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THE 
 
 ’J. 
 
 & 
 
 
 
 INTELLECTUAL AND ETHICAL VALUE 
 
 CLASSICAL EDUCATION 
 
 BY 
 
 J. ADAM M. A. 
 
 \\ 
 
 FELLOW AND TUTOR OF EMMANUEL COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 DEIGHTON BELL & CO. 
 1895 
 
[From the “ Emmanuel College Magazine ” F/7. A 7 *?. i.] 
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN 
 

 37^22 
 /V<A | 3a, 
 
 toTc 
 
 (|>|At<£tOIC 6MOI 
 
 cyNecTioic tg k<sJ cyntpattgzoic, 
 
 % * 
 
 oyK achmoy ttoAggoc ttoAit&ic 
 
 ’EMMA N O Y H A, 
 
 toAg to BiBAiA&piON 
 eyMGNec n&p<\ GyMGNoyc 
 Kex&pic0co. 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 ei mgn ct>iAococj>HTeoN, (J>iAoco4)htgon, kai g! mh 4>iAoco4>h- 
 
 TGON, CplA0C0cJ)HTG0N • TT&NTCOC Ap& 4>lAOC04>HTGON. 
 
 (Aristotle.) 
 
 (ZtZ 
 
^I;c gttfellccfual an6 ^ff)icat ^Talue of 
 Classical @6ttcaftort. 
 
 former student of Classics at the University, who is now 
 
 j jL earning an honourable if somewhat scanty livelihood by 
 teaching Greek and Latin grammar somewhere in the provinces, 
 once remarked to the writer of this Essay, a propos of the 
 curriculum of classical study here, “ Cut bono ? When I die, I 
 should like to have the words Cui bono ? engraved upon my 
 coffin.” The same inquiry, expressed perhaps with less play- 
 fully pathetic exaggeration, must occasionally be addressed to 
 every teacher of the Classics. It is a question which ought not 
 to be evaded, whether it comes from the advocate of some 
 rival scheme of Education, or from the dejected pupil vainly 
 struggling to descry the wood among the trees. A variety of 
 answers has often been returned 1 , and not without good reason, 
 because the answer necessarily differs according to the status 
 of the questioner. It would be inappropriate, for example, to 
 offer the same answer to a Senior Wrangler who is urging the 
 rival claims of mathematics, to a boy who is learning Latin for 
 
 1 Several of them are discussed (and somewhat severely handled) by 
 Professor Sidgwick in Farrar’s “Essays on a Liberal Education,” pp. 81 
 
 — * 43 - 
 
 3 
 
2 
 
 THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 the purposes of an apothecary, and to a classical student at 
 Oxford or Cambridge. We are therefore at liberty to attempt 
 a partial reply, addressed in the main to those who are familiar 
 with the routine of classical study as it is pursued in the 
 Universities. It is in these that classical education is carried 
 to its highest pitch ; and consequently any theory of classical 
 study at the Universities, if even approximately true, will be at 
 once more fundamental and more final than one whose scope 
 is limited to an earlier stage in the intellectual and moral 
 training of the student. If classical education is to retain its 
 hold upon the Universities, — and the recent development of 
 other studies has but strengthened its position 1 , — it must be 
 prepared to invite the student into more spacious and more 
 fruitful fields of inquiry than can profitably be worked at School. 
 The present Essay is only an attempt to sketch in outline what 
 seems to the author a true apology and theory of the place and 
 proper function of classical study in a University. 
 
 Let us begin by availing ourselves of a distinction of long 
 standing — a distinction at once popular and scientific — the 
 distinction between what is called a liberal and what is called 
 a professional education. The distinction was familiar to the 
 ancients ; in Plato’s day, the teachers of liberal education were 
 the philosophers and dramatists and artists, whereas professional 
 training was supplied by the Sophists. 
 
 Speaking generally, we may say that the primary object of 
 a professional education, now as in antiquity, is not to develop 
 
 1 The following passage from Mark Pattison’s Essays (Vol. I p. 440) 
 will shew that such a result might have been anticipated, if only — as we 
 shall endeavour to shew — the study of the classics is essentially a liberal 
 education. “It is a well-established fact in the history of liberal education, 
 that the periods in which the history and the practice of it have made the 
 greatest improvement, have been periods immediately succeeding some of 
 the great discoveries in science, or some of the great impulses to the study 
 of facts.” 
 
THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 3 
 
 the mental and moral qualities of the pupil for their own sakes, 
 but to enable him to make his living — to convert, in other 
 words, his brains into money. Training of this kind may or 
 may not incidentally advance the liberal education of the 
 learner, but in its essence it is altogether distinct from liberal 
 education, because its end and aim are different. 
 
 To give an exhaustive definition of liberal education lies 
 beyond our present scope, but we will mention two points in 
 which the man of liberal education — 6 7T€7rat Seu/xeVos, in the 
 strict sense of the word 7raiSeta — differs from the man whose 
 education is otherwise. 
 
 In the first place, liberal education implies the power of 
 intellectual sympathy. The faculty of entering into another 
 man’s thoughts, of appreciating his point of view, and recog- 
 nising the inherent necessity of his creed and conduct, belongs 
 only to the man who is liberally educated. In dealing with 
 their fellow-men, others are tyrants and persecutors ; he alone 
 is tolerant. Nor is his intellectual sympathy confined to the 
 circle in which he moves. He can enter into the thoughts and 
 feelings which prevail or have prevailed in another nation and 
 another age, and move among the mighty minds of every 
 generation as if they were his kindred. Liberal education 
 communicates this faculty of intellectual sympathy because, 
 being itself rather the Form than the Matter of knowledge, it 
 enables us in dealing with the thoughts of others to make them 
 our own by clothing them with the form which we already 
 know. From this point of view liberal education is to every 
 other kind of learning just what Logic is to the Sciences. 
 
 In the second place, liberal education involves the training 
 of the character no less than of the intellect. It aims at the 
 Trepiaytoyr] of the entire SOul — TrzpLaywyrj, & c WKTcpLvi ]<; 
 tip os T/jpepas cts dX.rjOivr]v tov optos ouaa €7ravoSos — a spiritual 
 revolution, in which the soul ascends from twilight to the noon- 
 
 i—4 
 
4 
 
 THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 day of reality 1 . True, the educator addresses himself to the 
 intellect of his pupil first and foremost, but he does not desire, 
 nor is it, from his point of view, even possible, to influence the 
 intellect without affecting the will and character. He addresses 
 himself in short, not to the intellect alone, but to the whole 
 man through the intellect. His attitude may be described in 
 the words of Plato 2 : 6 Se ye vvv Aoyos — cr^/xauei TavTrjv t rjv 
 ivovaav eKacrTOV hvvapiv iv rrj ^v\rj koX to opyavov a> Kara/x av- 
 Odvec cko.o'to?, oiov et op. pa prj Svuarov rjv aAXaxs r) £vv oAw to! 
 troi/xaTt crTpecf)€LV 7rpos to cfiaro v Ik tov (tkotoj 8ovs, ovtoj £vv 6\.y rrj 
 if/vxfj £k tov yvyvopivov neptaKTeov eiVat, ecos av eis to ov Kai tov 
 oi/tos to (fiavoTaTOv Swott) ycvr/Tcu dvaayiorOaL Oeiopievr] : “ Our 
 present reasoning indicates that this faculty ” (meaning vovs or 
 reason) “dwelling in the soul of each individual, this organ 
 wherewith each one learns, cannot be turned round bom gazing 
 on the false and fleeting, and rendered able to endure the con- 
 templation of truth and the brightest part thereof, except by 
 turning the whole soul round — even as if it were impossible to 
 turn the bodily eye from darkness to light except by turning the 
 whole body round along with it.” 
 
 Confining ourselves then for the present to these two features 
 of a liberal education — its power to produce intellectual sym- 
 pathy, and its effect in moulding the character through the 
 intellect — let us inquire whether the study of the Classics can 
 justly be regarded as a liberal education, when judged by these 
 two canons. 
 
 What is Classical Education? We may say briefly that 
 it is the transportation of the mind into the ways of thought 
 and feeling which prevailed in ancient Greece and Rome. 
 This is a high ideal ; but nothing short of this will do — 
 nothing short of this has been aimed at by Humanists in 
 every generation. Macaulay used to define a scholar as the 
 
 < 
 
 I 
 
 1 Plato Rep. vii 521 c. 
 
 2 Rep. vii 518 c. 
 
THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 5 
 
 man who could read his Plato with his feet upon the fender; 
 but that is not enough. It was said of Dr Kennedy that when 
 he took a class in Demosthenes he did not teach Demosthenes, 
 he ivas Demosthenes. It is in the same sense that the true 
 scholar always identifies himself with the author whom he reads. 
 In proportion as he grasps the full meaning of the Greek, he 
 transcends the limitations of time and place, and is carried 
 back into the world wherein his author lived and moved. 
 The soul of Homer, of Plato, of Sophocles, of Virgil passes 
 into him ; he looks out with other eyes upon another world ; 
 and the very music of their language seems to him the spon- 
 taneous utterance of thoughts that are not theirs, but his. Nor 
 is it only in the reading of authors that such a transportation 
 of the soul is necessary in order to derive the full benefit of a 
 classical training. The writing of Greek and Latin prose and 
 verse is truly valuable only in so far as it enables us to see with 
 the eyes, hear with the ears, and think with the minds, of the 
 ancients. No man ever wrote like Plato or like Cicero unless 
 the spirit of ancient philosophy or oratory dwelt within him at 
 the time. The same is true of the study of classical syntax and 
 grammar. The Grammarian is of little value to the Humanist if 
 he does not shew him what particular habit of mind or feeling 
 prompted the ancients to express themselves in such and such 
 a way. It has often been observed that language stands to 
 thought as form does to matter. Now if there is one thing 
 more characteristic of Greek civilisation than any other, 
 whether we consider its religion, its philosophy, its art, or its 
 politics, it is the intimate union which everywhere existed 
 between matter and form. In dealing with the relation of 
 language to thought, Plato expressed his consciousness of this 
 union by describing language as the image (ciSofiW) of thought, 
 and thought as nothing but the inner language of the soul con- 
 versing with herself. This is the justification of that laborious 
 
6 
 
 THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 study of words, and syntax, and idiom, which no serious student 
 of the Classics can afford to neglect. We desire to recreate 
 the world of Plato and Sophocles, to see what they saw, as 
 they saw it, think what they thought, as they thought it ; and 
 in the wonderful language which they spoke, there is no shade 
 of expression, however delicate, no particle, however trivial, in 
 which there may not lurk a subtle force, to miss which is to 
 fall short of apprehending the full significance of ancient life 
 and thought. We need hardly add that History and Archaeology 
 lose half their charm and all their educational value unless they 
 teach us how the ancients lived and felt. Modern historians 
 sometimes forget that History is one of the Muses: the ancients 
 seldom did. It is not every archaeologist who can see, like 
 Keats, the whole soul of Greek antiquity in a Grecian urn : 
 
 “O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede 
 Of marble men and maidens overwrought, 
 
 With forest branches and the trodden weed ; 
 
 Thou, silent form ! dost tease us out of thought 
 As doth eternity ! Cold Pastoral ! 
 
 When old age shall this generation waste, 
 
 Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe 
 Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, 
 
 Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all 
 Ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.” 
 
 Set Se 7rov TeA.evTai/ tt)v fjLovcnKrjv is ra rov Ka\ov ipoiTLKa, says 
 Plato 1 . If the love of beauty and truth is the ultimate goal of 
 all education — and if the outward beauty of form and shape, 
 whether it appeals to us through language or through sculpture, 
 is but the expression of the spiritual loveliness within, — then 
 our study of antiquity should be psychological. Classical study, 
 in point of fact, so far as it is an educative discipline, is a 
 department of Psychology, the crown of sciences, according to 
 Professor Bain. 
 
 1 Rep. hi 403 c. 
 
THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 
 
 7 
 
 We may take it then that education in the Classics involves, 
 or should involve, the transportation of the mind into the sphere 
 in which the ancients lived and thought and felt. 
 
 It remains to ask, Does such a transportation fulfil the 
 two conditions of liberal education which we have laid down ? 
 Does it promote intellectual sympathy? Does it refine and 
 strengthen the character ? 
 
 Before describing his curriculum of education, Plato lays 
 it down, in the seventh book of the Republic \ that whatever 
 presents us with two opposite sensations at one and the same 
 time is calculated to stimulate the intellect. By an extension 
 of this principle we may say that any department of study 
 which continually presents us with ideas and emotions anta- 
 gonistic to the age in which we live tends forcibly to awaken 
 our intellectual activities and foster intellectual sympathy. 
 
 Now this is precisely what the study of classical, and 
 especially of Greek, antiquity preeminently does. The litera- 
 tures of Greece and Rome are the only great and easily 
 accessible literatures which remain to us before the foundation 
 of Christianity and modern civilisation. In reading Greek 
 and Latin authors, if only we read them intelligently, we 
 stumble throughout almost every page upon some mode of 
 expression, upon some idea, foreign to the fashion of to-day. 
 The effect is, or should be, what Socrates described as an 
 intellectual torpedo-shock, similar to that produced upon the 
 body by contact with the torpedo or cramp-fish. You are 
 stunned at first — or, as Plato might say, dazed, and rendered 
 giddy, by the contradiction ; but the paralysis soon disappears, 
 and your intellect begins to resolve the contradiction into a 
 higher unity, involving a broader, more charitable, and for 
 that reason more profound, conception of human nature and 
 human life. “ The main object ” says Mr Bowen, in ‘ Essays 
 
 i 
 
 524 D. 
 
8 
 
 THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 on a Liberal Education ’ 1 — “ the main object of seeing dis- 
 tinctly what Plato and Cicero thought, is that one may be 
 able to look on all questions, not only on the side which they 
 now present, but on that also which they turned to observers 
 long ago ; to gain, as it were, a kind of intellectual parallax in 
 contemplating the problems of life.” 
 
 Let us give one or two examples of the kind of contradic- 
 tions which we have in view. We shall not attempt to resolve 
 them ; to do so would be to stray into the deepest questions 
 of philosophy, and it is an integral part of classical education 
 that every one should sooner or later — later rather than 
 sooner — devise a solution of his own. The examples which 
 we shall select are from Greece more often than from Rome. 
 
 If one were to endeavour to express in a single word the 
 fundamental difference between ancient and modern ways of 
 thinking, one might say that the keynote of the former is 
 synthesis, that of the latter analysis. The ancients delighted 
 in wholes ; the moderns delight in resolving a whole into its 
 component parts. It is only another way of expressing the 
 same essential difference to say that Greek antiquity was on 
 the whole imaginative, while modern life is scientific in the 
 main. Now the greatest whole which it is possible to conceive 
 is the totality of things, composed of the ego and the non-ego, 
 of internal and external nature, of the Individual and the 
 World. As regards the relation between these two, the Greeks 
 regarded Man and Nature as united in a far closer union than 
 we do now. Nature was to them no step-mother, no tigress, 
 “red in tooth and claw,” no inhuman force to be fought 
 against, but a mother, a beneficent power with whom we should 
 cooperate against the forces that make for misery and sin. 
 It was not, we may well believe, to pray to his goddess mother 
 only that Achilles turned to the sea for comfort : 
 
 
 p. 194. 
 
THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 9 
 
 avTap ’AxiXXebs 
 daKpvaas erapwv a<pap efero voacfn Xiacrdels 
 Qlv' €(f> aXbs toXltjs, opbwv iirl otvoira ttovtov 1 : 
 
 the dv^ptO/xov yeAaa/xa of the infinite waters soothed and con- 
 soled his troubled heart. Nothing could illustrate more finely 
 the Greek sentiment of kinship — if we may say so — with the 
 sea than Simonides’ picture of Danae and her babe cast adrift 
 upon the stormy waves. The words of Danae are full of peace 
 and quiet faith : fear is the least of her emotions. Hear what 
 she says, addressing her child : — 
 
 aXpav 5’ virepdev reav tcopav (3adeiav 
 TrapiovTOS Kbparos ovk aXeyeis, odd' avepwv 
 < pObyyov , Tropcpvptcuaiv 
 Keipevos eV ■xkaviaiv, kcCKov TrpbcrojTrov. 
 
 K^Xopcu 5’ eSSe fipecpo s, evd^TO) db ttovtos , 
 evdtra) 5’ aperpov kolk6v‘ 
 
 peTcufioXia 8 b ns (pavely, ZeO irarep, £k aedev. 
 
 ottl 8e OapaaXeov 'biros 
 
 eiixppai vocrfpiv 8 Lkcls, abyyvwdi poL 2 . 
 
 “Sleep, my babe, and sleep, the sea” ! The sympathy of human 
 with external nature was never more touchingly expressed. 
 And what shall we say of Earth, the Mother? The elder 
 Pliny 3 , in one of the noblest passages in the whole range of 
 Latin literature, has interpreted for us the ancient feeling of 
 love and affection for the mother who feeds and sustains us 
 during life, and recalls us to her arms at death: “Sequitur terra, 
 cui uni rerum naturae partium eximia propter merita cognomen 
 indidimus maternae venerationis. Sic hominum ilia, ut caelum 
 dei, quae nos nascentes excipit, natos alit semelque editos 
 sustinet semper, novissime complexa gremio iam a reliqua 
 natura abdicatos, turn maxime ut mater operiens, nullo magis 
 
 1 Homer, Iliad I 348 — 350. 
 
 3 Hist. Nat. II 63. 
 
 2 Simonides 37. 
 
10 THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION . 
 
 sacra merito quam quo nos quoque sacros facit, etiam monu- 
 menta ac titulos gerens nomenque prorogans nostrum et 
 memoriam extendens contra brevitatem aevi, cuius numen 
 ultimum iam nullis precamur irati grave, tanquam nesciamus 
 hanc esse solam quae nunquam irascatur homini. Aquae 
 subeunt in imbres, rigescunt in grandines, tumescunt in fluctus, 
 praecipitantur in torrentes : aer densatur nubibus, furit pro- 
 cellis ; at haec benigna, mitis, indulgens, ususque mortalium 
 semper ancilla, quae coacta generat, quae sponte fundit, quos 
 odores saporesque, quos sucos, quos tactus, quos colores !■” 
 “Turn maxime ut mater operiens,” “then most of all like a 
 mother covering us” — do not these words remove Death’s 
 Sting? 6 Se fxer a yrjf>(D<s liov e7rt rcAos Kara (frvcnv anrovioTaTO 5 rdlv 
 OavaTUiv kcu, /xaWov fxeO’ ySovrjs yty vo/ievos rj \v7rrjs 1 — death in 
 the course of nature is accompanied rather by pleasure than 
 by pain. The wearied child returns to his mother’s arms at 
 evening : 
 
 "E cnrepe , Trail >tol (pepeis, 
 
 (ptpeis olis, (pepeis alya, (pi pets pare pi 7 raida 2 . 
 
 But such a picture of Death, beautiful as it is, was rare 
 among the Greeks. We may welcome the God when he comes 
 as the natural evening of a happy day ; the miserable may pray 
 for him to come “ with healing in his wings,” as in the touching 
 lines of Aeschylus 3 : 
 
 (3 davare vaiav, pafi pi* anpiaaris /uioXeiv. 
 p.6vos 7 hp el av t&v dvrjKiaruv kclkuu 
 iarpos, a\yos 5’ ovdiu airTercu vexpod. 
 
 But how seldom does Death delay his advent till the natural 
 bourn ! 
 
 Modo pueros, modo adulescentes in cursu a tergo insequens 
 Necopinantes adsecuta est 4 . 
 
 1 Plato, Timaeus 81 e. 
 3 Frag. 244. 
 
 2 Sappho 95. 
 
 4 ap. Cicero Tuscul. Disp. 1 94. 
 
THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 I I 
 
 Nor could the Hellenic joy of living always look forward 
 with resignation even to the natural term of life. The well- 
 known lines attributed to Moschus represent the usual Greek 
 feeling about death : 
 
 alal TaX paXaxcu ptv eirav Kara Kairov oXwvrai , 
 i]8k to. xkupa. alkiva to t' evdaXes odXov avrfdov, 
 
 OxiTepov av fwovri kclI els 2tos aXXo <p6ovTL' 
 ap.p.es 8 ’ ot pey dXoi Kal Kaprepol oi aorpol civSpes, 
 oirirore irpara ddvupes, avanooi ev x^ 0VL KoiXq. 
 eijdopes ed paXa paapov areppova vrjyperov virvov. 
 
 The Greeks murmured at death because it seemed to involve 
 a breach with the order of nature. The leaf dies, but the soul 
 still lives, and clothes itself in another body in the spring ; 
 but man perishes, or if his soul survives in Hades, it is but 
 a shadow in shadow-land, a prisoner sighing for freedom and 
 the light of day 1 . The dead Achilles was but the mouthpiece 
 of Greek feeling when he said 2 : 
 
 pr) 8rj poi davarov ye trapaiba, <paL8ip ’ ’05i ’J<reu. 
 
 (iovXoipTfv V ijrdpovpos iwp Orfrefiepev aXXip 
 au8pl Trap ’ dKX-ffpip, ip pi j (Motos ttoX i)s et? 7 , 
 i] iracnv veiajeaai Kararpdip^vuiaiP avaaaeip. 
 
 But do not let us call the Greeks melancholy on this account; 
 it is easy to exaggerate what is called their melancholy. Their 
 repugnance at death is the measure of their optimism and 
 love of life. A Greek could hardly have written the exquisite 
 lines of Keats, in the “Ode to a Nightingale”: 
 
 1 It is interesting here to note how the theory of transmigration (in- 
 volving a return to life upon the earth, the soul clothing itself in a new body 
 as the tree puts forth new leaves) — the form in which the doctrine of 
 immortality impressed itself upon the deeper religious and philosophical 
 feeling of the Greeks — implies a reconciliation with the order of Nature as 
 seen in the life of plants. 
 
 2 Od. xi 488—491. 
 
12 
 
 THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 Darkling I listen ; and for many a time 
 I have been half in love with easeful Death, 
 
 Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme, 
 
 To take into the air my quiet breath; 
 
 Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 
 
 To cease upon the midnight with no pain, 
 
 While thou art pouring forth thy soul in ecstasy! 
 
 Still would’st thou sing, and I have ears in vain, 
 
 To thy high requiem become a sod. 
 
 to 2io\a)v, SoXcui/, "EWyves del 7raiSes ecrre, yepcov Be "EWyv ovk 
 eanv , said the Egyptian priest 1 . It was the eternal boyhood 
 of the Greeks that made them shrink from death as something 
 almost contrary to Nature. 
 
 Up to the present point, we have dealt with the Greek con- 
 ception of Nature and natural forces as personified, perhaps, 
 but not as deified. But to the common people and the philoso- 
 phers alike, Nature was divine. The popular imagination 
 peopled earth and sea and sky with multitudinous gods and 
 goddesses, the personification of natural forces, but did not 
 unify them in the conception of a single all-embracing Deity. 
 Throughout Greek literature, on the other hand, or at all events 
 in the best Greek literature which survives, there runs an 
 undercurrent of monotheism, and the philosophers loved to 
 represent the totality of Nature’s forces as the one and only 
 God. And as God is good, so likewise is Nature : 6 Se 6eo<s Kal 
 rj <£u<m, says Aristotle 2 , ovSev jxdryv ttoiovctiv. Evil is not 
 natural, but unnatural : ovSev tu v Trapa <jivanv Kakov 3 . It is the 
 background of Necessity or Fate which throws into relief the 
 smiling face of Nature 4 . And what the Greeks believed of 
 Nature as a whole, they believed of Human Nature. Man’s 
 
 1 Timaeus 22 b. 2 De Caelo 27 i a 33. 
 
 3 Ar. Pol. i32 5 b 10. 
 
 4 ib. I255 b 3. Cf. de Caelo 286 s 19 ^Karaais n's ianv ev tji yeveaei to 
 
 irapa (ptitnv tov Kara (ptioiv. 
 
THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 13 
 
 nature is not corrupt, not fallen, not degraded : there is no 
 such thing as ‘Original Sin’: there is no cleft between the 
 human and the divine, no aching sense of sin, no need of a 
 reconciliation with God : tv avSpwv, tv Otwv yevos • iK /Aids 
 Trviojxtv /jLdTpbs dpLcfiOTtpoL 1 . Or, as Heraclitus put it 2 : ri Sai ol 
 dvOpuiTTOi ; 6tol OvrjTOL. tl Sal oi 6toi ; dvOponroi aOdvaroi. The 
 most genuinely Greek expression of the ethical end is ‘ the life 
 according to Nature’: the highest practical expression of Greek 
 religion is — as it is well expressed by Zeller — ‘to do to the 
 glory of God that which is according to our own nature.’ 
 
 It is unnecessary to dwell at length upon the contrast 
 between such views and those under whose influence we live. 
 Ta\aL7rwpo<5 eyto ai0p(V7ro<s , cries St Paul 3 , Tis p.t pvcrtrai Ik too 
 <T(op.aTo<s tov Qavdrov tovtov ; We can hear the birth-cry of a new 
 religion in these words. Nature and man have strayed from 
 God : Christianity will lead them back. olSapLtv yap on 7 rdcra rj 
 
 KTLCT IS aVCTTtvd^tL KCU (TVV(l)SiVtL d\pi TOV vvv 4 : but Geos TjV iv 
 
 XpLorTw Koapiov KaiaWdo-crwv eavrd 5 . The contrast between 
 Paganism and Christianity could not be more strikingly ex- 
 pressed than in the words of St Paul 6 ivSrjpLovvTts iv rw o-oi/Aan 
 e/cS^/Aov/Aev airo tov Kvpcov, or in those of St James 7 rj i/>iAia too 
 koV/aoo t\0pa T °^ icTLv. Christianity looks for a city, not 
 on earth, but in the heavens : tJ/acov ydp to Tro\iTtvp.a iv oopai 01 s 
 vTrdpxtL 8 : a city wherein Justice dwells : /caivoos St ovpavovs Kal 
 yrjv Kaivrjv . . .TrpoSoKidp.tV) iv ols StKatocrvvr} kcitoikci 9 . In order to 
 become a citizen of this Ideal City — ttjv 7 roA. 11 / ttjv dyiav 'Iepoo- 
 aaXrjp. Kacvrjv which the author of the Revelation 10 saw koto- 
 /3ai .vovaav euro tov Geoo e/c too ovpavov , 'tjTocp.ao-p.ivrjv cos vvp.cf)r)v 
 KtKoapLr)p.ivY)v tw avSpl avTrjs — it is necessary to enslave the 
 
 1 Pind. Nem. vi r. 2 Frag. 67 ed. Bywater. 
 
 3 Romans vii. 24. 4 Romans viii. 22. 5 2 Cor. v. 19. 
 
 6 2 Cor. v. 6. 7 iv. 4. 8 Philipp, iii. 20. 
 
 9 2 Pet. iii. 13. 
 
 xxi, 2. 
 
4 
 
 THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION, \ 
 
 body and make free the soul : aAA’ u7r<D7ria£a> /xou to crw/xa, says 
 St Paul 1 , kolI SovXa ycoyw, — avTOs aSoKipos yevco/xai. What 
 
 a contrast to the Hellenic attitude is here ! /xt) Orjaavp^re -iplv 
 OrjaoLvpovs € 7 rt r/yc . . OrjcraypL^Te Se vpuv Or](ravpov<s iv ovpavw' 2 . 
 What meaning would this sublime exhortation have conveyed 
 to an ordinary Athenian in the time of Pericles ? The Hellenic 
 vista — 
 
 vyiaLveiv pev apiarov avdpl dvrjTtp, 
 devrepov de (pvav KaXov yeveadcu, 
 to rp'iTov rrXovTeiv a doXios, 
 
 Kal rb TerapTov ij^ciy pera twv <f)LX wv 3 , — 
 
 ends where the full fruition of the Christian begins — at death. 
 The correct appreciation of this fundamental contrast is one of 
 the most potent factors which can be conceived in the pro- 
 motion of intellectual life and sympathy 4 . 
 
 Let us take another illustration from the sphere of Man’s 
 duty to his fellows. The traditional morality of Greece laid it 
 down as a rule of conduct to do good to friends, and evil to 
 foes. We except for the present the protests raised by Plato 
 and one or two others 5 against this precept of Greek morality ; 
 
 1 i Cor. ix. 27. 2 St Matth. vi. 19. 
 
 3 Ath. xv. 694 e: cf. Plato Gorg. 451 e. 
 
 4 It is of course easy to find in Socrates, Plato, and Euripides, and 
 sporadically elsewhere, anticipations of the Pauline doctrine of Man and 
 Nature. The movement that began with Socrates — in so far as any great 
 movement can be said to have a beginning — prepared the way for the new 
 era. But even in Plato the contrast is conspicuous. The ptXDr] davarov, for 
 example, of the Phaedo is less of a religious than an intellectual aspiration. 
 Plato’s ‘study of death’ is inspired by the consciousness of ignorance, and the 
 desire of knowledge, St Paul’s by the sense of sin and the desire of holiness. 
 
 With Plato the moral exaltation was a result of the intellectual; with 
 St Paul it was the primary and immediate aim. 
 
 5 Pittacus, according to Diog. Laert. 1. 4.78, said <f)iXov py XLyeiv kclkws, 
 aXXa pride ex^pov. Plato’s protest is contained in Rep. I 335 B foil., in the 
 Gorgias, and elsewhere. 
 
THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 5 
 
 in this, as in many other matters, Plato’s teaching is the morn- 
 ing twilight of a brighter day. Solon 1 prays that he may be 
 4 sweet to friends, and bitter to foes ’ : Pindar 2 is fain £ to 
 love a friend,’ but 7 rorl k^Opov d t £)(6p6<; idv Xvkolo Slktjv V7 roOev- 
 ao/xai, dAA’ qlAAotc 7ra reoov o'Sots (tkoXlEls : and Socrates in the 
 Memorabilia 3 represents this principle as the prevailing morality 
 of Greece. Set against this the Sermon on the Mount : dya 
 7rare tov s £)(9pov<s vpcibv, KaXws ttol€LT€ rots pucrovariv vp. as, €vXo- 
 yetre rovs KaTapwpcevov s vplv, kcu irpocrcv^caOe V7 rep tcov h rrjpea- 
 ^oVrcov vpas 4 : or compare it with the picture of Christian ethics 
 in St Paul 5 : evXoydire tov<s SuvKovTas \.pbd< 5 ‘ evXoyelre, kcu p.r) 
 KaTapacrOt’ \aipCLV peer a ^acpovTwv, kcu kXclulv pcera kXcuovtidv . . . 
 £dv ovv 7T€tra 6 £\0p6<s crov, xj/wpu^e a vtoV iav &aj/a, 7roTt^e avrov' 
 tovto yap ttoIujv avOpaKas 7r vpos aojptvcreus €7ri rrjv KtcfiaXrjv avrov. 
 p.rj viKtZ vr ro tov kokov, aXXa viKa £v tw dya 6 u> to kokov. No 
 contrast could be more emphatic or significant. It is im- 
 possible to realise the contradiction at all without receiving an 
 intellectual stimulus : it is impossible fully to appreciate its 
 meaning without a quickening of intellectual sympathy. 
 
 The examples which we have selected belong to the sphere 
 of religion and ethics, but it would be easy to find instances in 
 which the study of Greek antiquity in its psychology, its political 
 theory and practice, its literature, its art, presents us with sug- 
 gestive and stimulating contrasts to modern fashions and beliefs. 
 In their psychological attitude, for example, the Greeks, true to 
 their unifying instinct, recoiled from the habit of analysing the 
 human mind with which we are familiar in the present day. 
 Intellect, Will, and Emotion were often unified by the Greeks 
 in Intellect. Asa result of this unification, morality, which we 
 now regard as, primarily at all events, a condition of the will, 
 was apt to be identified with an intellectual state. An inevitable 
 
 1 Frag. 13. 5. 2 Pyth. 11 83. 
 
 3 11. 3. 14. 4 St Luke vi. 27. 
 
 5 Romans xii. 9 — 21, esp. vv. 14, 15, 20, 21., 
 
6 
 
 THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 consequence of this was the exaltation of the rational or 
 intellectual side of human life over the emotional and moral. 
 In modern Teutonic races the tendency is the other way. 
 We need not dwell upon the striking differences between the 
 political ideals and institutions of the ancients and our own. 
 Their conception of the City State with all that it involved, 
 and, in particular, the influence of this ideal in determining the 
 relation between the individual and the State, these, and many 
 other less fundamental contrasts, readily suggest themselves. 
 Nor is it otherwise with ancient literature and art. It would be 
 an excellent educative discipline to institute a comparison 
 between the Classical and Romantic drama, or between Greek 
 and English lyric poetry, or between ancient and modern ways 
 of writing history. The study of ancient art and archaeology is 
 not a liberal education unless it is pursued with the ulterior 
 object of apprehending the spirit of Antiquity in its likeness 
 and unlikeness to that of Christendom. The Parthenon should 
 be interpreted by — shall we say? — Lincoln Cathedral: Niobe 
 weeping for her children by the Pieta of Michelangelo. 
 
 Enough has been said to indicate generally the way in which 
 the Study of classical literature and life fulfils the first requisite 
 of a liberal education by creating and fostering the spirit of 
 intellectual sympathy. It remains for us to shew how the 
 discipline of ancient civilisation should mould and fashion the 
 character. 
 
 To analyse the ideal man — the true likeness of Humanity, 
 to duSp€LKe\ov, o Sy kclL ''Ofir)po<; eKaXeaev kv tois dv0pw7TOL<i 
 lyyiyvo^vov re kcu 0 coeiKeXov 1 — is 7 rXcov y Kara ryv 
 
 TroLpovaav opptyv 2 : but we can all recognise two elements of 
 character, the blending of which in due proportion is as rare as 
 it is splendid. The one we call by such names as steadiness, 
 strength, sobriety, self-control, the habit of obeying law ; the 
 other is called intellectual acuteness, originality, independence 
 1 Plato, Republic VI 501 B. 
 
 2 ibid. 506 E. 
 
THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 17 
 
 of mind, the capacity of making law. These are the two great 
 factors which unite to form the characters of us all. Among 
 Englishmen it is perhaps the steady element which pre- 
 dominates. This element is magnificent in action, after it has 
 been told what to do, but, when confronted with an idea, it is 
 apt to yawn, or to look at its watch, being, to put it somewhat 
 bluntly, in the judgment at least of Frenchmen, a trifle stupid. 
 In its noblest forms this virtue of character will make a school- 
 boy lead a forlorn hope upon the battlefield, and meet a 
 glorious death with the cry of Floreat Etona still ringing on his 
 lips. In its degenerate forms it causes men to prize the body 
 above the soul, and “ esteem gymnastic more than music 1 .” 
 
 The second factor in character, that which we have called 
 originality, is less plentiful in the majority of men. It is often 
 found in inverse proportion to the element of steadiness, 
 and that is why genius — so we are wont to say — is often erratic 
 and unstable. It is in virtue of this element that discoveries 
 are made, and the limits of human knowledge extended ; it is 
 this that is the parent of the highest flights of poetry ; it is this 
 that founds religions and sways mankind, as the moon regulates 
 the tides, with the magic force of an idea. But in its degraded 
 forms, and when it is wrongly educated, it sinks into petty 
 sophistry, makes havoc of great names, and convinces itself and 
 others that the worse cause is the better, and so becomes a 
 curse to the society wherein it appears. Corruptio optimi 
 pessima. 
 
 <£iAoo'o</>€u' avev (jiaXaKLas — this is indeed the end. In the 
 Politicus 2 Plato wished to secure the presence of these two sides 
 of character in children by intermarriages between men and 
 women in whom the opposing elements predominated. It is 
 wholly in the spirit of Plato’s teaching to regard the ideal 
 character as itself the product of the spiritual union of these 
 two elements within the soul ; and it is such a spiritual union 
 
 1 Plato, Rep. viii 548 c. 
 
 2 3io- 
 
1 8 THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 that every attempt to educate the character should endeavour 
 to effect. 
 
 We have still to shew that the study of classical antiquity 
 tends to cherish and to unify these two sides of the ideal man. 
 
 To know a thing, in the fullest sense of the term, is to 
 become like the thing we know. Knowledge is the assimila- 
 tion of subject and object. This is the teaching of Christianity 
 and Platonism alike : the one tells us that to know God is to 
 be assimilated to His glorious image, the other that the know- 
 ledge of the Idea of Good or God, which is the ultimate end, 
 involves 6/aoiWis 6 c <3 Kara to Swarov 1 . To know the best and 
 highest in Greece and Rome is therefore to make the virtues of 
 antiquity our own. For the purpose of educating the character 
 by means of classical study, whatever is not best in ancient life 
 and thought should, in the first instance at least, be ignored. 
 
 What then is the best of Greece, what is the best of Rome ? 
 To put the matter briefly, the genius of Greece was speculative, 
 that of Rome was practical. The desire of knowledge, scepti- 
 cism in its true and noble sense of searching after truth, is the 
 dowry of ancient Greece ; strength and self-control, obedience 
 and law belong to Rome. Full well did Virgil say : 
 
 Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera, 
 
 Credo equidem, vivos ducent de marmore voltus; 
 
 Orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus 
 Describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent : 
 
 Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento; 
 
 Hae tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem, 
 
 Parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos' 2 . 
 
 Greece is in very truth the Mother of Ideas ! How many 
 seeds has she sown whose flowers and fruit delight and sustain 
 us now ! But the Greeks were relatively weak in action, 
 because they knew not how to combine, since it is of the 
 essence of genius to be individual. They could not translate 
 into practice the ideas which they created ; this honour was 
 1 Thcact. 176 b. “ Aeneid vi 848 — 854. 
 
THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 19 
 
 reserved for Christianity and Rome. The lofty ideals of 
 morality which the Greek philosophers constructed reappear in 
 Christian ethics, intensified, it is true, and intertwined more 
 closely with the affections and the will, but easy to recognise, 
 and in this profoundly human form sway still more powerfully 
 the hearts of men. Kai, 6 Xdyos <rap£ cyeVero, Kat i(TKrjv<D(T£v kv 
 rj/uv l . In Rome, thanks to the national virtues of courage, and 
 patience, and submission to authority, the ideas of law and 
 government enunciated by Greek thinkers were translated into 
 action, losing, perhaps, somewhat in the process, since practice 
 is everywhere less perfect than theory, but keeping alive the 
 sacred flame of civilisation, and spreading the pax Romana 
 over the face of the Roman world. 
 
 And now let us sum up. The study of Classical literature 
 and life is a liberal education because it enlarges our intellectual 
 horizon, and promotes intellectual sympathy by the electric 
 shock of contradiction and the activity thus set up. It is a 
 liberal education, in the second place, because it moulds the 
 will and character no less than the intellect. As the student 
 learns more of Greek life and thought, he should become more 
 independent and more manly, not driven to and fro by every 
 wind of doctrine, but honestly striving to think things out for 
 himself, and building his faith on the sure ground of knowledge. 
 In one word, he will love Truth more. As his knowledge of 
 the life and language of Rome advances, he will become more 
 patient and more courageous, he will learn “to scorn delights 
 and live laborious days,” he will become more loyal to himself, 
 his country, and his faith, and become both a better citizen 
 and a better man. In one word, he will love Law more. 
 
 The writer has spoken seriously, perhaps unduly so, upon 
 this subject of classical study, because he feels that the issue is 
 a great one : /xeyas o aywv, /xeyas, ov)( oaos Sokcc. It seems to 
 
 1 St John i. 14. 
 
20 THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 him a grave misfortune that any one should study classics 
 without trying sooner or later to form some notion of what the 
 study means. Every student and exponent of antiquity should 
 frame his theory for himself, otherwise its educational value is 
 but little. The present essay is only a vTropvrjp a rw ravrov t^vos 
 ficTiovTi 1 . The beginner in classical study should be content 
 at first to believe — Set yap TrLGTtvt.iv tovs pavOdvovra^ as Aris- 
 totle remarks — that there is a “ beatific vision.” Such a faith 
 will animate and inspire the daily routine, and make the 
 meanest particle breathe and live. He will begin by studying 
 the body, if we may say so, of Greek thought, the beautiful 
 language which is but the outward expression of inward and 
 more spiritual beauty : appovir] yap atfaavrjs <£ai /tprjs KptLTTcvv. 
 From the contemplation of bodily beauty he will rise to that of 
 spiritual, and the soul of antiquity will reveal herself to him in 
 the thoughts of ancient poets and philosophers and men of 
 science, in ancient laws and institutions, in the immortal crea- 
 tions of ancient art and architecture. He will then recognise 
 in the words of Plato 2 on Trav TO kclXXos a vro a ur <3 £vyyevt<i 
 ianv, and “ facing the full Sea of Beauty and looking thereon, 
 he will beget out of bountiful Philosophy many beautiful and 
 lofty conceptions and thoughts.” The Sea of Beauty stretches 
 wide, its waves unharvested as ever. We have merely stood 
 upon the shore ; he who scales the still snow citadels around it 
 will see farther, but even he will not see all. 
 
 ‘ Nay, come up hither 
 
 Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me; 
 
 Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown’d. 
 
 Miles and miles distant though the last line be, 
 
 And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond, 
 
 Still leagues beyond those leagues there is more sea.’ 
 
 1 Plato, Phaedr. 276 D. 2 Symp. 210 c — D. 
 
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