in order that they may learn to be 
 more gentle and harmonious and rhythmical, and so more 
 fitted for speech and action ; for the life of man in every 
 part has need of harmony and rhythm. Then they send 
 them to the master of gymnastics, in order that their bodies 
 may better minister to the virtuous mind and that the weak¬ 
 ness of their bodies may not force them to play the coward 
 in war or on any other occasion. This is what is done by 
 those who have the means, and those who have the means 
 are the rich. Their children begin education soonest and 
 leave off latest. When they have done with masters, the state 
 again compels them to learn the laws, and live after the 
 pattern which they furnish, and not after their own fancies; 
 and just as in learning to write, the writing-master first draws 
 lines with a stylus for the use of the young beginner, and 
 gives him the tablet and makes him follow the lines, so the 
 city draws the laws which were the invention of good law¬ 
 givers which were of old time; these are given to the young 
 man in order to guide him in his conduct whether as ruler 
 or ruled ; and he that transgresses them is to be corrected or 
 called to account, which is a term used not only in your 
 country, but in many others.’ 1 
 
 According to Plato and Lucian, then, the moral training of 
 the young Athenian was never lost sight of. The learning 
 by heart of noble passages from the poets and the whole of 
 the music-instruction (in its narrower sense) had the ethical 
 for its aim in the large sense of that term, including aesthetic. 
 Homer, and the poets generally, were (as I have already 
 said) looked upon as text-books of morality and wisdom. 
 
 To manners also, which are the outward expression of 
 good feeling, there was much attention paid both in the 
 family, in the street, and in the school. Grace and becom- 
 
 1 Translation taken from Mahaffy on Greek education, p, 37. 
 
270 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 ingness of manner was called eukosmia , and throughout the 
 whole Hellenic world stood side by side with the other two 
 aims of education — sophrosyne and arete : — this threefold 
 aim being pursued by means of a training in music and 
 gymnastic. But in the boy the Greeks did not expect to find 
 this harmonious, self-balanced life: he had to be educated to 
 it. The chief virtue of the boy was reverence for his elders, 
 modesty of demeanour, and a keen susceptibility to praise 
 and blame. 
 
 As a result of all this, we find that not only a penetrating 
 and active intelligence, but also grace of manner and refine¬ 
 ment of speech specially distinguished the Athenian Greek. 
 Cicero (‘De Orat.’ iii. 11) refers to it, and particularly men¬ 
 tions the sound of the voice and the sweetness of speaking 
 in a genuine Athenian. Even down to the time of Lucian 
 we have evidence of the existence of the same characteristics. 
 
 We naturally ask what provision was made for religious 
 education. The answer is that by the worship of the family 
 gods, by the civic recognition of the gods in religious festivals, 
 which were numerous and stately, and by learning and sing¬ 
 ing religious hymns and choruses religion was inculcated. 
 In truth, it entered in a pleasant and cheerful way into the 
 whole life of the boy and man as part of the aesthetic educa¬ 
 tion on its more serious side. 
 
 (/) Advanced education 
 
 The ephebi. — The higher education of the Greeks centres 
 in the gymnasium. The gymnasia were state-supported 
 institutions; and, in addition to a managing president, there 
 was a moral overseer or sophronist and many subordinate 
 officers. The ephebi continued to frequent them regularly 
 and go through more difficult gymnastic than in their earlier 
 years. 
 
 Both the moral and gymnastic training may be said to 
 have received their completion in the service in the militia 
 (or state-police) (beginning about the age of eighteen), when 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 271 
 
 among other duties (especially the practice of gymnastic 
 exercises), the youths had to camp out, occupy fortresses and 
 patrol the frontier for two years. There were certain head¬ 
 quarters for the ephebic companies, viz. Eleusis, Sunium, 
 Phyle, &c., besides forts. It was a military service and was 
 at first compulsory. The youths were liable to foreign ser¬ 
 vice only after its completion. It certainly, for manifest 
 social reasons, must have been a great burden on many 
 classes of citizens, and in the later days — those of the 
 Macedonian rule (340 B.C.), it became voluntary, and conse¬ 
 quently aristocratic. Hunting also formed part of the occu¬ 
 pation of the epliebi. 
 
 When they entered on this ephebic training (also as we 
 have seen practised among the Spartans) the Athenian 
 youths, now eighteen years of age, were formally admitted to 
 citizenship before the assembled citizens, and presented with 
 a shield and spear. They took the following oath in the 
 temple of Athene (Grasberger, iii. 61): ‘I will not bring dis¬ 
 honour to these holy weapons, and will not desert the com¬ 
 rade who stands side by side with me, whoever he may be. 
 For the holy places and for the laws I will fight singly and 
 with others. I will leave my country not in a worse but in 
 a better condition by sea and land than I have received it. 
 I will willingly and at all times submit to the judges and to 
 the established ordinances, also not allow that anyone should 
 infringe thereon or not give due obedience. I will reverence 
 the ancestral worship. Let the gods be witnesses of this ! ’ 1 
 Their names were now entered on the citizen-roll of the 
 phratria or ward to which they belonged, and they now in the 
 fullest sense belonged to the state. 
 
 The higher education of the Athenian Greek did not end 
 here. All his life long he was instructed by the public 
 
 1 There are slight variations both of the words and translation of this oath. 
 I give what seems best. Some put the taking of this oath after and not before 
 the ephebic training. There can be little doubt, I think, that it was taken at 
 about the age of eighteen, even before the word ‘ ephebus ’ as a specific and 
 technical term was in use. 
 
272 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 drama, by the contentions and rivalries of civic life, by the 
 great festivals, which were frequent and stimulating, in which 
 the young men took part as members of the choral bands, by 
 the superabounding development of native art, and by the 
 public literary contests which began at an early date in their 
 history and stirred the ambition of youths while moulding 
 the life of maturer men. The civic life, above all, which 
 often stirred questions in which the whole of the Hellenic 
 states were involved, gave a daily education to all citizens. 
 A polity is an education, says Plato. 
 
 Whatever might be disregarded, gymnastic was never for¬ 
 gotten. It was indeed in connection with the gymnasia that 
 sophistical and philosophic teaching began, in the later half 
 of the fifth century b.c., as we shall shortly see. As places 
 of common resort they were analogous to the modern club, 
 but they combined with this the freedom of the market-place 
 and the attractions of a public park, adorned with statues of 
 the gods. Stadia sapientice , says Quintilian, speaking of the 
 early imperial times in Rome, xn. ii. 8, . . . in portions et gym¬ 
 nasia primum , mox in conventus scholarum recesserunt. The 
 Athenian gymnasia of the Academy and the Lyceum gave 
 names to the two great schools of Plato and Aristotle. And, 
 later, the philosophic schools were themselves sometimes 
 called gymnasia. 1 In the next chapter we shall speak further 
 of the higher intellectual education. 
 
 I have in previous chapters brought into view the mean¬ 
 ing of the gymnastic training of boys; as regards young 
 men, the purpose was substantially identical. I may quote 
 with advantage the words of Lucian: ‘We teach them like¬ 
 wise to run races, which makes them swift of foot and pre¬ 
 vents their being out of breath; the course, moreover, is not 
 on solid ground, but in a deep sand, where the foot can 
 never be firm, but slips away from beneath them; we ex¬ 
 ercise them likewise in leaping over ditches with leaden 
 weights in their hands, and teach them to throw darts at 
 
 1 Hence in modern times in Germany (and occasionally in mediseval times) 
 a gymnasium is the designation of a higher school. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 273 
 
 a great distance. You must have seen also in tlie gym¬ 
 nasium a brass thing like a small shield, round and without 
 a handle or strings; you took one up, I remember, and 
 thought it very heavy, and so smooth that you could not 
 hold it: this they throw up into the air, or straight for¬ 
 wards, contending who shall cast it farthest; this strengthens 
 the shoulders and gives the limbs their full power and 
 agility. As to the dust and dirt, which seemed to you so 
 ridiculous, I will tell you why we have so much of it; in 
 the first place, we do it that the combatants may not hurt 
 themselves on the ground, but fall soft and without danger; 
 and secondly, because, when they grow wet in the mud and 
 look like so many eels, as you called them, it lubricates 
 the limbs. It is therefore neither useless nor ridiculous, 
 but promotes strength and agility by obliging them to hold 
 one another with all their might, to prevent their slipping 
 away: add to this, that to lift up a man who is anointed 
 with oil and rolled in the mud is not easy. Thus do we 
 exercise our youth, hoping by these means to render them 
 the guardians of our city and supporters of the commonweal, 
 that they will defend our liberties, conquer our enemies, and 
 make us feared and respected by all around us: in peace 
 they become better subjects, are above anything that is 
 base, and do not run into vice and debauchery from idle¬ 
 ness, but spend their leisure in these useful employments. 
 Our young men are thus prepared for peace and war/ And 
 again elsewhere: ‘Out of the gymnastic struggles another 
 more noble contention springs amongst all the members of 
 the community, and a crown is bestowed, not of pine, of 
 olive, or of parsley, but one with which is wreathed public 
 happiness and private liberty, the ancient rites and cere¬ 
 monies, the wealth, honour, and glory of our country, the 
 safety of every man’s property, with every good and noble 
 gift we wish from the gods. With that crown these are 
 all inwoven, and to this all our toils and labours lead.’ We 
 have hitherto been speaking of the period up to about the 
 
 middle of the fifth century b.c. Up to that date there is 
 
 18 
 
274 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 no evidence that the higher education involved abstract 
 study of any kind except for a few of a philosophic turn 
 of mind. The higher education was gymnastic, in so far 
 as it was compulsory. 
 
 A retrospect will satisfy us that neither in school nor 
 during the ephebic period had the Athenian a hard time. 
 In the school up to the date given above there was not 
 even geometry, geography, or drawing. Music, literature, 
 and gymnastic summed up his education. The life both 
 of the boy and the youth was easy, and by the help of the 
 slave-system which relieved citizens from sordid material 
 claims on their energies, the young were able to live a 
 more unencumbered life than was, perhaps, altogether good 
 for them. It was, however, always life; and owing to the 
 peculiar genius of the people, a life full of interest and 
 freshness, and of intellectual as well as bodily activity. 
 
 (y) School and home-discijpline 
 
 The school discipline was severe. The rod was freely 
 used both in the literary, music, and gymnastic training. It 
 is not till the times of Seneca and Quintilian, so far as I 
 know, that we find any protest against corporal chastisement, 
 unless we take the remark of Plato, ‘ Pep.’ vii. 536, as such a 
 protest: — ‘ In the case of the mind, no study pursued under 
 compulsion remains rooted in the memory. Hence you must 
 train children to their studies in a playful manner and with¬ 
 out any air of constraint.’ 1 It is not to be supposed that 
 even after Seneca and Quintilian the severity of punishment 
 was lessened. The Greeks and Romans, and after them 
 Christian teachers throughout the middle ages and down to 
 very recent times, associated teaching with flogging as a 
 kind of inevitable necessity. 
 
 But I commend this to general attention, that school¬ 
 masters were held of small account. Nor do I believe it 
 possible that, while this class of the community is fitly repre- 
 
 1 Locke uses words almost identical. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 275 
 
 sented as holding a book in one hand and a cane in the other, 
 it can ever stand high in social estimation. It is only when 
 we find in teachers of youth a high conception of their social 
 function as essentially a spiritual function, that the rod will 
 be regarded as degrading (to the teacher, not to the boy) and 
 the community begin to accord to schoolmasters that respect 
 which then, but only then, will rightfully belong to them. 
 And why ? Because then, and only then, will they work for 
 the intellect through the intellect, for the moral nature 
 through the moral nature. A resort to physical force is to 
 be regarded as a sign of weakness in the educator, save in 
 very extreme cases and after much deliberation. 
 
 The domestic discipline was more severe than we should 
 have expected from the general character of the Athenians; 
 but it is an additional confirmation of the importance they 
 attached to moral training. Sandals or slippers were used for 
 personal castigation. Strict attention was paid to the little 
 acts of life, such as the manner of sitting at table and of eat¬ 
 ing. The manner of taking salt and bread was regulated. 
 Even when the boys had reached their eighteenth year they 
 were held under strict subordination to their parents, and 
 their demeanour in the streets was prescribed. Modesty of 
 demeanour, respect to older men, and a general becomingness 
 of conduct was strictly imposed, not only on boys but young 
 men. Both at home and at school and in the palaestra, the 
 rod was freely used. A verse of Menander is to the effect 
 that a youth who has not been flogged has not been 
 educated. 
 
 (7i) Education of the women 
 
 The women had no school education. It was wholly 
 domestic. The room in which they and their children lived 
 was generally on the upper floor, to which they were mostly 
 confined, except on great festival occasions. There would of 
 course be necessarily more freedom of life among the poorer 
 classes ; but less education. At popular festivals the maidens 
 
276 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 walked in procession and danced choral dances. 1 On other 
 occasions the girls were confined to the house, and therefore 
 the Athenian women were for the most part slender and 
 pale. The mother gave them instruction in all feminine 
 occupations, in spinning, sewing, weaving, knitting, &c. 
 They sometimes learned a little reading and writing from 
 their mothers, and also singing and playing on the lyre. 
 ‘ Special emphasis/ says Schmidt, ‘ was in the case of the 
 girl laid on moral training : propriety of conduct, chastity and 
 purity, were the most beautiful womanly virtues, and domes¬ 
 tic thrift, as well as judicious management of the household, 
 the finest womanly qualities.’ Woman accordingly had not 
 that social and political influence in Athens which she had 
 in Sparta. Her position was little better than that of an 
 Oriental wife. Marriages were contracts arranged by parents. 
 The wife had no part even in social entertainments. When 
 her husband had guests she was not allowed to be present at 
 the dinner which she had herself prepared. 
 
 (i) Method. The schoolmaster. Holidays. School-houses 
 
 Method.—Modes of procedure have been occasionally 
 adverted to above in their proper place. As regards method 
 generally, there was none consciously thought out. The 
 teacher pointed to a letter and named it and the boy named 
 it after him. He recited pieces of poetry line by line to the 
 boy, and they were repeated until they had been acquired — 
 later, pieces were written down by the teacher and copied by 
 the pupil. The whole process was essentially a telling on 
 one side and learning by heart on the other; but explana¬ 
 tions were always given and asked. When manuscripts 
 became more common the master’s work would of course be 
 lightened and the boy’s independent activity stimulated. 
 
 i At tlie so-called bear-festival, says Schmidt (Brauronia) girls between 
 five and ten years of age were every five years consecrated to Artemis, 
 while sacrifices were offered and a passage from the Iliad read — a con¬ 
 secration which was meant to be the symbolic commemoration of a pure 
 virginity. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 277 
 
 There were no home lessons. Everything was done in school. 
 Any fairly educated Greek could teach on these terms who 
 had the necessary patience. I have already said that, so far 
 as we can learn, the pupils came up in turn to say their les¬ 
 son to the master. Questions of classification and school 
 organisation had not arisen. It is impossible to doubt, how¬ 
 ever, that pieces of poetry were learned collectively, as were 
 the alphabet and the multiplication table, to a kind of 
 monotonous chant. 
 
 On a vase (about the date of the Peloponnesian War and 
 now in the Berlin Museum) we have an interior view of a 
 schoolroom: and a young man is correcting the written 
 exercise of a boy, another instructs the boys in flute-playing, 
 a third gives instruction in the cithara, while a boy recites 
 poetry to his teacher. 
 
 The Schoolmaster. — The day-school master did not 
 take a high position. Demosthenes taunts his great rival 
 with having had to help his father to clean out the school 
 when he was a boy, and evidently regards the work of a 
 primary teacher as a very humble one indeed. ‘ As a boy,’ 
 he says (‘De Corona,’ 258), ‘you were reared in abject pov¬ 
 erty, waiting with your father on the school, grinding the 
 ink, sponging the benches, sweeping the room, doing the 
 duty of a menial rather than of a freeman’s son.’ There was 
 no public qualification for the office of schoolmaster, and 
 hence, chiefly, the low social status. It was the refuge of the 
 distressed. There was a proverbial saying applied to a man 
 who had disappeared: ‘ he is either dead or become a primary 
 schoolmaster.’ Lucian, long after the palmy days of Athe¬ 
 nian education, condemns tyrants sent to the nether world 
 to be beggars or primary schoolmasters. Dionysius the 
 tyrant taught an elementary school at Corinth, and this is 
 mentioned as an illustration of how low a man might fall. 
 Accordingly, it is absurd to suppose that the aim which the 
 Athenian mind had more or less consciously before it in the 
 education of the young was effectually carried out in the 
 schools. The aim and general method we know — the re- 
 
278 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 suits were doubtless often disappointing. The family and 
 the state were after all the chief educators. 
 
 Fees were paid for instruction, and hence partly the low 
 estimation in which the teacher was held, for the Greek mind 
 looked on paid intellectual work as casting discredit on the 
 recipient; at least till after the time of the sophists. 
 
 It is only when the state takes up education as a national 
 concern that teachers receive proper remuneration, and only 
 when they are professionally trained that they have any 
 status whatsoever. It appears from an inscription that at Teos 
 there was an endowment for a staff of teachers in the third 
 century b.c. 1 This endowment provided for girls as well as 
 hoys. Only the children of those who fell in battle were 
 educated at the expense of the state. 
 
 Holidays. — School holidays and festivals are frequently 
 referred to by the ancients. And when we add to these the 
 public festivals, to which the Athenians were much addicted, 
 we may conclude that the Athenian boy had an easy time of it. 
 
 School Houses. — The school-buildings were not of state 
 origin. The literary, musical, and gymnastic Teaching of 
 boys was all given in the houses or rooms provided by the 
 adventure teachers. The gymnasia for the ephebi and grown 
 men were, however, provided at the public expense. These 
 were large enclosures planted with trees and adorned with 
 gardens and shrubberies, monuments, temples, fountains, &c. 
 All Greek towns were provided with them. In the fifth cen¬ 
 tury B.c. there were three, the Academy, the Cynosarges, and 
 the Lyceum. They served, as I have already said, the pur¬ 
 poses of modern clubs as well as exercising grounds, and also 
 in the course of time they were the centres of schools of 
 philosophy and rhetoric. 
 
 5. CONTRAST BETWEEN ATHENIAN AND SPARTAN EDUCATION 
 
 The education of the Hellene generally was an education, 
 as we have seen, in gymnastic and music — music compre- 
 
 1 See Girard, VEducation Athenienne, witli references. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 279 
 
 hending literary and moral training as well as music in its 
 narrower sense. In gymnastic, including the training to 
 physical endurance generally, the Spartan was much more 
 exacting than the Athenian. The Athenian aimed at the 
 perfect development of the body and the maintenance of 
 health; the Spartan at making the body serviceable for the 
 hardest tasks that could be imposed on it. Both, however, 
 had in view the moral control to which good gymnastic 
 training contributes. 1 Neither the Spartan nor Athenian 
 gymnastic, however, is to be compared with our modern 
 British training by means of organised play. In our games 
 both physical and moral ends are gained in a way which 
 was, I believe, quite beyond the reach of the Greek system, 
 and which almost fulfils Plato’s conception of gymnastic as 
 an education. 
 
 In music, again, the Spartan, as we have seen, was edu¬ 
 cated, but only in the narrow and modern sense of the word 
 music. Beligious and national chants, metrical laws, choral 
 songs, and heroic ballads were, however, taught, and indeed 
 largely practised. The Athenian did all this, but, over and 
 above, he acquired skill on a musical instrument, and he 
 carried out musical education in its larger and literary sense 
 of reading, writing, and arithmetic. The study of the national 
 literature and the cultivation of literary taste by school reci¬ 
 tations and by the public drama, were all attended to. The 
 chief instrument in the education of mind among the Athe¬ 
 nians, was in brief, literature; and this chiefly in the form 
 of poetry. The Athenian education was (to use a modern 
 expression) wholly humanistic, and yet it had a very direct 
 connection with the intellectual life of the boy when he be¬ 
 came a fully-grown man. The Spartan education was ethical 
 (in a very narrow sense) and conservative, resting on law 
 and custom as sacred, and admitting of no development. 
 
 The Spartan had a restricted definite and civic aim; the 
 Athenian’s aim, though never losing sight of the state, was 
 
 1 The Boeotians, again, carried gymnastic into athletics to such an extent 
 as to he hurtful to the bodily growth. 
 
280 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 broad as humanity itself. Reading and writing, in so far 
 as they existed at Sparta, were esteemed only in so far as 
 they were ‘ useful.’ The Athenian view, on the other hand, 
 is well expressed in the already cited remark of Aristotle : 
 ‘ To be always in search of the useful by no means befits 
 men who are magnanimous and who are freemen.’ ‘ Give 
 the fellow half a drachma, and let him be gone,’ called out 
 Euclid to his slave, when a pupil asked what advantage he 
 would gain by mathematical study. To pursue even music 
 with a view to being an expert and turning it to use, and not 
 in the interests of a liberal education, was banausian. The 
 Spartan trained the citizen : the Athenian trained the man. 
 Hence in all the arts which adorn human life the Athenians 
 were great. They are still the masters of the modern world. 
 After the school period was over, the education of the citizen 
 went on, for it was a mere continuation of the work of the 
 school. The drama, sculpture, architecture, painting, sur¬ 
 rounded daily life with the noblest ideals. ‘ We carry them,’ 
 says Lucian in his ‘ Anacharsis,’ ‘ to comedies and tragedies at 
 our theatres, that whilst they behold the virtues and vices of 
 past times, they may themselves be attached to the one and 
 avoid the other; permitting our comic writers to expose and 
 ridicule the citizens; and this we do, as well for their sakes 
 who may grow better by seeing themselves laughed at, as 
 for that of the spectators in general who may thus escape 
 being ridiculed for the like absurdities.’ Thus was Athens 
 throughout the life of each man a perpetual school in the 
 best sense of that word, and not in the Spartan one. In the 
 speech of Pericles, part of which we quoted in the first chap¬ 
 ter, he is constantly contrasting Athens and Sparta, and the 
 contrast in their lives we see repeated in their processes of 
 education. 
 
 Note further, that the Athenian system was a free and 
 voluntary system, the state merely supervising and laying 
 down general rules, while carefully guarding the morals of 
 the palaestra and gymnasium. In the laws ascribed to Solon 
 are found injunctions to all parents to educate their children, 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 281 
 
 and also certain rules for the schools, but these are all of a 
 merely regulative character. In Sparta, on the other hand, 
 the system was a state system — compulsory and gratuitous. 
 Herein lies, partially, the explanation of its being so liardfast 
 and inelastic. All were cast in one mould. So must it 
 always be with over-centralised administration. This has 
 always to be resisted by a country which prizes freedom and 
 variety of culture. 
 
 Sparta, quite consistently with its theory of life and edu¬ 
 cation, took possession of the young citizen at the age of 
 seven; 1 Athens, only at the ephebic age of eighteen. 
 
 Again, in Athens we have professional schoolmasters; 
 whereas in Sparta worthy citizens supervise the education 
 of youth. 
 
 When we reflect on the past historical survey, we cannot 
 but be deeply impressed by the contrast of East and West. 
 Among the Hellenic races we first find ourselves in the cur- 
 rent of a life with higher aims, both national and individual, 
 than any we had previously encountered. Here, first, we 
 find a people living under political conditions which favoured 
 individual culture, intellectual activity, and personal ambi¬ 
 tion. * We breathe the atmosphere of liberty — an atmo¬ 
 sphere essential to the life of mind. We also find a religion 
 which, spite of the traditionary popular tales about the gods, 
 was an aesthetic idealism and intensely human. But it is a 
 superficial conclusion that favourable conditions made the 
 Greeks: the political and social conditions were themselves 
 * part of the expression of the Hellenic spirit. Let me add that, 
 for the maintenance of this spirit, they relied on the proper 
 upbringing of youth. In nothing were Greek writers more at 
 one than on the necessity of the education of the young with 
 a view to a life worth living and to the security of the state. 
 
 I have endeavoured to place before the reader the dis¬ 
 tinctive characteristics of the education of the two great 
 
 1 Nay, earlier, for it was the elders who determined whether a babe was to 
 live, not the father. 
 
232 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Hellenic types. It has only now to be noted that, after 
 the death of Alexander the Great, Hellenic education all 
 round the Mediterranean had in ore characteristics in com¬ 
 mon than in earlier times. The Ionic-Attic idea governed, 
 although at Sparta many of the old customs survived for 
 long after, and into Christian times. 
 
 I have been exhibiting the general aim and current of 
 Hellenic education. It is scarcely necessary to guard the 
 reader against concluding that, always and everywhere in 
 the Hellenic cities, this aim was consciously pursued, or that, 
 even in the most favourable circumstances, it was fully 
 realised. Even in the golden age of Socrates, we have com¬ 
 plaints of a degeneracy from a level of education which was 
 probably never reached. The well-known locus classicus in 
 the ‘ Clouds ’ of Aristophanes gives expression to these 
 complaints, but we ought never to attach too much histori¬ 
 cal importance to the criticisms of professed satirists or 
 humourists. 
 
 ‘ I prepare, ’ he says, i myself to speak 
 Of manners primitive and that good time 
 Which I have seen, when discipline prevailed, 
 
 And modesty was sanctioned by the laws. 
 
 No babbling then was suffered in the school; 
 
 The scholar’s text was silence. The whole group 
 
 In orderly procession sallied forth 
 
 Right onwards, without straggling, to attend 
 
 Their teacher in harmonics : though the snow 
 
 Fell on them thick as meal, the hardy brood 
 
 Breasted the storm uncloaked. Their harps were strung 
 
 Not to ignoble strains, for they were taught 
 
 A loftier key, whether to chant the name 
 
 Of Pallas terrible amidst the blaze 
 
 Of cities overthrown ; or wide and far to spread, 
 
 As custom was, the echoing peal.’ 
 
 I shall now speak briefly of the higher education of the 
 few in the fifth century b.c. and thereafter. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 283 
 
 CHAPTEB Y 
 
 THE HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE FIFTH CENTURY B.C. 
 
 AND THEREAFTER 
 
 We have seen that the Athenian youth and boy had, so far 
 as school instruction, primary, secondary, or higher was con¬ 
 cerned, an easy time of it up to the middle of the fifth cen¬ 
 tury b.c. And, as historians of education, we have to note 
 the fact that Greece was within sight of the highest pinnacle 
 of its fame in arts and arms before school instruction took a 
 more serious form. In Epic, Elegiac, Lyric, and Tragic 
 Dramatic poetry, all the greatest work had been done before 
 450 B.C., and in the subsequent sixty years philosophy, his¬ 
 tory, and even oratory and comedy, had given many, if not 
 most, of their greatest examples to the world. 
 
 From, let us say, 460 b.c., we can detect the beginnings of 
 what we call the ‘higher’ education, and this has of course 
 to be connected with the life of the ephebi. But first we 
 have to consider the historical situation. 
 
 As Athens and the other active Hellenic centres pro¬ 
 gressed in material civilisation and in democratic forms of 
 government, the number of young men of the leisured 
 classes who desired an outlet for their activity in political 
 life and were ready to interest themselves in all softs of 
 questions, largely increased. Improved facilities of com¬ 
 munication among Greek states and the multiplication of 
 political and colonial relations contributed also to the 
 enhancement of public life, especially after the Persian 
 wars, which ended 479 B.c. We had now the beginnings 
 of what is called the Athenian empire. It seemed to have 
 been instinctively felt that the chances of success in public 
 life, now so much enlarged and so much more exacting, 
 demanded more intellectual preparation than heretofore. 
 
284 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 The schools of abstract philosophy had as yet engaged the 
 attention of only a select few, and, moreover, did not meet 
 the practical wants of the time. 
 
 When we consider the cosmopolitan view of life and 
 politics forced on the Greeks by their warlike encounters 
 with both East and West and the wide ramification of 
 their commercial relations, the rise of a spirit of inquiry 
 and of criticism of existing institutions and their basis in 
 reason was not surprising. The new intellectual movement 
 sought for satisfaction. And this, quite apart from the 
 growing conviction that, with the increased importance of 
 the democracy came a demand on those who would succeed 
 in political life to study both politics and oratory . 1 
 
 Cotemporaneously with the rise of this new intellectual 
 and political movement, there arose in the Hellenic states 
 teachers who professed to give all the instruction needed 
 for guidance in public life. These men (called sophists, 
 the chief of whom were Protagoras, Gorgias, and Prodicus), 
 taking up their quarters first in one town and then in 
 another, offered their intellectual wares for sale, and thus 
 incurred the contempt of the pure philosophers who held 
 that wisdom was to be neither bought nor sold. They 
 were, however, a necessity of the time. They met the politi¬ 
 cal and educational demands of the age. 
 
 The sophists also represented, and to some extent satis¬ 
 fied, the critical needs of the time. As in the case of all 
 other ancient nations, it is difficult to show how the beliefs, 
 religious, ethical, and political, by which the Hellenic com¬ 
 munities were held together, grew up. They passed down 
 through the state (sometimes aided by a separate priesthood 
 who consecrated and developed tradition) and the family, 
 not as the product of deliberate scientific investigation, but 
 
 1 As long as MSS. were scarce, speaking before public assemblies was the 
 only mode of communication with the people. Rolls were for sale in shops 
 before the time of Plato. There was, however, no public library in Athens 
 till the Emperor Hadrian founded one. The Alexandrian library was 
 founded in 323 b.c. by Ptolemy Soter: an example afterwards imitated by 
 the kings of Pergamus. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 285 
 
 as the authoritative voice of a remote antiquity. Nations 
 held fast by their fathers and their gods — who were the 
 gods of their fathers — and clung to these with an unques¬ 
 tioning tenacity as if they alone protected their political 
 life from dissolution. The day of scepticism and reason 
 ultimately arrives for all such authoritative teaching, with 
 what final result to the faith of man and the interpretation 
 of human life, individual and social, we do not even yet 
 know. The Hellenic races, brilliant as they were, formed 
 no exception to this general law of life and progress. The 
 sophistical movement was a revolt against authority and 
 convention, but as a revolt it served its purpose by pro¬ 
 claiming the rights of reason. 
 
 The leading sophists had unquestionably studied the 
 systems of philosophy which had come down to them, and 
 were men of culture; but the abstract speculative interest 
 seemed to them to yield little that told on the immediate 
 human interest. They accordingly offered to their eager 
 pupils a kind of philosophy of practical life, superficial 
 it might be, hut still having intelligible relations to the 
 world of political activity on which they were entering 
 with all the ardent ambition of youth. Along with this, 
 they also frequently gave scientific instruction in all the 
 knowledge of the time. The more aspiring young men of 
 the upper classes eagerly sought for these instructors be¬ 
 cause they professed to give, and did, as a matter of fact, 
 give, a rational though doubtless superficial, view of life in 
 all its relations which could be turned to immediate use. 
 They obtained all the general knowledge they wanted from 
 the grammatical, physical, and moral discussions of the 
 peripatetic lecturers; but they prized above all their defi¬ 
 nite political instruction and their art of rhetoric. Bhetoric 
 had now become a theory as well as an art, and in the 
 course of time unfolded itself as a system so detailed and 
 so encumbered with technical details as to be, to the modern 
 mind, intolerable. Still, with all its superficiality and de¬ 
 fects and formalism, the teaching of the sophists supplied 
 
286 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 a want and gave the only higher education which then 
 existed, or was, perhaps, then practicable. 
 
 That the name ‘ sophist ’ did not, as time went on and as 
 rhetorical theory was dignified by the more earnest treatment 
 of Isocrates, call forth contempt, is evident from the fact 
 that the designation was almost universally applied to the 
 higher teachers, whether they included philosophy in their 
 course or confined themselves, as was the general rule, to 
 superficial science and a practical oratory. 
 
 It was inevitable, under a system of free learning and free 
 teaching such as existed in Athens and the Greek world 
 generally, that evils should arise. Numbers of pretenders 
 offered to give young men a rapid preparation for oratory and 
 consequent success in life. These men gave their pupils the 
 ready-made results of knowledge, and not training. Dia¬ 
 logues and speeches were learned by heart, and youths 
 taught to believe that a superficial acquaintance with the 
 commonplaces of science — political and other — a ceYtain 
 command of the technique of oratory and the attainment of 
 a certain verbal fluency, constituted education. But we 
 know that there were many sophists who took a more 
 serious view of their profession. Thus were brought within 
 the sphere of the higher education all the leisured youth of 
 the country, who aimed at public life in some form or other 
 and for whom abstract philosophy had no attractions. And 
 let us remember that public life under ancient conditions 
 comprised many possible occupations: an advocate in the 
 courts, a political speaker, including in this the whole func¬ 
 tion of the modern journalist and pamphleteer, and all legis¬ 
 lative and administrative employments. Apart, however, 
 from these special practical aims, the higher education under 
 sophists of good reputation had a liberalising character. 
 Speaking 500 years after the death of Isocrates, Lucian in 
 his £ Anacharsis ’ says, ‘ We commit our youth to certain 
 good and approved masters, who are called sophists or philos¬ 
 ophers ’ (the designation sophist was frequently used in¬ 
 stead of philosopher in Lucian’s time, 2nd century a.d.), ‘by 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 287 
 
 whom they are taught both to say and to do what is right 
 and just, to attend to and assist the commonweal, to live 
 honestly, never to seek after what is base and unworthy, or 
 to commit violence on any man.’ The advanced instruction 
 was indeed ethical and political, in so far as it was not 
 purely rhetorical. 
 
 Meanwhile, the philosophical schools which in the fourth 
 century held the tradition of earnest scientific inquiry for the 
 sake of truth alone, gave a profounder discipline: but the 
 youth of the country, down even to the close of classical an¬ 
 tiquity, unquestionably regarded rhetoric and oratory as the 
 main end of all their studies, to which philosophy was only 
 contributory. The outcome of the whole was, that in the 
 fourth century the higher or ‘ university ’ education com¬ 
 prised, for those who desired it, philosophy, which took a 
 wide range, politics, and rhetoric. For the few so disposed, 
 there were teachers of mathematics and astronomy. The 
 higher education continued to maintain this character (speak¬ 
 ing generally) in all the towns of the Mediterranean till 
 about 300 a.d. 
 
 I have said above that the higher education connected 
 itself closely with the ephebi and their rules of life. They 
 were not always on military duty, and as their athletics 
 were carried on in the gymnasia where philosophers and 
 sophists were in the habit of lecturing and teaching, it 
 gradually became the custom for many of the young men to 
 attend their prelections and to engage in dialogue with them. 
 And indeed, in the preceding generation it had already be¬ 
 come a recognised custom for young men, in the intervals of 
 their epliebic training and after it was concluded, to attend 
 one or more teachers of philosophy or politics or rhetoric. 
 The military duties of the ephebi were reduced to one year 
 about the time of Philip of Macedon, as I have previously 
 said, and, ere long, ephebic service became altogether volun¬ 
 tary ; and it would appear that the youths were now officially 
 expected, though not required, to attend the schools. Thus 
 the ephebic period became virtually a kind of ‘university’ 
 
288 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 life — in germ at least. Even then, however, all intellectual 
 pursuits gathered round gymnastic. So that we have this 
 interesting result, that the military and gymnastic training 
 of men above eighteen absorbed into itself what we should 
 in these days call university education — at least in so far as 
 opportunity went — just as the gymnasia themselves became 
 the university headquarters. 
 
 It was in the school of Isocrates (393-338 B.c.) that we 
 find the best results of the higher educational activity of the 
 fourth century. His popularity and fame all the world 
 recognises. As Cicero says in ‘Brutus,’ 32: 'Isocrates cujus 
 domus cunctse Grsecise quasi ludus quidam patuit atque offi- 
 cina dicendi.’ Plato, in the ‘ Phtedrus,’ puts him above all 
 the other teachers of oratory, ‘ because he has philosophy in 
 him.’ Isocrates, however, was not a philosopher in the 
 Platonic or Aristotelian sense; but rather a man of large 
 general culture and keen political interests who, recognising 
 rhetoric as the greatest of studies, because by means of it 
 one might persuade men to wise political action and to a 
 noble personal life, organised the teaching of this great art. 
 His aim was to make a thoughtful man and a capable citi¬ 
 zen ; but a capable citizen was one who could virite and speak, 
 and so influence his fellow-citizens to wise courses. The 
 educational question which Isocrates tried to solve was,‘ By 
 what intellectual preparation can this be best attained ? ’ 
 He always kept in view the ethical and large political rela¬ 
 tions of rhetoric. He professed to train for public life and 
 citizenship, not for abstract investigation. The Athenians 
 were by nature an eloquent people; and, altogether apart 
 from practical considerations, it was to be expected that they 
 would study eloquence, and that it should occupy a supreme 
 place in the higher education. Isocrates at once represented 
 and satisfied the national need. Moreover, he honestly 
 attached supreme importance to style as the servant of jus¬ 
 tice and virtue — being apparently persuaded that true elo¬ 
 quence must always be the reflection of a virtuous and wise 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 289 
 
 mind. Eloquence, he held, has for its aim the development 
 of great truths and is the chief agent in civilisation. And 
 although he saw all round him, to his deep regret, this same 
 eloquence used to tickle the ears of the populace or to ad¬ 
 vance personal interests or unworthy causes, it did not seem 
 to occur to him that a higher education founded on rhetoric 
 alone must he ultimately doomed to failure. In his view the 
 best form and the best thought were indissolubly allied. 
 Art in speech was the greatest of arts. In training to this, 
 all the faculties, intellectual and moral, were trained. Assum¬ 
 ing a good preliminary secondary education in grammar and 
 literature, and recognising mathematics and astronomy as a 
 valuable preparatory discipline, he rested the whole higher 
 education, thereafter, on language as an instrument of thought. 
 His pupils spent two or three years (sometimes even four) 
 under his tuition. We must therefore, I think, look upon 
 this organised school of Isocrates as the mother-university of 
 Europe. 
 
 As educationalists the only quarrel we have with Isocrates 
 arises out of his attitude to philosophy in the sense of the 
 pursuit of absolute truth — Science. But having said this, 
 we then become his followers. The fit use of language as 
 the expression of reason in man, and the power of using it 
 eloquently, not for personal aggrandisement, but in the 
 public interest, was unquestionably in those days the mark 
 of the highest culture. Is it not so even now? Given 
 adequate preparation such as Isocrates demanded, and still 
 more such as Quintilian insists upon, there is much to be 
 said for the ancient view, even in these days. 
 
 The higher education, said Isocrates, must be (1) Practical 
 — avoiding barren subtleties. (2) Rational, i.e. resting on 
 the development of the whole intelligence, not on technicali¬ 
 ties. (3) Comprehensive, i.e. not limited to the routine of 
 any single profession. He felt that he could carry young 
 men through a curriculum of this kind, which would not, it 
 is true, make them orators if they had no natural genius for 
 
 eloquence, but would at least make cultured men equipped 
 
 19 
 
290 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 for the service of the state. If these objects were to be 
 attained, the higher or university education ought to be a 
 school of rhetoric and the sole subject of study should be 
 ‘ philosophy.’ But of philosophy he took a wholly practical 
 view. Denying the possibility of attaining to absolute truth, 
 he regarded philosophy as the application of principles to 
 the actual work and occasions of civic and political life. 
 ‘ The philosophy of Isocrates,’ says Professor Jebb (ii. 41), 
 is the art of speaking and writing on large political subjects 
 considered as a preparation for advising or acting in political 
 affairs.’ Philosophy, so regarded, could scarcely fail to 
 mould the character as well as the opinions of youth, while 
 giving them the practical power of using their knowledge for 
 the benefit of society. And this was Isocrates’ aim — sub¬ 
 stantially an ethical one. Pie defends the better class of 
 sophists in these words: ‘ Some of their pupils become power¬ 
 ful debaters ; others become competent teachers ; all become 
 more accomplished members of society.’ 1 Instead of the 
 hasty preparation for future life which gave rise to the just 
 criticisms of Aristotle and others on the pretentious character 
 of the vulgar sophists, Isocrates carried the pupils through a 
 carefully organised course. ‘ I always teach my pupils,’ he 
 says, ‘ that in composing a speech the first thing needful is 
 to define clearly the object which they wish the speech to 
 effect: the next thing is to adapt the means to that end’ 
 (Jebb, ii. p. 243) ; and ‘ the real essence of his method con¬ 
 sisted in developing the learner’s own faculty through the 
 learner’s own efforts ’ (Jebb, p. 46). This method was 
 entirely opposed to that of the vulgar sophists, who made 
 their pupils learn by heart speeches and dialogues and then 
 trust to their natural powers of imitation and their own 
 undisciplined use of language; ‘ as if,’ says Aristotle, ‘ you 
 could teach a man to be a shoemaker by showing him several 
 pairs of shoes.’ On the other hand, it must be granted that 
 Aristotle’s ‘ Bhetoric,’ while the most philosophical exposition 
 of the subject, could never have made an orator: a long 
 
 1 On the Antidosis , Jebb’s translation (ii. 144, of Attic Orators). 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 291 
 
 course of practical study was indispensable; and the pupils 
 of Isocrates were always carried through a series of exercises 
 in composition and rhetoric which were carefully prepared 
 and revised and corrected by the master. 
 
 The death of Isocrates did not affect the position of 
 Athens as the world-centre of all intellectual activity. The 
 ambitious, well-to-do youth of the Mediterranean flocked to 
 Athens to receive their final preparation for life. And this 
 not in the schools of rhetoric alone — for side by side with 
 the rhetorical schools arose the great schools of philosophy, 
 Platonic, Peripatetic, Stoic, and Epicurean, as organised 
 systems , each with its teachers and devotees ; and in these 
 the more thoughtful found satisfaction for their philosophical 
 aspirations. 
 
 The sophistic and philosophical movements combined told, 
 as might have been expected, on the lower schools. Gram¬ 
 mar, drawing, and geometry had been gradually introduced: 
 and thus a formal element was added to the purely literary 
 and musical in the education of the young — especially of 
 those who frequented schools longer than others. Geogra¬ 
 phy, too, found a place in the school curriculum — almost a 
 necessity among a maritime race like the Greeks. Thus the 
 secondary-school curriculum was completed: but for cen¬ 
 turies, down, indeed, to the overthrow of the Boman empire, 
 it was only a good secondary school which could boast of 
 embracing a complete course. The result of Hellenic thought 
 on the education of the man was ultimately summed up on the 
 lines of Plato’s conceptions, supplemented by Aristotle. And 
 it was this : in the secondary school grammar, literature, music, 
 drawing, geography, arithmetic, and geometry ; in the higher 
 schools, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy (all 
 scientifically treated), these leading to the supreme study, 
 Dialectic in the sense of philosophy. 
 
 In the centuries after the birth of Christ, rhetoric and 
 dialectic were regarded as constituting, with grammar, a 
 propaedeutic to the higher physical studies. But meanwhile 
 they had altered their character, and were taught only in 
 
292 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 their formal and barren elements. Together they constituted 
 the trivium, the higher studies constituting the qucidrivium. 
 These names, however, were not in use till the fifth century. 
 All through the middle ages the seven studies taken together 
 constituted the liberal arts. But dialectic as philosophy in 
 the Platonic and Aristotelian sense had vanished from view, 
 and the preparatory ‘ arts * became restricted in their scope 
 and sterile in their results. 
 
 It was to the philosophic schools to which I have above 
 referred that Athens continued to owe its true fame and in¬ 
 fluence more than to the schools of the rhetoricians. The 
 philosophers pursued truth for its own sake. They repre¬ 
 sented the scientific spirit. Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno, 
 all had their successors. 1 But, while it is true that it was to 
 the philosophic teaching that Athens owed its greatness, it is 
 also true that as a consequence of the great importance as¬ 
 signed to oratory and to style generally, the higher education 
 was always tending to degenerate into the study of rhetoric 
 alone. A short road to oratory was the desire of young men, 
 
 1 The connection of these philosophical schools with certain localities in 
 Athens lias been briefly stated by Professor Mahaffy, as follows : 
 
 He says : ‘There were two gymnasia (in. the Greek sense) provided for the 
 youth who had finished their schooling—that in the groves of the suburb 
 called after the hero Academus, and that called the Kynosarges, near Mount 
 Lycabettus. The latter was specially open to the sons of citizens by foreign 
 wives. Thirdly, in Pericles’ day was established the Lykeion, near the river 
 Ilissos. They were all provided with water, shady walks, and gardens, and 
 were once among the main beauties of Athens and its neighbourhood. The 
 Academy became so identified with Plato’s teaching, that his pupils Antis- 
 thenes (the Cynic) and Aristotle settled beside, or in, the Kynosarges and 
 Lykeion respectively and were known by their locality, till the pupils of 
 Antisthenes removed to the frescoed portico (stoa) in Athens and were thence 
 called Stoics. Epicurus taught in his own garden in Athens. All these 
 settlements were copied from Plato’s idea. He apparently taught both in the 
 public gymnasium and in a private possession close beside it; and in his will, 
 preserved by Diogenes Laertius, he bequeaths his two pieces of land to Speu- 
 sippus, thus designating him as his formal successor. His practice being fol¬ 
 lowed, the title “ scholarch ’’ soon grew up for the head of the school and the 
 owner of a life interest in the locality devoted to the purpose. Each master 
 was called the successor ( diadochus) of his predecessor, and the succession of 
 these heads of schools has been traced with more or less success through all 
 the Hellenistic period/— Old Greek Education, p. 136. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 
 
 293 
 
 and they more and more tended to gather chiefly round the 
 rhetoricians. The next stage of degeneracy was inevitable. 
 From the moment linguistic art and mere style and oratori¬ 
 cal effect became the professed object of study, education was 
 divorced from reality. A man like Isocrates could maintain 
 a living connection between reason, ethical purpose, and 
 speech ; but we cannot imperil education on the expectation 
 of an apostolic succession of men of genius. With the 
 ordinary teacher degeneracy is certain, if we do not hold 
 high the scientific aim of knowledge for the sake of knowl¬ 
 edge, living for the sake of life. Form tends to become all 
 in all. Not what is said, but how it is said, becomes the 
 standard of culture. Education becomes artificial. Art for 
 art’s sake passes into artifice. The mind wastes its power 
 over words and niceties of phrase and composition. Origi¬ 
 nality gives place to imitation. Severe discipline in lan¬ 
 guage, grammar, and logic is lost sight of, and technical 
 forms are got up as if one could be eloquent by rule. Thus 
 rhetoric itself misses its aim — eloquence. Literature and 
 style interest all men, the forms of literature and the tech¬ 
 nicalities of style are for the arid expert alone. Under the 
 influence of rhetorical rules, the severe, manly, simple, and 
 logical development of a theme in the interests of truth gives 
 place to a weak and insipid but fluent loquacity, not intended 
 to enforce truth or to guide to sound judgment, but merely 
 to tickle the popular ear and to gratify the vanity, or gain 
 the temporary ends, of the speaker. Living oratory disap¬ 
 pears. Brilliant language, rhythmical sound, sharp antitheses, 
 metaphors, images, and playing on words had become, even 
 before the Christian era, objects of unfeigned admiration to 
 the youth of the Eastern Mediterranean. 
 
 It is usual to speak with a certain sentimental regret of 
 the early decadence of the Athenian higher schools. I can 
 find no ground for holding that they suffered from actual 
 decay till, perhaps, 200 or 250 years after the birth of Christ. 
 Their weakness lay in the commercial rivalry of the teachers 
 and the growing devotion to mere rhetoric. Assuredly, from 
 
294 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 430 B.c. to about 300 a.d., Athens, spite of the rise of many 
 rivals, remained the chief intellectual centre of the civilised 
 world. Thus for 700 years at least, spite of its great Alex¬ 
 andrian rival, it governed the higher education. Nor was 
 this education always of so degenerate a kind as satirists 
 would make us believe. A young man repairing to Athens 
 had still the best opportunities that had ever existed of dis¬ 
 cussing the profound questions of philosophy and science, 
 and of prosecuting an extensive literary and grammatical 
 course under some approved rhetorician, while entering into 
 friendly student relations with youths from all parts of the 
 Roman empire. What better university education can we 
 offer now, if the education of young men means the stimula¬ 
 tion of intellectual activity in the search for truth, or in the 
 attainment of professional excellence ? It is true that many 
 who flocked to Athens and the other university centres of 
 Rhodes, Pergamon, &c., often idled their time, and that not a 
 few were content with a very superficial culture, fitted for 
 mere oratorical display. But may we not, mutatis mutandis , 
 make the same remark now of every university in Europe ? 
 
 After all is said that can be said on Hellenic education, I 
 am disposed to return to my original proposition, viz. that 
 the Hellenic educational idea, more or less conscious, always 
 was Sophrosyne (self-control, balance, limitation), Arete , or 
 excellence, and Eukosmia, or grace and becomingness of 
 bearing and expression. To say that the Greeks did not 
 wholly succeed in attaining to this harmonious result is only 
 another way of saying that they were human beings. None 
 the less was the tendency always in the direction summed 
 up by these three words. They always had a more or less 
 conscious ideal of man, and to this each man was to be edu¬ 
 cated. The whole of life, it is true, was governed too much 
 by the idea of the beautiful — the artistic conception of 
 human life. Hence its charm, its freedom, its want of rever¬ 
 ence, and its saucy independence; hence, too, its failure to 
 attain, in the case of the great mass even of educated men, 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 295 
 
 to a profound sense of moral law 1 waiting on all the acts 
 and aims of mortals and relegating all else to a subordinate 
 place. Personal truthfulness, personal purity, and a sense of 
 overawing duty were not to he found in the average citizen, 
 except where an attempt had been made, as in Sparta, to 
 enforce them as part of the state-system of life —an artificial 
 attempt at best. We have in the Greek, I think, a pure 
 exhibition of the finite and aesthetic side of human nature in 
 its most charming and seductive forms. It could not endure ; 
 it is not to be imitated, save and in so far as it represents 
 one side of human endeavour. Only where law and duty 
 are supreme, where truth and reality take precedence of form, 
 and these three, Law, Duty, and Truth are recognised as the 
 divine order and the inexorable command, can man attain to 
 the fulness of his own personality, and mould an ideal state 
 composed of citizens harmoniously educated. In the Eoman 
 we find some glimpses of this fresh aspect of the problem of 
 national life, and to him we shall now turn. 
 
 NOTE ON ARISTOTLE 
 
 The history of education is one thing and the theoretical views 
 of philosophers another. And, accordingly, were it not that Aris¬ 
 totle in what he says really speaks in a Greek national sense, and 
 is not merely a theoriser but a representative spokesman, I should 
 not think it necessary to append the following extracts. 
 
 Aristotle (pupil of Plato, died 322 b.c.) 
 
 GENERAL 
 
 ‘ What we have to aim at is the happiness of each citizen, and 
 happiness consists in a complete activity and practice of virtue.’ — 
 ‘Politics,’ iv. 13. 
 
 Aristotle refers his reader to the ‘ Ethics ’ for this conclusion, and 
 thus shows that with him education as a subject of study had a 
 scientific basis in ethical philosophy. 
 
 1 I am speaking of the Hellenic race, not of individual dramatists or 
 philosophers. 
 
296 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 1 It is right that the citizens should possess a capacity for affairs 
 and for war, but still more for the enjoyment of peace or leisure. 
 Right that they should be capable of such actions as are indispen¬ 
 sable and salutary, hut still more of such as are moral per se. It is 
 with a view to these objects, then, that they should he educated 
 while they are still children, and at all other ages, till they pass 
 beyond the need of education ’ (iv. 14). 
 
 The soul consists of two parts — reason in itself, and the lower 
 nature which is capable of receiving the rule of reason. This we 
 find in the ‘ De Anima ’; hut it is assumed in the educational dis¬ 
 cussion. In educating we have to train the habits so as to secure 
 the supremacy of reason. 
 
 Up to the age of five it is not desirable to make children apply 
 themselves to study of any kind or to compulsory bodily exercises, 
 for fear of injuring their growth. They should be allowed only so 
 much movement as not to fall into a sluggish habit of body. 
 Their amusements should not be of too laborious a sort, nor yet 
 effeminate. 
 
 Great care should be taken as to the associates of children, and 
 that all coarseness and foul language he far removed from them, 
 since light talking about foul things is closely followed by doing 
 them. 
 
 Education, in the strict sense, begins at seven and may be 
 divided into two periods — seven to fourteen, and fourteen to 
 twenty-one. 
 
 (Book Y. c. 1.) Education should be regulated by the state for 
 the ends of the state, and each citizen should understand that he is 
 not his own master, but a part of the state. 
 
 Also, in the same place, he says : ‘As the end proposed to the 
 state as a whole is one, it is clear that the education of all the 
 citizens must be one and the same, and the superintendence of it a 
 public affair rather than in private hands/ 
 
 SUBJECTS OF STUDY 
 
 Note. — We must bear in mind that Aristotle, like other 
 Greeks, relegated all mechanical occupations to slaves, who were 
 not citizens. 
 
 (Book V. 2 of ‘ Politics.’) ‘ That such useful studies as are abso¬ 
 lutely indispensable ought to be taught, is plain enough; not all 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 297 
 
 useful studies, however, for in face of the distinction which exists 
 between liberal and illiberal occupations, it is evident that our 
 youth should not be allowed to engage in any but such as, being 
 practically useful, will, at the same time, not reduce one who 
 engages in them to the level of a mere mechanic. It may be 
 observed that any occupation, or art, or study, deserves to be 
 regarded as mechanical if it renders the body, or soul, or intellect 
 of free persons unfit for the exercise or practice of virtue.’ . . . 
 
 ‘It is the object of any action or study which is all-important. 
 There may be nothing illiberal in them if undertaken for one’s 
 own sake or the sake of one’s friends, or the attainment of virtue ; 
 whereas, the very same action, if done to satisfy others, would in 
 many cases bear a menial or slavish aspect. 
 
 ‘The studies established at the present day are, as has been 
 already remarked, of an ambiguous character. We may say that 
 there are four usual subjects of education, viz. reading, writing, 
 gymnastic, music, and further — although this is not universally 
 admitted — the art of design. Reading and writing and the art of 
 design are taught for their serviceableness in the purposes of life 
 and their various utility, gymnastic as tending to the promotion of 
 valour, but the purpose of music is involved in great uncertainty ’ 
 (Book Y. 2). 
 
 MUSIC — THE RELATION OF MUSIC TO LEISURE — ITS LIMITS AS 
 
 A SUBJECT OF EDUCATION 
 
 Leisure and the noble employment of leisure is the end we must 
 have in view, according to Aristotle. 
 
 ‘ There is no consensus of opinion as to the definition of this 
 pleasure [leisure], each individual is guided by his own personality 
 and habit of mind, and he is the perfect man whose pleasure is 
 perfect and derived from the noblest sources. 
 
 ‘It is evident, then, from our consideration of business and 
 leisure, that there are certain things in which instruction and edu¬ 
 cation are necessary with a view to leisure, and that these branches 
 of education and study are ends in themselves, while such as have 
 business for their object are pursued only as being indispensable 
 and as leading to some ulterior object. Accordingly music was 
 introduced into the educational system by our forefathers, not as 
 indispensable — it had no such characteristic — nor as practically 
 
298 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 useful, in the sense in which reading and writing are useful for 
 pecuniary transactions, domestic economy, scientific study, and a 
 variety of political actions, or as the art of design is, in the general 
 opinion, useful as a means of forming a better judgment of works 
 of art, nor, again, as useful, like gymnastic, in promoting health 
 and vigour. Neither of these two results do we find to be pro¬ 
 duced by music. It remains, therefore, that music is useful for the 
 rational enjoyment of leisure, and this is evidently the purpose to 
 which it was in fact applied by our forefathers, as it is ranked by 
 them as an element of the rational enjoyment which is considered 
 to he appropriate to free persons’ (Book V. 3). 
 
 Music, like drawing, is to be followed as a liberal and not as a 
 professional study. Enough should be learned to enable all to 
 enjoy what others do, and for this a certain amount of practical 
 acquaintance with both music and drawing is necessary. 
 
 GYMNASTIC AND ITS LIMITS 
 
 ‘As it is evident that the education of the habits must precede 
 that of the reason, and the education of the body must precede that 
 of the intellect, it clearly follows that we must surrender our chil¬ 
 dren in the first instance to gymnastic and the art of the trainer, 
 as the latter imparts a certain character to their physical condition, 
 and the former to the feats they can perform. . . . 
 
 ‘The duty, then, of employing gymnastic and the method of 
 its employment are admitted. Up to the age of puberty gymnastic 
 exercises of a comparatively light kind should be applied, with a 
 prohibition of hard diet and compulsory exercises, so that there 
 may be no impediment to the growth. The fact that these may 
 have the effect of hindering growth may be clearly inferred from 
 the circumstance that in the list of Olympian victors it would not 
 be possible to find more than two or three who have been success¬ 
 ful in manhood as well as in boyhood; for the effect of their train¬ 
 ing in youth is that they lose their physical vigour in consequence 
 of the forced gymnastic exercises they perform. When our youth 
 have devoted three years from the age of puberty to other studies, 
 it is then proper that the succeeding period of life should be occu¬ 
 pied with hard exercises and severities of diet. For the intellect 
 and the body should not be subject to severe exertion simultane¬ 
 ously, as the two kinds of exertion naturally produce contrary 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 299 
 
 effects, that of the body being an impediment to the intellect, and 
 that of the intellect to the body ’ (Book Y. 4). 
 
 Aristotle then proceeds to discuss the moral effect of different 
 kinds of music, and then seems to get tired of his subject. The 
 whole discussion, though full of good sense, is as a whole inade¬ 
 quate and disappointing. 
 
 But gymnastic, though indispensable, is only, like reading and 
 writing, a preliminary; the true aim of education is the training 
 to do what is virtuous for its own sake and with no ulterior pur¬ 
 pose. In this way alone the capable citizen can be produced, and 
 one who will, further, be capable of enjoyment of the noblest 
 kind. This being so, we should read the ‘ Ethics ’ as well as the 
 ‘ Politics’ if we are to form a true conception of Aristotle’s educa¬ 
 tional ideal. The process of education is, in brief, instruction and 
 discipline in virtue. From this point of view the ‘Ethics’ is 
 truly Aristotle’s prime educational treatise. What are in the 
 ‘ Politics ’ called the subjects of education are in truth only the 
 indispensable subsidiaries or instruments of the true education, 
 which is ethical in its aim. 
 
 Aristotle does not, unfortunately, show us how we are to pro¬ 
 ceed, nor how best to form the noble character whose employment 
 of leisure is noble. 
 
 Plato’s aim in education is a harmonious man in a harmonious 
 state. This harmonious man is the realisation of ‘the good’ in 
 the individual, which again is identical with ‘the just.’ The 
 individual, however, is only a part of a higher harmony, the 
 harmony which is realised in a just state. The individual is 
 thus necessarily subject to the interests of the whole, and must find 
 his particular harmony in and through the larger harmony of 
 which he is merely a part. This Platonic conception is in truth 
 a philosophic rendering and an idealisation of the Doric educa¬ 
 tional idea. 
 
 When we compare the Platonic with the Aristotelian educa¬ 
 tional aim, we are struck by the more modern spirit of Aristotle. 
 He does not aim at theoretic completeness in his view of man and 
 the state. He takes things as he finds them and keeps his eye 
 fixed on the possible and practicable. The cultured and har¬ 
 monious man is not an object of concern with him, but only the 
 capable and virtuous citizen. Virtue, in brief, is Aristotle’s edu- 
 
300 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 cational end, the virtue of the individual without regard to an 
 ideal harmony of nature or perfect culture. Let each man he 
 sound in body and virtuous, and Aristotle is content. He 
 demands, however, that he he capable also of enjoyment and that 
 he shall enjoy. He is not to he in such deadly earnest about 
 virtue that he has no vital energy left for enjoyment — enjoyment 
 of a liberal and elevating kind. Where there are such men, the 
 state as such may be left out of account we may almost say, 
 although this is to strain Aristotle. Now this I consider to he 
 a practical formulation of the Attic spirit as opposed to the 
 Doric. It is in the spirit of Pericles’ address to the Athenians 
 in which lie insists on the claims of the individual, whom Plato, 
 on the other hand, would subject entirely, as did the Spartans, 
 to the claims of the state. Aristotle’s doctrine is the doctrine 
 of freedom ; Plato’s the doctrine of despotism. 
 
 Note. — The translations are taken from Welldon’s Politics. 
 
 Authorities. — The more important histories, viz. Ranke, Curtius, Thirl- 
 wall; Encyclopaedias ; Loci classici, especially from Plato, Aristotle, Xeno¬ 
 phon, Plutarch, Lucian; Krause’s Geschiclite der Erziehung, etc., hei den 
 Griechen, Etruskern u. Romern. Especially, and for details, Grasberger’s 
 Erziehung und Unterricht im classischen Altherthum; Muller’s Dorians; 
 Becker’s Charicles ; Professor Wilkins’s National Education in Greece; 
 Schmidt’s Geschichte der Pddagogik ; 1 Mahaffy’s Old Greek Education; 
 Capes; Ussing’s Erziehung und Jugendunterricht hei den Griechen und 
 Romern; Paul Girard’s U Education Athenienne ; Professor Jebb’s Attic 
 Orators; Professor Butcher’s Aspects of Greek Life; Tiele’s Outlines of the 
 History of Religions. Also references to Cramer, and many others. 
 
 1 Sentences, I think, will occasionally be found translated from Schmidt’s uni¬ 
 versal history, especially in the details of Spartan education, but only on subjects 
 and points which are commonplaces. 
 
D. THE ROMANS 
 
 At ilia Ians est magno in genere et in divitiis maximis 
 Liberos hominem educare, generi monumentum, et sibi. 
 
 Plaut. Mil. iii. 108. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE ROMAN PEOPLE AND THEIR GENERAL 
 CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 In passing from the Hellenic races to the Roman people 1 we 
 enter a new phase of life, and yet one which, while different, 
 is, in its deeper relations to the progress of humanity, of 
 equal importance. The human spirit which under the limita¬ 
 tions imposed by the Hellenic genius — self-control, virtue, 
 and grace of expression — moves freely in every direction, 
 mobile, subtle, living, joyous, now presents itself to us in a 
 less captivating form; but the personality of man, his self- 
 conscious worth as an individual, his supremacy over the 
 conditions of his own life, are in this new field of educational 
 study, conspicuously exhibited. This personality does not now 
 find a channel for its self-assertion in the creative faculty 
 and the exercise of the imagination. On this side the Roman 
 
 1 Chief dates in Roman History. —Rome founded 753 b.c.; expulsion of 
 kings and beginning of republic under consuls, 509 b.c. ; victory of the 
 plebeians in the constitution, 366 b.c. ; Pyrrhus defeated and Rome supreme 
 in Italy, 275 b.c. ; end of the second Punic war and establishment of Roman 
 supremacy in Spain, 202 b.c. ; Macedonia a Roman province, 148 b.c. ; Spain 
 made into Roman provinces, 123 b.c. ; Rome at this date supreme over the 
 Mediterranean countries. The Gracchi and their attempted reforms, 133-121 
 B.c. ; Civil war (Marius and Sulla), 88-82 b.c. ; Caius Julius Caesar puts him¬ 
 self at the head of the government, 48 b.c. ; Caesar assassinated, 44 b.c. ; 
 Augustus Caesar emperor, 30 b.c. to 14 a.d. ; the Claudian emperors, then the 
 Flavian emperors, 70-96 a.d. ; Constantine the Great, 306-337 A.d. 
 
302 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 mind was essentially imitative. It conquered other nations 
 in arms, and, while doing so, it made conquests also of 
 foreign arts, and it was as acquisitions, not as native pro¬ 
 ducts, that it was adorned by them. Much of Roman litera¬ 
 ture, indeed, suggests vigour of mind and the force of 
 mechanical adaptation of means to ends, rather than the 
 spontaneous outburst of genius. The Roman certainly ac¬ 
 quired Greek culture, but it was as a graft on a very homely 
 Roman stock. Their universal masterfulness was even here 
 prominent. Literature was a conquest rather than the in¬ 
 evitable expression of the popular life; and hence it always 
 remained the possession of the cultivated class alone, and was 
 not, as among the Athenians, the atmosphere which all free 
 citizens breathed. 
 
 A clear and direct perception of his relation to the outer 
 world, not as a dwelling-place for the gods, but as a world to 
 subdue and reduce to order, was the characteristic of the 
 Roman. His bent of mind was, consequently, essentially 
 practical, and, as practical, prosaic. If the Greek ideal was a 
 beautiful soul in a beautiful body, the Roman ideal was a sound 
 mind in a sound body. Manliness, energy, governing power, 
 intense personality, and that keen perception of the relative 
 rights of men in the matter of property — a perception which 
 is the natural product of an intense personality — formed the 
 basis of the Roman character. It is the Spartan and not the 
 Athenian Greek with whom the Roman has, from the first, 
 certain points of contact; but, in the former case, we have a 
 society in which the individual was largely lost in the com¬ 
 munity : in the latter, we have a strong and abiding individu¬ 
 alism, which yet spontaneously identifies itself with the 
 general good. As can easily be understood in the case of a 
 nation whose genius was so essentially practical, whose life 
 was so wholly a civil life, the chief legacy of thought which 
 they bequeathed to humanity was their moral energy and 
 their jurisprudence. The latter we still study as the basis of 
 all modern law; and this it was which, during a long and 
 critical period, combined with the influence of the Church to 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 303 
 
 hold the civilisation of Europe together, and finally to re¬ 
 create it. Roman law, indeed, is itself a civilisation. 
 
 The origin of this great people as narrated by Livy is now 
 discarded, and many of Hegel’s strictures are accordingly 
 now irrelevant. Certain tribes of the Latin race established 
 themselves on the Tiberine hills as elsewhere on the plains 
 of Latium. These Latin tribes developed on the hills which 
 they occupied all the elements of the civic life characteristic 
 of the Latin communities generally, and they did so quickly 
 under the necessities of their position as the advanced guard 
 of Latium, and as masters of the river. They formed a union, 
 and gradually acquired the hegemony of all the Latin race, 
 further extending their dominion to the Yolsci on the south, 
 the Sabellian races on the east, and the Etruscans on the 
 north. This, though doubtless the true explanation of the 
 rise of the Roman state, has one defect (if one may venture 
 an opinion against great authorities) : it pushes the theory of 
 Latin unity of race too far, even almost to the ignoring of the 
 mixed elements in the primitive community. 1 All the ele¬ 
 ments of the Etruscan, the Latin, and the Sabellian were un¬ 
 questionably mixed in the Roman of history. They did not 
 lie side by side as heterogeneous, but very early constituted 
 a unity. 
 
 The transference of power from the kings to the consuls 
 and senate was not only a transference from a monarchical 
 to an aristocratic and oligarchic government, but necessarily 
 gave fresh strength and compactness to the already existing 
 aristocracy. The senators now felt, each in his own person, 
 that he was a king of Rome, and with this accession of 
 dignity there was also an increase of the sense of responsi¬ 
 bility which must have told on the gravity and seriousness 
 of individual character and bearing. Hence the senate was 
 truly described as an assemblage of kings. Such a transfer¬ 
 ence of the sovereignty, too, must have made them feel the 
 
 1 While we may set aside the Livian predatory origin of Rome, we must yet, 
 I think, regard its mixed elements combined with its position as determining 
 largely its character and its destiny. 
 
304 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 necessity of preserving as much as possible the purity and 
 exclusiveness of their order in the interests of the safety of 
 the state, which might have been quickly overwhelmed by 
 the intrusion of the democracy. There can be little doubt 
 that, had the democracy attained to that supremacy which 
 characterised the Athenian Demos, Dome would never have 
 developed into the Eoman Empire. A great and noteworthy 
 civic community it would doubtless have been, but little 
 more than this. The Latin communities would have held 
 their own outside the Servian wall, the Samnites and Sabines 
 would have continued to lead an uncontrolled existence, and 
 the already established Etruscan power would probably have 
 permanently overawed the rising state. To create and main¬ 
 tain an empire there must be a continuity of purpose and 
 policy which is alien to a pure democracy. Whether we 
 approve of a hereditary aristocracy or not, there can be no 
 doubt that it conserves a tradition of individual and family 
 life as well as of national policy, and thus contributes power¬ 
 fully to the stability and permanence of a state in its domes¬ 
 tic, and especially in its foreign, relations. At the same time 
 it has its dangers, for it rests the healthy life of the state on 
 one class, and the corruption of this is the corruption of the 
 whole. 
 
 The elements of weakness in the Eepublic which finally 
 made the imperial form of government inevitable it would be 
 irrelevant here to trace. It is not difficult now, after the 
 event, to see that the growth of a city into that unwieldiness 
 of bulk to which Eome attained when it became the centre 
 of the commerce and life of the world, would have made 
 it impossible for even a pure Senate after the mind of Cato 
 himself to hold firmly the reins of power. But with the 
 growth of the Eoman Empire the senatorial purity and self- 
 denying patriotism had, as a matter of fact, vanished. The 
 personal aggrandisement for which the tributary wealth of 
 the world gave such opportunities, with the corruptions 
 caused by slavery, the divorce of the Italians from the land 
 as free cultivators, the subversion of religious faith, and the 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 305 
 
 introduction of those larger ideas of personal development 
 and culture which Greece taught, all combined to put an end 
 for ever to the assemblage of kings. The proscriptions of 
 Marius and the reprisals of Sulla had also weeded out the 
 ancient families, and wealthy plebeians, advanced to senato¬ 
 rial rank, had by the time of Augustus almost wholly super¬ 
 seded the ancient nobility. You find now no longer the 
 austere old Roman Senate, but, as an eminent historian has 
 remarked, your eye is arrested by a succession of great in¬ 
 dividuals who dominated the state. This prominence of in¬ 
 dividuals, and the impossibility of a city ruling an empire, led 
 to the final organisation of the Imperial Government which, 
 while preserving ancient Republican forms, preserved them 
 as a mere phantom of the past, the lifeless form of a freedom 
 that had been. Assuredly one cause of the corruption of 
 society was the superseding of the traditionary education by 
 unconsidered and unregulated novelties. The old austere 
 domestic system had disappeared, and what had taken its 
 place was not due to any deliberate state-policy, but only to 
 the caprice of individuals — at least till after the empire had 
 been for some time established. 
 
 Our chief business, however, is with the Roman people in 
 all their moral greatness and strength as factors in the world- 
 history, taking first of all the period which ends with the 
 fall of Carthage. We find in them great moral qualities — 
 qualities, indeed, which the history of the past shows us to 
 be necessary to the rise of a stable social organisation. The 
 popular idea of the Roman is that of manly vigour , and the 
 popular idea is correct. To this it is added by Hegel that 
 he was a creature of the abstract understanding — prosaic, 
 utilitarian, practical. This, also, is true, and hence we may 
 find a key to the Roman character, even in the ideal sphere 
 of his religion. 
 
 Religion. — In religion the Roman was unquestionably 
 serious and devout. The community between gods and men 
 was not, however, understood as among the Hellenes. There 
 
 was no rich mythology to bridge over the space that sepa- 
 
 20" 
 
306 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 rated gods and men. The Eoman gods were not separate 
 idealised personalities as among the Greeks, who recognised 
 no god to whom they did not give a concrete form. There 
 was, however, with the Eoman a deep spiritual side to every¬ 
 thing, and that the Eoman abstracted, assigning to it the 
 name and power of deity. The gods differed in importance 
 only in so far as the abstract thought was more or less 
 generalised. For example, if Jupiter and Juno are the 
 abstractions of manhood and womanhood and Dea-Dia or 
 Ceres the creative power, their position in the Pantheon 
 would necessarily be higher than Fides (fidelity to engage¬ 
 ments), Terminus the boundary god, Silvanus the god of the 
 forest, or Vertumnus the god of the circling year. So intense 
 was this spiritual perception and so disposed to fit itself 
 to abstract and yet definite forms, that in the prayer for 
 husbandmen, as Mommsen says, ‘there were invoked the 
 spirits of fallowing, of ploughing, of furrowing, sowing, cover¬ 
 ing in, harrowing, and so forth.’ In like manner marriage, 
 birth, and death, and every other natural event, were endowed 
 with a sacred life. This is not to be confounded with 
 element-worship: it was the worship, or at least the abstract 
 and reverential recognition, of the Unseen Power that resided 
 in all things. The feeling of awe with which the Eoman 
 regarded the gods, as compared with the joyous friendliness 
 of the Greeks, is well indicated by the fact that the latter 
 when he sacrificed raised his eyes to heaven, the former 
 veiled his head. The gravitas of the Eoman character was 
 largely due to the seriousness, approaching even sadness, 
 which characterised his religion. The awe with which the 
 Eoman contemplated the Unseen is also indicated in the 
 word ‘ religio,’ whether we connect it with ‘ binding ’ or 
 ‘reflection ’ (Conscience) — (religare or relegere). This relig¬ 
 ion — the early religion of Eome — may be called an organ¬ 
 ised Animism, but it is very seriously held. 
 
 The supreme Eoman god was Jupiter Optimus Maximus, 
 not merely as representative of abstract man, but as the 
 reflection of the life of Eome as a civil life, and as the 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 307 
 
 guardian of the state. Doubtless, the position of this god 
 was largely due to Greek influence. Jupiter, as supreme god, 
 was regarded also as father of men and source of all blessings, 
 and preeminently the god of good faith and purity. There 
 was thus a distinct ethical element in the Roman conception; 
 for Jupiter was the god of life and light and purity no less 
 than the divine personification of the Roman State. Next to 
 Jupiter was Mars, as reflecting the military spirit. A deep 
 religious feeling was exhibited not only in the earlier periods 
 of Roman society, but all through its history, spite of Hellenic 
 influences and the introduction among the people of numer¬ 
 ous gods. The great Scipio Africanus went daily into the 
 temple of Jupiter to pray, and ascribed all his triumphs to 
 the protecting care of the god of Rome. Even Velleius 
 Paterculus, writing so late as the time of Tiberius, concludes 
 his history with a prayer, part of which only has been pre¬ 
 served, but which begins thus : —‘ 0 Jupiter (Capitolinus) ! 
 0 Jupiter Stator! 0 Mars Gradivus, author of the Roman 
 
 name! 0 Vesta, guardian of the eternal fire! O all ye 
 
 deities who have exalted the present magnitude of the Roman 
 Empire, raising it to a position of supremacy over the world! 
 Guard, preserve, and protect, I beseech you, in the name of 
 the Commonwealth, our present State, &c.’ Even if this be 
 regarded as a merely conventional conclusion to a history, 
 the fact that it was so would not affect our argument. After 
 all that can be said, however, it is true that just as the cult 
 of Apollo was the true religion of the Greeks, so Rome, as 
 identified with Jupiter, or Jupiter as identified with Rome, 
 was the religion of Romans. 
 
 The Hellenic gods, with their accompanying mythical 
 legends, began to enter into the Roman religious system even 
 so early as the time of the kings; but even they, so to speak, 
 became Romans. For, religious as the Romans were, there 
 was little of either the vaguely infinite or the artistic ideal in 
 their objects of worship. The gods all had a practical char¬ 
 acter, having to do with the civic economy or with social 
 relations or moralities, and religious rites were used to 
 
308 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 strengthen some of the best habits of the people. Such a 
 system, while promoting the stability of the Commonwealth, 
 could not possibly afford elements for the imagination and 
 for art to work upon. Even Greek sculpture when it entered 
 Eome took the practical form of portraiture and ministered 
 to the pride of family. The finite aims and prosaic char¬ 
 acter of the Roman were thoroughly interwoven with his 
 religious system, even when the primaeval form of it had 
 given way to the worship of Hellenicised deities. Church 
 and State were truly one. In fact religion, as Ihne says 
 (iv. p. 3),‘ was with the Romans not a matter of feeling 
 or speculation, but of law ; ’ but, as such, it was a great 
 reality. 
 
 In the earlier period of Roman history, the king acted as 
 chief intercessor with the gods, and appointed the priest and 
 priestesses — a power which afterwards passed into the hands 
 of the College of Priests, who nominated a Pontifex Maximus. 
 They were an aristocratic body and constantly abused their 
 office to promote the power of the Senate. Subsequently the 
 tribes elected citizens to the office of president, but during 
 the time of Sulla this privilege was restored to the colleges, 
 and in 63 b.c. it returned to the tribes. The Roman state 
 was thus free from the evils of a hereditary priesthood. The 
 priest never lost his character of being a civil functionary, 
 just as originally the king, as head of the civil power, had 
 been chief priest. 
 
 In the last century of the republic, the monotheism which 
 had attached itself to the name of Jupiter Optimus Maxi¬ 
 mus became more prominent among the cultured few, and 
 in early imperial times we find among the Stoics and 
 Platonists a belief in one overruling God and a devotion 
 to ethical philosophy, which do much to atone for the reck¬ 
 less irreligion or practical idolatry of the many. But when 
 we consider the extinction of ancient tradition and belief 
 and all that constituted the distinctive Roman ‘ conscience/ 
 we are surprised that society still held together as it did 
 for so many centuries. The Roman seemed still to draw 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 309 
 
 strength from his past history, and an inherited patriotism 
 and concentration of purpose may he said to have survived, 
 in their practical influence, their own death. This Roman 
 religion of patriotism finds expression in the ‘ De Officiis ’ 
 of Cicero, i. 17 : — ‘Cari sunt parentes, cari liberi, propinqui 
 familiares; sed omnes omnium caritates patria una com- 
 plexa est; pro qua quis bonus dubitet mortem oppetere ei 
 si sit profuturus?’ We shall see the firm basis of this 
 intense feeling in the family and the civic and civil consti¬ 
 tution, of which we shall now speak. 
 
 Social Life. — The Roman family was the unit of the 
 Roman state. This could not be said either of Athens or 
 Sparta. In the family we find, in its most pronounced 
 form, the absolute authority of the father. ‘ If any one 
 thing/ says Becker in his ‘ Galius/ ‘ more strikingly exhibits 
 the austerity of the Roman character and its propensity to 
 domination, it is the arbitrary power which the father pos¬ 
 sesses over his children. By the laws of Nature immediate 
 authority over the children belongs to the father only for 
 the time during which they require his providing care, pro¬ 
 tection, and guidance. The humanity and right feeling of 
 the Grecian legislators led them to look at the matter from 
 this point of view, and they allowed the authority of the 
 father to last only till the son was of a certain age, or till he 
 was married, or was entered on the list of citizens, and they 
 so restricted this power that the utmost a father could do 
 was to eject his son from his house and disinherit him. 
 Not so in Rome. There the child was born the property 
 of his father, who could dispose of it as he thought fit. 
 This power might last, under certain limitations, even till 
 the death of the father/ 1 ‘ The power we have over our 
 
 children/ says the jurist Gaius, ‘is a right peculiar to the 
 Romans/ In truth we must regard the father of the family 
 as both priest and magistrate. A patria potestas so abso¬ 
 lute gave unity to the family. 
 
 The practice of monogamy was not peculiar to the 
 
 1 Excursus ii. to scene 1, p. 179. 
 
310 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Romans, but the honour paid to the wife as head of the 
 household seems to have been first fully recognised by 
 them. The Spartan mother had a high place assigned to 
 her; but, owing to the public system of education, she 
 exercised less personal influence than the Roman. Within 
 the house, woman was not servant but mistress. She 
 exercised a power almost equal to that of her husband. 
 £ Exempted,’ says Mommsen, ‘ from the tasks of corn-grind¬ 
 ing and cooking, which, according to the Roman ideas, 
 belonged to menials, the Roman housewife devoted herself 
 in the main to the superintendence of her maid-servants 
 and to the accompanying labours of the distaff.’ She was 
 not relegated to private life in the gynceceum, like the 
 Athenian wife. She occupied the atrium surrounded by 
 her servants and children. The woman being held in such 
 high honour, and her permanent position as wife being 
 protected by law, she felt that on her largely depended the 
 honour of the family. The high moral character of the 
 Roman matron thus became famous for all time; and her 
 influence on the character and education of her sons was 
 unquestionably great. ‘Do not kiss me,’ said the mother 
 of the victorious Coriolanus, ‘ till I know whether you are 
 an enemy or a son,’ and when his wife fell on her knees 
 weeping in support of the mother, the haughty conqueror 
 yielded and said, ‘ Mother, this is a happy victory for you 
 and for Rome, but it is ruin and shame to your son;’ and 
 shedding tears, fell back from the city which he had pre¬ 
 viously doomed. We may, then, confidently accept the 
 remark of Mommsen, that the ‘ Roman family from the first 
 contained within it the conditions of a high culture in the 
 mere moral adjustment of the mutual relations of its mem¬ 
 bers.’ ‘As the strictly organised family,’says Ihne (iv. 250), 
 ‘ forms the basis for the national life of the Roman people 
 and the starting point for the development of the state; 
 so also Roman morality and private economy were deter¬ 
 mined by the influence which the same family organisa¬ 
 tion exercised upon every member of society. . . . Labour, 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 311 
 
 frugality, self-sacrifice for the good of the house and state 
 were the active virtues of the old Roman peasant.’ 
 
 The unity of the family found its centre in the worship 
 of the household gods, the Penates and Lares. The penates 
 were the gods of the hearth, the lares were the ‘ lords ’ of the 
 family — the departed spirits of ancestors, who were regarded 
 as still concerned with the well-being of their descendants. 
 The image of the chief lar, clad in a toga, usually stood 
 between two penates in the atrium of the house beside the 
 household hearth. This shrine the ancient Roman saluted 
 daily with a morning prayer and an offering from the table, 
 while three times every month and on all festivities — such 
 as birth-days, assumption of the toga virilis, marriage, or the 
 return of a member of the family after long absence — sacri¬ 
 fices were offered. The father was priest. Though evil 
 spirits among the departed were recognised by the Romans 
 (as among all nations in some form or other) this did not affect 
 their religious trust in the good. The gens or clan again was 
 merely an enlarged familia, and as each father and mother 
 were priest and priestess in their own house, so the gentes 
 had common altars and sacrifices. The state was thus made 
 up of many little states, bound together by mutual interests 
 and religious ceremonies. The authority of the head of each 
 family was the basis of the authority of the central power, 
 and the obedience and military subjection of the members of 
 the families and clan was the basis of that capacity for obedi¬ 
 ence and discipline which always distinguished the Roman. 
 It was the abstract beliefs in the spirits of ‘ things ’ and the 
 domestic worship which constituted the true and effective 
 Roman religion, before the influence of Greece was felt. 
 
 The religion of the Roman state, it has been said, was 
 simply the religion of the domestic hearth writ large, for the 
 state, too, had its common hearth where the Vestal Virgins 
 guarded for ever the eternal fire which symbolised at once 
 the sacredness and the purity of the Roman home. But 
 while the goddess of the hearth, Vesta, held her central 
 place of honour in the vaulted temple [supposed to have been 
 
312 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 built after the manner of the atrium of a house] between the 
 Capitoline and Palatine hills, she was worshipped not merely 
 as a public goddess, as among the Greeks, but at every pri¬ 
 vate hearth. The common meals of the family were taken 
 round the hearth, and were a daily bond of family union and 
 a daily act of worship. The penates protected the going out 
 and coming in of the members of the family, and to them at 
 every meal libations were offered. 
 
 The depth of family feeling among the Romans and the 
 conservatism of their character are well illustrated by the 
 practice of carrying masks of their progenitors to funerals, so 
 that the head of a family might be said to be followed by 
 his own ancestors to the last funeral rites. 
 
 So closely was the Roman life bound up with religion that 
 we have found it impossible to speak of the one without 
 the other. The Roman state ultimately rests on Jupiter as 
 law and order and object of supreme reverence, on Mars as 
 the arm strong for defence and offence, and on Vesta as sym¬ 
 bolising the sacredness and purity of the home. 1 
 
 Civil Relations. — What now was the Roman in his 
 civil relations, as distinguished from the religious and the 
 social ? 
 
 In the original constitution of Rome the burgesses, or free¬ 
 men, constituted the state. The elders of the three hundred 
 clans forming the community were the senate, and co-ordi¬ 
 nate with the king. The various members of the family, 
 however distantly related, constituted the gens or clan. The 
 senators who represented the clans — to the number of three 
 hundred — were the king’s council, but the ultimate appeal 
 was to the whole body of burgesses or patricii. We see from 
 this that, from the first, the Roman led a public and political 
 life. The expulsion of the kings and the transference of 
 power to the consuls and senate (509 B.c.) gave to the 
 
 1 The.practical disruption of the Roman religion under Hellenic influences 
 before the end of the Republic, I do not enter into. Spite of all the changes and 
 the influx of many gods, the old Roman idea seems to me to have survived far 
 into imperial times. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 313 
 
 world the most powerful aristocratic republic the world has 
 ever seen. The burgesses alone had originally the duty of 
 bearing arms, which thus was a privilege. These were the 
 patres, and they and their families were called patricians in 
 opposition to the plebs — those inhabitants of Rome who had 
 gathered there after the original settlement. It would he 
 out of place here to dwell on the history of Roman civil life, 
 or to speak of the struggles between patricians and plebeians. 
 Even in these struggles a common patriotism was never for¬ 
 gotten. Enough is done for our purposes here if I point out 
 the leading characteristics of life of the Roman generally. 
 It is thus that we get a key to his conceptions of education. 
 
 One great event in the development of Roman civil life 
 must, however, be named — the appointment of decemviri to 
 draw up a code of law. This code (the Twelve Tables), ap¬ 
 proved by the senate and sanctioned by the assemblies of the 
 people, was doubtless largely based on the customary law 
 which had arisen in the preceding centuries. It was more in 
 the interests of the masses of the people than of the aristo¬ 
 cratic senate that there should be a code to which all might 
 appeal. The object was the ‘ equalising of liberty/ for Law, 
 as opposed to the arbitrary decisions of individuals however 
 wise, is liberty. These laws (‘ fountain of public and private 
 law/ as Livy says) constituted the basis of the great Roman 
 jurisprudence, and in respect of language were concise, lucid, 
 simple, and in all respects admirable. They were cut on 
 bronze tablets and put up in a public place. The date of 
 their publication was 450 b.c., and we may regard this as the 
 second founding of the Roman state. The idea of law and 
 the supremacy of law did not then for the first time enter 
 the Roman mind, but its existence was signalised and con¬ 
 firmed by a public act which was not only the guarantee of 
 Roman liberty but an important factor in the history of 
 European civilisation. 
 
 Let us now sum up this brief survey. What have we 
 found ? A people with deep religious instincts which lead 
 
314 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 us to expect that religious instruction and sentiment will 
 find a prominent place in the education of children; an 
 almost sacred family life, with an autocratic father, but 
 happily also with a true house-mother at its head; a free 
 and intensely political public life — a life in the forum — at 
 once cause and effect of a strong sense of that community of 
 the social organism which is at the root of all true patriotism ; 
 an unquestioned recognition of the supremacy of law, and in 
 connection with all this a military life reserved as an hon¬ 
 ourable function for the true citizen. In Rome the executive 
 authority of the magistrate, whether king, consul, dictator, or 
 emperor, was never questioned, any more than the authority 
 of the council of elders. To the interests of the state as a 
 whole every individual was prepared to sacrifice himself. 
 This did not weaken the family idea. On the contrary, it 
 was the chief glory of the leading families to have served the 
 state nobly. ‘ Life in the case of the Roman,’ says Mommsen 
 (ii. 4, 8),‘was spent under conditions of austere restraint, 
 and the nobler he was the less was he a free man. All-pow¬ 
 erful custom restricted him to a narrow range of thought and 
 action; and to have led a serious and strict life, or, to use a 
 Latin expression, a grave and severe life, was his glory. 
 Nothing more or less was expected of him than that he 
 should keep his household in good order, and unflinchingly 
 bear his part of counsel and action in public affairs. But 
 while the individual had neither the wish nor the power to 
 be aught else than a member of the community, the glory 
 and the might of that community were felt by every indi¬ 
 vidual burgess as a personal possession to be transmitted 
 along with his name and his homestead to posterity; and 
 thus, as one generation after another was laid in the tomb 
 and each in succession added its fresh contribution to the 
 stock of ancient honours, the collective sense of dignity in 
 the noble families of Rome swelled into that mighty pride 
 of Roman citizenship to which the earth has never, perhaps, 
 witnessed a parallel, and the traces of which — strange as 
 they are grand — seem to us whenever we meet them to 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 315 
 
 belong, as it were, to another world. It was one of the char¬ 
 acteristic peculiarities of this mighty pride of citizenship 
 that, while not suppressed, it was yet compelled by the rigid 
 simplicity and equality that prevailed among the citizens to 
 remain locked up within the breast during life, and was only 
 allowed to find expression after death ; but it was displayed 
 in the funeral of the man of distinction so intensely and con¬ 
 spicuously that this ceremonial is better fitted than any other 
 phenomenon of Roman life to give us who live in other times 
 a glimpse of the wonderful spirit of the Romans.’ 
 
 But the civic and civil life of the Romans could not have 
 sustained itself, even with the help of that respect for ances¬ 
 try which included a veneration for the forms as well as the 
 life of the past, and for Jupiter as Head of the State, had it 
 not been for the instinctive recognition of law as the basis of 
 true liberty which made Rome an ever-extending and long- 
 enduring power. ‘ The Romans were distinguished,’ says 
 Ihne (iv. 7), ‘ from all other nations not only by the extreme 
 earnestness and precision with which they conceived their 
 law and worked out the consequences of its fundamental 
 principles, but by the good sense which made them submit 
 to the law, once established, as an * absolute necessity of 
 political health and strength. It was this severity in 
 thinking and acting which, more than any other causes, made 
 Rome great and powerful. . . . The divine law, the elder 
 sister of the civil law, was the pattern on which the latter 
 was moulded. Both were characterised by the same severity, 
 systematic order, deference to fixed formulas, and fear of 
 change.’ 
 
 The Personal Character of the Roman. — The char¬ 
 acter of the Roman is sufficiently indicated in what we have 
 already said; but a few more words seem necessary, inas¬ 
 much as the tradition of character, no less than that of 
 civic life and duty, was the main source of the education 
 of successive generations for the first 350 years of the city’s 
 life. 
 
 In the Roman a personality more intense than the Hellenic 
 
316 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 is visible. He exists, doubtless, for tlie state, but in tbis 
 sense, that the state exists in and through him. From the 
 first a certain self-sufficing Stoic dignity characterises him. 
 Roman personality asserts itself as always subordinate to the 
 state, yet governed by the thought that the state exists 
 through and by virtue of the individual and of the family 
 which the father represents. The state needs the individual, 
 and each citizen proudly bears the burden of the civil life. 
 The feelings of personality, of a regulative will, and of obli¬ 
 gation to law and duty, are closely interwoven in their roots 
 in human nature; and where they exist we should expect to 
 find those complex virtues flourish into which personality, 
 will, and a sense of law most largely enter. These virtues 
 are integrity, courage, resolution, persistence, fidelity, and 
 justice, in the sense of law; and the very naming of these 
 ethical characteristics recalls to our minds the ancient 
 Roman of tradition, the founder of an empire. With such a 
 people you expect to find great administrative ability. They 
 are born to govern, and to conquer that they may govern. 
 Their persistency, nay, pertinacity, explains itself. Mark the 
 saying of the proud and overbearing Roman: ‘ Rome must 
 never conclude a peace, save as victor; ’ an issue of war only 
 attainable by inflexible hardness, and more, alas, of the exter¬ 
 nal show than the reality of justice to enemies and rebels. 
 With such a people you expect to find a power of subduing 
 nature as well as men to their imperious and imperial will. 
 Their roads, their bridges, their aqueducts, their public build¬ 
 ings, all testify to this. 
 
 As the people, par eminence, of practical reason, the rela¬ 
 tions of men as holders of property, which represents to the 
 eye of sense our personalities, are always vividly present to 
 them, and we are not surprised to find a keen perception of 
 relative rights, of practical justice as between members of the 
 same state at least, and subsequently as between nations, and 
 the consequent creation of a sound jurisprudence which, with 
 the extension of the empire, becomes vast and imposing, and 
 from being civic and national becomes imperial and cosmo- 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 317 
 
 politan. To the remark that Greece conquered took Rome 
 captive by its arts, may be aptly opposed this, that Rome 
 fallen took its victors captive by its law, and still, indeed, 
 holds them bound. 
 
 The beautiful, however — art and the softer and gentler 
 emotions — are as incompatible with the Roman nature as a 
 joyous delight in life for mere life’s sake, and in nature for 
 nature’s sake. These things are to be met with, but they are 
 not indigenous: even these Rome must conquer and lay its 
 warlike hands upon and affect to enjoy. In the moral sphere 
 the Roman virtus has to be contrasted with the /cakoKayaOia 
 of the Greek. 
 
 With all their great qualities, and in perfect consistency 
 with them, it is yet true, as Ihne says (i. 120), ‘they were a 
 cold, calculating, selfish people, without enthusiasm or the 
 power of awakening enthusiasm, distinguished by self-control 
 and an iron will rather than by the graces of character. They 
 were proud, overbearing, cruel, and rapacious.’ 
 
 I may fitly conclude the preceding survey of Roman 
 characteristics in the well-known lines of Vergil (‘ iEneid,’ 
 vi. 847): 
 
 Others, I ween, with happier grace 
 From bronze or stone shall call the face, 
 
 Plead doubtful causes, map the skies, 
 
 And tell when planets set or rise. 
 
 But ye, my Romans, still control 
 The nations far and wide ; 
 
 Be this your genius — to impose 
 The rule of Heaven on vanquished foes, 
 
 Show pity to the humbled soul, 
 
 And crush the sons of pride . 1 
 
 Conington*s translation. 
 
 1 Excudent alii spirantia mollius sera, 
 
 Credo equidem, vivos ducent de marmore vultus, 
 
 Orabunt caussas inelius, cselique meatus 
 Describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent: 
 
 Tu regere imperio populos, Eomane, memento ; 
 
 Hse tibi erunt artes ; pacisque imponere morem 
 Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos. 
 
318 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Wealth and the lust and luxury of power ultimately de¬ 
 stroyed the distinctively Roman character, although round it 
 there still hovered an imperial magnificence. No nation has 
 yet been found which has been able to resist the insidious 
 inroads of abounding wealth — especially when that is con¬ 
 centrated (as seems to be inevitable), in the hands of a small 
 minority of the citizens. There arises a rivalry in self- 
 indulgence and ostentation among the few and a deep-seated 
 discontent among the many. The latter are indifferent to 
 the maintenance of the commonwealth; the former are pre¬ 
 occupied with personal aims and ambitions. In presence of 
 the appetite for self-aggrandisement, civic virtues and public 
 spirit gradually disappear, and the nation is doomed, for it 
 has lost the moral energy that made it. Where each seeks 
 his own things and not also those of another, the community 
 of feeling which constitutes a commonwealth is gone. There 
 exists a veiled internecine war which must make the State 
 an easy prey to external foes, unless it be saved by an inter¬ 
 nal revolution. We may, in the passing fashion of the hour, 
 talk of a state being an organism, but, after all, it is a mass 
 of individuals; and it is only by the education of these in¬ 
 dividuals and the maintenance of the sanctity of the individ¬ 
 ual family that we can hope permanently to sustain public 
 virtue and uphold an empire. Take care of individuals 
 and the family, and the (so-called) ‘ organism ’ will take care 
 of itself. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ROMAN EDUCATION 
 
 What means now did the Boman take for maintaining his 
 greatness by educating those who were to bear the burden of 
 the state after their fathers had passed away ? 
 
 I shall first answer the question very generally in the 
 words of Cicero, who says: ‘ Among the Greeks some devote 
 themselves with their whole soul to the poets, others to 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 319 
 
 geometers, others to musicians, others again, like the Dialec¬ 
 ticians, open up to themselves a new sphere of activity and 
 devote their whole time and life to the arts which mould the 
 mind of youth to humanity and virtue. The children of the 
 Romans, on the other hand, are brought up that they may 
 one day be able to be of service to the fatherland, and one 
 must accordingly instruct them in the customs of the state 
 and in the institutions of their ancestors. The fatherland 
 has produced and brought us up that we may devote to its 
 use the finest capacities of our mind, talent, and understand¬ 
 ing. Therefore we must learn those arts whereby we may 
 be of greatest service to the state, for that I hold to be the 
 highest wisdom and virtue/ The humanities and learning, 
 art and the beautiful, these were not the motive forces of 
 Roman education as they had been among the Greeks, but 
 rather those arts which might be of political service. Har¬ 
 monious development, culture — either of mind or body — 
 for its own sake was an idea alien to the Roman mind. It 
 was only when the seeds of decay had been already sown 
 that Hellenic aims and Hellenic culture found a place; and 
 then only partially. The practical Roman life was essentially 
 opposed to the Greek aesthetic life. 
 
 It is necessary to speak of the education of Rome in suc¬ 
 cessive periods. 
 
 First National Period — to 303 B.c. 
 
 In his home, in the forum, and in military exercises, the 
 Roman boy for the first four or five centuries of the Republic 
 found his education, and any account of this must necessarily 
 be a mere repetition of what has been already written on the 
 religious, social, and civil life of Rome. Such reading and 
 writing as were necessary for affairs were in some instances 
 acquired from adventure teachers during this period, but it 
 would appear that they were chiefly acquired in the home. 
 The education of the Roman boy was simply the education 
 which home-life, citizenship, and the observance of ancestral 
 tradition gave him. As the fathers and mothers, so the 
 
320 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 sons and daughters. Gravitas, honestas, fortitudo, prudentia, 
 justitia — these were the words which summed up the vir 
 bonus and to these the young Roman was trained. 
 
 In the Home. —The laws of the Twelve Tables (confirm¬ 
 ing previous usage) required that a misformed infant should 
 be killed, but the father could decide this question only with 
 the help of a council of his nearest male relatives. There 
 was, however, no law against the exposure of infants, and 
 this was practised under the general rights which the father 
 had; but it would not appear to have been so much the 
 usage as among the Greeks. In later times, infants whom it 
 was desired to get rid of were often placed before the Temple 
 of Pietas — which thus might he regarded as a kind of creche 
 for foundlings. In 374 A.D. exposure was prohibited by law 
 (Cod. Justin, viii. 52, 2) ; but the law was ineffectual. 
 Ussing points out that Hierocles in the fifth century com¬ 
 plains of the continuance of the practice. 
 
 Mothers suckled their own children until about the time 
 that Greek customs began to penetrate Roman society. Wet- 
 nurses (almost always slaves, often Greeks) were then 
 employed. On the ninth day after his birth the hoy, and on 
 the eighth the girl (Krause, p. 236), received their names 
 (dies lustricus) ; this was also the ‘ naming ’ day (dies nomi- 
 num'), and there was a family feast and dancing. The 
 religious ceremonial, the naming, and the festival, were all 
 at the same time. The child was thereafter registered. A 
 box or ball, with an amulet enclosed, was hung round the 
 child’s neck to preserve it from magical arts and the evil eye. 
 This bulla was of gold in the case of children of the higher 
 ranks. 
 
 The children had their games, to a large extent of the 
 same kind as those common among the Greeks. The amuse- 
 ments of the hoys, however, seem to have been chiefly games 
 of various kinds with the hall. 
 
 His mother, and afterwards his father, trained the Roman 
 boy and not a slave-pedagogue, and, even when a pedagogue 
 was employed, the maternal supervision was not intermitted, 
 
THE ARYAN OF INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 321 
 
 during all the earlier centuries at least; and, in the best 
 houses, not till towards the end of the Republic. 
 
 The child, let us remember, was under the influence of a 
 mother who was assigned her true place at the head of the 
 household. The severe discipline and magisterial authority 
 of the father were supplemented by the milder moral influ¬ 
 ence of the mother, while the reverence shown to the house¬ 
 hold gods in the various ordinary acts of daily life tended to 
 evoke that feeling of veneration and religiosity which was 
 characteristic of the Roman. 
 
 The boy exchanged the toga 'prcetexta for the toga virilis 
 about the sixteenth year, when his name was formally con¬ 
 firmed. He entered thus early on the responsibilities of man¬ 
 hood. This change was made with great ceremony, both 
 domestic and public, and accompanied (like other Roman 
 acts) by domestic religious rites, temple sacrifices, and a 
 family festival. The youth’s name was now enrolled among 
 the citizens. The education thenceforth was the education 
 of public life, including military exercises; hut the home 
 education and influence never ceased. 
 
 On festival and religious occasions, and in solemn banquets, 
 the youth was accustomed in the earlier centuries to assist 
 in chanting the national songs, and may he said thereby to 
 have acquired the elements of poetry and music; but they 
 were the barest elements. Later in the history of the Repub¬ 
 lic, the singing and chanting seem to have been performed 
 by a specially hired class. Music was not, as among the 
 Greeks, a domestic institution and an alleviator of daily life. 
 Nor was the purely practical direction of the Roman training 
 counteracted by their religion as it might have been; for 
 this too, as we have seen, was narrow, always closely con¬ 
 nected with the hourly needs of the individual, the family, 
 and the state. Being the growth of the abstract understand¬ 
 ing, it did not yield materials for the poetic imagination and 
 the free growth of ideal aims. Youths, after assuming the 
 toga virilis , were a great deal in the company of their fathers 
 in the street and forum, and learned in this way the duties 
 
 21 
 
322 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 of a man and a citizen ; ‘ virtutis enim,’ says Cicero (‘ De Off.’ 
 i. 6), ‘laus omnis in actione consistit.’ 
 
 The chief education, in brief, which the Eoman boy 
 received was the moral and religious training of home, and 
 free intercourse with his father and mother. The religion of 
 the hearth, as I have said, was the centre-point of the religion 
 of the Eoman, and the education was the education of the 
 hearth. In religion a high standard of observance was main¬ 
 tained. Pietas, the ethical basis of the family, extended to 
 the gens, and thus a reflected influence on home training was 
 felt. We see here in operation that family education which 
 Plutarch, 1 writing 100 years after the birth of Christ, 
 strongly advocates for all, up to the age at which they are fit 
 to attend the higher schools. What Sparta aimed at giving 
 through its public system, and compulsorily, the Eoman 
 aimed at giving through the parents, and freely: that is to 
 say, he was content with this, because we cannot say that 
 there was any conscious aim. The result was that the 
 Eoman had a more genuine and personal morality than 
 the Spartan. 
 
 Thus during the first centuries of Eoman life down to 
 about 303 B.c. the education was domestic, civic, and military. 
 In its domestic relations it was profoundly religious. The 
 sense of duty to moral law, to paternal authority, and to 
 the state, was ever present to the child and the boy. There 
 was no element of joy or love in the moral, any more than in 
 the religious, life. There was, however, a deep sense of 
 spiritual powers external to man which might be pleased or 
 displeased by right or wrong conduct in every act of daily 
 life, and this constituted that ‘conscience’ of which the old 
 Eoman religion was a formal and habitual recognition. 2 
 
 The literary education of the boys must have been wholly 
 confined, during the period of which we are speaking, to 
 religious hymns and national songs — those early lays of 
 which Cicero mourns the loss, and to which I have adverted 
 
 1 Authorship of the essay in Plutarch’s works doubtful. 
 
 2 Pater’s Marius the Epicurean. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 323 
 
 above. Schools are indeed mentioned in which the simple 
 arts of reading and writing were acquired. The daughter of 
 Virginius is represented as frequenting one of these, 305 B.c. 
 (Livy, iii. 44), * Yirgini venienti in forum — ibi namque in 
 tabernis literarum ludi ercint — minister decemviri libidinis 
 manum injecit.’ Tabernce were a kind of booths open to the 
 street. Nor is there any reason to doubt that many such 
 schools existed. In the time of Camillus we find mention of 
 a teacher of boys at Falerii (for the liberi principum, Livy, v. 
 27) 1 ; and this confirms our conclusion that there was a con¬ 
 siderable number of adventure elementary schools {ludi) prior 
 to 303 B.c. at Lome, as well as among Sabines and Etruscans. 
 They were generally taught by slaves or freedmen. 
 
 But, as we might expect from the domestic character of 
 Roman training, it is probable that when reading and writing 
 were taught, they were taught in the family and by the 
 father. This is the only explanation of the wide diffusion of 
 these elementary arts. In any case, whether by domestic 
 teaching or otherwise, reading and writing, so far as required 
 for purposes of utility, were, at least from the fourth century 
 B.c., widely known among certain classes of Roman citizens 
 — probably as widely known as they were in civilised Europe 
 in the beginning of the eighteenth century. Livy says that 
 Roman boys used to be instructed in Etruscan literature just 
 as in his time they were instructed in Greek (?). 
 
 The young men practised gymnastic exercises, but solely 
 with a view to military fitness, in the Campus Martius. Sing¬ 
 ing, music, and dancing were all alien to the Roman and, 
 indeed, despised by him. 0 
 
 Second National Period. — 303 b.c. to 148 B.c. (Death 
 of Cato). 
 
 Till about 250 B.c. Roman education remained sub¬ 
 stantially the same as in the preceding centuries. But 
 during the preceding fifty years a certain development had 
 
 1 Schola does not occur in the sense of a school till the later imperial times. 
 The word for a school was Indus or Indus literarius. 
 
324 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 taken place. Two historical facts we must take as our guide. 
 First of all, in 260 B.C., Plutarch tells us that Spurius Car- 
 vilius, a freedman who had been domestic tutor to the Consul 
 Carvilius, opened a school and was the first to take fixed fees 
 for his instruction. This school Plutarch calls a 7 pa/jL/iaro- 
 • SiSaa/caXelov. Was he a primary teacher — a grammatist 
 (literator ), or was he a secondary teacher —a grammaticus ? 
 Without entering into the discussion of this question, I 
 would simply point to the second important historical fact. 
 Prior to the date of Carvilius’s school there could be no 
 literary instruction, because there was no literature. It is 
 about this date that we have a sudden development of a 
 national literature, by the help of Italo-Greeks chiefly. Cn. 
 ISTsevius of Campania was born 273 B.c., and wrote a histori¬ 
 cal poem on the first Punic War (probably about 240 B.c.), 
 twenty years after Carvilius opened his school. He also 
 wrote dramas and epigrams based on Greek literature. Then 
 Livius Andronicus (a freedman from Tarentum), who died 
 203 b . c ., wrote a translation into Latin of the ‘ Odyssey’—let 
 us say also about 240 b . c . ; Quintus Ennius, et sapiens, et 
 fortis} born 240 B.c. (also like Nsevius from Campania), laid 
 the foundation of Roman epic in his ‘ Annals,’ let us say 
 about 200 b . c . ; Pacuvius (born 220 b . c .), a nephew of En¬ 
 nius, wrote dramas full of Roman national feeling, and he 
 was followed by the great comedian Plautus. Are we to 
 suppose that Nsevius and Andronicus, without any literary 
 precursors, all at once gave literary form to the Latin tongue 
 about 240 b . c . ? Is it not more probable that when Carvilius 
 opened his school in 260 B.c. and taught a reformed alphabet 
 and spelling, Latin had taken shape, and that not only tra¬ 
 ditionary fables were instruments of education but also con¬ 
 temporary Latinity in the form of public records, not to speak 
 of the Twelve Tables, which were in good literary form ? 2 
 
 1 Horace, Ejp. ii. 1, where see a list of early writers more or less characterised. 
 
 2 Horace helps us here — 
 
 ‘ fcedera regum 
 
 Vel Gabiis vel cum rigidis sequata Sabinis, 
 
 Pontificum libros, aunosa volumina vatum,’ &c. Ep. 11 . i. 24. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 325 
 
 Carvilius would thus carry his pupils, doubtless a select few, 
 further in the study of Latin than was possible for the ordi¬ 
 nary primary schoolmaster. Accordingly, he was a gram- 
 maticus. Indeed, if this had not been the case, not only in 
 the school of Carvilius but in other schools, for whom did 
 ISTsevius and Andronicus write ? They must have had an 
 
 *j 
 
 audience. We know, also, that the rude Atellan Fables had 
 before this given place to the higher dramatic form of the 
 Satura. 
 
 It appears to me that we must conclude that in 260 B.c. 
 and onwards there was gradually growing up in the ordinary 
 ludi a higher linguistic education than had yet been known. 
 Acquaintance with Greek had been common, though not 
 general, before this date, for we know that Postumius, am¬ 
 bassador to Tarentum so early as 282 B.c., addressed an 
 assembly there in the Greek tongue. The frivolous audience 
 laughed at his blunders it is true, but it was no common feat 
 to address a formal oration to Greeks in their own tongue. 
 The increasing intercourse with Magna Grsecia and Sicily, 
 and with the Greek colonies of the Mediterranean generally, 
 had, in fact, made Greek familiar as the language both of 
 commerce and diplomacy, and given it an early footing in 
 Rome. Greek slaves and freedmen were employed to teach 
 the language conversationally to the children of the wealthier 
 citizens, and to act as secretaries. Along with conversational 
 Greek, the Roman youth now also had the laws of the Twelve 
 Tables for a text-book, and these as a chant (carmen neces- 
 sarium ) had to be learnt by heart. So the Spartan and 
 Cretan boys, it will be remembered, said or chanted their 
 laws. Reading and writing were more widely diffused than 
 in previous generations, and ludi had increased in number. 
 Traditionary songs in praise of heroes also were learnt by 
 heart and chanted, declamation and modulation of tone 
 always receiving great attention. 
 
 Education in the true sense, however, was not in the 
 hands of the school-teacher, but was mainly domestic as 
 in the previous centuries. It depended on the character 
 
326 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 of the father and mother, and the spirit that animated 
 public life. Conservative tradition governed it. It has 
 been well remarked that the less imagination a people 
 has the more is it governed by tradition; and tradition 
 governed the unimaginative Roman. The boys were 
 brought up in the disciplina vetus, the manners and cus¬ 
 toms of ancestors being held in reverence. Moribus anti - 
 quis stat res Iiomana virisque (Ennius in Cic. ‘De Rep.’ 5). 
 There was no suggestion of a state system as in Sparta 
 whereby to mould the youth into citizens of a certain type, 
 and yet severity and dignity of life were maintained; but 
 this wholly through the family and by the power of trans¬ 
 mitted custom. This would not have been possible with¬ 
 out the existence of a hereditary aristocracy protecting itself 
 by marriage laws from admixture with plebeians. A native 
 literature did not exist, except in the form of heroic songs 
 and public records, rude fables, and satires cast in a rough 
 dramatic form. 
 
 It was now that the Italo-Greek Livius Andronicus, above 
 referred to, endeavoured to supply the want of a literature 
 by translating the ‘ Odyssey ’ into Latin. He also repro¬ 
 duced Greek dramas in the Latin tongue. The ‘ Odyssey ’ 
 thereupon became a text-book and was studied, and large 
 portions of it learnt by heart, by the Roman youth. This 
 change, which was in point of fact the beginning of true 
 literary education among the Romans, began about 233 B.c. 
 — Livius Andronicus died before 213 B.c. The school of 
 Carvilius, already referred to, dates from about 260 B.c. 
 Mommsen says (iii. 463), ‘ The place of the Twelve Tables 
 was taken by the Latin Odyssey ’ (not for some time after 
 this, according to Cicero), ‘ as a sort of improved primer, and 
 the Roman, boy was . . . trained to the knowledge and 
 delivery of his mother-tongue by means of this translation, 
 as the Greek by means of the original; noted teachers of 
 the Greek language and literature, Andronicus and others, 
 who already probably taught, not children properly so called, 
 but boys growing up to maturity and young men, did not 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 327 
 
 disdain to give instruction in the mother-tongue along with 
 the Greek.’ These were the first steps towards a higher 
 Latin instruction, but they did not yet, properly speaking, 
 constitute such an instruction in any large sense. Instruc¬ 
 tion in a language cannot manifestly go beyond the elemen¬ 
 tary stage so long as the language wants a literature. ‘ Up 
 till that time’ (233 b.c.), says Suetonius (‘De Gramm.’ i.) 
 ‘literature, far from being held in honour, was not even 
 known: in fact, the city, rude and absorbed in war, did 
 not yet give much attention to the liberal arts.’ 
 
 The Latin Odyssey was not only the beginning of Roman 
 literary education but continued to be taught into post¬ 
 republican times. Horace learned it in the school of 
 Orbilius, and Quintilian favours it. 
 
 Literature in education, and with it Hellenism, made 
 steady progress during the whole of the next century, and 
 its dominance in the schools may be fixed at the date of 
 the death of Cato the elder, who had laboured to stem its 
 progress (148 b.c.). At this date, too, Macedonia became 
 a Roman province, and the Second Punic War and the 
 supremacy of the Romans in Spain were already past 
 history. 
 
 That the literary education of the young Romans had 
 made remarkable progress during the century that followed 
 the opening of Carvilius’s school, is apparent (apart from 
 other ample evidence 2 ) from the reception of the Athenian 
 ambassadors, Carneades the Academic and Diogenes the 
 Stoic, by the Roman youth who flocked to hear them dis¬ 
 course in 155 B.c. Already, as Plutarch tells us in his Life 
 of Cato, oratory was much studied in Rome, 2 and the ambi¬ 
 tious among the young men were prepared to hear with open 
 ears the philosophic teachings of the Greeks. Polybius, 
 about 167 B.c., refers to the number of capable teachers who 
 resided in Rome. In this year also (167 B.c.) Crates of 
 
 1 For example, Scipio and other leading statesmen preferred to write in 
 Greek. 
 
 2 For a sketch of Roman oratory the student will read Cicero’s ‘ Brutus.’ 
 
328 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Mallos in Cilicia, a Stoic philosopher and a man of great 
 learning, came to Koine as ambassador of King Attalus. He 
 fell into an open sewer and broke his leg (Suet, ii.), and was 
 consequently compelled to remain in Borne for some time. 
 ‘ During the whole period of his embassy and convalescence/ 
 says Suetonius, ‘ he gave frequent lectures, taking great pains 
 to instruct his hearers, and he has left us an example worthy 
 of imitation.’ 
 
 The date of the death of Cato (148 B.c.) completes the 
 second period of Roman life and education ; and a book 
 which he wrote, ‘ De Liberis educandis/ seems to have illus¬ 
 trated the genuine practical character of Roman educational 
 conceptions in their strictest sense. It doubtless was in¬ 
 tended as a protest against Hellenic innovations. The Hel¬ 
 lenic idea of culture had not yet indeed taken root, and the 
 words in Cicero (‘ De Republica/ i. 20) were still applicable: 
 
 — ‘ Quid esse igitur censes discendum nobis V To which 
 the answer is: — ‘ Eas artes quae efficiant ut usui civitati 
 simus.’ The book by Cato was intended to show what a vir 
 bonus ought to be as orator, physician, husbandman, warrior, 
 and jurist. So much science only was to be acquired as was 
 necessary for practical purposes. Latin grammar was not 
 included, and this shows that the learned had not yet done 
 much for the grammatical study of the native tongue. 
 Music and the mathematical and physical sciences were 
 excluded. Cato used to say that ‘ Greek literature should be 
 looked into, but not thoroughly studied.’ There seems after 
 this to have been a succession of books of a similar kind; 
 but in all these, knowledge — as such and for its own sake 
 
 — was not advocated. Cato is spoken of by Quintilian as 
 the first Roman writer on pedagogy. 
 
 During this second period, as in that which preceded it, it 
 cannot be said that the masses of the people (and only a por¬ 
 tion of them) received any instruction save the rudiments of 
 reading and writing. Those intended for mercantile life 
 continued to acquire these accomplishments, and they were 
 much more widely diffused (as appeared from Cato’s book) 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 329 
 
 even among the slaves, than we can now well explain unless 
 it be that these, for the most part, were Greeks or Syro- 
 Greeks. Schools were still what we call ‘ adventure ’ schools, 
 and there is no evidence that the differentiation into grammar 
 or secondary schools had yet taken place, although teachers 
 here and there gave advanced or secondary instruction. 
 
 On the whole we may say that advanced instruction was 
 chiefly domestic and tutorial, and consequently restricted to 
 the upper classes. Spite, however, of Hellenic influence, the 
 mores, consuetudines et instituta majorum, which constituted 
 the vetus discijplina, still animated education. The Korean 
 was essentially conservative. The word * educare ’ when 
 contrasted with the Greek TrcuSevetv is itself instructive. It 
 means to train up a child in the way he should go — the 
 way, viz., of his fathers; whereas, the Greek word has in 
 view all that concerns both the bodily and mental growth of 
 the boy. Education, in this Greek sense, can hardly he said 
 to have existed at the time of Cato’s death. Polybius, in¬ 
 deed, writing about this time, remarks on the neglect of 
 education among the Komans, as compared with the attention 
 paid to it among the Greeks. 
 
 To sum up. We are justified in saying that literary educa¬ 
 tion cannot be regarded as beginning in Rome till about 233 
 B.c. After this date, there seems to have been rapid progress, 
 owing to Greek influence. Note also that the Second Punic 
 War ended in 202 B.c., and Rome had now breathing time. 
 Her power was finally established, and she was on her way 
 to empire. Macedon was conquered 168 B.c. The first 
 library was erected at Rome in 167 B.c. Let us put all these 
 facts together and we shall accept readily Mommsen’s con¬ 
 clusion that ‘ even in the time of Pictor and Cato Greek cul¬ 
 ture was widely diffused at Rome, and there was also a native 
 culture.’ 
 
 The rapid progress which education made in Rome is 
 partly to be explained by the fact that a recognised scheme 
 of culture already existed in the Hellenic schools of Italy and 
 the Mediterranean cities generally. 
 
330 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Third National Period. —148 B.c. onwards (Corinth 
 destroyed 146 b.c.). 
 
 We now come to the third period of Boinan intellectual 
 life and education. After 148 B.c. it could no longer be said 
 to be specifically Boman at all. 1 It was Greek education as 
 influenced and coloured by the Boman character and aims. 
 It embraced not only the Latin and Greek languages and 
 literature, but music and geometry. After the conquest of 
 Macedonia, twenty years before (167 B.c.), the intellectual 
 traffic between Greece and Borne, already considerable, was 
 greatly augmented, and, from this time forward, Greek lan¬ 
 guage and literature were regarded as indispensable elements 
 in the higher education. Less than fifty years after the 
 death of the great conservative Boman, Hellenism, already 
 dominant in 148 B.c., was now triumphant. Cicero (born 
 106 B.c.) tells us that at the beginning of his life the ancient 
 education had been wholly overthrown. 
 
 The extent to which the cycle of general culture had 
 changed in the Boman world during the course of a century, 
 is shown by a comparison of the Encyclopaedia of Cato with 
 the similar treatise of Yarro, ‘concerning school sciences.’ 2 
 As constituent elements of professional culture there appeared 
 in Cato the art of oratory, the sciences of agriculture, of law, 
 of war, and of medicine; in Yarro, the ‘ most learned of the 
 Bomans’ (born 116 B.c.), there appeared grammar, logic or 
 dialectics, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music, 
 medicine, and architecture. This scheme of knowledge rests 
 on a wholly Hellenic conception. 
 
 And yet we cannot say that secondary schools taught by 
 grammatici existed earlier than 148 years B.c. Before that 
 date, some of the ordinary ludi may have carried boys be¬ 
 yond the limits of a primary education. In all countries we 
 find this transition period. But we are not entitled to go 
 behind the authority of Suetonius, who tells us that Crates 
 introduced the study of grammar at Borne. I speak only of 
 
 1 Lucilius, the satirist, was born in 147 b.c. 
 
 2 So far as the contents of these books are now known. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 331 
 
 schools: that advanced instruction was given by Greek 
 tutors in families we know. Progress was now, however, very 
 rapid. About 140 B.c. there were, according to Suetonius 
 (‘De Gram/ iii.), more than twenty celebrated grammatici at 
 Pome, all, it is presumed, teaching. 
 
 The higher education also, which was summed up by the 
 one word Oratory, seems to have begun to flourish about the 
 same time, taught by Greeks in Greek to those who could 
 follow them. It was towards the middle of the seventh 
 century (100 B.c.), that the eminent orators Marcus Antonius 
 and Lucius Crassus flourished, and twenty or thirty years 
 before them the Gracchi. These men must have begun their 
 education as boys about the beginning of the third period. 
 They could speak Greek and hold discussions in it. A 
 decree of the senate (161 B.c.) directed against the rhetori¬ 
 cians and philosophers had failed to arrest the higher educa¬ 
 tion in its beginnings; and the censorial edict against the 
 higher schools so late as 112 B.c. was a brutum fulmen. It 
 was, however, the philosophy of the Greeks, and not their 
 literature, that the more conservative among the Romans 
 most dreaded. There was also not a little distrust of the 
 Greek character, and that not without reason. Greek art 
 and artists followed close on the heels of Greek rhetoric. It 
 was about this time also that the women of the higher classes 
 began to participate in the Hellenistic education. 
 
 What Cato foresaw had now come. It had been hastened 
 doubtless by the number of Greek scholars who found their 
 way to Rome after the fall of Corinth (146 B.c.); among 
 these there were philosophical and rhetorical teachers of 
 considerable pretensions. The decree of the senate and the 
 edict of the censor above referred to, are so interesting in the 
 history of education generally, that I shall quote fully what 
 Suetonius (‘ De Rhet/ i.) says : 
 
 ‘ Rhetoric also, as well as grammar, was not introduced 
 amongst us till a late period, and with still more difficulty, 
 inasmuch as we find that, at times, the practice of it was 
 even prohibited. In order to leave no doubt of this I will 
 
332 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 subjoin an ancient decree of the senate as well as an edict of 
 the censors : “ In the consulship of Caius Eannius Strabo and 
 Marcus Valerius Messala, 1 the praetor Marcus Pomponius 
 moved the senate that an act be passed respecting philoso¬ 
 phers and rhetoricians. In this matter they have decreed as 
 follows: c It shall be lawful for M. Pomponius, the praetor, to 
 take such measures and make such provisions as the good of 
 the republic and the duty of his office require, that no philoso¬ 
 phers or rhetoricians be suffered in Rome.’ ” After some 
 interval, the censor Cnaeus Domitius iEnobarbus and Lucius 
 Licinius Crassus issued the following edict upon the same 
 subject. “ It is reported to us that certain persons have insti¬ 
 tuted a new kind of discipline ; that our youth resort to their 
 schools ; that they have assumed the title of Latin rhetori¬ 
 cians ; and that young men waste their time there, whole days 
 together. Our ancestors have ordained what instruction it 
 is fitting their children should receive, and what schools they 
 should attend. These novelties, contrary to the customs and 
 instructions of our ‘ancestors, we neither approve nor do they 
 appear to us good. Wherefore it appears to be our duty that 
 we should notify our judgment both to those who keep such 
 schools and those who are in the practice of frequenting 
 them, that they meet our disapprobation.” However, by slow 
 degrees, rhetoric manifested itself to be a useful and honour¬ 
 able study, and many persons devoted themselves to it both 
 as a means of defence and of acquiring reputation.’ 
 
 Many native Romans also now began to cultivate the 
 scholastic field, and it became the fashion to study Naevius, 
 Ennius, and Lucilius in the schools, and to comment on these 
 authors critically. The education which had humanitas, or 
 culture, in the Roman sense, for its aim was thus finally 
 established, let us say about 625 A.u.c. at latest, i. e. 128 B.c. 
 The first formal instruction in Latin rhetoric and oratory by 
 a Roman was given (but not for pay) about 128 B.c., the 
 year we have named. His name was Lucius iElius Praecon- 
 inus of Lanuvium, commonly called ‘ The Penman’ (Stilo), a 
 
 1 This senatus consultum was made 161 b.c. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 333 
 
 distinguished Roman knight. But it is only as a purely 
 Latin rhetor that we can call him the first, for Greek rhetori¬ 
 cians taught long before this. 1 
 
 Personal superintendence of the boys of the wealthier 
 classes had been to a large extent and for some time before 
 this handed over to psedagogi — in imitation of the Greek 
 custom. These were also called ‘ custodes ’ and ‘ comites.’ 
 They, however, did not instruct the boys but simply acted 
 as guardians and attendants. They were generally Greek 
 or Syro-Greek slaves and freedmen, and were, for the most 
 part, selected with great care. The object the parents had 
 in view was not only a moral one, but conversational fluency 
 in the Greek tongue. 
 
 The line which the Hellenistic studies took in Rome was 
 grammatical and philological rather than aesthetic, and in 
 the higher schools it was rhetorical. The more ambitious 
 minds occupied themselves with philosophical questions, 
 especially on the lines of the Academic and Stoic philos¬ 
 ophies ; but even the study of philosophy always had in 
 view the practical equipment of the orator, except in so far 
 as it afforded material for intellectual fence. The young 
 Roman had at all periods of history to prepare himself for 
 speech in the forum or the senate. Oratory was not only 
 a mark of culture, but also a weapon of offence and defence 
 (‘ regina rerum oratio,’ says Pacuvius). Accordingly, even 
 now when both Latin and Greek literature had become 
 fairly established as part of the ordinary instruction, both 
 in the grammatical and rhetorical schools, the acquisition of 
 oratory still governed those studies which were primarily 
 intended to cultivate the humanity of the pupil more 
 Grcecorum. Thus true to its own instincts did Rome 
 remain even when the narrow ancient life was beginning 
 to disappear. It is true that the laws of the Twelve Tables 
 
 1 Quintilian tells us (ii. 4. 42) on the authority of Cicero, that the first 
 eminent Latin rhetor who taught by the method of fictitious pleadings in the 
 school was Plotius, towards the end of the life of Licinius Crassus and about 
 the same time as the first school of Roman literature was opened by Nicanor 
 Postumus (93 b.c.). 
 
334 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 were no longer used as a text-book, that the old domestic 
 education was maintaining itself with difficulty, and that 
 Latin and Greek literature now formed the basis of all edu¬ 
 cation ; but the chief aim of the literary education was 
 always oratory, not pure literature. The study of rhetoric, 
 as constituting the highest education of youth, was regarded 
 as not merely essential to the formation of a man, ‘ ingenuus 
 et liberaliter educatus,’ but above all as the road to influence, 
 power, and public employment. 
 
 We now see virtually established in the last period of 
 the Eepublic, i.e. from 148 B.c., a regular course of instruc¬ 
 tion having culture or humanitas for its object, but always 
 in subservience to oratory for the uses of public life. The 
 curriculum might be said to consist of three stages — the 
 primary, in which reading and writing of Latin and Greek 
 were taught; then the grammatical and literary instruction 
 of a higher and philological kind; finally the technical and 
 elaborate study of rhetoric and the art of forensic orations, 
 along with such dialectic and philosophy as might be 
 available. 
 
 It was to the Hellenic victory over the old Boman edu¬ 
 cation that we owe Cicero, Vergil, Lucretius, and all that 
 brilliant crowd of literary men who adorned the last century 
 of the Eepublic and the beginnings of the empire. Cicero 
 was born 106 B.c. ; Lucretius 98 b.c. ; Vergil 70 b.c. It was 
 only now that Latin finally took its place side by side with 
 Greek, if not as an equal, yet as an honourable rival. 
 
 Csesar, and after him Augustus, encouraged and protected 
 the professors of every art, and many now took to literature 
 and philosophy as the occupation of men to whom, under an 
 imperial system, the highest political activity was no longer 
 open. While, therefore, we may regret with Cato, and at 
 a later date Tacitus, the decay of the old Boman training, 
 we must recognise the necessity of the Hellenic invasion if 
 a larger conception of the ends of education and of life was 
 ever to animate the Boman mind. The importance of this 
 fn the future history of the world is beyond our power of 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 335 
 
 estimating, for it was under Roman protection and under 
 Imperial power that all the nobler arts of life were assured 
 of recognition and encouragement in every corner of the 
 civilised world. 
 
 And yet it was impossible to turn a Roman into a Greek. 
 He remained to the last prosaic and practical. The Helleni- 
 cised few to whom culture pure and simple was an aim, 
 formed a kind of intellectual aristocracy. Even in the time 
 of Augustus we find Horace fully recognising the difference 
 between the Roman and the Greek mind, just as we find the 
 same recognition in the passage we quoted from Cicero. In 
 the ‘ Ep. ad Pisones,’ line 325, Horace 1 contrasts the Greek 
 genius with that of the practical Roman: 
 
 4 To the Greeks the Muse has given genius, to the Greeks, 
 ambitious of nothing but praise, the power to speak with elo¬ 
 quence. The boys of Rome learn by long calculations to divide a 
 pound into a hundred parts. “ Let Albinus’ son tell me what 
 remains if from five ounces one is taken.” If you have been able 
 to answer “ the third of a pound,” well done ; you will be able to 
 look after your own estate. Add an ounce, what is the sum? 
 44 Half a pound.” When we have thus imbued their minds with 
 the canker and care of gain, do we hope that they will compose 
 poems worthy of preservation, worthy of being preserved in cases 
 of cypress ? ’ 
 
 1 Graiis ingenium, Graiis dedit ore rotundo 
 Musa loqui, prpeter laudem nullius avaris. 
 
 Romani pueri longis rationibus assem 
 Discunt in partes centum diducere. Dicat 
 Filius Albini : si de quincunce remota est 
 Uncia, quid superat ? Poteras dixisse, Triens. Eu ! 
 
 Rem poteris servare tuam. Redit uncia, quid fit ? 
 
 Semis. At haec animos aerugo et cura peculi 
 Quum semel imbuerit, speramus carmina fingi 
 Posse linenda cedro et levi seryanda cupresso ? 
 
336 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 CURRICULUM OF STUDY—SCHOOLS, METHODS, AND 
 
 MASTERS 
 
 I shall now sum up briefly the course of instruction 
 through which the Roman youth were carried during the 
 third or Romano-Hellenic period, as accurately as it can 
 be ascertained. 
 
 Primary Instruction 
 
 Up to the sixth or seventh year the child remained at 
 home under his mother and nurse, and under the protection 
 of a pcedagogus. His elementary instruction then began either 
 at home or in a Indus publicus under a ludimagister (gram- 
 matist, liter a tor), where he learnt to read and write. Indus 
 was the word confined to primary schools; schola, from the 
 Greek, was applied to higher schools. 1 Horace, in his first 
 book of Satires, I. vi. 72, gives a picture of Italian boys going 
 to school. His father, he says, ‘ was unwilling to send me 
 to the ludus of Flavius, whither boys the offspring of great 
 centurions were wont to go with their satchels ’ ( capsce calcu- 
 lorum, says Orelli, i.e. bags for holding pebbles to count with) 
 ‘ and tablets, carrying their fee every Ides, but had the spirit 
 to bring his boy to Rome to be taught.’ 2 
 
 In learning their letters, the children first acquired their 
 names and their sequence by heart without regard to their 
 
 1 ‘Ludus’ was a place for exercise of any kind, e.g. ‘Indus militarist 
 where soldiers were exercised. It thus was naturally used for the place to 
 which children resorted for school exercises. (leisure whicli gave 
 
 the Latin ‘schola,’ was originally used by the Greeks to designate a place for 
 the occupation of leisure, and so gradually was applied to a place for 
 philosophical discussions. 
 
 2 ‘ Noluit in Flavi ludum me mittere magni 
 Quo pueri magnis e centurionibus orti, 
 
 Laevo suspensi loculos tabulamque lacerto, 
 
 Ibant octonis referentes Idibus tera ; 
 
 Sed puerum est ausus Romam portare docendum,’ &c. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 337 
 
 form and function, a practice of which Quintilian complains. 
 Writing was begun at the same time with reading, either by 
 copying models or by tracing letters inscribed on waxen 
 tablets or graven in wood — the teacher at first guiding the 
 hand. 
 
 The details of the work done in a Roman primary school 
 are not, so far as I can learn, accurately known. Simple 
 reading and writing and very elementary calculation were 
 taught, the last with the free help of the fingers and little 
 stones and thereafter on waxen tablets. I think we can also 
 say for certain that (as in the Greek schools) attention was 
 paid to accentuation and elocution, and that the substance of 
 what was read was always explained. Gnomic verses con¬ 
 taining maxims and precepts were taken down and com¬ 
 mitted to memory. The reading-book was generally the 
 Latin version of the ‘ Odyssey/ Up to about 80 B.c., the 
 laws of the Twelve Tables were learnt by heart. 1 
 
 Secondary Instruction 
 
 About the age of twelve the hoy passed into the school of 
 the grammaticus — to whom the epithets ‘ doctus ’ and 
 ‘ eruditus ’ were usually applied. 
 
 There were two classes of grammatical schools — the Greek 
 and the Latin. It was the general custom to go to the 
 former first. This custom was approved of by Quintilian. 
 The pupil, when he entered, usually took with him a certain 
 conversational knowledge of Greek. He was instructed in 
 grammar in the narrower sense, learned portions of Homer 
 and other poets by heart, and was introduced to the critical 
 study of literature and to composition. The fables of HCsop 
 were popular in the earlier stages of instruction. To reading 
 
 1 After all that has been written on Roman education, the precise details 
 of work in the primary schools are by no means certain. Doubtless it varied 
 as it has done in our own country and depended on the qualifications of the 
 teacher — at least before the grammatical or secondary schools were fully 
 differentiated. 
 
 22 
 
338 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 with purity of diction and good expression much importance 
 was now attached. 
 
 Dictation was largely practised with a view to correct 
 spelling, and also because, by means of dictation, select poems 
 could be written down and learnt by heart when the com- 
 plete works of the poets could not be had. Even when rolls 
 became cheap, this practice of dictation was kept up. The 
 rhetorician even dictated his system of rhetoric. 
 
 The Twelve Tables ceased to be learned by heart in the 
 lifetime of Cicero. 1 Music was taught with a view chiefly 
 to rhythm — for music as an art was not cultivated at Eome. 
 The employments of leisure were not esteemed there — the 
 Roman was too serious and practical for this. The musi¬ 
 cians employed at religious festivals were paid servants. 
 
 As to writing, it seems to me doubtful whether in the pri¬ 
 mary school the pupil advanced beyond writing with the 
 sharp-pointed stylus on waxen tablets; but in the secondary 
 schools they also learned to write on parchment or papyrus 
 with pen ( calamus ) and ink (atr amentum). In these schools, 
 however, and even in the schools of the rhetoricians, the 
 waxen tablet was constantly in use. With the flat head of 
 the style words could be deleted and corrections made. 
 
 Grammatical instruction meant in Rome ordinary gram¬ 
 mar as we now understand it, to which all the philology of 
 the time was made contributory ; also literature with the ex¬ 
 planation of the poets, and criticism. The full explanation 
 of the poets was also the recognised medium for giving gen¬ 
 eral information. Thus, outside the literary text-books, the 
 instruction which the Roman boy received was orally com¬ 
 municated. He was dependent on his master. 
 
 The Greek and Latin grammar schools, were distinct. As 
 a rule, I have said, the boy went first to the Greek school. 
 Greek was, in fact, the leading study of the secondary 
 schools, and was acquired as if it were a native tongue. 
 The advanced pupils spoke and wrote Greek. But from 
 
 1 Cic. De Leg. ii. 23: ‘Discebamus enim pneri XII. ut carmen neces- 
 sarium, quas jam nemo discit.’ 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 339 
 
 about 90 B.c., if not sooner, Latin rhetoric, i.e. the adapta¬ 
 tion of Greek rhetoric to the Latin language and oratory, 
 began also to be taught. By that time there was a Latin 
 literature and not a few orators, and the language had been 
 moulded into the concise, vigorous, and effective organ of 
 speech which has come down to modern Europe. At the 
 same time it was not unusual for the advanced pupils to 
 declaim in Greek as well as in Latin. If they had not 
 done so, they could not have benefited by the criticism 
 of their Greek teachers who, for the most part, despised 
 Latin. 
 
 Geography was taught, as appears from a line of Pro¬ 
 pertius (iv. iii. 36), ‘ Cogor et e tabula pictos cognoscere 
 mundos.’ 
 
 To the course of instruction in the grammar schools we 
 have to add music, with a view to the understanding of 
 metre; not the playing on an instrument, as in Greece. The 
 simple singing or chanting which had been associated with 
 Roman religion and celebration of heroes, was learned from 
 special teachers by a few, but only with a view to proper in¬ 
 tonation and rhythm in oratory. By the Roman the horn 
 and the trumpet were preferred to the lyre and cithara which 
 charmed the Greek. 
 
 Arithmetic was taught; but neither in the secondary or 
 higher education was it the theoretical arithmetic of Plato, 
 but mere calculation. 
 
 Geometry was taught by a specialist, but chiefly in its 
 practical relations to mensuration. As a liberal study it had 
 for the Romans no attraction. So with astronomy. 
 
 Dancing was taught, but only privately in the homes of 
 the pupils. It partook very much of the nature of instruc¬ 
 tion in calisthenics and ‘ deportment/ and was wholly unlike 
 our modern dancing. The possibility of young men and 
 women waltzing together at a public assembly would have 
 been to the Roman shocking, had it not been inconceivable. 
 Indeed, Cicero says in one of his orations, that no one would 
 dance unless he were either drunk or mad. 
 
340 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Gymnastic had a purely hygienic and military aim, and 
 only those who had assumed the toga virilis frequented the 
 Campus Martius. It was with difficulty the Roman ever 
 understood it in the Hellenic sense of a free discipline. The 
 gymnastic of the Romans had, it is true, towards the end of 
 the Republic, borrowed a good deal from the Greeks; but the 
 Campus Martius was never a Greek gymnasium, but essen¬ 
 tially a military exercising ground. 
 
 The literati or grammatici in the later years of the school 
 curriculum frequently encroached on the work which 
 properly belonged to the rhetoricians, and gave exercises in 
 declamation and disputation, great attention being paid at 
 this stage, and, indeed, at all stages of school-teaching, to 
 pleasing elocution. 
 
 In the Roman school of the grammaticus we see only a 
 repetition of the Hellenic school after it was fully developed 
 (let us say in the third century B.C.). The differentiation 
 into primary and secondary schools had now taken place 
 everywhere. It is this developed Hellenic school that is 
 
 known as the Romano-Hellenic, and it was to be found in all 
 
 * 
 
 the important towns of the Roman Empire down to the fifth 
 century a.d. But in all things—even in the study of 
 Greek — there was a Roman practical aim, while in all sub¬ 
 jects, save literature and what bore directly on the full 
 understanding of the poets, the Roman was superficial 
 and utilitarian. Might we not say, superficial because 
 utilitarian ? 
 
 The further education of the youth after he had assumed 
 the toga virilis (generally at sixteen years of age) depended 
 on his future occupation. Those intended for a farmer’s life 
 went to live at some farm station; those intended for the 
 army passed very young into the service; those again who 
 were intended for public life or for pleaders and jurists, went 
 to the rhetorical schools and thereafter attended the forum, 
 the comitia, and the senate, attaching themselves to some 
 approved orator or jurist. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 341 
 
 The Higher Instruction — Oratory 
 
 In the rhetorical schools the young men studied rhetoric 
 and all the arts which could make an effective orator. Cicero 
 (‘De Orat.’ iv.) tells us that hi the last century of the 
 Republic ‘ no studies were ever pursued with more earnest¬ 
 ness than those tending to the acquisition of eloquence.’ 
 These studies, as being linguistic and literary in the widest 
 sense, gave a large and liberal cultivation, notwithstanding 
 the practical aim. It was held that to be a ‘ true orator ’ a 
 man must study philosophy, mathematics, and, in fact, 
 familiarise himself with the whole encyclopaedia. In the 
 schools the youths wrote declamations on prescribed themes 
 (theses or loci communes ) and delivered them with proper 
 accent and articulation. They conducted also fictitious cases, 
 taking sides in the dispute. The analysis of language with 
 a view to mastering all its forms was studied (see Cicero ‘ De 
 Oratore ’ and Quintilian). Mathematics, philosophy (at least 
 towards the end of the Republic) and law, as well as litera¬ 
 ture, entered more or less into this higher curriculum; hut 
 the three former seem to have been studied under specialist 
 teachers, and did not form an essential part of the higher 
 instruction with the majority of students. It was only in 
 the closing period of the Republic that native history began 
 to receive attention. In short, we may say that in the higher 
 education of youths who aimed at some form of public life — 
 as all the ambitious among the well-to-do did—-the two 
 words ‘ law ’ and ‘ oratory ’ practically summed up their 
 studies. Philosophy and geometry, which, along with astron¬ 
 omy, included in those days the whole of physical science, 
 were merely touched, save by a few of the more ardent. In 
 a political constitution in which a senate or a popular audi¬ 
 ence had to be convinced, oratory was the great instrument 
 of the rising politician; while at the bar it was of supreme 
 importance. Even when the Roman began to philosophise 
 seriously, it was always practical ethical studies that attracted 
 him. Some substitute had to be found for national tradition 
 
342 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 and for lost gods. But in its larger scientific aspects, philo¬ 
 sophical study was alien to the Boman mind, and took the 
 form, as we see in Cicero, of literary and academic exercita- 
 tions. About oratory, however, they were very much in 
 earnest. 
 
 Youths of high intellectual ambition did not rest satisfied 
 with the instruction obtainable at Borne, but (at least after 
 80 b.c.) resorted to Athens and other philosophical and rhe¬ 
 torical centres. In the last decades of the Bepublic there 
 were many famous schools of this higher class. In addition to 
 Athens, the mother city, we have the great university schools 
 of Bliodes, Apollonia, Mitylene, Alexandria, Tarsus, Perga- 
 mus, and afterwards, in imperial times, Smyrna and Ephesus. 
 In the time of Cicero Marseilles also was already a widely 
 known school. 
 
 Women shared in the literary culture of Borne; but only 
 to a restricted extent. That girls occasionally attended day- 
 schools, at least towards the end of the Bepublic, is certain; 
 but speaking generally, their education was domestic and 
 conducted by private tutors. But many possessed high 
 culture. Beferring to the Gracchi Cicero says, non tam in 
 gremio educatos qacim sermone mcttris. Much later, similar 
 testimony is borne to the mother of Agricola by Tacitus. 
 
 But although the Boman always remained Boman in the 
 midst of Hellenic influences, he had lost, long before the 
 time of Augustus, the old primitive simplicity of life. 
 Probably Cato the elder was the last genuine representative of 
 this, and there is a suspicion of affectation in his intellectual 
 narrowness, frugality, and hardiness. The severe and even 
 stern Boman family life penetrated by a moral and religious 
 spirit had, to a large extent, disappeared owing to contact 
 with other nations and the new liberal education. Wealth, 
 luxury, and Greek scepticism, had begun to weaken the 
 Boman fibre. There were always some, of course, who repre¬ 
 sented the ancient spirit and who, in the words of Cicero, 
 added Hellenic culture ad domesticum majorumque morem ; 
 but the mass of the upper classes, having lost the Boman 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 343 
 
 faith, began to find their life-aim in personal ambition and 
 aggrandisement, save when they adopted a cosmopolitan 
 philosophy and lived apart. 
 
 Discipline. Teachers. School-houses 
 
 Discipline. — The school discipline was severe. Plautus 
 Bacch.’ iii. 3. 27), says 
 
 Cum librum legeres si unam peccavisses syllabam 
 Fieret corium tarn maculosum quani est nutricis pallium. 
 
 The rod and strap 1 were freely used both in the elementary 
 and secondary school. All are familiar with Horace’s 
 Orbilius plagosus (‘ Ep.’ ii. 1.70), who transferred to the 
 school the discipline he had learned to suffer and enforce as 
 a soldier. Juvenal refers to school punishments (i. 15), 
 where it would appear that £ to withdraw the hand from the 
 rod ’ was a phrase for leaving school. Ausonius speaks of 
 the school resounding with many a stroke (multo veriere). 
 Martial refers to the ‘ melancholy rods, sceptres of peda¬ 
 gogues,’ ‘ Ferukeque tristes sceptra psedagogorum ’ (x. 62). 
 He also speaks of the teacher as ‘ clamosus,’ and it is both 
 to ludimagistri and grammatici that the epithets ‘ ssevus,’ 
 ‘ acerbus,’ ‘ plagosus,’ were justly applied by him. Notwith¬ 
 standing that Martial in the epigram just quoted appeals to 
 the schoolmaster to he kind to his pupils, if he would have 
 them love learning ; that the stern Cato in his lost book ‘ De 
 Liberis educandis,’ denounced those who strike women and 
 children; that Quintilian protested against the practice; 
 that one distinguished teacher was opposed to flogging in 
 the generation preceding Quintilian ; that Yerrius Flaccus 
 followed a milder way; that Seneca advocated lenity, and 
 that Cicero said that virtue was to be instilled, not by 
 menaces, force, and terror, hut by instruction and persuasion 
 — notwithstanding all this, the severe discipline continued. 
 
 1 Hor. Sat. I. 319, refers to scutica as a whip more severe than the flagellum , 
 and both were more severe than the ferula, but I am not aware that the two 
 former were used in schools. 
 
344 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Augustine as a boy had to endure severe castigations (370- 
 80 A.D.). 
 
 The school hours were long, often beginning before day¬ 
 light and going on till the evening with an interval for din¬ 
 ner. There appear, however, to have been no home lessons. 1 
 The pupils seem to have spoken aloud when learning, and 
 the masters out-shouted them. Martial (ix. 69) says: 
 
 Despiteful pedant, why dost me pursue, 
 
 Thou head detested by the younger crew ? 
 
 Before the cock proclaims the day is near 
 Thy direful threats and lashes stun my ear, &c. 
 
 There were a considerable number of short holidays 
 throughout the year, in addition to every eighth day. But 
 the four months’ holiday beginning in the middle of June is 
 now understood to have been confined to rural and elementary 
 schools. - 
 
 We do not hear of rewards for merit till the time of 
 Augustus. It was Verrius Elaccus who first introduced the 
 
 O 
 
 custom of giving book prizes; but both in Augustan times 
 and thereafter they were rare. 
 
 Position of the Teacher.— The pedagogue who had 
 charge of the boy night and day, and held a paternal rela¬ 
 tion to him, accompanied his charge to school, sat there with 
 him, and brought him home again. He had considerable 
 powers granted to him with a view to secure obedience, 
 although he was almost always only a slave. The Romans, 
 however, seem to have taken more pains in selecting their 
 pedagogues than the Greeks did. Their reward, when their 
 task was completed, was usually the gift of their freedom. 
 
 In the time of the Empire, as well as of the Republic, the 
 position of the elementary teacher was very humble ; and 
 before the Empire even the grammaticus, though more es¬ 
 teemed, did not stand high. It was Julius Caesar who first 
 gave Roman citizenship to the grammatici. Indeed, the oc¬ 
 cupation of elementary teacher — it could not be called a 
 
 1 Ussing says that time was given also for gymnastic. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 345 
 
 profession — was looked upon with contempt. Held of low 
 estimation in the best Attic time, it fell still lower in the 
 Roman. I have already quoted from Lucian in the chapters 
 on Greek education, and other references might be given 
 here to Latin writers. Justin, among others, when he refers 
 (xxi. 5) to the story of Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse 
 having become a primary teacher after his expulsion, uses 
 the following words: ‘ humillima quaeque tutissima existi- 
 mans, in sordidissimum vitae genus descendit.’ Among 
 Greek fragments there is one which says of a man who had 
 disappeared, ‘ he is either dead or become a primary teacher.’ 
 The teachers were always slaves or freedmen, and had to 
 maintain a daily contest with their unruly pupils. All 
 references to the circumstances of teachers before the time 
 of Cicero represent them as in poverty. The payments to 
 them were for a long period in the form of ‘ honoraria ’ 
 rather than fees. They had to take what they could get. 
 
 The grammatici, as I have already indicated, held a higher 
 position and were spoken of with some respect; but it was 
 only of the rhetoricians (who corresponded to our modern 
 professors), that respectful and laudatory remarks are made 
 by Roman writers. 
 
 It was in the first century of our era that the word ‘ pro¬ 
 fessor’ began to be used as applied to experts in some of the 
 ‘ liberal arts.’ Quintilian (xii. 2) says : ‘ Si geometrse et mus- 
 ici et grammatici ceterarumque artium professores omnem 
 suam vitam, quamlibet longa fuerit, in singulis artibus con- 
 sumpserunt,’ &c. In the time of the Emperor Hadrian the 
 title was given to the public, established and paid lecturers 
 in the Athenaeum at Rome. The designation ‘professores 
 medici ’ seems first to have made its appearance in the time 
 of Severus (193 a.d.). 1 
 
 1 Seneca was probably the first to use the designation Professor. He 
 speaks (Ep. 89) of ‘professores eloquentise.’ It will probably be found that 
 it was only to rhetorical teachers, and not to philosophers, that the word was 
 applied in the first instance, and then to other specialists. The title ‘ pro¬ 
 fessor ’ was in the course of time extended to the grammatici and to the 
 instructors in mathematics and medicine. 
 
346 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Both grammatici and rhetoricians often made large 
 fortunes. As to the social status of all of them we must 
 remember a fact which influenced the ancient mind to an 
 extent which we fail fully to comprehend, viz. that they 
 taught for money. It has also to be noted that they were 
 not held to ‘ educate/ but only to teach certain subjects , and 
 to take their payment like dealers in other articles. 
 
 School-houses, &c.—Neither among the Greeks nor 
 Romans were these universal or even common in our 
 modern sense; nor were they built for educational pur¬ 
 poses. Adventure teachers (and all were adventure 
 teachers) naturally provided their own schoolrooms. For 
 a long period any room was good enough for giving ele¬ 
 mentary instruction. Sometimes schools were held in the 
 open air, in some quiet corner of a street or market place. 
 Horace (‘Ep.’ I. xx. 17) says: 
 
 Ut pueros elementa docentem 
 Occupet extremis in vicis balba senectus. 1 2 
 
 In the earlier times we read of tabernce — sheds or booths; 
 and these tabernce in later times were like shops or ‘ leanto’s ’ 
 opening on the street, and attached to even fashionable 
 houses. The children for the most part sat on the floor, 
 or, if in the street, on the stones. But the schools of the 
 grammatici seem to have been generally the covered spaces 
 attached to larger buildings, ‘ giving ’ on the street and pro¬ 
 vided with benches for the children, the master occupying 
 a high seat or cathedra? Sometimes they were very much 
 like the verandah of a house. The schoolrooms ( jpcrgulce 
 magistrates ) were also frequently adorned with works of 
 art — both in sculpture (marble or plaster) and in painting. 
 They were open and accessible to all. Parents and other 
 
 1 That this passage is relevant might he doubtful were it not for other 
 confirmatory knowledge. Dion. Chrys. Or. 29, is aptly quoted by Orellius. 
 
 2 The assistant (adjutor, or sub-doctor) sat on a stool. The benches had 
 no backs, nor were there desks. The pupils wrote on their knees. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 347 
 
 members of the public frequently dropt in to see the boys 
 at their work, and there were great ‘ speech-days.’ 
 
 The books were rolls of MS. ( volumina ), which the chil¬ 
 dren carried to school in cylindrical wooden boxes. 
 
 The state took no charge of either schools or school¬ 
 masters ; all was left to the parent. 
 
 The wealthier families of Rome were not, however, (as I 
 have so often pointed out) dependent solely, or even chiefly, 
 on schools. Both grammatici and rhetoricians were em¬ 
 ployed in private houses to transcribe MSS. and to educate 
 the children. It is to this form of private education that 
 Quintilian objected. 
 
 In early imperial times the number of schools, primary 
 and secondary, began to increase rapidly, and in some cases 
 the teachers were engaged by the municipalities and were 
 paid a fixed salary. We see the beginning of this custom 
 shadowed forth in a letter from Pliny to Tacitus which we 
 shall quote in the sequel. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 DETAILS OF INSTRUCTION AND METHOD IN THE GRAMMATI¬ 
 CAL AND RHETORICAL SCHOOLS 
 
 We have been speaking generally of the course of instruc¬ 
 tion in Rome. Let us now endeavour to penetrate into the 
 inside of the Roman grammar and rhetorical schools and 
 see the mode of procedure in more detail, if possible. 1 
 
 The School of the Grammaticus. — The exercises of 
 the grammatical school-boy were (1) Reading, to which, 
 as I have said, great attention was paid. It was a fine 
 art. (2) Reproducing short tales or fables orally, and 
 then writing them as exercises in composition. (3) Para¬ 
 phrasing. This was graded. The younger pupils were 
 restricted to the employment of the poet’s own words when 
 
 1 Following to a considerable extent the guidance of Professor Jullien. 
 
348 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 turning his lines into prose order. The more advanced did 
 not mangle the poet (as we moderns do), but were re¬ 
 quired to expand his lines into prose rhetorical form and 
 might take all sorts of liberties so long as they did not 
 go beyond the meaning of the poet. This was in truth a 
 rhetorical imitation of the poet and doubtless a valuable 
 exercise. (4) Short sentences (sentential) were given on 
 which they rang changes of number, case, and syntactical 
 construction; just as, in our best schools, boys are required 
 to convert direct into indirect in Latin, and vice versa. 
 (5) Pithy sentences were also given and the pupil re¬ 
 quired to explain them, and also to paraphrase them as 
 we have above explained paraphrasing. (6) Prosody and 
 the practice of verse-writing were taught. 
 
 Translation from Greek into Latin was not practised in 
 the advanced rhetorical schools until after the time of Augus¬ 
 tus. In modern schools we have found this exercise so valu¬ 
 able for boys that we cannot hut he surprised that it was not 
 practised from the very first by the practical Bo mans. 
 Cicero speaks of the great benefit he had obtained from it; 
 but translation, as practised by him, may rather be called 
 imitation. 
 
 The above exercises combined with a close critical study 
 of the language and the literary qualities of poems, and the 
 free and elocutionary delivery from memory of numerous 
 passages, constituted the principal work of the grammar 
 school. 
 
 But there was a tendency in these schools towards the end 
 of the Bepublic to retain hoys longer than formerly, and to 
 introduce them to exercises in declamation on moral ques¬ 
 tions of a general kind and in giving descriptions of things 
 and events (the higher forms of oratory — the judiciary and 
 the deliberative—being specially reserved for the advanced 
 schools of the rhetoricians). Quintilian complains of this in¬ 
 trusion of the grannnaticus on the rhetor. It was the Latin 
 grammaticus who was chiefly guilty of thus stepping beyond 
 his own sphere, his school being, in the majority of cases, 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 349 
 
 attended after the school of the Greek grammaticus. It is 
 manifest that the practice was of doubtful educational value, 
 inasmuch as it led to premature and showy exhibitions of 
 oratory and thus interfered with the more thorough prepara¬ 
 tory linguistic discipline. Especially would this evil be 
 accentuated by the competition among masters for pupils and 
 the gullibility of the Bornan parent, who was doubtless as 
 easily imposed on as the British father. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the Boman hoy had thrown 
 on him the impossible task of producing the exercises above 
 referred to without help and guidance. The Greek rhetori¬ 
 cians had reduced thesis-writing and declamation to an art, 
 and the logicians had helped them. ‘ Topics ’ ( tottol , places, 
 and in Latin, loci ) had for their object the fixed development 
 of a subject in a certain form and the art of finding argu¬ 
 ments. Without entering into details (which, however, are 
 interesting educationally), I shall borrow from Professor 
 Jullien a statement of the topical hints for an exercise on a 
 chria, i.e. dictum, or pregnant sentence, ascribed to some dis¬ 
 tinguished man : e.g. Plato says that ‘ the Muses dwell in the 
 soul of the cultured man.’ 
 
 1. A laudation of the writer to whom the utterance or 
 deed was ascribed. 
 
 2. The paraphrase, in which the thought was expanded. 
 
 3. The motif or underlying principle which explained and 
 justified the truth of the thought. 
 
 4. Comparison, i.e. the comparing of the thought with 
 other thoughts like or unlike, just as Plutarch compares 
 characters in his ‘ Lives.’ 
 
 5. The example: which was furnished by some distin¬ 
 guished man. 
 
 6. Witnesses to confirm the dictum, i.e. quotations from 
 authorities who had said the same, or a similar, thing. 
 
 7. Conclusion: which often took the form of a practical 
 exhortation. 
 
 So guided, and with models of similar exercises before 
 him, often written by his master, the boy could scarcely fail 
 
350 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 to produce a fairly good essay or declamation, especially as 
 the learning by heart of the poets had stored his mind with 
 words and felicitous expressions. It was held to be a merit 
 to borrow from distinguished writers, and not a fault. In¬ 
 deed, even in mature authors we find in ancient times and 
 during the latter half of the middle ages a very free use of 
 the productions of their predecessors. It seems to me that 
 plagiarism may be said to have become a moral offence only 
 in modern times. 
 
 Loci communes (common places) were declamations against 
 particular vices and in support of virtues in the abstract. 
 They were thus general in their treatment. But in these, as 
 in all other exercises both of the grammatical and rhetorical 
 schools, there was a recognised development of the theme. 
 The treatises on rhetoric were intended to help invention, to 
 practice in the use of correct language, in the nature and use 
 of tropes and figures of speech and in all the devices whereby 
 a speaker could influence his fellow men. 
 
 The Oratory to which youths were trained, after going 
 through such preparatory instruction as I have outlined in the 
 school of the grammaticus, was deliberative and judiciary — 
 that is to say, eloquence suited to a public assembly or senate, 
 or to the bar. As Professor Jullien says, it was professional 
 instruction as opposed to the liberal instruction of the gram- 
 matici. The line of demarcation, however, between the 
 grammaticus and the rhetorician was never clearly defined. 
 Much depended on the teacher, as it always does where all 
 are struggling, each for himself. 
 
 That the work of the student of oratory was not narrow, 
 illiberal, and purely technical may be learned from Cicero, 
 and from Quintilian passim . As regards the strictly tech¬ 
 nical training I may with advantage quote from the ‘ De 
 Oratore,’ i. 31, a passage which admirably sums up the whole 
 process. 
 
 ‘ In the first place I will not deny that, as becomes a man 
 well born and liberally educated, I learned those trite and 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 351 
 
 common precepts of teachers in general: first, that it is the 
 business of an orator to speak in a manner adapted to per¬ 
 suade ; next, that every speech is either upon a question con¬ 
 cerning a matter in general, without specification of persons 
 or times, or concerning a matter referring to certain persons 
 and times; hut that, in either case, whatever falls under 
 controversy, the question with regard to it is usually, 
 whether such a thing has been done, or, if it has been done, 
 of what nature it is, or by what name it should be 
 called; or, as some add, whether it seems to have been done 
 rightly or not. That controversies arise also on the interpre¬ 
 tation of writing, in which anything has been expressed 
 ambiguously, or contradictorily, or so that what is written is 
 at variance with the writer’s evident intention; and that 
 there are certain lines of argument adapted to all these cases. 
 But that of such subjects as are distinct from general ques¬ 
 tions, part come under the head of judicial proceedings, part 
 under that of deliberations; and that there is a third kind 
 which is employed in praising or censuring particular per¬ 
 sons. That there are also certain common-places on which 
 we may insist in judicial proceedings, in which equity is 
 the object; others, which we may adopt in deliberations, all 
 which are to be directed to the advantage of those to whom 
 we give counsel; others in panegyric, in which all must be 
 referred to the dignity of the persons commended. That 
 since all the business and art of an orator is divided into 
 five parts, he ought first to find out what he should say; 
 next, to dispose and arrange his matter, not only in a certain 
 order, but with a sort of power and judgment; then to clothe 
 and deck his thoughts with language; then to secure them 
 in his memory; and lastly, to deliver them with dignity and 
 grace. I had learned and understood also, that before we 
 enter upon the main subject, the minds of the audience 
 should be conciliated by an exordium; next, that the case 
 should be clearly stated ; then, that the point in controversy 
 should be established; then, that what we maintain should 
 be supported by proof, and that whatever was said on the 
 
352 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 other side should be refuted ; and that, in the conclusion of 
 our speech, whatever was in our favour should be amplified 
 and enforced, and whatever made for our adversaries should 
 be weakened and invalidated. 
 
 ‘ I had heard also what is taught about the costume of a 
 speech; in regard to which it is first directed that we should 
 speak correctly and in pure Latin ; next, intelligibly and with 
 perspicuity; then gracefully; then suitably to the dignity of 
 the subject, and as it were becomingly; and I had made 
 myself acquainted with the rules relating to every particular. 
 Moreover, I had seen art applied to those things which are 
 properly endowments of nature; for I had gone over some 
 precepts concerning action, and some concerning artificial 
 memory, which were short, indeed, but requiring much exer¬ 
 cise; matters on which almost all the learning of those 
 artificial orators is employed; and if I should say that it is 
 of no assistance, I should say what is not true ; for it conveys 
 some hints to admonish the orator, as it were, to what he 
 should refer each part of his speech, and to what points he 
 may direct his view, so as not to wander from the object 
 which he has proposed to himself. But I consider that with 
 regard to all precepts the case is this, not that orators by ad¬ 
 hering to them have obtained distinction in eloquence, but 
 that certain persons have noticed what men of eloquence 
 practised of their own accord, and formed rules accordingly; 
 so that eloquence has not sprung from art, but art from elo¬ 
 quence ; not that, as I said before, I entirely reject art, for it 
 is, though not essentially necessary to oratory, yet proper for 
 a man of liberal education to learn. And by you, my young 
 friends, some preliminary exercise must be undergone; 
 though, indeed, you are already on the course ; but those who 
 are to enter upon a race, and those who are preparing for 
 what is to be done in the forum, as their field of battle, may 
 alike previously learn, and try their powers, by practising in 
 sport.’ 
 
 So far as we know the course of training thus generally 
 sketched by Cicero, it may be concisely summed up thus: 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 353 
 
 When the Rhetor began from the beginning he carried the 
 * youth through the exercises which' I have already described 
 as the higher work of the grammaticus, and then gave more 
 advanced work on the same lines while he delivered or 
 dictated lectures on the theory of eloquence. Subsequent 
 exercises consisted of speeches prepared by the pupils, of 
 a demonstrative, deliberative, or judiciary character. The 
 demonstrative consisted very much of the laudation or un¬ 
 favourable criticism of certain historical, or it might be 
 imaginary, acts and characters; the deliberative was an 
 argument addressing itself to the question whether any act 
 should have been done or not; the judiciary was in the form 
 of a pleading before a judge — attack and defence. These 
 pleadings were often regarding fictitious cases, sometimes 
 regarding cases that had actually been in the courts. The 
 general course of instruction applicable to all forms of oratory 
 embraced Invention, i.e. the finding of arguments; Disposi¬ 
 tion or arrangement; Style or elocution; Memory and its 
 cultivation ; and Action or delivery. Disputations were con¬ 
 ducted by the students, under the guidance of the rhetor. 
 All sorts of subjects were propounded, but chiefly those hav¬ 
 ing a political or ethical significance. In imperial times, and 
 probably earlier, the rhetors themselves would have public 
 bouts, and people would flock to hear them and encourage 
 them with their plaudits. Divorced, however, as the exercises 
 were from all direct bearing on political action, they tended 
 more and more to become mere declamation. 
 
 We now see that the education which took shape to itself 
 under the Roman sway, and which was summed up in the 
 word humanitas, was almost wholly a literary education, 
 based, however, on a thorough grammatical study. It is 
 important to note this, and the relative place assigned to 
 other studies, because of its bearing on the history of educa¬ 
 tion even down to our own times. 
 
 It is, I think, sufficiently clear that, notwithstanding the 
 literary character of the education, private and public utility 
 governed the Roman practice. Roman education was Greek, 
 
 23 
 
 i 
 
354 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 but it was Greek translated into Latin. The liberal arts were 
 all cultivated at Rome, but not by Romans. They were to * 
 be enjoyed, not pursued. Greek aliens —very often slaves 
 or freedmen — represented all the arts, and were hired. Play¬ 
 acting, though regarded as a degrading employment, was yet 
 of ‘ use ’ to the orator by teaching him gesture : sculpture 
 was of ‘ use ’ for public monuments and portraiture, and so 
 forth. 
 
 Literature, it is true, was in esteem both as a study, an 
 educational instrument, and as a recreation; but, above all, 
 as necessary to form the orator. Literature for the sake of 
 literature, art for the sake of art, were to the Greek familiar 
 conceptions ; and in his schools it was the real of literature, 
 the enriching of the mind with noble utterances and noble 
 forms, which was always prominent. In the case of the 
 Roman we find the discipline of grammar take precedence of 
 the living spirit of literature, without, however, by any means 
 extinguishing it. 
 
 Of course there were many individual exceptions to the 
 Roman view of art and the arts among the Romans them¬ 
 selves ; but the general utilitarian tendency of the Roman 
 mind was always in evidence. The Hellenic ideal of a 
 cultured man—cultured for the sake of culture — was never 
 accepted by the Roman, save in a half-hearted way. Indeed, 
 he had great contempt, and with good reason, for much of 
 the product of the Hellenic system. The lively Greek who 
 frequented the streets of Rome and other Italian towns, and 
 who in his easy self-confidence was ready to talk, and to 
 talk well, on any subject and in favour of any side, was 
 antagonistic to the Roman type of character, and to that 
 serious view of life which had made the Roman and which 
 seemed still to survive in spite of growing luxury, an en¬ 
 feebled public spirit, and a decaying morality. 
 
 I have already said that the loss of the writings of Terentius 
 Varro (died 26 b.c.), the ‘most learned of the Romans,’ has 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 
 
 355 
 
 deprived us of much that would have thrown additional light 
 on the actual state of education and of learning immediately 
 before the birth of Christ. One of his works was entitled 
 ‘ Libri Disciplinarum.’ All the more valuable are the writ¬ 
 ings of Quintilian which appeared in the last decade of the 
 first century a.d. In him we see the highest type of teacher 
 which the ancient world produced, with, perhaps, the single 
 exception of Isocrates ; and from his writings we can learn 
 both what the Eomano-Hellenic education was in its inner 
 working, and also what, in his opinion, it ought to have been. 
 His works, accordingly, are not only of great importance in 
 the history of education as formulating the aims and method 
 of the best kind of Romano-Hellenic school, both grammatical 
 and rhetorical; hut they also contain so much practical 
 instruction for the teacher of all time that I shall now speak 
 of him and his treatise in some detail, confining myself, how¬ 
 ever, to what is specially instructive to the teacher of the 
 modern school. I am justified in giving this prominence to 
 Quintilian by the further fact that he has governed all 
 modern education since the Renaissance; and, in truth, we 
 have not even yet advanced so far as wholly to restore the 
 school of Quintilian. The nearest approach to it were the 
 schools of Vittorino da Feltre in the fourteenth and Hegius, 
 Michael Neander, Trotzendorff, and Sturm, in the fifteenth 
 and sixteenth centuries. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE SCHOOL OF QUINTILIAN 
 
 Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was born at Calagurris 
 (Calahorra) in the upper valley of the Ebro about a.d. 
 38. 1 He seems to have been taken by his father to Rome 
 
 1 Many say 35, and till recently 42 was the accepted date. I give a date 
 between the two as being the most probable. Seneca was born a year or two 
 before the birth of Christ ; Plutarch 48 or 49 a.d. (about the same time as 
 Quintilian), and Tacitus about 61 a.d. 
 
356 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 when quite a hoy to prosecute his studies. His father was 
 himself a teacher of rhetoric. At the age of about 25 he 
 returned to his native place, where he remained several years 
 in the practice of his profession. At about the age of 30 he 
 again came to Eome in the retinue of Galba (a.d. 68) and 
 began to practise at the bar, attaining some distinction, 
 especially for his clear, exact, and logical statement of cases. 
 Dr. Peterson in his edition of Book X. quotes from Hild as 
 follows: —‘ Among the orators of the day, some, ignorant 
 and coarse, had left mean occupations for the bar without 
 any preliminary study, where they made up in audacity for 
 lack of talent, and in noisy conceit for a defective knowledge 
 of law; others were trained in the practice of delation to 
 every form of trickery and violence; Quintilian, honest, able, 
 and moderate, stood by himself.’ 
 
 Later in life he began to give instruction in the oratorical 
 art, including under this, however, a wide range of gram¬ 
 matical and literary culture, which he thought necessary to 
 the education of the true orator. Among his pupils was the 
 younger Pliny. He acquired a great reputation as an in¬ 
 structor, and more honour than was usually conferred on 
 teachers of rhetoric in those days. Domitian gave him per¬ 
 mission to wear the insignia of a man of consular rank. It 
 is to this that Juvenal refers in the line (Sat. vii. 186), 
 
 If fortune be kind, you will from a rhetor become a consul . 1 
 
 The well-known passage in Suetonius’ ‘Life of Vespasian’ 
 (c. 18) marks the first State action for the maintenance of 
 public schools: ‘ Vespasianus, who first fixed out of the 
 public treasury a salary of 100 sestertia each to the rhetors, 
 Greek and Latin 2 ’ (estimated at about 8001. a year). As 
 Vespasian reigned from a.d. 71 to a.d. 79, the most active 
 period of Quintilian’s scholastic career, we may conclude 
 that he was one of the rhetors endowed by Vespasian, all 
 
 1 ‘Si fortuna volet, ties de rlietore consul.’ 
 
 2 ‘ Qui primus e fisco Latinis Grsecisque rhetoribus annua centena con- 
 stituit.’ 
 
357 
 
 THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 
 
 the more that the ‘Eusebian Chronicle’ (Roth’s ‘ Suetonius,’ 
 p. 272) says : ‘ Quintilian, a Calagurritan from Spain, the 
 first to open a public school in Rome and to receive a salary 
 out of the public treasury, flourished.’ 1 Referring to his 
 work as a public instructor, Martial says, 2 ‘ Quintilian, su¬ 
 preme governor of unstable youth ; Quintilian, glory of the 
 Roman gown ! ’ 
 
 After twenty years’ teaching he retired from active life at 
 the early age of about fifty, although after his retirement he 
 was employed as a private tutor at court to Domitian’s two 
 grand-nephews (a.d. 93). 
 
 At the urgent solicitation of many friends and admirers, 
 and also to put a*stop to the circulation of notes of his 
 lectures, published with his name but without his authority, 
 he now began to prepare and arrange, with a view to publi¬ 
 cation, the abundant materials amassed in the course of an 
 active professional life. This occupied him a period of only 
 two years (probably between a.d. 93 and 95). The solicita¬ 
 tions of his publisher led him to issue his work sooner than 
 he would otherwise have done. He died before the end of 
 the first century a.d. at the age of about sixty. He himself 
 tells us that he lost his wife when she was only nineteen, 
 and that the two boys she left behind her also died, the 
 younger at five years old and the elder at ten. 
 
 The books which he published, sometimes called ‘ Oratori¬ 
 cal Institutions,’ are known under the title of ‘ Twelve Books 
 on the Education of an Orator’: ‘He Institutione Oratoria’ 
 are the words which he himself uses in a prefatory letter to 
 his publisher, Trypho. 
 
 Quintilian was one of the most Roman of the Roman men 
 of letters. Not only because of the national note in his 
 style as a whole, but for the legal precision and directness 
 of his thought and language, and for the soundness and 
 
 1 ‘ Quintilianus, ex Hispania, Calagurritamis, qui primus Romse publicam 
 scholam Paperuit] et salarium e fisco accepit, claruit. ’ 
 
 2 * Quintiliane vagse moderator suinme juventse, 
 
 Gloria Romance Quintiliane togce.’ — ii. 90. 
 
358 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 moderation of his judgments. There is the calmness of 
 scientific exposition about his reasoning, wholly unlike our 
 modern style of writing into which we are apt to introduce, 
 even unconsciously, a certain amount of open or latent 
 passion. Political and religious bias dominates even our 
 abstract philosophy and political economy. Every reader 
 will be disposed to concur in the estimate of Bahr in his 
 ‘ Geschichte der Komischen Literatur/ where he says: ‘ We 
 find in Quintilian a genuinely critical spirit, a sound judg¬ 
 ment, and a truly practical sense, a pure refined taste, 
 a wide literary culture, and an extensive acquaintance 
 with the whole range of Greek and Roman literature ’ 
 (p. 325). 
 
 In exposition, Quintilian never uses a single word more 
 than is necessary to express his thought. He has none of 
 the amplitude of language which belongs to Cicero. It is 
 possible that he did not admire copiousness of language as 
 distinguished from copiousness of argument. It certainly 
 strikes the reader that while Quintilian was capable of a 
 far more exact philosophical style than Cicero, richness 
 and abundance of language were alien to his cast of mind 
 as well as forbidden by the strictly practical aims of his 
 book. 
 
 But how is it, we are first disposed to ask, that a book 
 on the education of the orator should in these days con¬ 
 cern us as educationalists, except in a very subordinate 
 way ? The answer is already partly given in the preceding 
 chapter. 
 
 Quintilian started with a very enlarged conception of the 
 training requisite for an orator. This designation, indeed, 
 as used by him, may be regarded as synonymous with a 
 completely cultivated man. ‘ Others/ he says, ‘ have begun 
 their treatises on rhetoric as if they were merely putting 
 the finishing touch of eloquence on pupils already masters 
 of every kind of learning ’ (Procem. 4); ‘ but I am of opinion 
 that to make an orator we must begin from the beginning, 
 and I consequently/ he adds, ‘shall begin to shape the 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 359 
 
 studies of an orator from his infancy just as if he were 
 handed over to me to bring up.’ He accordingly proposes 
 to start ab ipsis discendi velut incunabulis (as it were from 
 the very cradle of learning). 
 
 Quintilian does not imagine that education can do every¬ 
 thing. On the contrary, he tells us that unless Nature 
 helps, all instructions will be useless. ‘ Illud tamen in 
 primis testandum est, nihil prsecepta atque artes valere 
 nisi adjuvante natura. Quapropter ei, cui deerit ingenium, 
 non magis htec scripta sunt quam de agrorum cultu steril- 
 ibus terris ’: ‘ First of all I must bear witness to this, that 
 precepts and arts are of no value without the assistance of 
 nature. Wherefore to him who wants talent these writings 
 are of no more significance than an agricultural treatise to 
 barren lands.’ At the same time he held with Isocrates and 
 Cicero that natural powers could be largely augmented and 
 adorned. 
 
 Cato the elder, in his lost treatise on education, affirmed 
 it to be the aim of education to produce the bonus vir. 
 Quintilian substitutes for this the bonus orator, and in 
 doing so he places himself in more direct sympathy with 
 the practical aims of the post-republican Roman life and 
 education. He in fact extends the aim of Cato when in 
 the beginning of the twelfth book he defines the orator to 
 be ‘ The Good Man skilled in speaking ’ — Vir bonus dicendi 
 peritus. Mere facultas dicendi he despises. His idea of 
 an orator is in fact that of a learned, cultivated, virtuous 
 philosopher who, qualified by certain innate or acquired 
 aptitudes, is engaged in the highest practical affairs of life. 
 Practical life for all is always assumed. In the twelfth 
 book, indeed, he talks with some disdain of philosophers, 
 because they withdraw themselves from public occupations. 
 He desires to form a ‘ Roman philosopher.’ 1 ‘ The man I 
 
 educate I should wish to be a Roman philosopher who, not 
 
 1 ‘ Ilium quem instituo, Romanum quendam velim esse sapientem, qui 
 non secretis disputationibus sed rerum experimentis atque operibus vere 
 civilem virum exhibeat.’— xii. 27. 
 
360 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 by disputations apart but by dealing with practical life and 
 by public activity, shows himself to be truly a vir civilis * 
 (a man occupied with affairs that concern the commonweal). 
 We manifestly require in such a man, he says, not only the 
 highest ability but also every virtue of the mind. Accord¬ 
 ingly, he aims at forming a man who is in the best sense 
 of the word a citizen, adapted for the administration of 
 public and private affairs, who is competent to govern cities 
 by his counsels, to institute them by his laws, and to 
 improve them by his judicial decisions. Then as to the 
 virtues: an orator has to discourse on matters relating to 
 justice, temperance, and fortitude, and how can he do so 
 effectively unless he himself is distinguished by these 
 virtues ? 
 
 The orator, let us remember, had a large and important 
 function in the public life of the ancients. He was not 
 merely a pleader at the bar, but also before public assemblies. 
 He influenced the whole policy of a country, and among 
 other functions discharged the duty of the modern publicist. 
 At first sight, we may be disposed to question the necessity 
 of goodness and virtue to a good orator; but a little reflec¬ 
 tion will satisfy us that, when we fully realise the scope of 
 the orator’s function as understood by the ancients, we must 
 admit with Quintilian that the truly good orator must him¬ 
 self be good. We all recognise the contrast between learn¬ 
 ing and wisdom: but it is important to note also that 
 intellectual ability, even the highest, is not necessarily wis¬ 
 dom. The moral element must dominate. Quintilian did 
 not stand alone in his opinion. ‘ Depravity,’ says Aristotle, 
 
 ‘ perverts the vision and causes it to be deceived as to the 
 principles of action, so that it is really impossible for a per¬ 
 son who is not good to be really wise and prudent.’ And 
 how can a bad man give sound counsel in an oration ? To 
 the extent to which the counsel, the persuasions, the argu¬ 
 ment are unsound, it is bad oratory. Coleridge, in his 
 ‘Table-talk,’ cites from Strabo the opinion, ‘to be a good 
 poet one must be a good man.’ Carlyle, again, says, 4 The 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 361 
 
 real quantity of our insight — how justly and thoroughly we 
 shall comprehend the nature of a thing, especially of a 
 human thing, depends on our patience, our fairness, loving¬ 
 ness, what strength soever we have ; intellect comes from the 
 whole man as it is the light that enlightens the whole man.’ 
 (Yol. v. of ‘Miscellanies/ p. 125.) The significant thing for 
 us to note as students of education is that Quintilian, like all 
 competent thinkers on this subject, aimed at a moral result 
 as the supreme end. In our great schools do we consciously 
 do this ? If we do not, then, with all our ‘ classical ’ preten¬ 
 sions, we are followers neither of the best Greeks nor 
 Romans. There must be something wrong. Quintilian 
 held that a man could not be engaged in the pursuit of those 
 noble studies of literature and philosophy which were indis¬ 
 pensable to the education of an orator, unless he were free 
 from vice. From which may we not conclude that occupa¬ 
 tion with ennobling studies is the greatest safeguard of 
 youth ? 1 
 
 Mere eloquence in the ordinary sense, fluent faculty of 
 speech, did not constitute an orator in Quintilian’s view. He 
 even absorbed the title philosopher into that of orator, as did 
 Isocrates. He wished to produce a man ‘ optima sentientem, 
 optimeque dicentem ’ (xii. 1. 25) ‘thinking the best things 
 and expressing them in the very best way/ and not a mere 
 mercenary pleader in the forum, or a claptrap popular talker. 
 By giving to philosophy a practical character and testing it, 
 as it were, by its power of doing practical service to the 
 state, he maintained even for philosophy a higher standard 
 than then existed in many of the schools of Greece and Alex¬ 
 andria. We do not quarrel with Quintilian, then, because, 
 under a very natural tendency, peculiar to his age and 
 nation, to magnify the office of the rhetorician, he used the 
 word orator as a synonym for the perfectly trained and fully 
 equipped citizen: nor yet because he held that the perfect 
 orator was also necessarily the perfect citizen. He admits 
 that no man ever was what he aims at producing; but none 
 
 1 ‘ In eodem pectore nullum est honestorum turpiumque consortium.’ 
 
362 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 the less ought we all to aim at the ideal, 1 ‘ none the less, are 
 we to strive after the highest; even if this is not attainable, 
 nevertheless those who strive after it will go higher than 
 those who, having despaired by anticipation of reaching their 
 object, forthwith pull themselves up and halt at the bottom 
 of the hill/ 
 
 We see, then, that the analysis of the writings which 
 Quintilian left behind him must furnish us with a knowledge 
 of the best educational conceptions possible in his time, pre¬ 
 sented in a form thoroughly trustworthy, inasmuch as they 
 come from a man of long experience as a teacher, and of a 
 temper whose ardour was moderated by cool reason and 
 sound judgment. They will also admit us to a knowledge of 
 the kind of training through which the wealthier classes of 
 Eoman youth — those who sought to govern their country — 
 were carried at the beginning of the Christian era, when the 
 Hellenic influence was completely established. 
 
 I do not pretend to give an exhaustive account of Quin¬ 
 tilian, but merely to bring into view his leading principles 
 and methods as these are expounded in his first two books, 
 and only in so far as they may bear on school work in these 
 days. I shall make such reference to his subsequent books 
 as will enable the reader to form an adequate conception of 
 the way in which he discharged the task he imposed on 
 himself. 
 
 At the end of his preface, Quintilian gives us a preliminary 
 survey of his plan, as follows : 
 
 The first book will contain those things which precede the 
 proper work of the teacher of rhetoric. 
 
 The second book will treat of the elements of rhetoric. 
 
 The next five will be devoted to Inventio, including 
 arrangement ( Dispositio ). 
 
 1 ‘ Non ideo minus nobis ad summa tendendum est . . . quod si non con- 
 tingat, altius tamen ibunt qui ad summa nitentur quam qui, prsesumpta de- 
 speratione quo velint evadendi, protinus circa ima substiterint ’ (i. 19). 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 363 
 
 The next four will be devoted to Elocution (i.e. style), in¬ 
 cluding memory and pronunciation {i.e. delivery). 
 
 In conclusion will be considered the cultivation of the 
 orator personally, and as a pleader. 
 
 First Booh 
 
 In his first book, Quintilian deals with the instruction of 
 children before the age of seven. After many warnings as to 
 the necessity of providing nurses whose moral character is 
 good, and who have sufficient education to set a good ex¬ 
 ample in speaking, he takes up the intellectual instruction of 
 the child. 
 
 He objects to the learning of the alphabet in a memorial 
 way, so that children early acquire the habit of saying the 
 letters, trusting to their memory alone. He advises that the 
 shape and name be always impressed on the child together, 
 and recommends the tracing over of letters which have been 
 cut on a board. He also recommends the use of ivory figures 
 of letters as playthings. When they begin to read words, 
 let the reading be very slow and distinct, he says ; otherwise, 
 by hurrying the child, or permitting the child to hurry, you 
 form a bad habit and retard progress. 
 
 As to writing, he evidently considers that this art is best 
 begun by tracing the letters on the board referred to above, 
 and thereafter by copying good specimens, according to our 
 modern usage. He thinks that the lines which the pupil is 
 required to imitate should convey moral lessons which he 
 will carry with him to old age. He also thinks that a 
 child, in learning to write, should not be constantly exer¬ 
 cised on ordinary words, but on the more unusual words, 
 that he may acquire betimes a knowledge of terms which, at 
 a later period of his studies, may be useful to him. He 
 points out that, as future progress and cultivation depend so 
 much on the art of writing, the pupil should learn to write 
 quickly as well as well, and well as well as quickly. 
 
 Memory, he thinks, may be even at this early age culti¬ 
 vated, and passages from the poets and utterances of learned 
 
364 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 men learned by heart. For this he gives a curious reason, 
 that at this age a teacher can do little for the education of 
 children (as they can produce nothing from themselves) 
 except cultivate their memory. 
 
 Above all, he impresses on his readers that children are 
 not stupid; that they are ready in thinking and prompt in 
 learning (‘ faciles in excogitando et ad discendum promptos ’) ; 
 that it is as natural for the human animal to be so as it is 
 for birds to fly, horses to run, and wild beasts to be savage. 
 
 ‘ Characteristic of man is a certain stirring and dexterous 
 movement of mind, and hence the belief in the celestial 
 origin of the soul.’ 1 It is the want of proper training which 
 dulls the childish intelligence. Minds naturally stupid and 
 unteachable do certainly exist, but only as monstrosities 
 exist — and they are few in number. Yet some have greater 
 natural aptitude than others. 
 
 He objects to Eoman boys learning Greek exclusively for 
 too long a period; but he holds that they should begin with 
 Greek (he must mean in the secondary or grammar school), 
 taking to Latin in a year or two, and learning it thereafter 
 pari passu with Greek. Greek, let us remember, was at this 
 time, and, indeed, long before, taught to all the upper classes 
 as the source of Eoman literature, and it was also known 
 colloquially to the upper classes and to merchants and others 
 through the large number of Greek slaves and paedagogi who 
 frequented Eome, and the universal relations which Eome 
 had with the whole civilised world. 
 
 Quintilian now proceeds to discuss the respective merits 
 of public and private education. By public education was, 
 in his time, meant day-schools, such as we are familiar 
 with in Scotland and Germany. Public schools — in the 
 restricted sense of schools in which boys were educated 
 away from the influence of their parents, being boarded at 
 the seat of their education, either in the school buildings 
 
 # O 
 
 or m affiliated houses — are institutions more characteristic 
 
 1 ‘Nobis propria est mentis agitatio atque sollertia, unde origo animi cce* 
 lestis creditur. ’ 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 365 
 
 of England than of any other country, though of course 
 known in other countries: in all, indeed, to a certain extent 
 indispensable. Quintilian, accordingly, is contrasting domes¬ 
 tic as opposed to school instruction. He argues the ques¬ 
 tion, which in his day was evidently of great importance. 
 Nowadays it has less interest. We are all persuaded that 
 boys, at least, are better instructed in some public fashion, 
 although we may differ as to the desirableness of removing 
 them from the parental roof altogether. 
 
 Quintilian draws a very black picture of the domestic life 
 of many Romans — their daily habits of luxury, their sensu¬ 
 ality, and their licentious conversation and songs. No day 
 public school could be otherwise than beneficial to the boy 
 of such a family. That is certain. We feel that the ‘ tone ’ 
 of a day-school as a whole could not fail, however defective, 
 to be better than the tone of a boy so reared. The school 
 would have to guard against him, not he against the school. 
 In these days we are scarcely, indeed, interested in this ques¬ 
 tion in the form in which it presented itself to Quintilian; 
 education is now for all, and Quintilian assumes that those 
 who prefer private education employ private preceptors and 
 pedagogues, which is possible only to the few wealthy. 
 Public day and public boarding schools are both alike with 
 us simply a necessity, and no amount of argument can now 
 touch the question. The only point which calls for discussion 
 in these days is the relative advantages of these two classes 
 of ‘public’ schools. We shall find the arguments of Quin¬ 
 tilian not altogether inapplicable to this modern question. 
 For he bases his argument for day-schools mainly on the bad 
 influences of the pupil’s home, and the consequent luxury, 
 effeminacy, viciousness, and self-conceit which flow from 
 these. So now we may (without formally entering into the 
 discussion here) say that where the domestic atmosphere is 
 bad because of the luxuriousness of homes, the preoccupation 
 of the parents with other things than the bringing up of their 
 children, and the evil influences flowing from the subservi¬ 
 ency and flattery of menials, the children should certainly be 
 
366 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 removed to some other place where they may find that true 
 home which their parents have denied them. For such chil¬ 
 dren a day-school is better, much better, than nothing; hut 
 a public home school — if I may so designate it — is best 
 of all. 
 
 Quintilian remarks, in connection with school work, on 
 the advantages of emulation, and points out that it is easier 
 for beginners of tender years to imitate their fellow-pupils 
 than their teacher. He refers to a custom which prevailed 
 in the school in which he was himself instructed. The hoys 
 were assigned a certain order in speaking or declaiming the 
 passages they had learned — the best being assigned the 
 highest place, and adds (a suggestive fact) that every thirtieth 
 day a fresh arrangement of the order was made according to 
 the results of a fresh exercise. If we would imitate this, 
 adapting it to modern school life, we should have monthly 
 examinations to determine the places of hoys in a class — a 
 far sounder system than trusting to the chances of daily 
 ‘place-taking,’ which, moreover, has many collateral dis¬ 
 advantages. 
 
 One other observation Quintilian makes which we may 
 here quote. He counsels masters to moderate their strength 
 so as not to burden the undeveloped powers of the learners, 
 but rather to descend to the level of their understanding 
 — ‘ ad intellectum audientis descendere.’ He compares the 
 ambitious attempt to give boys more than their stage of 
 progress admits of to the pouring of a gush of water into a 
 narrow-necked bottle. The water is lost, whereas a gradual 
 inpouring of it little by little fills the bottle. ‘What is 
 greater than the understanding of a boy,’ he says, ‘will 
 not enter his mind at all, because it is not open to appre¬ 
 hend it.’ 1 
 
 He then is led aside to speak of the natural endowments 
 and disposition of boys. He considers that memory — that 
 is to say, that kind of memory which both acquires easily 
 
 1 ‘Majora intellects velut parum apertos ad percipiendum animos non subi- 
 bunt ’ (28). 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 367 
 
 and retains long — is the chief early sign of ability in chil¬ 
 dren. The next indication of talent is the power of imita¬ 
 tion ; hut if this takes the direction of imitating deformities 
 or peculiarities it is a very bad sign. He speaks strongly of 
 this, and says that this mimicking tendency in a boy gives 
 him no hope of his ever having a good disposition. The 
 pupil whom he prefers is he who is capable of receiving what 
 is taught without difficulty and is disposed to ask questions; 
 but inclined to follow rather than to run on ahead. The pre¬ 
 cocious boy seldom yields good fruit in the long run. He 
 can do little things with great ease, and, instigated by self- 
 confidence, desires to show at once all he can do. Without 
 any signs of bashfulness, he strings words together fluently. 
 There is no true force , and what power he shows has not deep 
 roots ; and so on. 
 
 As to natural disposition; he points out that all boys do 
 not yield to the same motives. ‘ Some are remiss, unless you 
 urge them on ; some resent commands ; some are restrained 
 by fear; and others are enfeebled by it; continuity of study 
 shapes some, others get on with more of a rush. Give me 
 the boy/ he says, ‘ whom praise excites, whom glory urges, 
 who weeps at defeat.’ 
 
 Quintilian advocates relaxation and play; but he gives us 
 no indication of the amount of daily headwork he expected 
 of a boy. The time-table of a Roman school would be an 
 interesting monument. He considers that boys’ dispositions 
 appear more frequently in play than anywhere else: they then 
 reveal themselves unconsciously and we can correct faults 
 while the boy is yet of tender years. (The playground, then, 
 seems to be with Quintilian part of the school.) 
 
 As to corporal punishments, Quintilian has very decided 
 opinions. The passage is a celebrated one among educational¬ 
 ists, and I shall give it here. 
 
 ‘ I do not at all approve of boys being flogged, although it 
 is an established practice and one approved of by Chrysippus. 
 I object to it, (1) because it is a disgusting practice and fit 
 only for slaves, and indeed if you change the age of your 
 
368 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 pupil, a personal insult; (2) because if the mind of a boy is 
 so illiberal (ungenerous) as to be inaccessible to reproofs, he 
 will simply be hardened to the infliction of stripes like the 
 worst of slaves ; (3) because there will be no need whatso¬ 
 ever of castigation if the superintendent of his studies (exactor 
 studiorum ) be persistent. As things are now, it would seem 
 that the negligence of psedagogi is made amends for, not by 
 requiring boys to do what is right, but by punishing them 
 for doing what is wrong . . . [Not to dwell on these matters,] 
 it is enough to say that to no man ought too much liberty to 
 be allowed in dealing with pupils of tender years and easily 
 injured.’ 1 
 
 Secondary Instruction 
 
 Quintilian now supposes a boy to be able to read and write 
 Latin, and he considers that the fundamental discipline next 
 necessary for him with a view to his cultivation is grammar. 
 He prefers to begin with the Greek Grammar. Following 
 the same opinion, it was customary throughout Europe till 
 recently, as we all know, to begin with Latin Grammar, and 
 to trust that boys would see their way through the grammar 
 of their native tongue by means of the Latin. Hence ‘ Gram¬ 
 mar’ schools. I have already pointed out that there were 
 both Greek and Latin Grammar schools. Greek Grammar 
 schools preceded Latin ones. On this point there is an 
 interesting quotation from a lost letter of Cicero’s given by 
 Suetonius in his Life of the rhetorician L. Plotius Gallus, 
 which I may here introduce : ‘ I remember well that when 
 we were boys, one Lucius Plotius first began to teach Latin ; 
 and as great numbers flocked to his school, so that those who 
 were most devoted to study were eager to take lessons from 
 him, it was a great trouble to me that I too was not allowed 
 to do so. I was prevented, however, by the decided opinion 
 of men of the greatest learning who considered that it was 
 best to cultivate the mind by the study of Greek.’ 
 
 1 Plato and Seneca had objected to severity and force before Quintilian. 
 Cicero (‘De Orat.’ i. 58) is frequently referred to as opposed to coercive means, 
 but he is speaking quite generally and not of schools. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 369 
 
 Quintilian lays great stress on the accurate and detailed 
 knowledge of grammar, including what we now call his¬ 
 torical grammar, the inquiry into the sounds of letters, the 
 transposition and substitution of vowels and consonants by 
 reference to ancient Latin and Greek forms: then the study 
 of the parts of speech, and inquiry into etymologies, syno¬ 
 nyms, &c. The difficulty of fixing the number of the parts 
 of speech and the difference of opinion as regards their origin 
 and proper classification is, Quintilian thinks, no argument 
 against the study. I may be allowed to interpose here that 
 it is an argument for the study. These grammatical founda¬ 
 tions should he surely and soundly laid according to Quin¬ 
 tilian, as the basis of future literary culture. And so far 
 Quintilian was right, if we grant him that the object of all 
 training is to train a man who can speak well and write well. 
 In these days we may follow Quintilian with safety, notwith¬ 
 standing his apparently limited view of the end of education 
 — because he has already said that only the man trained in 
 all the virtues and in practical philosophy is the true orator. 
 Mutcitis mutandis we must indeed heartily concur with Quin¬ 
 tilian, for a man who would speak well and write well must, 
 first of all, know what he is speaking about, and in the 
 second place he must have been a student of words, of style, 
 and of literary expression. But words alone, considered 
 grammatically, though an important and indispensable dis¬ 
 cipline, will not give him power of speaking or writing with 
 effect. In modern times, then, we must extend the matter 
 of education if we are to carry out Quintilian’s instructions. 
 But while so saying, we must concur with him in thinking 
 that the analysis of language — that is, of words and sen¬ 
 tences, and also of mere forms and of etymologies, is pro¬ 
 ductive of much benefit to the intelligence of a boy, and 
 gives a firmness and solidity to the intellect which even 
 logic will fail to give where there has been no such prior 
 grammatical discipline. As to Quintilian’s opinion that we 
 should begin with a foreign tongue, we must bear in mind 
 our change of circumstances; the grammar of our own 
 
 24 
 
370 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 language is now considerably developed and systematised, 
 and the science of comparative philology has thrown great 
 light on origins. Accordingly, English, in the hands of a 
 man of grammatical and philological mind, is now capable of 
 being used as a most valuable instrument both of instruction 
 and discipline. Then, again, the grammatical study of 
 Greek was more advanced than that of Latin in Quintilian’s 
 time; and there were other good reasons. A potent argu¬ 
 ment also which would not suggest itself to Quintilian for 
 beginning with the grammar of our own tongue is that the 
 boy already knows it, practically and implicitly. We have 
 only, by pursuing the analytico-synthetic method to raise 
 the indefinite experience to true knowledge — make explicit 
 what is implicit. This is instruction in the grammar of the 
 vernacular. 
 
 Quintilian now deals with the use of words, inculcating 
 the avoidance of ‘ barbarisms ’ (which are defined to be faults 
 in respect of individual words), solecisms, &c. Quintilian’s 
 remarks here contain little of value to us as teachers beyond 
 impressing on all who may read them the importance of 
 employing only such words as are correct in substance and 
 in form. It is not wasted time to direct the attention of 
 scholars to mere words; this is a popular error : the study of 
 words with special reference to their comparative fitness to 
 express a thought, and to their purity of origin, is a valuable 
 discipline. Words carry ideas. 
 
 In speaking of correct language generally, Quintilian 
 points out, to begin with, that it rests on ratio, vetustas , 
 auctoritas, and consuetudo (reason, antiquity, authority, and 
 custom). He then considers each of these sources, or rather 
 guarantees, of correct language in a chapter full of interest 
 for the student of the Latin tongue and of general ety¬ 
 mology. After all, in the selection of words we must be 
 guided by the custom of our time, says Quintilian, not the 
 custom of the multitude but the ‘consensus eruditorum’ 
 (learned or educated men), just as the consensus of good 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 371 
 
 men determines custom as regards manner of living (Horace 
 speaks also of the usus loquendi). 
 
 He next deals with the writing of words as the previous 
 chapter dealt with words spoken. The spelling of words 
 is considered here. His general conclusion as to spelling 
 is that words should be written as they are sounded, inas¬ 
 much as the very use of written characters is to represent 
 sounds. He makes an exception, however, where custom 
 declares strongly for a spelling though it be inconsistent 
 with the sound. 
 
 To the teaching of good reading he attaches, as did all 
 Romans and Greeks, great importance. Reading is to be 
 taught with care, the boy being taught when to read 
 slowly, when with more rapidity, when to speak with 
 vivacity, and when with gentleness of tone. All this 
 depends on practice; and I have, he says, only one thing 
 to enjoin: ‘ that he may do all these things let him under¬ 
 stand what he reads.’ He adds, and I think the remark 
 as applied to reading is worth our attention, ‘ Let the read¬ 
 ing be manly and grave, but grave with a certain sweet¬ 
 ness.’ The poets are not to be read like prose writers; at 
 the same time they are not to be read in a sing-song tone, 
 nor ‘ plasmate effeminata ’ — that is to say, rendered effemi¬ 
 nate by an exaggerated and affected modulation. He tells 
 us that Caesar once said to a reader of this last kind ‘ Si 
 cantas, male cantas; si legis, cantas ’ (if you are singing, 
 you sing vilely; if you are reading, you sing). He objects 
 to speeches in poetry being uttered by the reader as an 
 actor would utter them; but thinks a difference of tone 
 necessary in order to show that they are speeches. 
 
 The substance of what is read should be morally good 
 and inspiring, while the literary character of it should be 
 worthy of imitation. Homer and Virgil therefore should 
 be read, and the poets generally, taking care to give to 
 boys only what is morally pure. Those things are to be 
 chiefly perused by boys which most of all nourish the 
 talent and enlarge the mind — books on learning being 
 
372 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 postponed. Manliness of thought and expression are to 
 be gained from a study of the older writers. 
 
 He then refers to the course to be pursued by the teacher 
 in examining on the passages read. The verses should be 
 parsed and scanned. Peculiarities in the use of words 
 should then be brought out and the different senses in 
 which certain words may be taken. But above all, the 
 teacher should point out the beauty of the arrangement, 
 the charm of the subject matter, the appropriateness of 
 the words to the character represented, what is worthy of 
 praise in the substance, what in the words used, and so 
 forth. Historical allusions should be explained; but the 
 pupil should not he overloaded with these, but confined 
 to what is related by authors of mark. 
 
 While boys are still young and not yet ready to be 
 handed over to the rhetor, the beginnings of the art of 
 speaking should be taught. Boys should, after they have 
 left behind them nursery stories, be exercised in relating 
 the fables of iEsop, and afterwards writing down the nar¬ 
 ration. Then they should he required to paraphrase the 
 poets, and to give brief statements regarding events or char¬ 
 acters which have a moral significance. (This, I think, was 
 what was known as ‘ description ’). 
 
 Quintilian now, leaving the study of language, adverts to 
 those other studies which are necessary to the orator, or com¬ 
 pletely educated man, taking up specially mathematics and 
 music. 
 
 The word music among the ancients, I may here recall to 
 the reader, was a word of varying application. Sometimes it 
 had the limited signification which we attach to it. At 
 other times it was regarded as including also grammar and 
 geometry; and again in its wider sense it included all educa¬ 
 tion, save that which had to do with the discipline and 
 development of the body, which was called gymnastic. 
 
 The importance of music, in its restricted sense, for the 
 orator was evident; for he must understand and practise 
 rhythm in his sentences and utterance. Mathematics, which 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 373 
 
 covered both arithmetic and geometry, can, I think, be shown 
 to be indispensable only on the presumption that we regard 
 the orator as our type of an educated man. If we do so, all 
 that Quintilian says about the importance of musical and 
 mathematical studies will receive the heartiest support of all 
 competent persons. The grounds on which he advocates 
 music are of a practical kind, and the same applies to his 
 advocacy of geometry. The educational ends of the Romans 
 had always (as I have frequently said) an objective and 
 practical character. The recognition of the fact that there 
 was a certain constitution of mind and the relation of educa¬ 
 tional instruments to the full development and discipline of 
 the mind, as mind, does not seem to have been entertained 
 by them. By this I do not mean to convey that the efficacy 
 of certain studies in sharpening the intelligence, such, for ex¬ 
 ample, as dialectic and mathematics, was not recognised; 
 but merely that the development of mind as such was not 
 the object they had in view. With the Athenian Greeks, 
 and to some extent even with the Spartans, it was otherwise. 
 Culture was aimed at — a complete harmony of nature — 
 mind and body. The object in view with the Romans on the 
 contrary was to make a man apt for affairs, or, as with . 
 Quintilian, a perfect orator, which included the former. 
 The practical issue of all education was never lost sight of. 
 
 Quintilian, neither in speaking of music or geometry, sug¬ 
 gests methods of procedure, but he says much that is perti¬ 
 nent with reference to both. His remarks on the importance 
 and influence of music are eloquent and recall the Ciceronian 
 style. When speaking of the importance of musical rhythm 
 to the orator, he says with epigrammatic force: ‘ Both by the 
 tone of voice and the modulation, music sounds forth grand 
 things in a lofty style, pleasant things sweetly, ordinary 
 things gently, and in its whole art it is in harmony with the 
 feelings that are expressed.’ 1 The musical education was in 
 fact instruction in rhythm and intonation. 
 
 1 ‘ Et voce et modulatione grandia elate, jucunda dulciter, moderata leniter 
 canit, totaque arte conseDtit cum eorum quae dicuutur affectibus ’ (24). 
 
374 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 As to geometry, Quintilian argues not only for its practical 
 utility, but also for its use as exciting the intelligence, sharp¬ 
 ening the wits, and giving greater celerity of perception. 
 Then he shows that geometry is more closely allied to logic 
 than to rhetoric and lauds it as an exercise in deductive 
 reasoning. Note here that in Quintilian’s scheme of educa¬ 
 tion, physical science was included, because he finally rests 
 the claims of geometry on its being the engine whereby we 
 rise to a knowledge of the ratio mundi and learn that there 
 is nothing which is not ordered, nothing which is fortuitous. 
 
 Elsewhere (in the introduction to the eighth book) Quin¬ 
 tilian points to the importance of instruction in things: 
 ‘ Curarn verborum, reruni volo esse solicitudinem ’ (I desire 
 that there be care for words but a solicitude for things) ; 
 again, ‘ Sit ergo cura elocutionis quam maxima, dum scimus 
 tamen **dhil verborum causa faciendum, quum verba ipsa 
 rerum gratia reperta sint.’ (‘ Let there be the greatest pos¬ 
 sible care for expression as long as we recognise the fact that 
 nothing is to be done for the sake of words, since words 
 themselves have been invented for the sake of things.’) 
 
 Quintilian now passes outside general education and pro¬ 
 ceeds to discuss the training which is peculiar to the future 
 orator only; and although what he says is well deserving of 
 all who hope to distinguish themselves in the pulpit or par¬ 
 liament or at the bar, it bears only very partially on the 
 question of general education. He recommends the student 
 of oratory to take lessons from an actor, but only with a 
 view to pronuntiatio, by which he means both the correct and 
 full pronunciation of words, the delivery of passages convey¬ 
 ing different kinds of sentiment, and the facial movements 
 to be used, or rather to be avoided. As the pupil gets older, 
 he recommends the recitation of good speeches to his master 
 in the style he would have to adopt in pleading. Gesture 
 should be learned from the masters in the pakestra. But 
 Quintilian draws a strong line between what is becoming in 
 an actor and in an orator respectively. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 375 
 
 As to the capacity of the young to study a great many 
 subjects together, Quintilian gives expression to what is char¬ 
 acterised by soundness of judgment and freshness, force, and 
 even fervour of style. ‘ People,’ he says, ‘ who talk of the 
 difficulty of learning many subjects at the same time, forget 
 the nature of the young mind — its facility of movement, its 
 pliancy and its interest in many things. They also forget to 
 remember that the doing of things is not so fatiguing as cogita- 
 tio or thought; further, that children do not put force on them¬ 
 selves, but are guided by others/ He also points out the 
 refreshment which is obtained by varying studies, and even 
 by passing from reading to writing about the same subject. 
 
 He dwells with force on the importance of early instruc¬ 
 tion in any department which a man is afterwards thoroughly 
 to know, illustrating this by the case of imported slaves who 
 are very long of overcoming the difficulties of the Latin 
 tongue, whereas children speak freely two years after they 
 have begun to pronounce words. The Greeks called those 
 who excelled in their own special art jocedomatheis — that is 
 to say, instructed from boyhood. (Plato in his ‘ Laws ’ also 
 speaks of this.) In brief, we try to excuse our own sloth by 
 talking of the difficulty which attends the thorough study of 
 many subjects, says Quintilian. 
 
 Having now come to the close of the second part of a boy’s 
 education, that pursued under the grammaticus, and given 
 him a thorough foundation, Quintilian next hands him over 
 to the rhetor (what we should call university teaching) and 
 the subjects to be pursued under him are considered in the 
 second book. 
 
 Second Booh 
 Higher Instruction 
 
 After discussing the age at which a young man should pass 
 out of the hands of the grammaticus into the hands of the 
 rhetor, just as we now discuss the age for passing from a 
 High School to an University, in the course of which he 
 
376 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION 
 
 remarks that the rhetor had for some time been disposed to 
 leave part of his proper function and do the work of the 
 grammaticus, he dwells with great force on the importance 
 of selecting instructors who will not only afford an example 
 of the strictest virtue themselves, hut be prepared to exercise 
 considerable sternness in controlling the morals of those who 
 frequent their schools. 
 
 Here, when endeavouring to guide the master, he gives 
 him advice which shows that he has gone straight to the 
 heart of the whole matter. Act, he says, as if you were the 
 father of the pupils. Accept all the responsibilities which a 
 parent feels. Avoid a gloomy austerity lest it give rise to 
 contempt. As a teacher, far removed from heat of temper, 
 but yet not a compounder of faults which ought to be cor¬ 
 rected ; simple in teaching, patient of labour, persistent and 
 steady rather than immoderate in your demands. 1 Ready 
 with an answer to all who ask questions and asking ques¬ 
 tions of those who do not seek information. In praising the 
 exercises of your pupils neither grudging nor effusive, be¬ 
 cause in the former case there arises a weariness of the 
 labour of preparation, and in the latter a disposition towards 
 carelessness. In correcting what is in need of correction, let 
 not the teacher be bitter, and least of all contemptuous, be¬ 
 cause when the master finds fault as if he had a personal 
 hatred the effect is to drive his pupils from the design of 
 study. Daily let him say many things which his pupils 
 will carry away with them, for the living voice is more 
 potent than precepts which are written, especially if the 
 pupils love and respect their master. 
 
 Quintilian objects to allowing the students to applaud each 
 other’s exercises, as tending to abuse and as leading the 
 pupil to look away from the right source of judgment which 
 is the master. 2 
 
 1 As a teacher, ‘ minime iracundus, nec tamen eorum quae emendanda 
 erunt dissimulator, simplex in docendo, patiens laboris, assiduus potius quam 
 immodicus ’ (5). 
 
 2 Chapter 3. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 377 
 
 He is now led aside for a moment to animadvert on the 
 tendency of parents to think that a second-rate or third-rate 
 master will do well enough for their sons before they reach 
 a certain age and while yet in the elements of a subject, and 
 he points out the fallacy which underlies this view. He 
 also maintains that the ablest man is the best teacher. 
 
 I may remark that it is commonly said that men who are 
 profoundly versed in any subject often teach it very indifferently. 
 I am disposed to agree with Quintilian that the ablest and 
 profoundest scholar will teach most simply, most clearly, and 
 most successfully. It certainly is the case that many men 
 of profound attainments in a subject cannot teach it; but it 
 is equally true that more men who have superficial acquaint¬ 
 ance with a subject cannot teach it. This is because both 
 alike want the disposition to teach and the faculty of teach¬ 
 ing. The question really is : given two men of equal teach¬ 
 ing disposition and faculty, which of these will teach a 
 subject best, the man of shallow, or the man of profound 
 attainment ? I think there can be no doubt of the answer 
 to this, and we must agree with Quintilian; but we must 
 beware of concluding with him that profound knowledge 
 implies the fitness to teach. A recent writer in reply to a 
 remark by Dr. Pusey who had said that a man who knew a 
 subject thoroughly could teach it, answered with great point 
 that it should rather be said that * a man who could teach a 
 subject thoroughly, knew it.’ On the other hand, men of 
 known superficiality often seem to teach exceedingly well. 
 This is in the experience of us all; but I believe it to be a 
 delusion. They teach well, though their knowledge be super¬ 
 ficial ; but it is necessary to note that their teaching also is 
 superficial, and though it may serve well enough the objects 
 of those who desire a smattering and seek display, it is never 
 sound teaching. It cannot possibly be so. The very words 
 used by such an instructor in teaching will want that exact¬ 
 ness and precision without which there is no true learning. 
 They will not represent realities either of nature or thought, 
 but confused and loose images of realities only, while all 
 
378 
 
 PRE- CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION 
 
 that the subject of the lesson truly suggests will be left 
 outside. 
 
 Some of Quintilian’s words in this connection are worth 
 quoting: e.g. ‘ He will not count that man among precep¬ 
 tors at all who will not give care to small things. Method, 
 which is of such moment in teaching, is plainest and simplest 
 with the most learned: things taught by the most learned 
 are also so taught that they are more easily understood and 
 more lucid; the less genuine ability a man has, the more 
 does he attempt to raise himself up and stretch himself out: 
 the less he is competent the more obscure he will be.’ 
 
 Let a preceptor, then, he concludes, be eminent for his 
 eloquence [or, as we should say, his learning] and for his 
 moral character, that so, like Phoenix the tutor of Achilles, 
 (‘ II.’ ix.), he may train his pupils both to speak and to act 
 [i. e. to know and to do]. 1 
 
 Quintilian now passes from general observations and 
 enters more fully on the duties proper to the Ehetorician, 
 and we shall here part company with him. The extent to 
 which the art of oratory was cultivated and the laborious, 
 and (as we now think) vain and futile detail into which it 
 was carried in ancient times has little save a historic interest. 
 In its historical aspects, however, it is for the educational¬ 
 ist worthy of separate study. 
 
 There are, however, some good remarks on the training of 
 boys in narrative composition; and also on the nature of 
 boys themselves. He prefers, he says, the boy whose com¬ 
 positions show a certain fecundity, although they may be 
 crude and characterised by want of judgment and taste. 
 This gives hope of future strength. The cure of fertility is 
 easy; but no toil will overcome barrenness. He has little 
 hope of that kind of nature in boys which shows itself in 
 judgment anticipating growth of mind. 2 This is, I think, 
 
 1 Chapter 4. 
 
 2 ‘ Facile remedium est ubertatis ; sterilia nullo labore vincuntur. Ilia mihi 
 in pueris natura minimum spei dederit in qua ingenium judicio praesumitur.’ 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 
 
 379 
 
 what Goethe calls a matured judgment in an immature mind. 
 So he objects to a dry master — magister aridus — just as 
 one objects to a dry hard soil for tender plants. Moisture 
 is needed. Such masters make their boys small and narrow. 
 In learning merely to avoid faults under such masters, the 
 pupils fall into the greatest fault of all — that they have no 
 virtues. The teaching of such a man I may call ‘ negative ’ 
 teaching. 
 
 For myself I am persuaded that in the teaching of Latin 
 and Greek, and still more of our own tongue, the culture of. 
 the whole man which flows from the study of literary expres¬ 
 sion and art, is seldom yet adequately understood. It is to 
 this capacity for giving aesthetic and moral culture as well 
 as a close intellectual discipline, that we must finally rest 
 the claims of the ancient classics on the continuous attention 
 of youth. Not that I in any way depreciate the work of the 
 grammaticus; very far from it, for I hold that there can be 
 no strict and, therefore, no genuine culture which is not 
 based on the studies in which it is the special function of 
 the grammaticus to guide boys. For those who hold these 
 views, and who desire to give this culture, the study of what 
 Quintilian now says will be fruitful. 1 
 
 He first lays stress on reading in class from good authors, 
 preferring to take the best authors at once. At the age at 
 which boys went to the rhetor there could be little difficulty 
 in introducing them at once to the best literature of their 
 country. It is only when good literature is given to minds 
 as yet unripe for it, that it excites aversion, and rightly does 
 so. In studying any piece of literature, the teacher, Quin¬ 
 tilian says, must direct attention to the circumstances under 
 which the writing that his pupils are studying was produced, 
 its logical arrangement and persuasive power, pointing out in 
 brief all the virtues of language and form. He even thinks 
 that bad specimens of oratory may be taken, that their vices 
 of language, style, and arrangement may be pointed out. 
 
 1 Chapter 5. 
 
380 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Such writings, he says, should be commented on to show 
 that notwithstanding their popularity, they are full of 
 obscurities, inappropriateness of language, turgidity, mean¬ 
 ness, effeminacy, &c. — the very reason, indeed, why many 
 praise them. For there is a tendency (especially I may add 
 on the part of youth) to think that a direct manner of expres¬ 
 sion and a natural utterance are destitute of genius, while 
 language out of the ordinary course is held to be in some 
 way more select and worthy of admiration. The preceptor 
 also will test his pupils by asking questions so as to obviate 
 listlessness and inattention, and thereby also to lead to inde¬ 
 pendence of judgment; for we teach in order that teaching 
 may not be always necessary. This kind of literary training 
 Quintilian thinks to he of more value than the study of all 
 the treatises on rhetoric that ever were written. 
 
 Quintilian is of opinion that, while the best writers should 
 he read, those should be first studied whose writings are 
 most transparent, postponing, for example, Sallust to Livy. 
 He also thinks that the study of the antique writers of a 
 language should come last, or at least only after the style 
 and judgment are formed, for the reason that while they are 
 weighty with thought, their expression is faulty (though 
 doubtless excellent for its time). The pupils, not being 
 competent to appreciate the thought fully, are apt to run 
 into an imitation of a style alien to their own time, and to 
 imagine that so they resemble these great writers of antiquity. 
 As to contemporary writers, however good they may be, he 
 holds that we ought to postpone the reading of them also, 
 lest imitation should take precedence of the power of sound 
 judgment. 1 
 
 Quintilian, speaking of reproduction, thinks that when a 
 theme is given, the master should for some time at least give 
 instructions how it is to be worked out before the pupil 
 begins to work at it; and not content himself with merely 
 finding fault when it is done. He also is of opinion that 
 
 1 Chapter 5. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 381 
 
 pupils should rarely be allowed to recite their own com¬ 
 positions, and that the effort of memory necessary to 
 do this will be better expended by learning by heart 
 and reciting the best passages of eminent writers. The 
 memory will be better exercised in this way, and the pupils 
 will also acquire a good stock of phrases and forms of 
 expression. 1 
 
 He now deals with a question often discussed since 
 Quintilian, viz.: whether the peculiar intellectual tendencies 
 of various boys should be specially cultivated, Nature, as it 
 were, giving us a hint in what direction it desires different 
 boys to excel. Quintilian, as aiming at producing the perfect 
 orator, which is his expression for the perfectly educated 
 man, could not of course take this view. While the special 
 talent has to be alone cultivated in those whose general 
 capacity is weak, and who will not yield any return to 
 attempts to educate him all round ; yet in all stronger natures 
 we, while promoting the clear purposes of nature in different 
 boys, must yet give general training concurrently. At the 
 same time it would be a waste of time to strive after what 
 manifestly cannot be accomplished, and wrong to turn a 
 youth away from that which he can do best to something 
 which he can do, but not so well. 2 
 
 Turning now from the teacher to the pupil, he calls on them 
 to love their teachers as well as their studies, and to regard 
 them as parentes non quidem corporum sed mentium . They 
 will thus come together with pleasure and alacrity; found 
 fault with, they will not be angry, praised they will 
 be glad, by their zeal they will deserve their teacher’s 
 love. 3 It is the duty of teachers to teach, but equally 
 of learners to learn. And then he concludes with an ob¬ 
 servation which merits to be inscribed on the porch of every 
 school. 
 
 1 Chapter 7. 2 Chapter 8. 
 
 3 ‘ Einendati non irascentur, laudati gaudebunt, ut sint carissimi studio 
 merebuntur.’ 
 
382 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 As you may sow seeds to no purpose unless the furrows, soft¬ 
 ened beforehand, nourish them, so eloquence [education] declines 
 to grow and thrive save by the sympathetic concord of giver and 
 receiver . 1 
 
 He next refers to the practice in the ancient schools of 
 encouraging pleadings on imaginary or fictitious cases with 
 a view to the formation of the pleader, and recommends 
 the practice with this precaution, that these should not be 
 vague and turgid but as like as possible to the reality. 
 Even names should be put in to give them a more real 
 character, while at the same time elegance is to be aimed 
 at. 2 And these remarks lead him to a somewhat severe 
 criticism of those who think that no training in oratory is 
 needed and that nature and natural force are to be trusted. 
 The observations made here strike me as applying with 
 great force to those who hold that education is a subject 
 which it is superfluous for educators to study. At the 
 same time, he says that while art is necessary to the study 
 of art, yet the art must be of a general or universal kind 
 and not descend to petty directions, but leave freedom for 
 the adaptation of an orator to the circumstances under 
 which the oration is delivered. In like manner, I would 
 say: — It is not our business to give ‘ quasdam leges im- 
 mutabili necessitate constrictas studiosis educandi’ (certain 
 laws bound together by an immutable necessity to those 
 desirous of educating), but rather principles and general 
 methods. 3 
 
 In the nineteenth chapter he recurs to the question 
 whether Nature or learning does most for the orator, and 
 comes to the conclusion that if you consider each as sub¬ 
 sisting independently of the other, Nature does most; if 
 both co-exist moderately but in equal proportions, Nature 
 
 1 ‘ Sicut . . . frustra sparseris semina nisi ilia prsemolitus foverit sulcus, 
 sic eloquentia [for which read educatio ] coalescere [grow and thrive] negat, 
 nisi sociata tradentis accipientisque concordia.’ 
 
 2 Chapters 11 and 12. 
 
 8 Chapter 13. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 383 
 
 does most; but in the finished or perfect orator learning or 
 art does most. 
 
 The next five books of Quintilian deal with invention in 
 oratory and the arranging of what is invented — the logic 
 of an argumentative discourse. 
 
 In the introduction to the eighth book he gives a clear 
 and excellent summary of the instructions he has laid 
 down as to the rules of oratory under the various heads of 
 invention and arrangement. In modern times we should 
 consider a young man’s time wasted who spent it over 
 these books, and yet it is generally allowed that Quintilian 
 had simplified the subject of rhetoric considerably. In 
 the prooemium, Quintilian seems to become half aware of 
 this himself. Many things, he says, should be taught by 
 Nature herself, and precepts should not so much seem to 
 have been invented by teachers as observed by them as they 
 occurred. Here we have a hint as to the true method of 
 teaching rhetoric, or the perfect in expression, viz. by 
 reading and criticising excellent models. And what is 
 this but evolving the abstract out of the concrete along 
 with the pupil: in brief, proceeding analytically and in¬ 
 ductively with a view to the discovery of the general 
 and the abstract ? It seems to me that rhetoric ought to 
 be taught as grammar ought to be taught; and by the study 
 of rhetoric I mean (1) the study of the logical consecution 
 of an argumentum as uttered; and (2) the study of its 
 aesthetic characteristics. 
 
 Quintilian condemns, as strongly as any sense-realist of 
 modern times could, those who ‘ grow old in the empty 
 pursuit of words’ ( quodam inani verborum studio senescunt 
 (Lib. viii. Procem.)). Our business is to see to things, that 
 is, facts and thoughts, first, and thereafter to fit the words 
 closely to these. By ‘ things * Quintilian meant realities of 
 thought as well as of sense. 1 What, then, would Quin- 
 
 1 This passage has often been misapplied. 
 
384 
 
 PRE- CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION 
 
 tilian have said of Latin verses and elegant Latin prose 
 for English youth if he thus discouraged inane verborum 
 studium in Latin for a Latin ? The only possible defence 
 is that Latin verse-writing cultivates the faculty of expres¬ 
 sion and the aesthetic perceptions generally in connection 
 with the language in which we think — our vernacular. 
 Does it do so ? I do not speak of poets, for they stand 
 apart, it may be held; but are our best prose writers and 
 our best aesthetic critics the men who wrote the best Latin 
 and Greek verses at school and college ? Is it not in point 
 of fact generally quite otherwise ? Are not such linguistic 
 performances actually hurtful ? Does not Nature avenge 
 itself on those who think too much of words instead of 
 things ? Do they not belong to the XoyoSaiSaXoL, cunning 
 word-artificers of whom Plato speaks ? Such linguistic 
 tours de force are very clever exercitations — the very high¬ 
 est of clever exercitations, we may admit. But they are no 
 more. If they are to be cultivated at all (beyond the stage 
 of simple translation of English words into Latin verses 
 with a view to quantities), the cultivation of them should 
 oe confined to specialists — men who mean to live by Latin 
 and Greek. For them it is the efflorescence of their studies. 
 Why, indeed, do we learn Latin or Greek ? For the sake 
 of the literature these tongues enshrine of course, and for 
 the sake of historic culture; but also for the sake of lan¬ 
 guage-discipline and that training in literary perception 
 which is aesthetic discipline. We assuredly cannot attain 
 our end unless we write Latin or Greek prose, and also do 
 a little in versification. This may be admitted; but if we 
 keep in view the end proposed — linguistic discipline, the 
 most important of all possible disciplines, because lan¬ 
 guage is the reflex of thought, and, so regarded, covers the 
 whole of life — we shall restrict our exercitations in ancient 
 tongues within narrow limits. In Latin prose, e.g. syntactical 
 accuracy we must have, and also Latinity — that is to say, 
 an approach to the Latin cast or mould of expression: in 
 verse, however, we shall confine ourselves to the transla- 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 385 
 
 tion of English sense into Latin verse for the sake of quanti¬ 
 ties and of familiarising the pupil with the poetical idiom 
 of the Eomans; but beyond this we shall attempt nothing 
 save as rare and voluntary exercises for the few. So with 
 Greek. Words, as Quintilian well says, were invented for 
 the sake of things, not things for the sake of words. 
 
 When Quintilian speaks of the art of elocution, by which 
 he means the speaking forth, that is to say, the form or style 
 of what has been conceived in the mind, he holds that this 
 requires much teaching and study. At the same time he 
 never loses sight of the fact that thought, reality, truth of 
 conception and aim, lie at the basis of all style. ‘ The best 
 words,’ he says, ‘ generally attach themselves to our subject 
 and show themselves by their own light; whereas we set 
 ourselves to seek for words as if they were always hidden 
 and trying to keep themselves from being discovered. We 
 never consider that they are to be found close to the subject 
 on which we have to speak, but look for them in strange 
 places, and we do violence to them when we have found 
 them.’ Again, in concluding his introduction he says, ‘ Let 
 the greatest possible care be bestowed on expression, pro¬ 
 vided we bear in mind that nothing is to be done for the sake 
 of words, since words themselves were invented for the sake 
 of things, and those words are most to be commended which 
 express our thoughts best and produce the impression which 
 we desire.’ He also says (xii. 1. 30), ‘ Nee quidquam non 
 diserte quod honeste dicitur ’ (nothing which is honestly and 
 truly expressed is without eloquence). While there is much 
 that is too technical for modern taste in the eighth and ninth 
 books, I doubt if we could not extract from them more sound 
 criticism of style and of the way of teaching ‘ elocution ’ 
 (which is style) than from any modern treatise that I have 
 heard of. 
 
 We see that Quintilian, and not only Quintilian but the 
 ancients generally, meant by oratory the utterance of thought 
 on every variety of subject in fit words adorned by such 
 graces as the orator could command. We do not in modern 
 
 25 
 
386 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 times believe that any instruction in rhetorical forms can 
 give more than an artificial, and therefore a bad, rhetoric or 
 style. And in truth Quintilian sees this clearly enough. 
 At the same time there is such a thing as criticism; and it 
 is to this that Quintilian would introduce the student with 
 a view to self-criticism, and so far there is no doubt that a 
 student so trained would be preserved from many faults. 
 But no amount of such training would make him an orator. 
 
 That Quintilian had himself this view of his subject is 
 everywhere manifest, not least in his interpretation of 
 oratory as the general aim of education. It was the general 
 aim only because the utterance of thought (there being first 
 the thought) was the highest manifestation of human reason. 
 Batio and Oratio summed up the intellectual excellence of 
 man. This was the position of Isocrates also. To reach 
 perfect utterance, according to Quintilian, was impossible, 
 without knowledge of a wide and various kind — philoso¬ 
 phy, literature, science; and besides these, personal virtue. 
 Thus the Roman educational aim, like the Greek, was a lofty 
 one. One can easily understand how the common ruck of 
 teachers in the Roman Empire would hasten to their end 
 and attract pupils who hoped by a little study of figures, 
 tropes, and other rhetorical devices to become orators ‘in 
 twelve lessons.’ The quick degradation of the educational 
 aim of men like Isocrates, Cicero, and Quintilian, was cer¬ 
 tain, because it was so easy. Lucian’s satirical observations 
 on sophists and orators, about 150 years later, were doubtless 
 more than justified. 
 
 But oratory, as aim, would have been even in all ages 
 justified, had Quintilian’s conception of the qualifications 
 for it been adopted; above all, had men never lost sight of 
 things, not things of sense alone or chiefly, but things of 
 mind, as the main, though not exclusive, object of study. 
 The tendency of forms and formulae to usurp the place of 
 realities is the characteristic not only of the history of 
 religion in all countries, but also of literature, science, and 
 philosophy. The vestment is more regarded than the body. 
 
TEE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 387 
 
 It is only the single-minded pursuit of truth in all depart¬ 
 ments of thought for its own sake that keeps oratory, style, 
 religion, and politics ever living and true. 
 
 The ninth and tenth books constitute a treatise on 
 style, and are full of excellent advice; but here again 
 whatever rules Quintilian prescribes, he seems to be 
 always conscious of the small part these play in forming 
 the orator, compared with a knowledge of what has been 
 done by others, and constant practice by the student him¬ 
 self. Write, read, mark, and imitate excellencies of style. 
 
 I know nothing likely to be of more value to young men 
 in a modern class of rhetoric and literature than the tenth 
 book. Read for example the third and fourth chapters. 
 How excellent is a saying like this, when Quintilian 
 speaks of polishing the style of any literary production, 
 that ‘the file should polish our work but not wear it to 
 nothing.’ That this tenth book should be so seldom pre¬ 
 sented for graduation examinations is evidence that Latin 
 has not been taught with a view to what the literature can 
 teach us, but only for grammatical and examination purposes. 
 Where this can be said the university is, thus and so far, a 
 mere secondary school. 
 
 The second chapter of Book XI. contains a very inter¬ 
 esting discussion of memory, and is, moreover, historically 
 interesting as summing up all the ancients knew on this 
 subject. 
 
 The third chapter affords much instruction to both actors 
 and preachers as well as public speakers, and should be 
 studied by them. 
 
 In the twelfth book Quintilian gathers up the threads of 
 his long discourse. He has shown that to be an orator one 
 must be carried through a thorough discipline, and that all 
 literature and science must be studied. Now he concentrates 
 himself on the ethical characteristics of the true orator, the 
 vir bonus peritus dicendi, and shows the necessity of high 
 character to genuine success in oratory. 
 
388 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 How can a man become an orator who is deficient in dis¬ 
 cernment, judgment, and prudence? The vicious man is 
 deficient in these qualities. How can he prosecute studies 
 with a single aim to excellence unless he be temperate ? 
 How can the unjust man be trusted to speak of justice? 
 Who is most likely to attain the ends of oratory — the per¬ 
 suading of those whom he addresses — the good and truthful 
 man, or the vicious man who has no high moral standard ? 
 Quintilian always distinguishes between the merely ‘elo¬ 
 quent ’ man, and the perfect orator. ‘ What I have in view/ 
 he says, ‘is a man who, being possessed of the highest 
 natural genius, stores his mind thoroughly with the most 
 valuable kinds of knowledge, a man sent by the gods to do 
 honour to the world, and such as no preceding age has 
 known, a man in every way eminent and excellent, a thinker 
 of the best thoughts and a speaker of the best words to fit 
 these thoughts.’ Even in inferior employments, as in the 
 courts of law, such a man will be great, ‘ but his powers will 
 shine with the highest lustre on great occasions, when the 
 counsels of the senate are to be directed, and the people to be 
 guided from error into rectitude.’ Such a man Vergil de¬ 
 picts in ‘ iEn.’ i. 148. Such an orator plants his feelings in 
 the breasts of others because they are first active in his own 
 breast. 
 
 With this high standard in view a man must study phil¬ 
 osophy —- not that he may be a philosopher who simply dis¬ 
 cusses and prescribes, but a ‘ Romanus sapiens ’: that is to 
 say, a man who carries his philosophy into civil life. Phil¬ 
 osophy is divided into physics, ethics, and dialectics. By 
 physics or natural philosophy Quintilian (curiously enough) 
 understands the general philosophy of life and man, includ¬ 
 ing nature and religion. It is not necessary for a student to 
 attach himself to any sect of philosophers; but only to 
 study philosophy, and get what is noblest and best in it for 
 the formation of his own character. And in saying this, 
 Quintilian, in my opinion, defines the object of philosophic 
 study in an university course even now. In this part of his 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 389 
 
 treatise Quintilian again shows how small a part the mere 
 rules of the rhetorician play in the forming of the orator, as 
 compared with the philosopher, by quoting with approval 
 Cicero as saving ‘ non tantuni se debere scholis rhetorum 
 
 v O 
 
 quantum Academiae spatiis [gardens] 5 (‘De Orat.’ 2, 23). 
 
 When we say that Quintilian looked to the study of liter¬ 
 ature and philosophy as that which was to make the finished 
 orator, let it not be supposed that he ignored the study of 
 nature. Even into the secondary school — the school of the 
 grammaticus — mathematics and science entered, as I have 
 shown in its proper place, and it was taken up in the higher 
 course. 
 
 The following chapters of this book deal with the special 
 qualifications of the pleader, such as a knowledge of the civil 
 law, &c. In the tenth chapter we have an interesting survey 
 of Greek painting and sculpture, and a parallelism drawn 
 between the plastic arts and oratory. 
 
 The concluding chapter contains a vigorous and eloquent 
 incitement to study and to the pursuit of all excellence. 
 
 CHAPTER YI 
 
 EDUCATION IN IMPERIAL TIMES 
 The classical decadence 
 
 Throughout Quintilian’s treatise, while rules of composi¬ 
 tion and of the literary presentation of thought — above 
 all, of oratorical expression — receive ample treatment, the 
 author is always recurring to the substance of knowledge and 
 literature. The discipline, the gravity, and moral earnest¬ 
 ness of the Roman are always to the front, and these he 
 would harmonise with Hellenic ideals. Though himself a 
 provincial, he is always the grave conservative Roman: not 
 by any means so Hellenic and anti-Roman as Cicero and his 
 friends had been. His aims are not higher than those attrib- 
 uted to Isocrates, but his mode of attaining them is better, 
 
390 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 as far as we know; and this because he takes up the whole 
 question of the education of a man. He wrote at a critical 
 time for the ancient world; hut he was powerless to arrest 
 the downward progress of the higher education. His book, 
 says Mommsen, 1 ‘ is one of the most excellent we possess 
 from Roman antiquity, pervaded by fine taste and rare judg¬ 
 ment, simple in feeling as in presentation, instructive with¬ 
 out weariness, pleasing without effort, contrasting sharply 
 and designedly with the fashionable literature that was so 
 rich in phrases and so empty of ideas.’ 
 
 The evils of which Tacitus, in the ‘ He Oratorihus,’ com¬ 
 plains, and which were to he found in Gaul and Spain as 
 well as at Rome and in the East, were already visible, if not 
 conspicuous, when Quintilian began to teach. The ‘ De 
 Oratorihus’ must have appeared about 74 a.d. (Bahr, ii. 330), 
 and therefore about five or six years after Quintilian opened 
 his school. 2 The language of Tacitus is, however, wholly that 
 of a laudator temporis acti, yet we find in his protest so 
 vivid a picture of his own conception of former ages and of 
 contemporary evils, that I may with advantage to the student 
 of education here quote from him. 
 
 1 It was accordingly usual with our ancestors, when a lad was 
 being prepared for public speaking, as soon as he was fully 
 trained by home discipline and his mind was stored with culture, 
 to have him taken by his father or his relatives to the orator who 
 held the highest rank in the state. The hoy used to accompany 
 and attend him and be present at all his speeches, alike in the law- 
 courts and the assembly, and thus he picked up the art of repartee 
 and became habituated to the strife of words, and indeed, I may 
 almost say, learnt how to fight in battle. Thereby young men 
 acquired, from the first, great experience and confidence, and a very 
 large stock of discrimination, for they were studying in broad day¬ 
 light, in the very thick of the conflict, where no one can say any- 
 
 1 Book viii. cap. 2 of Hist, of Provinces of Roman Empire. 
 
 2 Tactitus was a man of letters who wrote always with a view to literary and 
 dramatic effect. He had also very strong prejudices and a powerfully satirical 
 vein. We must take all he says cum grano , if I may venture to say so. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 
 
 391 
 
 tiling foolish or self-contradictory without its being refuted by the 
 judge or ridiculed by the opponent, or, last of all, repudiated by the 
 very counsel with him. Thus, from the beginning, they were im¬ 
 bued with true and genuine eloquence, and, although they attached 
 themselves to one pleader, still they became acquainted with all 
 advocates of their own standing in a multitude of cases before the 
 courts. They had, too, abundant experience of the popular ear, in 
 all its greatest varieties, and with this they could easily ascertain 
 what was liked or disapproved in each speaker. Thus, they were 
 not in want of a teacher of the very best and choicest kind who 
 could show them eloquence in her true features, not in a mere re¬ 
 semblance; nor did they lack opponents and rivals, who fought 
 with actual steel, not with a wooden sword, and the audience, too, 
 was always crowded, always changing, made up of unfriendly as 
 well as of admiring critics, so that neither success nor failure could 
 be disguised. You know, of course, that eloquence wins its great 
 and enduring fame quite as much from the benches of our oppo¬ 
 nents as from those of our friends, nay more, its rise from that 
 quarter is steadier and its growth surer. Undoubtedly it was 
 under such teachers that the youth of whom I am speaking, the 
 disciple of orators, the listener in the forum, the student in the 
 law-courts, was trained and practised by the experiences of others. 
 The laws he learnt by daily hearing, the faces of the judges were 
 familiar to him, the ways of popular assemblies were continually 
 before his eyes; he had frequent experience of the ear of the 
 people, and whether he undertook a prosecution or a defence, he 
 was at once singly and alone equal to any case. We still read 
 with admiration the speeches in which Lucius Crassus, in his nine¬ 
 teenth, Caesar and Asinius Pollio in their twenty-first year, Calvus, 
 when very little older, denounced, respectively, Carbo, Dolabella, 
 Cato, and Vatinius. 
 
 ‘ But in these days we have our youths taken to the professor’s 
 theatre — the rhetoricians, as we call them. The class made its 
 appearance a little before Cicero’s time and was not liked by our 
 ancestors, as is evident from the fact that, when Crassus and 
 Domitius were censors, they were ordered, as Cicero says, to “ close 
 the school of impudence.” However, as I was just saying, the 
 boys are taken to schools in which it is hard to tell whether the 
 place itself, or their fellow scholars, or the character of their studies, 
 
392 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 do their minds most harm. As for the place, there is no such thing 
 as reverence, for no one enters it who is not as ignorant as the 
 rest. As for the scholars, there can be no improvement when boys 
 and striplings, with equal assurance, address, and are addressed by, 
 other boys and striplings. 
 
 ‘ As for the mental exercises themselves, they are the reverse of 
 beneficial. Two kinds of subject matter are dealt with before the 
 rhetoricians — the persuasive and the controversial. The per¬ 
 suasive, as being comparatively easy and requiring less skill, is 
 given to boys. The controversial is assigned to riper scholars and, 
 good heavens ! what strange and astonishing productions are the 
 result! It comes to pass that subjects remote from all reality are 
 actually used for declamation.’ 
 
 Brodrick’s Translation. 
 
 Petronius Arbiter, about the same time, laments the decline 
 of the higher education, and satirises the sophists. Con¬ 
 firmatory passages might be added from Juvenal, who died 
 about 120 a.d., but whose satires were probably written in 
 the concluding decade of the first century. Then, about 50 
 years after Juvenal's death, we can learn from Lucian what 
 the tendency of the ‘ higher ’ instruction was — all towards 
 the premature fitting out of youth for success in life, by 
 means of rhetoric and oratory, and a superficial acquaintance 
 with the stock commonplaces of argumentation. There was 
 no careful curriculum of severe study in language, history, 
 dialectic, and literature, as was required by Quintilian, and 
 contemplated, in part at least, by many leading sophist-phil¬ 
 osophers, who, long before imperial times, had followed 
 Isocrates. Now, nothing is more certain than this in educa¬ 
 tion, that the moment the vesture of thought becomes an 
 object of worship—whether in the shape of word-cunning, 
 elegance of style, or rules for rhetorical construction and 
 rhythmical effect — the result must be decline and decay. 
 With such an educational end in view, it was not surprising 
 that young men in the second century a.d. should become im¬ 
 patient of the slow processes of disciplinary preparation. 
 They rushed the preparatory grammar, literature, and dialectic 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 393 
 
 in order to get at the sophistics, the declamation and super¬ 
 ficial politics of the rhetorical or ‘ university ’ schools. - 
 
 The remarkable devotion to Roman literature and rhetoric 
 in the provinces doubtless helped the decline, while it was a 
 gratifying illustration of the rapid diffusion of the Roman 
 language and literature among the native Gauls and Span¬ 
 iards. 1 They helped the decline because the native provin¬ 
 cials were essentially imitators, though, doubtless, frequently 
 able, and almost always (at least in Gaul) eloquent. 
 
 But we are not entitled, even at the bidding of Tacitus, to 
 speak of the decline of education as already accomplished in 
 the first two, or even three, centuries of the empire. On the 
 contrary, there had been great progress. All the countries 
 of the Mediterranean, including Gaul, as far north as Treves, 
 and Spain as far south as Corduba, were swarming with 
 accomplished men. Some of these were Italians settled in 
 the provinces, but a large number were native Gauls and 
 Spaniards who lived for the acquisition of Roman literature 
 and eloquence, and were as keen in the pursuit of it as the 
 fervent young men of the post-medheval renaissance. The 
 decline, such as it was, at the time Tacitus wrote, was in the 
 educational aim; it was this that contained the seed of 
 decay. True, the old Roman idea was now no longer a living 
 force; but we had in its place the Romano-Hellenic culture 
 — broad, cosmopolitan, and essentially humane. I may here 
 summarise briefly the grounds for refusing to accept the 
 opinion that education as a national movement was retro¬ 
 grading in imperial times. 
 
 First; there was the growth of public libraries. From 
 150 years B.c. onwards, it became usual for the wealthy 
 Roman to collect books, almost wholly Greek. This was 
 following the example of distinguished Greeks 200 years 
 earlier. iEmilius Paullus, moreover, and Sulla conveyed 
 libraries from Greece and Asia Minor as plunder of war. 
 The first Public Library in Rome was instituted by Asinius 
 Pollio in the time of Augustus, in the atrium of the Temple 
 
 1 Especially after Tiberius shut up the Druidical colleges. 
 
394 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 of Liberty on Mt. Aventine. Julius Caesar had, before this, 
 contemplated a great Greek and Latin Library, but his death 
 cut short his scheme. Augustus himself instituted a library 
 in the temple of Apollo on Mt. Palatine, and a second, the 
 Octavian, in the Portions Octavia. There were other public 
 libraries in Rome, but the greatest was the Ulpian founded by 
 Trajan. All this activity was the fruit of Hellenic example. 
 There had been public libraries in several Greek towns, and 
 in Alexandria, the greatest of them all was founded by 
 Ptolemy Soter in 323 B.c.; before the time of Julius Crnsar, 
 when the greatest part of it was burnt down, it possessed 
 certainly not less than 500,000 volumes. It was soon re¬ 
 stored, but only to be totally destroyed during the confusion 
 of the Arab occupation in 640 a.d. At Pergamon also a 
 great library rivalling that of Alexandria had been founded 
 by Eumenes the king. 
 
 In later imperial times there were twenty-eight public 
 libraries hi Rome. Books (yolumina or rolls) were cheap, 
 and booksellers’ shops numerous. We are assured that in 
 provincial towns this activity was imitated, and that with the 
 large extension of schools under the emperors, and the 
 greater accessibility of books, the facilities for education had 
 been enormously increased. 
 
 Secondly; not only in Rome, but throughout Italy and in 
 all the cities of the Empire, grammatical schools had arisen. 
 These were fostered by the municipalities, encouraged by the 
 emperors, and a considerable number of them were endowed 
 with public money. The wide diffusion of grammar (or 
 secondary) schools in all the countries round the Mediterra¬ 
 nean may be inferred from the large number of higher or 
 rhetoric schools which grew up in addition to the great 
 schools of Rhodes, Athens, and Pergamos. We learn from 
 Suetonius and other sources that Vespasian, 70-79 a.d., gave 
 salaries from the public treasury to both Latin and Greek 
 rhetoricians at Rome. Quintilian was one of these. This 
 rhetorical school was further developed by Hadrian (117- 
 138 a.d.). The number of professors was largely increased, 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 395 
 
 a noble building was erected, with lecture-halls where orators 
 and poets held forth, and where Greek and Latin gram¬ 
 marians and rhetoricians had numerous students. This 
 institution, called the Athenaeum, was the university of 
 Rome for centuries. Antoninus Pius, continued this good 
 work in the provinces, giving both honour and income to 
 the higher teachers. He was the first (it is believed) to 
 make them a privileged class by relieving them of rates and 
 taxes, the obligation to hold municipal offices, to serve in the 
 army, and to have soldiers quartered on them. These immu¬ 
 nities were extended to philosophers, rhetoricians, gram¬ 
 marians, and physicians. To prevent abuse of these privi¬ 
 leges he restricted the number of each class who were to 
 enjoy them : the smaller towns being allowed five physicians, 
 three sophists, 1 and three grammarians; in large towns (i.e. 
 towns in which a court of justice was established) seven 
 physicians, four sophists, and four grammarians were recog¬ 
 nised ; and in the capital towns of a province, ten physicians, 
 five sophists, and five grammarians. Under Constantine the 
 Great (306-337) these privileges were confirmed and ex¬ 
 tended, and under Theodosius II. (408) the more distin¬ 
 guished teachers at Constantinople were raised to the rank 
 of counts of the first class. Great schools arose at Mar¬ 
 seilles, Trier, Autun, Bourdeaux, and elsewhere. 
 
 Meanwhile, at Athens, which still continued to be the 
 home of philosophy, the four philosophical schools had kept 
 up a kind of apostolic succession. Marcus Aurelius had, in 
 176 a.d., fixed a liberal state salary to be paid to two teachers 
 in each of these schools, besides two teachers of oratory. 
 The council of the city appointed to these offices, subject to 
 the approval of the emperor. 
 
 Alexander Severus (218) appointed teachers of archi¬ 
 tecture, mathematics, and mechanics, as well as medicine, 
 rhetoric, and grammar, and even began a system of ‘ bursa¬ 
 ries’ at Rome. And in 376, Gratian ordered that in all the 
 capitals of the seventeen Gallic provinces the grammarians 
 
 1 This term had become applicable to both rhetoricians and philosophers. 
 
396 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 and rhetoricians in both Latin and Greek should receive from 
 the imperial chest a sum equal to their municipal salary. 
 
 The higher school or university of Constantinople, which 
 emulated Pomp, had its professors increased by Theodosius 
 II. to three Latin rhetoricians, five Greek sophists, ten Latin 
 and ten Greek grammarians, one philosopher, and two jurists. 
 They were accommodated in the Capitolium. 
 
 The great school of Berytus was an university of law. 
 
 Nor must we omit to mention Alexandria. The Museum of 
 Alexandria, founded by Ptolemy Philadelphus about 280 B.c., 
 was in full activity. Strabo says (xvii. p. 112, Oxford ed.): 
 ‘ Part of the royal palaces is the Museum, which has cloisters, 
 an exedra (these were semi-circular alcoves at the end of por¬ 
 ticoes and fitted with seats where the learned taught their 
 students), and a very large house in which there is a “ common- 
 room ” for those who are fellows of the Museum and devote 
 themselves to letters : there are public endowments for the Col¬ 
 lege (Synod) and it is presided over by a priest formerly ap¬ 
 pointed by the kings, now by Cfesar.’ The great libraries were 
 accessible to these men and their students. There was an ob¬ 
 servatory and, it is said also, botanical and zoological gardens. 
 The chief work of this college of learned men was in the 
 departments of mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and 
 medicine. It is said they chose their own principals: if so 
 they must have corresponded to our Deans of Paculties, as 
 the president was a state nominee. The Emperor Claudius 
 (died 54 a.d.) added a second Museum, in which his own 
 historical works were to be regularly read. Caracalla (died 
 217 a.d.) confiscated the salaries, and the institution came to 
 an end — that is to say, in so far as it was an endowed sys¬ 
 tem of fellowships — in the third century. 
 
 During all these centuries, moreover, numerous gramma¬ 
 rians and sophists wandered from town to town and opened 
 private schools. 
 
 Nor do the above facts stand alone in the educational 
 history of the time. They indicate the public policy of the 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 397 
 
 Empire, but they do not reveal that that policy was sup¬ 
 ported by a wide-spread ‘ humanity ’ destined soon to super¬ 
 sede the humanitas of mere culture. We find this well 
 exemplified in a letter (iv. 13), from Pliny the younger (died 
 about 110 a.d.) addressed to Tacitus: 
 
 I am glad [he says] to hear of your safe arrival at Rome. I am 
 always anxious to see you, and especially just now. I shall stay a 
 few more days at Tusculum, that I may finish a little work that I 
 have in hand, for I am afraid that if I break it off when I have all 
 but completed it, I shall find it difficult to take it up again. Mean¬ 
 while, that I may lose no time, I send off this letter, so to speak, in 
 advance of me, to ask a favour of you which I shall soon ask in • 
 person. First, let me tell you the occasion of it. Being lately at 
 my native town [Comum, about twenty-eight miles north of Milan] 
 a young lad, son of one of my neighbours, came to pay me a com¬ 
 plimentary call. ‘ Do you go to school ? ’ I asked him. ‘ Yes,’ he 
 replied. ‘Where?’ ‘ At Milan ’ [Mediolanum]. ‘ Why not here ? ’ 
 ‘Because,’ said his father, who had come with him, ‘we have no 
 teachers here.’ ‘ No teachers ! Why surely,’ I replied, ‘ it would 
 be very much to the interest of all you fathers ’ (and fortunately 
 several fathers heard what I said) ‘ to have your sons educated here 
 rather than anywhere else. Where can they live more pleasantly 
 than in their own town ? or be bred up more virtuously than under 
 their parents’ eyes, or at less expense than at home ? What an 
 easy matter it would be, by a general contribution, to hire teachers, 
 and to apply to their salaries the money which you now spend on 
 lodging, journeys, and all you have to purchase for your sons at a 
 distance from home. I have no children myself; I look on my 
 native town in the light of a child or a parent, and I am ready to 
 advance a third part of any sum which you think fit to raise for the 
 purpose. I would even promise the whole amount were 1 not 
 afraid that my benefaction might be spoilt by jobbery, as I see 
 happens in many towns where teachers are engaged at the public 
 expense. There is only one way of meeting this evil. If the 
 choice of teachers is left solely to the parents, the obligation to 
 choose rightly will be enforced by the necessity of having to pay 
 towards the teachers’ salaries. Those who would, perhaps, be 
 careless in administering another’s bounty, will certainly be careful 
 
398 
 
 PRE- CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION 
 
 about tbeir own expenses, and will see that none but those who 
 deserve it receive any of my money, when they must at the same 
 time receive theirs as well. So take counsel together and be en¬ 
 couraged by my example, and be assured that the greater my pro¬ 
 portion of the expense shall be, the better shall I be pleased. 
 You can do nothing more for the good of your children, or more 
 acceptable to your native town. Your sons will thus receive their 
 education in the place of their birth, and be accustomed from their 
 infancy to love and cling to their native soil. I trust that you 
 may secure such eminent teachers that the neighbouring towns 
 will be glad to draw their learning from hence; so that, as you 
 now send your children elsewhere to be educated, other people’s 
 children may hereafter flock hither for instruction.’ 
 
 I thought it advisable to explain the whole affair to you circum¬ 
 stantially, so that you may see more clearly how much obliged I 
 should be if you will undertake what I request. I entreat you, in 
 consideration of the importance of the matter, to look out among 
 the multitude of men of letters whom the reputation of your genius 
 draws around you some teachers to whom we may apply, but with¬ 
 out as yet tying ourselves down to any particular man. I leave 
 everything to the parents, I wish them to judge and select as they 
 think fit; I take on myself nothing but the trouble and expense. 
 If anyone shall be found who has confidence in his own ability, let 
 him go there ; but he must understand that he goes with no assur¬ 
 ance but that derived from his own merit. (‘ Ancient Classics for 
 English Readers — Pliny.’) 
 
 From this letter we see that two kinds of schools were in 
 existence in Pliny’s day: (1) schools, supported by the 
 municipalities, not uncommon (multis in locis ), and (2) 
 subscription-schools, where sufficient funds could be raised 
 to engage a teacher. When there was a good school in any 
 place, boys came from a distance and seem to have taken 
 lodgings in the place in order to attend it. We also see the 
 importance which Pliny attaches to education, the high 
 value he sets on home training and his opinion as to free 
 education. He sees the danger of bad appointments likely 
 to arise from fixed payments and centralisation, and he also 
 sees the necessity of some subsidy to encourage local effort. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 399 
 
 Pliny’s letter is itself evidence of the spirit of humanity to 
 which I have already adverted, and which, under the influence 
 of the Stoic philosophy, had already lead to charitable founda¬ 
 tions. Large benefactions were made not only by the state 
 but by private individuals, for the maintenance of orphan¬ 
 ages ; and successive emperors added to these in many 
 Italian towns. 
 
 Nor, as further evidence of educational activity, were 
 writers on education wanting. There were many whose 
 names and books are lost, but some of the most eminent are 
 still household words in the history of education. Omitting 
 the earlier writers, we have Seneca, Quintilian, Tacitus, Pliny 
 the younger, Plutarch, and Musonius the Stoic, who all wrote 
 on the subject of education, and the opinions of any one of 
 whom, in so far as they can he now ascertained, might, in 
 their educational reference, he the subject of an interesting 
 and instructive monograph. 
 
 As regards individual life; it is unhappily true that most 
 of the educated intelligence of the empire sought, under very 
 lax moral conditions, the satisfactions of material wealth or 
 the glory of place and power. The vetus disciplina, the prisca 
 virtus , was gone from the life even of the senate, now an 
 upstart body of novi homines. The religion of Rome was 
 dead, for, as Professor Flint truly says, ‘ Rome had made the 
 world Roman and become herself cosmopolitan.’ 1 And yet 
 we can still find a succession of men of the old Roman type 
 among whom the traditionary dignity of family intercourse 
 and severity of morals survived. The Stoic philosophy, as a 
 noble scheme of life, had established itself in many minds as 
 a motive force, and filled the place no longer occupied by the 
 memories of a great history and an ancestral religion. When 
 w T e note the humanity and even tenderness conveyed in the 
 letter from Pliny quoted above, and realise also the universal 
 human relations of the Stoic system, we can see that for the 
 cultured men of the empire a noble and beneficent existence 
 was always possible. 
 
 1 History of Philosophy of History, p. 56. 
 
400 
 
 PRE- CHRIST IA N ED UCA TION 
 
 In view of all these facts, I repeat that it seems to me absurd 
 to talk of the decline of education in the first two centuries 
 of the Christian era. It never had been so widely extended, 
 and never before had it received so much fostering care. 
 Nor have I found any evidence that the grammar schools 
 were, in their working, seriously defective. The quality of 
 the discipline and instruction of the higher schools, it is true, 
 had degenerated in some quarters because of the large acces¬ 
 sion to the number of learners and of competing teachers. 
 But an excellent education could still be obtained at all the 
 great centres of the empire. 
 
 The ethical element in education was, moreover, making 
 progress, while the intellectual elements of culture were being 
 extended. The Alexandrian philosophy of the time had a 
 religious and mystical tendency, and elsewhere the supremacy 
 of ethics in philosophy and the prevalence of purer and more 
 exalted notions of God have to be noted. These were educa¬ 
 tive forces of the highest kind. Cicero says much on this 
 subject that might be here quoted. Quintilian, again, 
 advocating the study of ethics by the orator, says : ‘ If the 
 world is governed by a Providence, the state ought surely to 
 be ruled by the superintendence of good men. If our souls 
 are of divine origin, we ought to devote ourselves to virtue, 
 and not be slaves to a body of terrestrial nature ’ (xii. 2). 
 Apollonius of Tyana was an itinerant preacher of ethics — a 
 kind of apostle. ‘ The whole universe which you see 
 around you,’ says Seneca, ‘ comprising all things divine and 
 human, is one. We are members of one great body. Nature 
 has made us relative, when it begat us from the same 
 materials and for the same destinies.’ 1 
 
 Depraved superstitions, moral excesses, and brutal pleas¬ 
 ures, meanwhile characterised a large proportion of the 
 people, who had not yet found a substitute for their lost gods, 
 while training to civic virtue had become impossible for them 
 under the inevitable imperial despotism. 
 
 But I need not dwell on what is a commonplace of moral 
 
 1 Seneca, Ep. xcv., quoted by Mr. Lecky. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 401 
 
 history; it will be more to the purpose to give a summary 
 of two writers who exhibit the ethical and humane spirit 
 which was then beginning to permeate society, viz. Plutarch 
 and Musonius. 
 
 Plutarch 1 
 
 Plutarch, a Greek, wrote his essay on the education of chil¬ 
 dren about 100 a.d. The following is a summary of his 
 wisdom. 
 
 The most pregnant and epigrammatic of his utterances is this, 
 1 Nature without education is blind/ In beginning his essay, he 
 says, ‘ Come, let us consider what is to be said regarding the edu¬ 
 cation of free children, and by what means they may be made 
 virtuous.’ But he confines himself within much narrower limits 
 than a purpose so large would have led us to expect. He more 
 than once, as might be expected in a Greek, dwells on the impor¬ 
 tance of gymnastics for the young and of recreation for adults 
 who are disposed to work hard. Even a bow we have to unbend 
 if it is to do its work properly. 
 
 For good agriculture, he says, there must be good soil, a skilful 
 husbandman, and fruitful seed; so in education, nature is the soil, 
 the master the husbandman, and precepts and instruction the seed. 
 Deficiency in the nature of the child may be supplied by labour 
 and culture. There is a concurrence of three things requisite to 
 virtue — nature, reason, and use. By reason he means instruction, 
 by use he means exercise. 
 
 Like all other writers on education Plutarch dwells much on the 
 importance of exercise with a view to habit. Without instruction 
 nature is blind, but even where there is instruction, of what value 
 will it be without constant practice in the good ? He presses the 
 cultivation of the memory in the sphere of intellectual instruction, 
 but beyond this he has little to say on the training of the intellect. 
 
 It is on the moral education of the boy and youth that he most 
 strongly insists. Let them be taught, above all, to keep their tem¬ 
 pers and to control their tongues. A man never regrets having 
 said too little. That they should be trained to speak the truth is 
 
 1 Doubtful whether the essay on education was Plutarch’s. 
 
 26 
 
402 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 essential. Lying is for slaves. He points out that the elements of 
 virtue are love of honour and fear of punishment (n^topia), and 
 that the faults of boys are, in truth, trifling in themselves, and 
 easily corrected; but in youths these faults may grow to vices. 
 ‘ Childhood is a tender thing, and may easily be.wrought into any 
 shape.’ 
 
 The main instrument of all education is philosophy. By phil¬ 
 osophy he means all that bears on the conduct of life. The sole 
 guide of the mind of man is philosophy. By this we are taught 
 what is good and bad, honourable and dishonourable, just and 
 unjust, what we are most to desire and what most to shun, and the 
 duties we owe to the gods, to our parents, friends, strangers, soci¬ 
 ety ; also the regulation of all the passions, &c. In this he repeats 
 Isocrates. 
 
 With a view to sound instruction, the writers of antiquity are to 
 be read, confining boys to the good and useful in these. 
 
 Parents are enjoined to care for their children’s education, and 
 to be careful in their choice of nurses, psedagogi, and masters, not 
 grudging expenditure on so important a matter as education. They 
 are also urged themselves to take an interest in what their children 
 are learning. 
 
 On the subject of coercion he says, ‘ Children are to be won to 
 follow liberal studies by exhortations and rational motives, and on 
 no account to be forced thereto by whipping or any other contume¬ 
 lious punishments. I will not urge that such usage seems to me 
 more agreeable to slaves than to ingenuous (freeborn) citizens! 
 And even slaves when thus handled are dulled and discouraged 
 from the performance of their tasks, partly by reason of the smart 
 of their stripes, partly because of the disgrace thereby inflicted. 
 But praise and reproof are more effectual on free-born children 
 than any such disgraceful handling, the former to incite them to 
 what is good, the latter to restrain them from that which is evil. . . . 
 It is useful not to give them such large commendations as to puff 
 them up with pride.’ 
 
 As to amount of work to be demanded of the young, Plutarch 
 says that some parents, being over hasty to advance their children 
 in learning beyond their equals, overwork them, and so cause them 
 to be ill-affected to study. For, ‘as plants by moderate watering 
 are nourished, but with overmuch moisture are glutted, so is the 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 403 
 
 spirit improved by moderate labours, but overwhelmed by such as 
 are excessive.’ 
 
 Memory should be cultivated. It is the mother of the Muses. 
 ‘Nothing doth so much beget and nourish learning as memory.’ 
 
 Filthy talk is to be checked, because, as Democritus says, words 
 are the shadows of actions. Children must be brought up to be 
 alfable and courteous. 
 
 Nothing can be more ‘modern’ than all this. 
 
 Musonins the Stoic, again, is especially interesting, as he 
 discusses the question of the education of women. 1 
 
 ‘ In turning over the pages of the Greek Anthology of Stobseus,’ 2 
 says the late Dr. Muir, ‘ I found (in the Appendix containing ex¬ 
 tracts from the collection of John of Damascus, in vol. iv. pp. 212 
 ff. and 220 If.) two passages quoted from Musonius, the one headed 
 “ On the question whether men’s daughters should be educated 
 similar to their sons,” and the other affirming that “ Women ought 
 to study philosophy.” The author, C. Musonius Rufus, was “a 
 celebrated Stoic philosopher,” who lived “ in the first century of the 
 Christian era ” ’ (Smith’s ‘ Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biog¬ 
 raphy and Mythology,’ s. v.). 
 
 The following is a translation of the first of the two passages : — 
 ‘ The conversation having turned on the question whether people’s 
 sons and daughters should receive the same education, the philoso¬ 
 pher (after referring to the analogy furnished by the identical 
 training received by both the males and the females of two of the 
 species of animals employed by men to render them active service, 
 horses and dogs) asks whether men ought to receive any special 
 education and training superior to those allowed to women, as if 
 both alike should not acquire the same virtues, or if it is possible for 
 the two sexes to attain to the same virtues otherwise than by the 
 same education. But it is easy to learn that a man has not differ¬ 
 ent virtues from a woman. For, first, the one should have good 
 
 1 The late Dr. J. Muir, founder of the Sanskrit Chair in the university of 
 Edinburgh, and a well-known scholar, printed, or translated, a portion of 
 Musonius about twenty years ago and sent me a cop} r , from which I now give 
 extracts. 
 
 2 Joannis Stobcei Florilegium, edited by Meineke (Teubner’s 12mo edition, 
 1857). 
 
404 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 sense, as well as the other; for of what use would either a foolish 
 man or a foolish woman he ? Then the man could not be a good 
 citizen if he were unjust. And the woman could not carry on the 
 concerns of the household virtuously if not being just, but the 
 contrary, she should first wrong her husband, as they say Eriphyle 
 did. 1 2 It is also good that the woman as well as the man should be 
 self-controlled 2 (o-ux^povetv) . . . . Perhaps some one would say 
 that courage [literally, manliness, avSpUa] is a quality befitting men 
 alone; but even this is not so, for the best woman also should be 
 courageous, and be free from weakness, so that she may not be 
 overcome either by toil or by fear. Otherwise how can she continue 
 virtuous, if anyone either by terror or by imposing toil can force 
 her to submit to anything disgraceful? Women ought also to 
 repel assaults, for if not they will show themselves weaker than 
 hens, and the females of other birds, which fight for their young 
 against animals much bigger than themselves. How, then, should 
 woman not stand in need of courage ? And that they share a cer¬ 
 tain martial vigour was proved by the race of the Amazons, who 
 subdued many nations by force of arms. So that if other women 
 are deficient in courage, this must be laid to the account of 3 want 
 of training rather than to [weakness of] nature. If, then, the same 
 virtues must pertain to men and women, it follows necessarily that 
 the same training and education must be suitable for both. For 
 in the case of all animals and plants, the application of the proper 
 treatment ought to impart to each the excellence belonging to it. 
 Or, if both men and women should have to possess equal skill in 
 playing the flute, or in performing on the harp, and if this were nec¬ 
 essary for their livelihood, we should impart to both equally the re¬ 
 quisite instruction. But if both ought to excel in the virtue proper 
 to mankind, and to be in an equal measure wise and temperate, and 
 
 1 Eriphyle was the wife of Amphiaraus who was bribed by Polynices with 
 the necklace of Harmonia to betray her husband’s lurking place, so that he 
 was forced to join the expedition against Thebes, where he fell. 
 
 2 See Dr. Jowett’s introduction to his translation of Plato’s Charmidas, 
 p. 3, where he calls ‘temperance, or awcppoavu-r], a peculiarly Greek notion, 
 which may also be rendered moderation, modesty, discretion, wisdom, with¬ 
 out completely exhausting by all these terms the various associations of the 
 word. ’ 
 
 3 There being a gap in the text here, I have followed the editor Meineke’s 
 conjecture as the mode of filling it. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 405 
 
 to partake in courage and righteousness the one no less than the 
 other, shall we not educate them both in the same manner, and 
 teach both equally the art by which a human being may become 
 good? Yes, we must act thus and no otherwise. What then? 
 Some one will perhaps say, Would you think it right to teach men 
 to spin wool just as you do women? and women equally with men 
 to addict themselves to gymnastic exercises? No, this I will never 
 approve. But I say that as in the human race men have a stronger 
 and women a weaker nature, each of these natures should have 
 the tasks which are most suited to it, assigned to it, and that the 
 heavier should be allotted to the stronger, and the lighter to the 
 weaker. Spinning, as well as housekeeping, would therefore be 
 more suitable for women than for men, while gymnastics, as well as 
 out of door work, would be fitter for men than for women : though 
 sometimes some men might properly undertake some of the lighter 
 tasks and such as seem to belong to women; and women again 
 might engage in the harder tasks, and those which appear more 
 appropriate for men, in cases where either bodily qualities, or 
 necessity, or particular occasions, might lead to such action. For 
 perhaps all human tasks are open to all, and common both to men 
 and women, and nothing is necessarily appointed exclusively for 
 either; not that 1 some things may not be more suitable for the 
 one, and others for the other nature ; so that some are called men’s 
 and others women’s occupations. But whatever things have refer¬ 
 ence to virtue, these one may rightly affirm to be equally appro¬ 
 priate for both natures, since we say that virtues do not belong 
 more to the one than to the other. Wherefore I think it is reason¬ 
 able that both males and females should be similarly instructed in 
 matters relating to virtue; and they should be taught from their 
 infancy that such and such a thing is good, and such and such a 
 thing is bad (the same thing bad for both) and that one thing is 
 profitable and another injurious, and that this is to be done and 
 that not; from which wisdom is acquired by those who learn, by 
 boys and girls equally, and in no way differently by each; then 
 they are to be inspired with a feeling of shame in regard to every¬ 
 thing base. These qualities being implanted in them, it neces¬ 
 sarily follows that both men and women will become virtuous. 
 And those who are rightly instructed, whether males or females, 
 
 1 The words of the original [/mi] 8) 8£) must apparently bear this sense. 
 
406 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 are to be accustomed to endure toil, not to fear death, not to be 
 crushed by any calamity, so that they may become courageous [or 
 manly]; for it has been shown above that women too should par¬ 
 take in the character of courage [or manliness, avSpia]. Then again, 
 it is an excellent thing to teach them to avoid selfishness 1 and to 
 honour equality, and, as human beings, to seek to benefit and not 
 to injure mankind; and such instruction renders those who receive 
 it just. But why should a man learn these things more than a 
 woman? For if it is fitting that women should be just, then both 
 sexes should be taught these things which are most seasonable and 
 most important. For if the man should know some little matter 
 connected with some artist’s department, and the woman not, or 
 conversely, this will not prove the education of each to be different. 
 Only, as regards any of the most important matters let not the one 
 be taught differently from the other. If anyone asks me what 
 science is to preside over this instruction I shall reply that as with¬ 
 out philosophy no man can be rightly instructed, so neither can any 
 woman. But I do not mean to say that if women are to philoso¬ 
 phise they ought properly to possess fluency and extraordinary 
 cleverness in discussion ; for I do not praise this very much even 
 in men; but I mean that women should acquire a virtuous char¬ 
 acter and nobleness, since philosophy is the pursuit of a noble 
 character, and nothing else/ 
 
 The following is a translation of the second passage mentioned 
 above : — ‘ And when one asked him if women too should study 
 philosophy, he began, somewhat in this way, to teach that they 
 should. Women, he said, have received from the gods the same 
 reason as men, the reason which we use in dealing with each other, 
 and by which we discern, in regard to each act, whether it is good 
 or bad, noble or base. So, too, the female has the same percep¬ 
 tions as the male — seeing, hearing, smelling, and so forth. . . . 
 So, too, not only men, but women also, have by nature the desire 
 and the adaptation for virtue; for the latter, no less than the 
 former, are so formed as to be pleased with noble and righteous 
 actions and to disapprove the contraries of these. This being the 
 case, why should it belong to men principally to inquire and con¬ 
 sider how they shall live nobly — which is the province of philos¬ 
 ophy — and not principally to women ? Is it because it is fitting 
 
 1 w'Keov^la. 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 407 
 
 for men to be good, and not for women'? But let us inquire in 
 regard to every particular quality suitable for a woman who shall 
 be good ; for it will appear that she will derive each of these char¬ 
 acteristics principally from philosophy. First, a woman ought to 
 be a good housekeeper, and capable of judging what things are ex¬ 
 pedient for the house, and qualified to rule the domestics. Now, 
 I say that such qualities would belong most to a woman who 
 studied philosophy, since each of these things is a part of life, and 
 the science of matters regarding life is nothing else than philosophy, 
 and the philosopher, as Socrates said, continues inquiring “ what 
 things, good or bad, are done in the house.” But the woman 
 should further be self-controlled, so as to keep herself pure . . . 
 not to be the slave of desires, nor quarrelsome, nor extravagant, nor 
 fond of dress. These are the works of a virtuous woman ; and, in 
 addition, she should control anger, not give way to grief, be supe¬ 
 rior to all passion. These things philosophy enjoins, and it appears 
 to me that anyone, whether man or woman, who should learn and 
 practise them, would be a most correct person. What then] 
 These things are so. Is not, therefore, a woman justified in study¬ 
 ing philosophy, in being a blameless partner of [her husband’s] 
 life, a good helpmeet in housekeeping, a careful guardian of her 
 husband and children, and in every way free from the love of gain 
 and from selfishness ] And what woman would possess this char¬ 
 acter more than the student of philosophy, who would be bound, 
 if philosophy is uniform [] in its effects] to esteem the doing 
 worse than the suffering of injustice — insomuch as it is more dis¬ 
 graceful — and to regard being worsted as better than gaining an 
 advantage, and to love her children more than [her own] life ? 
 And what woman would be juster than she who possessed such a 
 character ] And it befits the educated woman to be more coura¬ 
 geous than the uneducated, and the student of philosophy than she 
 who is untrained in it, so that she would neither submit to any¬ 
 thing disgraceful from the fear of death, or through shrinking from 
 toil, nor succumb to anyone because he was well-born, or powerful, 
 or rich, or even a tyrant. For it is her fortune to have studied to 
 be high-minded, 1 and to regard death as not an evil and life as not 
 a good, and similarly not to turn away from toil, or at all to in¬ 
 dulge in indolence. Whence it is to be expected that such a 
 
 1 fiiya (ppoveiv. 
 
408 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 woman would work with her own hands, and submit to toil, should 
 be able herself to suckle the infants to whom she gave birth, and 
 minister to her husband with her own hands, and fulfil without 
 reluctance tasks which some consider as work only fit for slaves. 
 Would not, now, such a woman be a great treasure for her hus¬ 
 band, an ornament to her relatives, and a good example to those of 
 her own sex who knew her ? 
 
 ‘ But some will say that the women who visit philosophers must 
 generally become bold and presuming when, leaving their house¬ 
 hold occupations, they live surrounded by men, and practise dis¬ 
 cussions, and argue subtly, and analyse syllogisms, while they ought 
 to be sitting at home spinning. But I am so far from approving 
 of women who are studying philosophy leaving their proper avoca¬ 
 tions and devoting themselves solely to discussions, that I should 
 not even think it fit for men to do this. But I say that they ought 
 to engage in all the reasonings with which they occupy themselves 
 for the sake of their avocations. For as medical speculations are 
 useless unless they conduce to the health of the human body, so if 
 a philosopher holds or inculcates any doctrine, it is of no value 
 unless it promote the virtue of the human soul. But, above all 
 things, we ought to weigh the principles which we think that 
 women studying philosophy should follow, so as to form a judg¬ 
 ment whether the doctrine which teaches that modesty is the 
 greatest good can make women bold, or whether that which incul¬ 
 cates the greatest composure can accustom them to live recklessly 
 [or impudently], or that which shows vice to be the greatest evil 
 does not teach virtuous self-restraint, or that which represents 
 housekeeping as a virtue, and exhorts a woman to be satisfied with 
 it and to work with her own hands, does not dispose a woman to 
 practise household occupations.’ 
 
 I have said enough, I think, to justify me in declining 
 to accept the statements regarding the degeneracy of edu¬ 
 cation in the first or even the second century. The actual 
 facts compel us largely to discount the opinion of stern 
 moralists like Tacitus, or professed satirists like Juvenal 
 or Petronius Arbiter. There is no period of human his¬ 
 tory which does not afford weaknesses to expose and vices 
 to lash. At the same time, it was the fact that nations 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 409 
 
 which, like the Greeks and Romans, had lost their tradi¬ 
 tionary faith, and which regarded rhetoric or oratory—• 
 which at best was only intellectual and aesthetic culture 
 — as the highest aim of public education, were doomed to 
 find their mistake. It was easy for ambitious young men — 
 especially now that oratorical forms and the technique of 
 rhetoric were settled, and innumerable models were avail¬ 
 able — to scamp grammatical and literary preparation, and 
 to mistake glibness of tongue and facility of imitation for 
 true oratorical power. It was this tendency which Quin¬ 
 tilian and Tacitus saw and wished to arrest. It received an 
 impulse from professed rhetoricians and sophists swarming 
 from Greece and Asia Minor in search of the means of 
 support. They could not but compete with each other, 
 and offer the maximum of accomplishment for the mini¬ 
 mum of labour on the part of the student. Lucian, towards 
 the close of the second century, exposes the evils which by 
 that time had become conspicuous. The third century, I 
 consider, was the century of decadence, and also of the rise 
 of the Christian schools. Let me here note that it is partly 
 to counteract the tendency to haste and superficiality on 
 the part of ambitious and active young men that modern 
 societies have instituted and endowed universities and 
 schools. Without these, and the conditions of sound at¬ 
 tainment which they are authorised to impose as conditions 
 of graduation and of professional qualifications, we, in these 
 days, should be flooded with the same evils as overwhelmed 
 the education of the ancient world. This mode of regulat¬ 
 ing education had not altogether escaped the attention of 
 the imperial administration, as I have shown, but the 
 measures which were taken were inadequate to counteract 
 the operation of other causes in a dissolving society. 
 
 Meanwhile a new formative force had entered the world 
 in humble guise, and was steadily making way. It gathered 
 into a unity and round a sacred personality the Stoic human¬ 
 ity and universalism, the Platonic ethical idealism, and all 
 
410 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 the purest conceptions of the Divine which the various 
 races of mankind had painfully, and each only partially, 
 elaborated. God immanent in His own world as a God 
 not only of law but of love — Himself seeking man to raise 
 him to sonship — was an overmastering thought. In the 
 presence of this sublime conception, all so-called culture 
 seemed an impertinence, and all philosophy merely sub¬ 
 ordinate and contributory. In the light of the great idea, 
 citizenship, culture, oratory, all alike, as aims of education 
 disappear. Citizenship of the city of God now transcends 
 while it comprehends the claims of all earthly cities ; culture 
 is the mere adornment of the life in Christ, oratory the mere 
 vehicle for proclaiming the Evangel. An organised scheme 
 of guidance for the individual spirit during its transitory 
 passage to an eternal life arose out of the central thought 
 of Christianity; and this superseded all previous concep¬ 
 tions of the education of man. Errors, unfortunately, were 
 made. Philosophy and the products of human genius were, 
 ere long, held to be essentially hostile to the new life. 
 Many centuries had to elapse before Romano-Hellenic cul¬ 
 ture was found to be compatible with the Christian aim. 
 
 To some it may appear that in the past pages, while I 
 have allowed their full educational value to civil laws, and 
 the social organisation of nations, I have yet attached too 
 great an importance to national religious conceptions. I 
 think not. Outside the prosaic and prudential moralities, 
 without which the most elementary society cannot sustain 
 itself for a day, the idea of God and of man as related to 
 Him governs all life, and therefore all education, of the 
 human spirit. It determines all ethics, and consequently 
 all civic and political activity, though it may be silently. 
 For the idea of God is not merely the conception of a world- 
 cause and world-order, but gathers up into itself all the ideal 
 impulses, infinite in their essential character, which place the 
 mind of man on its highest plane of energy — whether in 
 philosophy and art, or in practical politics and the conduct 
 of life. It is the final interpretation of man. That idea, 
 
THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 411 
 
 such as it may be from time to time and age to age, lies in 
 the innermost core of consciousness even when its exis¬ 
 tence is denied. Epicurus has his God as well as Zeno, 
 Plato no less than Paul, the Aztec as well as the Chinese, 
 and above that idea, which also is the ideal, no man and 
 no nation can rise. The educational administrator has to 
 think of these things if he is not, with the best intentions, 
 to leave his country worse than he found it, and sow the 
 seeds of dissolution. ‘ To govern well,’ says Milton, ‘ is to 
 train up a nation in true wisdom and virtue, and that which 
 springs from thence, magnanimity (take heed of that) ; and 
 that which is our beginning, regeneration and happiest end, 
 likeness to God which we call godliness: and this is the true 
 flourishing of a land. Other things follow, as the shadow 
 does the substance .’ 1 
 
 Authorities. — Largely loci classici, especially Suetonius, De Gramm. 
 Cicero, De Orat. ; Tacitus, De Orat.; Pliny ; Strabo ; Becker’s Galius; Erzie- 
 liung und Jugendunterricht bci den Griechen u. Romern , von J. L. Ussing; 
 lime’s History of Rome; Mommsen’s History of Rome , also of the Roman 
 Provinces; Hegel’s Philosophy of History; Krause’s Geschichte der Erz. etc. 
 lei den Griechen und Romern; Bahr’s Geschichte der Romischen Litteratur; 
 Emile Jullien, Sur les Professeurs de la literature dans Vancienne Rome; 
 Lecky’s History of European Morals. Also several books mentioned under 
 Greece and references to numerous historians. 
 
 1 Of Reformation in England, second book (near beginning). 
 
A LIST OF 
 
 BOOKS FOR TEACHERS 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 
 
 91 and 93 Fifth Avenue, New York. 
 
 Psychology in the Schoolroom. 
 
 By T. F. G. Dexter, B.A., B.Sc., and A. H. Garlick, B.A., author 
 of “A New Manual of Method.” 421 pages. Crown 8vo. $1.50. 
 
 Many students have little difficulty in mastering the general 
 principles of the Science of Psychology, but experience considerable 
 difficulty in applying those principles to the Art of Teaching ; and 
 it is because special attention has been paid to the application of 
 the subject that it is hoped that this book will be of some service, 
 not only to the student and young teacher, but also to teachers 
 generally.— From the Preface. 
 
 Adopted for the Professional Course of Study for Teachers in the State 
 of Virginia, and as a text-book in Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y. 
 Syracuse University, Syracuse, N. Y.; College of the City of New York 
 State Normal School, Whitewater, Wis.; State Normal School, Peru, Neb. 
 University of Mississippi; Howard University, Washington, D. C.; and 
 many other leading institutions throughout the country. 
 
 Hon. Joseph W. Southall, 
 
 State Superintendent of Public 
 Instruction, Virginia:—“I cannot 
 commend too highly Dexter and 
 Garlick’s ‘Psychology in the School¬ 
 room’ to all teachers who wish to 
 learn the scientific principles on 
 which all correct teaching is based. 
 It is a model text-book.” 
 
 John J. McNulty, Professor of 
 Moral Philosophy in the College of 
 the City of New York :—“ I have 
 recommended Dexter and Garlick’s 
 4 Psychology in the Schoolroom ’ as 
 being the most practical aid to a 
 preparation for meeting the require¬ 
 ments for securing higher licenses.” 
 
 Hon. Frank J. Browne, State 
 Superintendent of Wash.:—‘‘It 
 meets the requirements of the most 
 advanced thought. Its adaptation to 
 the schoolroom is up to date and the 
 book will surely make its own way 
 among the teachers of our land.” 
 
 Miss Lucy Wheelock, Kinder¬ 
 garten Training School, Boston, 
 Mass.:—“ It has proved to be such 
 a treasure that we are to adopt it 
 for our junior class book. I shall 
 send you an order for it as soon as 
 the class assembles.” 
 
 Albert Leonard, Dean of Col¬ 
 lege of Liberal Arts, Syracuse Uni¬ 
 versity, Syracuse, N. Y.:—“It is 
 altogether the best book of the kind 
 that I have seen. It will be adopted 
 for use in our class.” 
 
 Charles H. Winston, Professor 
 in Richmond College, Virginia, 
 Conductor of State Normal School: 
 —“After a practical trial, my 
 opinion in brief is that no other 
 book that I have seen combines so 
 well sound theory and correct gen¬ 
 eral principles with plain and prac¬ 
 tical applications of these to the 
 details of daily school life.” 
 
2 
 
 Longmans, Green, & Co’s Publications. 
 
 German Higher Schools—The History, Organization, and 
 Methods of Secondary Education in Germany. 
 
 By James E. Russell, Ph.D., Dean of Teachers College, Columbia 
 University, New York. 8vo. 468 pages. With 7 Appendices of Tables 
 and a Full Index. $2.25. 
 
 This book is the result of Dr. Russell’s personal investigation of the Ger¬ 
 man Schools at the instance of the Regents of the University of the State of 
 New York, and as the Special Agent of the United States. Very little has 
 been written heretofore in English on the secondary education, which is the 
 foundation of the German University training and the basis of all profes¬ 
 sional service in the Fatherland, although it is in this sphere that German 
 education can be studied to best advantage. 
 
 Contents: Beginnings of German Schools—The Rise of Protestant 
 Schools—The Period of Transition—The Reconstruction of the Higher 
 Schools—The Prussian School System—The Higher Schools of Prussia 
 —Foundation and Maintenance of Higher Schools—Rules, Regulations 
 and Customs—Examinations and Privileges—Student Life in the Higher 
 Schools—Instruction in Religion—Instruction in German—Instruction 
 in Greek and Latin—Instruction in Modern Languages—Instruction in 
 History and Geography—Instruction in Mathematics—Instruction in 
 the Natural Sciences—The Professional Training of Teachers—Ap¬ 
 pointment, Promotion, and Emoluments of Teachers—Tendencies of 
 School Reform—Merits and Defects of German Secondary Education— 
 The Privileged Higher Schools of Germany in 1897—Attendance in 
 Higher Schools in Prussia—System of Privileges—Salary Schedules— 
 Pensions of Teachers in the Higher Schools of Germany—Extracts 
 from the General Pension Laws of Prussia—Leading Educational Jour¬ 
 nals of Germany—Index. 
 
 The Outlook, New York:— 1 ‘ The 
 book abounds in matters of interest 
 to all professional teachers. The 
 work is certain to remain, at least for 
 years, the standard reference-book 
 and authority upon this subject.” 
 
 The Dial, Chicago:—“The au¬ 
 thor shows wide reading on this sub¬ 
 ject and skilful use of the note-book. 
 He sprinkles quotations over his 
 pages most plentifully, but he so 
 weaves them into his narrative or 
 exposition as not seriously to impair 
 the unity of his composition. But, 
 what is more to the purpose, he 
 shows, when dealing with the second¬ 
 ary schools as they now exist, a large 
 first-hand knowledge, obtained by 
 personal visitation of schools and 
 conference with teachers and educa¬ 
 tional authorities. There is no work 
 
 in the English language, known to 
 us, that contains so much and so 
 valuable information about the sec¬ 
 ondary schools of Germany. Nor is 
 the book a book of facts merely ; the 
 author has an eye also for ideas and 
 forces, and conducts his historical 
 narration with constant reference to 
 these factors.” 
 
 Public Opinion, New York:— 
 “ An original and very valuable con¬ 
 tribution to the literature of peda¬ 
 gogies. For Germany’s position in 
 educational matters is an assurance 
 that one may learn much from a 
 study of any of her schools. After 
 several historical chapters each study 
 of the secondary schools is taken up 
 separately—a very wise plan which 
 greatly simplifies a search for par¬ 
 ticular information,” 
 
Longmans, Green, & Co's Publications. 
 
 3 
 
 AMERICAN CITIZEN SERIES, 
 
 A Series of Books on the Practical Workings of the Functions of the 
 State and of Society, with Especial Reference to American Conditions 
 and Experience. Under the Editorship of Dr. Albert Bushnell 
 Hart, of Harvard University. 
 
 Outline of Practical Sociology with Special Reference to 
 American Conditions. 
 
 By Carroll D. Wright, United States Commissioner of Labor; Lec¬ 
 turer in the Catholic University of America. Large crown 8vo, with 
 12 Maps and Diagrams. 464 pages. $2.00. 
 
 Contents: Parti. The Basis of Practical Sociology. Intro¬ 
 duction—1. Development of the Science of Social Relation—2. The 
 Population of the United States—3. The Status of the Population of 
 the United States—4. Native and Foreign Born. Part II. Units of 
 Social Organism. 1. Social Units—2. Political Units. Part III. 
 Questions of Population, i. Immigration — 2. Urban and Rural 
 Population—3. Special Problems of City Life. Part IV. Questions 
 of the Family, i. Marriage and Divorce—2. Education—3. Employ¬ 
 ment of Women and Children. Part V. The Labor System, i. Old 
 and New Systems of Labor—2. Appliances of the Modern Labor Sys¬ 
 tem—3. Relations of Employer and Employee—4. Questions Relating 
 to .Strikes and Lockouts. Part VI. Social Well-Being, i. The 
 Accumulation of Wealth—2. Poverty—3. The Relation of Art to Social 
 Well-Being—4. Are the Rich Growing Richer, and the Poor Poorer ? 
 Part VII. The Defence of Society, i. Criminology—2. The Pun¬ 
 ishment of Crime—3. The Temperance Question—4. Regulation of 
 Organizations. Part VIII. Remedies : Solutions that are Proposed 
 for Social and Economic Difficulties. Maps and Diagrams. Index. 
 
 Professor C. M. Geer, Bates 
 College, Lewiston, Me.:—“ I am 
 very much pleased with the book, as 
 it covers what ought to be given in a 
 college course in sociology.” 
 
 Professor I. A. Loos, State 
 University, Iowa City, la.:—“I 
 think Dr. Wright has done his work 
 remarkably well, and he alone could 
 have given us just this work,crammed 
 with knowledge and good sense, 
 lighting up the path of the student 
 through the mazes of documentary 
 material.” 
 
 American Journal of Sociology, 
 
 University of Chicago, Chicago,Ill.: 
 —“ Colonel Wright could not fail to 
 produce a notable book on the sub¬ 
 ject to which he has devoted this 
 volume. There is no equally avail¬ 
 able compilation and classification.” 
 
 Outlook, New York :—“ The in¬ 
 itial volume .... sets a high 
 standard for its successors to pre¬ 
 serve. . . . These bibliographies 
 fit the book peculiarly for advanced 
 classes, from which independent 
 work is expected. The field which 
 the volume covers is extremely broad. 
 . . . . On all these subjects a 
 prodigious amount of American sta¬ 
 tistical information is given.” 
 
 Dial: —“ In this field of thought 
 Mr. Wright’s book presents more 
 abundant stores of fact than any 
 similar publication. The statistical 
 matter is actually made interesting. 
 
 . . . . The student of society 
 is here supplied with a mass of data 
 of great importance, and is directed 
 to abundant and valuable sources of 
 information and discussion.” 
 
4 
 
 Longmans, Green, & Co’s Publications . 
 
 The Art of Teaching. 
 
 By David Salmon, Principal of Swansea Training College. Crown 
 
 8vo. 289 pages. $1.25. 
 
 This book is devoted to the exposition of teaching as a Technical Art, 
 founded on experience, philosophical principle and scientific observation. 
 In the Introduction the author adopts Milton’s definition of “ a complete 
 and generous education,” but points out that the school teacher is really 
 only one factor in physical, moral, and intellectual culture, and that, even 
 to be efficiently so, he has need of professional training. His aim must be 
 directed to secure the utility, discipline, and pleasure of the taught as 
 results of exercised activity. The author takes up in successive chapters— 
 
 (1) Order, Attention, and Discipline, and gives rules applicable to the 
 regulated and successful exercise of these that they may become habitual ; 
 
 (2) Oral Questioning—how to proceed with and succeed in it, and what to 
 avoid while engaged in the process ; (3) Object Lessons—what to aim at in 
 giving them, and how to accomplish the intended result; (4) Reading, 
 Spelling, Writing, and Arithmetic—how they should be taught, and the 
 relative merits of various methods of procedure ; (5) English, including 
 Composition, Grammar, and Literature ; (6) Geography, and how to make 
 the teaching of it educative and valuable ; (7) History, and the methods of 
 giving it a living (not a bookworm) interest; (8) the Education of Infants— 
 as a speciality. 
 
 [From the New York Nation .] 
 
 Salmon’s contributions to elementary school literature are many and valu¬ 
 able. It suffices to mention his “Object Lessons,” “School Grammar,” 
 “School Composition,” “Stories from Early English History.” He has 
 now collected into the volume before us his views on the “ Art of Teach¬ 
 ing.” The treatment of the subject is orderly, thorough, authoritative. He 
 takes up first the fundamental matters of order, attention, discipline. Then 
 comes a charming discussion of the art of oral questioning. Next follows an 
 estimate of the claims upon attention of the main subjects of elementary study, 
 with invaluable hints as to the teaching of each. The subjects treated are : 
 Reading, Spelling, Writing, Arithmetic, English, Geography, History. This 
 is, indeed, familiar ground, but the treatment is so able, so acute, so com¬ 
 prehensive, that there is constant variety and constant interest. A very 
 valuable portion of the volume is the section of sixty pages on Infant Edu¬ 
 cation. Not only are the history and development of the kindergarten here 
 admirably discussed, but the original and valuable contributions of England 
 to the Education of young children are set forth. Most wise and helpful is 
 Salmon’s discussion of the best ways of teaching the elementary studies. 
 This portion of the book is a true teachers’ manual. It is a genuine pleasure 
 to commend without qualification this admirable manual. It is a worthy 
 companion to Fitch’s “Lectures on Teaching,” and, like that book, ought 
 to be on every teacher’s shelf. 
 
 H. C. Missimer, Superintendent 
 of Public Schools, Erie, Pa.:—“I 
 have read Salmon’s 4 Art of Teach¬ 
 ing,’ and believe it to be the best work 
 on the subject yet published. It is 
 
 simple, direct, clear, practical, and 
 has evidently been written by one 
 who has had experience with every 
 problem and difficulty of the school¬ 
 room.” 
 
Longmans, Green, & Co's Publications . 
 
 5 
 
 A New Manual of Method. 
 
 By A. H. Garlick, B.A., Head Master of the Woolwich P. T. Centre. 
 Crown 8vo. New Edition. 398 pages. $1.20.* 
 
 Contents : School Economy—Discipline—Classification (Grading)— 
 Notes of Lessons—Class Teaching—Object Lessons—Kindergarten— 
 Arithmetic — Reading — Spelling—Writing — Geography— History— 
 English—Elementary Science—Music. 
 
 The experience of the author in the teaching of School Method has led 
 him to believe that young students require much more help in this subject 
 than is offered in existing manuals, and that it is essential that the informa¬ 
 tion contained should be offered in its most serviceable form. His experi¬ 
 ence has shown that no book is suitable unless it is comprehensive in its 
 range, practical in its nature, and modern in its methods. For this reason 
 all the subject-matter in this book has been carefully methodized, and much 
 of it thrown into teaching form—the form which is most difficult to young 
 teachers to acquire, and the most useful in practice. 
 
 This work is based on the writer’s teaching notes during the past ten 
 years ; and as it grew to meet the wants of his own pupils for their recur¬ 
 ring examinations, it is believed that it will be found specially suitable for 
 teachers and students. 
 
 William H. Maxwell, City Superintendent, New York, in the Educa¬ 
 tional Review ;— “ . . . He treats of all the subjects in the elementary 
 
 curriculum. . . . The conspicuous merits of the book are its clear¬ 
 
 ness, its conciseness, and its fullness. If a teacher is at a loss to know 
 how to teach an important point,— say in arithmetic, history or geography, 
 — he has only to open this book at the appropriate heading, and he will find 
 an excellent method of presenting it, which, if he has any ingenuity, he can 
 easily adapt to his own uses. If he is in doubt about a matter of discipline, 
 such, for instance, as how to treat a case of obstinacy, he will find the 
 different kinds of obstinacy classified, and the appropriate treatment sug¬ 
 gested for each kind. In short, the book is a vade mecum which the teacher 
 should no more think of reading through than he would of perusing the 
 dictionary from cover to cover, but which he will do well to consult when 
 confronted with a difficulty. . . . ” 
 
 J. J. McNulty, Professor of Philosophy, the College of the City of New 
 York :—“ In our pedagogical course, we are using Garlick’s Manual of 
 Method as a practical guide for students intending to teach. The remark¬ 
 able success of our candidates for state and city licenses, and the satisfac¬ 
 tory results of the examinations in methods of teaching, I attribute, in large 
 measure, to the interesting manner in which the various subjects are pre¬ 
 sented by Mr. Garlick.” 
 
 Nation, New York :—“ It is the best manual of its scope in English.” 
 
 The Independent, New York :—“ The notes given on all these topics 
 are those of a master, and of a master from whom any teacher in these 
 grades of instruction might be glad to receive suggestions.” 
 
 Professor Carla Wenckebach, Wellesley College,Wellesley, Mass.:— 
 “ It is excellent. No teacher can do without it.” 
 
6 
 
 Longmans, Green, & Co's Publications . 
 
 Teaching and School Organization. 
 
 A Manual of Practice, with Especial Reference to Secondary Instruc¬ 
 tion. Edited by P. A. Barnett. Crown 8vo. 438 pages. $2.00. 
 
 The object of this Manual is to collect and co-ordinate for the use of 
 students and teachers, the experience of persons of authority in special 
 branches of educational practice, and to cover as nearly as possible the 
 whole field of the work of Secondary Schools of both higher and lower 
 grades. 
 
 The subjects treated in the 22 chapters are as follows : The Criterion in 
 Education—Organization and Curricula in Boys’ Schools—Kindergarten— 
 Reading—Drawing and Writing—Arithmetic and Mathamatics—English 
 Grammar and Composition—English Literature—Modern History—Ancient 
 History—Geography—Classics—Science—Modern Languages—Vocal Music 
 —Discipline—Ineffectiveness of Teaching—Specialization—School Libraries 
 —School Hygiene—Apparatus and Furniture—Organization and Curricula 
 in Girls’ Schools. 
 
 A Manual of Clay=Modelling for Teachers and Scholars. 
 
 By Mary Louisa Hermione Unwin. With 66 Illustrations and a 
 Preface by T. G. Rooper, M.A. Balliol College, Oxford. i2mo. 
 $1.00. 
 
 The course set forth in this Manual is suitable for children of six or seven 
 years of age and upwards. It is a great advantage to young children to 
 learn to handle the clay and to become accustomed to using it. They may 
 begin with the simplest objects, such as beads, round or flat, of different 
 sizes ; cherries with string or wicker stalks ; a sausage, or cigar ; a small 
 saucer, or a basket, a bun, or an open pea-pod with loose peas in it made 
 separately ; a pat of butter, or a cottage loaf, are also suitable. For the 
 work of advanced pupils, or for the higher classes in schools, more difficult 
 subjects may be attempted. 
 
 Kindergarten Guide. 
 
 By Lois Bates With numerous Illustrations, chiefly in half-tone, and 
 16 colored plates. Crown 8vo. 388 pages. $1.50.* 
 
 In addition to a full description of the kindergarten gifts and occupations, 
 the book shows how ordinary subjects may be taught on kindergarten 
 principles. 
 
 Churchman, New York:—“A long needed hand-book for the kinder¬ 
 garten teacher. . . . The whole course of instruction is elaborately 
 
 explained with full illustrations, so that the teacher possesses, in this i2mo 
 volume, a complete compendium for her work.” 
 
 Journal of Education, Boston, Mass.:—“ Never before has there been 
 so full, varied, and detailed a treatment of the subject from the standpoint 
 of teacher, parent, and child. No family in which there are little children 
 should be without this sum of all kindergarten virtues.” 
 
Longmans, Green, & Co's Publications . 
 
 7 
 
 Common Sense in Education. 
 
 By P. A. Barnett, M. A. Crown 8vo. 331 pages. $1.50. 
 
 This volume is based on a systematic course of lectures on the Practice 
 of Education, which was delivered to Teachers during the last term of 1898. 
 The lectures have been re-written and enlarged, and additional matter 
 treated, so as to form a complete introduction to the study of current prob¬ 
 lems of teaching and school practice. Such points of general theory are 
 discussed as determine organization, curriculum, and schoolroom procedure. 
 
 The subject of education is treated under the following general heads : — 
 1. Lessons from the Plistory of Education ; Warnings from Demonstrated 
 Errors—2. The Physical Basis of Education, and the Hygiene of Learning 
 —3. The General Discipline of Character—4. Discipline in Instruction—5. 
 Curricula—6. Audible Speech ; Native and Foreign Languages—7. Liter¬ 
 ature—8. Science and Mathematics—9. History and Geography—10. The 
 “ Classical ” Languages—11. Special Studies and Examinations—12. The 
 Making of the Teacher. 
 
 Paul H. Hanus, Harvard Uni¬ 
 versity, Cambridge, Mass. : — “I 
 have looked the book through with 
 much interest. While I cannot agree 
 with all the author’s views, I am glad 
 
 to see that the book justifies the 
 title. I shall take pleasure in calling 
 the attention of students and teach¬ 
 ers to it.” 
 
 Selections from the Sources of English History : being 
 a Supplement to Text-books of English History, 
 B.C. 55—A.D. 1832. 
 
 Arranged and edited by Charles W. Colby, M.A., Ph.D., Professor 
 of History in McGill University, Montreal. Crown 8vo. 361 pages. 
 
 $1.50. 
 
 Professor Max Farrand, 
 
 Wesleyan University, Middletown, 
 Conn. : — “ The most satisfactory 
 expression of opinion that I can 
 make to you, I suppose, of Colby’s 
 Selections, is the announcement that 
 I am so greatly pleased with it that 
 I shall adopt it for use in my class 
 in English History for next year.” 
 
 Professor Benjamin S. Terry, 
 
 University of Chicago, Chicago, 
 Ill.:—“ It is a good book, and 
 something which the teacher of 
 English History has long needed. 
 I shall be very glad to use it in my 
 own work.” 
 
 Julius Howard Pratt, Jr., 
 
 Milwaukee Academy, Milwaukee, 
 Wis.:—“ It is very satisfactory to 
 
 have books of this kind that give 
 a glimpse at the original sources in 
 a way to attract rather than to repel 
 the young student.” 
 
 Professor Allen Johnson, Iowa 
 College, Grinnell, Iowa:—“Let me 
 add simply that I am greatly pleased 
 with the presswork of this volume ; it 
 is a pleasure to put so faultless a piece 
 of work into the hands of students.” 
 
 Journal of Education, Boston : 
 —“Few ‘supplements’ are as indis¬ 
 pensable to the satisfactory study of 
 any subject as is Dr. Colby’s ‘ Selec¬ 
 tions from the Sources of English 
 History.’ It is not too much to say 
 that no teacher should conduct a class 
 in English history without making 
 constant use of this book.” 
 
8 
 
 Longmans, Green, Gr Co's Publications . 
 
 ANNOUNCEMENTS. 
 
 American Teachers’ Series. 
 
 Messrs. Longmans, Green, & Co. have the pleasure to announce that 
 they have arranged for the publication of a series of books for the 
 guidance and assistance of teachers in elementary and secondary schools, 
 and of students in normal schools and teachers’ colleges ; to be pub¬ 
 lished under the general title of American Teachers' Series. The series 
 will be under the general editorship of Dr. James E. Russell, Dean 
 of Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. 
 
 The following volumes are now in preparation ; others will be announced 
 at an early date : 
 
 I. English. 
 
 By George R. Carpenter and Franklin T. Baker, Professors in 
 Columbia University. 
 
 II. Manual Training. 
 
 By Charles R. Richards, Professor of Manual Training in Teachers 
 College ; late Director of the Department of Science and Technology 
 in Pratt Institute. 
 
 III. Latin and Greek. 
 
 By Charles E. Bennett, Professor of Latin in Cornell University 
 and George P. Bristol, Professor of Greek in Cornell University 
 
 IV. History and Civics. 
 
 By Henry E. Bourne, Professor of History in the Western Reserve 
 University, Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 V. Mathematics. 
 
 By J. W. A. Young, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Mathematical 
 Pedagogy in the University of Chicago. 
 
 VI. Chemistry and Physics. 
 
 By Alexander Smith, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of General Chem¬ 
 istry in the University of Chicago; and 
 
 Messrs. Longmans, Green, & Co. will be happy to send their 
 Catalogue, describing more than 1,000 text-books and 
 works of reference, to any teacher on request. 
 

Date Due 
 
 Ap 8 *38 
 
 
 
 
 My 18 ’3 
 
 
 
 
 RESERVE 
 
 
 
 
 0 23 ’42 
 
 
 
 
 OC 2 2’51 
 
 
 
 
 Ft 1 5 3* 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 «***■• 
 
 
 
 MfMiiMMb 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ? 
 
 
 
 
 r 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
. . #v 
 
 - ^ 
 
 •*. ' / -'j 1 >' -{ f 
 
 
 I#.