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EDUCATION

soul all the perfection of which they are susceptible; according to Rousseau, in making the primitive instincts and dispositions the constant guides of character and action; and according to Kant, there is within every man a divine ideal, the type after which he was created, the germs of a perfect person, and it is the office of education to favor and direct the growth of these germs. Yet education not only aims at the development and culture of the child as an individual, but is also the means by which every rising generation is put in possession of all the attainments of preceding generations, and becomes capable of increasing and improving this inheritance. It thus secures the regular progress of society, and has for its end to fashion childhood to an order of things and of ideas which it is designed to establish or perpetuate. Thus, according to Aristotle, "the most effective way of preserving a state is to bring up the citizens in the spirit of the government; to fashion, and as it were to cast them in the mould of the constitution." "The task of the instructor," says Herbart, "consists in transmitting and interpreting to the new generation the experience of the race." Education therefore has reference to the economy of society; it constitutes the apprenticeship of those who are afterward to take a place in the order of a civilized community; and, as universal knowledge and skill are impossible, it varies for the different states and classes of men, like the different pursuits of life. In the earliest ages, the entire education and culture of the people were in the hands of priests, who were the first founders of institutions, the first savants, statesmen, judges, physicians, astronomers, and architects; and science has been separated from religion, and teaching has been a distinct profession, only in the most highly civilized communities. Even in these, learning and schools have often been to a greater or less extent, more or less directly, under the patronage and care of religious bodies, since religion has been esteemed by all nations the highest interest of society.-At a very ancient era, though less remote than they themselves pretend, the Chinese possessed a high degree of culture. The Chinese sage, Confucius (born 551 B. C.), was the restorer and not the founder of their civilization, and expressly disclaimed writing any thing which had not long been recognized in the legislation and science of his ancestors. The principles established by him and by Mencius (nearly 2 centuries later) still prevail in Chinese pedagogy. The course of instruction begins in the family, where the boys are taught to enumerate objects, to count to the number of 10,000, and to reverence their parents and ancestors by a minute ceremonial. At the age of 5 or 6 years they are sent to school. On entering the hall, the pupil makes obeisance first to the holy Confucius and then to his master. A lesson learned in grammar, history, ethics, mathematics, or astronomy, according to the proficiency of the student, is followed by the morning repast; af ter which the day is spent in copying, learning

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by heart, and reciting select passages of literature. Before departure at night a part of the pupils relate some of the events of ancient history, which are explained by the master; others unite in singing an ancient ode, which is sometimes accompanied by a symbolic dance. They leave the hall with the same obeisances with which they enter it, and on reaching home reverentially salute the domestic spirits, and their ancestors, parents, and relatives. For the sons of the nobles a higher course of instruction is provided in universities under the surveillance of the state. One of these exists in most of the large cities, and the most advanced of them is the imperial college in Pekin. Candidates for admission into the last are required to pass a strict examination, and the graduates from it are at once appointed to public. office. In no other country, with perhaps the exception of Prussia, is a learned education the means of official promotion so much as in China. The education of girls is neglected, but the daughters of the wealthy are generally taught to read, write, sing, and sometimes to make verses.-Historians usually account the inhabitants of India the most highly educated of the ancient nations of the East. Yet Hindoo learning and science have always been almost exclusively in the hands of the caste of Brahmins, who only are allowed to explain the Vedas or sacred books to the two castes next in rank. The fourth and much the most numerous caste of Soodras, or laborers, are excluded from all privileges of education, and forbidden even to listen to the reading of the sacred books. The elementary schools are now held in the open air, and the instruction ordinarily begins with writing. The boys, sitting naked on the ground, write in the sand, or on palm leaves, a series of moral sentences from the ancient writings. These are also committed to memory. The Vedas are taught separately in the schools of the Brahmins, and embrace not only the higher doctrines of mythology, but also of mathematics, astrology, and philosophy. Hindoo masters especially inculcate the rules of politeness, the art of elegant conversation, the countenance which ought to be assumed according to occasions, and innumerable minute practices of etiquette and duplicity. The education of women, to whom the laws of Manu ascribe a mingled character of malice and deceit, is totally neglected, and it is a disgrace for them to know how to read. Only the courtesans learn to read, sing, and dance. Schools have been established by the British government, and also by the natives, in which there are generally two departments, in one of which the English language, sciences, and literature are taught, and in the other the Sanscrit, Persian, or Arabic languages and literature. The early culture of the Egyptians was such, that the Greeks derived from them their first lessons in science and philosophy. In Egypt, too, the Israelites obtained the knowledge which enabled them to measure and "divide the land." Learning and political power were chiefly in the hands of the

priests, among whom the greater part of the lands were distributed. Public education existed only in the castes of priests and warriors, until it became more general after the rise of the Persian and Greek dominion. While the mass of the people were trained to the mechanical arts, a few only were instructed in the mathematical sciences, and in the doctrines of morality and divinity. An esoteric culture was reserved to the priests themselves, whose principal schools were at Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis. The allusions of the Greeks, and the inscriptions on the monuments, prove an early knowledge of geometry, astronomy, mensuration, and surveying in Egypt, and from the time of Thales the wisest of the Greeks went to study in that country. Iamblichus says that Pythagoras derived thence his information upon different sciences, and that he complied with the minutest regulations of the priests, in order to overcome their repugnance to impart ing their theories. Plato, it is said, was a disciple of them, and states that "when Solon inquired of them about ancient matters he perceived that neither he nor any one of the Greeks had any knowledge of very remote antiquity." It was not unusual for female children of the priestly families to acquire an education, but the populace in general were trained only to follow in the occupation of their parents and kinsmen. At a later period a part of Egypt came within the circle of Greek civilization, and the schools of Alexandria and other cities of the delta became as renowned as those of Thebes and other more southern cities had formerly been. The two Alexandrian libraries, one of which was destroyed under Theodosius the Great, and the other by command of the caliph Omar I. (A. D. 642), were the most remarkable monuments of ancient learning.-The culture of the ancient Persians was the exclusive care of the magi, a priestly caste of Median origin, who were the savants of the empire, the legislators, judges, interpreters of dreams, astrologers, and highest functionaries at court. They ruled the Persians for ages by the force of intellect alone. To them were intrusted the preservation and establishment of the doctrines and laws of Zoroaster. There was no general system of national education, but the instruction was simple for the people, learned and religious for the magi, and military and political for the warriors. The faults of children were not regarded as sins till the age of 8 years, when they were first taught to say their prayers. The intellectual culture was but trifling except to those who were to inherit the learning of the magi, but the moral education inculcated the civil virtues and strict habits of truth and justice, while in physical training the Persians surpassed all other eastern nations. Their fundamental maxim was to combine a meagre fare with violent gymnastic exercises. According to Herodotus, "their sons were carefully instructed from their 5th to their 20th year in 3 things alone, to ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the truth." The Cyropa

dia of Xenophon is a romantic picture of the Persian mode of education. It presents the whole population divided into 4 classes according to age, and meeting at appointed times in the 4 divisions of the public edifices, which were far removed from the market places. The boys till the age of 17 years were taught to know and to practise justice, and to entertain right sentiments toward the divinity, their country, their parents, and their friends. They lodged at home, took their slight meals under the care of their masters, learned to handle the bow and javelin, and were prompted to admire and imitate those aged men who were noted for exemplary virtues. From the age of 17 to 27 years they passed their nights in the public edifice, that the purity of their morals might be strictly guarded, learned the arts of war, were accustomed to rise early, to bear cold and heat, to walk, to run, and to follow the chase. During the 25 following years they were accounted ripe men, and obeyed their superiors in war. Above the age of 52 they were reckoned among old men, renounced martial service, and administered justice in public and private affairs. Such an education and career was legally open to every citizen, but only the wealthier classes could avail themselves of the public schools, since it was necessary not only to dispense with the labor of their children, but also to pay their expenses.-The theocratic constitution of the Hebrew nation, and the foundation of its politics and ethics on religion, produced a mental cultivation as manifested in its literature very unlike that found among any other oriental people. The schools of the prophets are the only schools which are mentioned, but children were generally instructed by their parents in the law of Moses and the history of the nation. The obedience of children to the commands of their parents is a frequent injunction in the Scriptures. Girls were taught to sing, to play upon musical instruments, and to dance on solemn occasions; and many female poets and learned women figure in the history of the ancient Jews. After the exile the rabbins established schools to which children were sent from their 5th or 6th year, and in which, beside the teaching of the Scriptures, the commentaries and traditions, the Mishna and Gemara, were taught and committed to memory. The instruction was oral, no student ever taking notes, and the Mishna had long been transmitted from master to pupil before it was committed to writing. The most celebrated of the early rabbinical schools were those of Jamnia (long under the direction of Gamaliel, and at which Saint Paul studied), Tiberias, Alexandria, Babylon, and Jerusalem. During the greater part of the middle ages Jew. ish astronomers, physicians, poets, and philosophers were scattered through Spain, Italy, and France, and the cities of northern Africa and western Asia. Their greatest schools flourished in Egypt, Fez, Andalusia, and Languedoc.-Of the methods of Greek education, a connected account may be formed from the numerous scat

EDUCATION

tered allusions in classical literature. At the age of 6 years boys passed from the exclusive care of their mothers, who educated them till then along with the girls. Lullabies, cradles, baubles, rattles, dolls, miniature go-carts, and images of warriors and mythological scenes, are mentioned among the resources of the nursery. The children were terrified into good behavior by stories of bugbears and bogies, or by castigation, which was far from uncommon, and was administered usually with the slipper or sandal. The nurses and attendants used to tell tales for their amusement, consisting chiefly of the legendary exploits of the gods and demigods. Plato and Plutarch treat particularly of the moral influence of this story-telling, and urged that the nurses should be restricted in their selection of subjects. At about their 8th year the boys were intrusted to the care of a pedagogue, who accompanied them to school, carried their books, and kept them constantly under surveillance. He was a slave, but often intelligent and of polished manners. The schools were under the supervision, but not the patronage, of the state, and the fees received from pupils constituted the schoolmaster's income. Instruction began in the early morning, and was in 3 branches: the letters (comprehending reading, writing, and arithmetic), music (including also literature and art), and gymnastic exercises. Plato recommended that arithmetic be taught as an amusement, and that the abstract ideas of number be presented in as concrete a form as possible by the use of apples and the like. Having learned to read, the boy was made familiar with the works of the poets, and required to commit to memory long select passages. The poems of Homer, especially, were thought to contain by precept and example every thing calculated to awaken in youth a national spirit, and to impress the noblest virtues. The lyre was the favorite musical instrument at Athens, and instruction in playing upon it was a regular part of education. The flute was at one time popular, but its use was abandoned, according to Aristotle, because it distorted the face. Attendance at school was continued till the 16th or 18th year, after which those who wished became disciples of teachers of a higher order, the philosophers, rhetoricians, and sophists. From that age they began more to frequent the gymnasia for athletic exercises, the benches of which were often occupied by sophists conversing with their pupils and surrounded by a crowd of listeners. For girls there were neither educational institutions nor private teachers. Their whole instruction was derived from their mothers and nurses, and till marriage they were excluded from the society and conversation of the opposite sex. Hence, there were no scientific or learned ladies, with the exception of the hetara, and of these the Milesian Aspasia was perhaps the only one that was respected. Grecian education received its first strong impressions from the institutions of Lycurgus and Solon, and from the influence of the school of Pytha

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goras. That the child was the property, not of his parents, but of the state, was the central idea of the educational system established by Lycurgus in Sparta. All personal interests must yield to those of the nation. Every Spartan child, with the exception of the heir presumptive to the throne, was subjected to a severe military and public discipline, which consisted largely in gymnastic training, to the neglect of intellectual culture. They were not taught to read, but to speak with a precision which is yet proverbial. Truthfulness and masterly self-command were moral results which were well combined with physical endurance. Females were educated nearly the same as males, and the two sexes often strove together in gymnastic contests. Thus was formed a hardy and warlike nation, destitute and heedless alike of refined feelings, aesthetic tastes, and scientific knowledge. It was in obedience to the principles of the code of Solon that Athens became the centre and mother of liberal culture. Though education, like religion, was recognized as a part of the political constitution, yet the state left it to parental interests and affection to educate the young, ordaining only certain general rules, chiefly in behalf of morality. Thus every citizen, under a severe penalty, was required to teach his son to read and to swim; he was also to fit him for some occupation, otherwise the son would not be obliged to support him in his old age. Intellectual and aesthetic culture were always prominent in Athenian education, and gymnastic training was encouraged as much in the interest of physical beauty as of physical strength. In the time of Pericles the writers, statesmen, artists, and the populace united in appreciating the fine arts; every coin was stamped with a beautiful symbol, the poorest clay vessels were gracefully outlined, and the finest Athenian specimens of architecture and sculpture appealed to common sentiments of patriotism, religion, and taste. Pythagoras was the first of the Greek philosophers who founded a school or sect that survived him for centuries. He settled as a teacher in Magna Græcia, or southern Italy, after having travelled and studied in Egypt. He admitted into his society only those whose physiognomy pleased him, who obeyed their parents, were devoid of vanity, and had the art of keeping silence and listening. The disciple was first admitted only to the exoteric class, where he learned but a part of his master's dogmas. There he remained at least 8 years, during the last 5 of which he accustomed himself principally to silence. He was finally received into the esoteric class, where he was initiated into all the sciences, especially mathematics, upon which Pythagoras set the highest value. The basis of his system seems to have been the harmony of the universe, and our conceptions of order and of music; and it practically inculcated respect for women, simplicity in attire, severe honesty, devotion to ideas of beauty and virtue, and the blending of all the elements of character so that they should tend to a single

end. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle subsequently developed the Greek theories in the higher departments of education, their speculations on the subject forming a part of their philosophical and political systems.-The Hellenic methods of education were in most respects copied by the Romans, who, however, at first laid greater stress on vigorous corporeal exercises and the nurture of the sentiment of patriotism. The ancient title of the schoolmaster was master of the games (ludimagister), and instruction was entirely independent of the state till near the time of the emperors. Numerous religious ceremonies preceded, accompanied, and followed the birth of a child, who during the republic was educated in the family successively under the care of his mother, his father, and a pedagogue or learned slave. After his 15th year, the noble young Roman assumed the toga virilis, and from that time for more than a year applied himself to gymnastic exercises designed to prepare him for war. He was afterward admitted to the society of public men to learn the art of statesmanship. After the Greek influence became predominant in Roman culture, a Greek rather than a Roman was preferred for pedagogue, and the institution of public schools, to which boys were sent at the age of 7 years, made the advantages of education more general. Under the empire the Greek literature was taught to the sons of the wealthy as carefully as the Latin, and the education was completed by rhetoricians, who in the time of Quintilian often received a salary from the public treasury. Athens, where there was an academy with 10 professors, was much frequented by the young Romans, and a school of high repute was founded in Constantinople by Constantine and reorganized by Theodosius the Younger. Girls were often carefully educated during the later period of the empire; and from about the close of the republic there appear to have been schools designed for them exclusively, where they were rarely visited by their fathers. Antoninus Pius (A. D. 138-161) was the first Roman monarch who established a school for orphans. The principal original sources for the history of education among the Romans are the writings of Cicero, Seneca, Pliny the Younger, and especially the Institutiones Oratoria of Quintilian.-At the time when the last vestiges of Roman supremacy were disappearing in the West, the genius of Mohammed raised an obscure people in a corner of Asia to sudden greatness. In the 7th century the Arabians overran Syria, Persia, Egypt, and the whole north-west of Africa, and in the next, Spain also. Though they had no native literature but poetry, and no science but a fanciful astronomy inherited from shepherds, and though they were at first as destructive to western learning as to Christianity, they yet soon discovered the value of the writings of the Greeks, especially of those on medicine, mathematics, and natural philosophy. Hippocrates and Galen, Euclid and Ptolemy, Aristotle and Theophrastus

were translated into Arabic, and voluminously commented on; and in the 10th century, the darkest period of Christian literature, the Arabs had flourishing schools of learning from Bagdad to Cordova. Of their 17 universities, that of Cordova enjoyed the highest reputation, and is said to have possessed a library of 600,000 volumes. Grammar, the art of versifying, history, geography, astronomy and astrology, chemistry and alchemy, mathematics, and medicine were all studied, and in the last two departments the Arabians made important improvements on their Greek masters. An elementary school was attached to every mosque, in which reading and writing were taught, the pupils at the same time learning many poems by heart. At first, the sons of wealthy Arabs on reaching their 20th year were accustomed to go on a literary journey, visiting the most eminent savants who gave public lectures; but after the foundation of universities by the caliphs in the largest cities, these became the resort of those who desired a learned education. They were chiefly occupied with theology, jurisprudence, and speculative philosophy; and for the natural sciences there were special schools, while medicine was taught in hospitals. The professors and students dwelt in the same edifice, and usually there was but one eminent scholar connected as teacher with each university. In Spain the Saracens had their most brilliant career, covering the plains, the valleys, and the hillsides with palaces and costly dwellings in the light and graceful style of Moorish architecture, making poetry and the fine arts as well as scholarship flourish at the Moorish courts, and giving rich endowments to schools and universities, the advantages of which were open both to Christians and Moslems, and to the female sex as well as the male. Gerbert, afterward Pope Sylvester II., studied under the Spanish Arabs, and passing thence to France and Germany, is said to have revived in those countries arithmetic, music, and geometry, which had become unknown. Sharon Turner gives a list of Spanish-Arabian women who were noted for their erudition or their skill in poetry, oratory, philosophy, jurisprudence, or music.— The early Christians, unable to found separate schools for the education of their children, either instructed them at home or sent them to pagan schools. The names of Anthusa, Nonna, and Monica, the mothers and teachers of Chrysostom, Gregory Nazianzen, and Augustine, are memorials of the care with which Christian parents sought the intellectual and religious culture of their sons. The daughters also shared in the domestic lessons. Yet those who desired a learned education resorted to schools taught by pagans, the most flourishing of which in the 2d century was that of Alexandria, where a mnltitude of pagans, Jews, and Christians prosecuted their studies together. By the side of this ancient institution soon arose the Christian school of the catechists, said to have been founded by Pantenus in 181, in which Christian the

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ology assumed a regular and scientific form. It was designed especially to qualify young men to become preachers, but its course of study embraced mathematics, logic, rhetoric, physics, metaphysics, and ethics, as well as theology, and it continued in existence till near the 5th century. Its most eminent master was Origen, who, being exiled in 231 from Alexandria, soon after established a similar school in Cæsarea, in which St. Basil was educated. The school of Antioch produced Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia; and that of Edessa, called the Athens of Syria, and which was long the principal seat of oriental learning, attracted students from great distances, and is memorable especially for its part against St. Cyril in the Nestorian controversy. In all the Christian schools the Bible gradually became the principal text book, and the sciences were pursued only in their theological bearings. In the West there were till the 5th century pagan schools in the largest cities, as Carthage, Rome, Milan, Treves, Marseilles, and Lyons; and owing to the fewness of the Christian institutions, it was common for distinguished doctors of the church to assemble around them the young men who purposed entering the priesthood, and to instruct them by their conversation rather than by regular lessons. Early in the 5th century learning found a ref. uge in the monasteries which had been introduced in the East for purposes of solitude and contemplation, but in the West for quiet and union amid the disorders of society-as a centre and asylum for persons who wished to live, to discuss, and to exercise themselves together. The abbey founded at Tours by St. Martin, that of St. Victor founded by Cassianus at Marseilles, and that of Lerins founded by St. Honoratus and St. Caprais in one of the isles of Hyères, were philosophical schools of Christianity, in which the great questions of free will, predestination, grace, and original sin were warmly agitated, and in the last two of which the Pelagian opinions for half a century found their greatest nourishment and support. In the 6th and 7th centuries the schools were of 3 classes, the parochial, the cathedral or episcopal, and the cloistral or conventual. The first were in the house and under the care of a priest, were designed mainly to produce readers in the church, and the instruction in them rarely extended beyond the constant repetition of passages of Scripture; the second were of a higher grade, and usually under the direction of a bishop, were designed for the education of priests, though young noblemen were also received as pupils, and the canticles and formulas in use in religious worship were the chief subjects of study; the third received children who were devoted either to a religious or secular life, and taught them to read, to copy manuscripts, and to understand Latin. The cloistral schools were very numerous and for both sexes, most of those for females being under the discipline of St. Benedict. In the convent of Arles nearly 200 nuns were occupied in copying religious books, or sometimes

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the works of the ancients. The Irish monasteries at this time surpassed all others in maintaining the traditions of learning. The course of 7 sciences or liberal arts, divided into the trivium (grammar, dialectics, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music), was introduced in the 6th century, and defined in two jargon hexameters : Gramm. loquitur; Dia. vera docet; Rhet. verba colorat; Mus. canit; Ar. numerat; Geo. ponderat; Ast. colit astrá. Yet learning was for the most part of a fantastic character and put to frivolous uses, and excepting the writings of Boëthius, the last utterance of classical culture, the principal productions and text books of the time were the arid compilations of Isidorus of Seville, Capella, and Cassiodorus. The 7th century, says Hallam, was the nadir of the human mind in Europe, and its movement in advance began with Charlemagne before the close of the next. This monarch invited to his court Alcuin from the cloisters of York, Clement from Ireland, and Theodulf from Germany, and reëstablished the palatial school, in which the sons of some of the nobility were educated with his own children, and which accompanied him wherever he went. It was called the palatine academy, and the members of it took names borrowed from sacred or profane history; thus Charlemagne was called David, Alcuin Horace, Angilbert Homer, and Gisla Lucia. In this school, and afterward in those of Tours and Fulda, the course of instruction embraced all the learning of the age. He also founded schools in every bishopric and monastery, in which reading, singing, computation, grammar, and the learning of psalms by heart were the exercises; and he instituted two schools at Soissons and Metz solely for instruction in church music, under the care of Italian masters. In two capitularies addressed by him to the religious preachers under his government, and to the abbé Bangulf, the head of a religious order, he insisted on a higher education for the priesthood, and the multiplication of correct copies of the Scriptures and of the Latin classics; and he bestowed fortune and honors on those monasteries and monks that excelled in the art of producing correct and beautiful copies. The study of Greek was partially revived, and it was made a condition of the endowment of the school at Osnabrück that there should always be clerks there skilled in that language. The emperor made an unsuccessful effort for the culture of the German language, causing a collection of the German popular songs to be made; yet his design was not seconded by the clergy, who esteemed German a barbarous tongue and relic of paganism which ought to be extirpated rather than cultivated. Less than a century after Charlemagne, King Alfred revived letters and schools in England, which had been almost extinguished by the Danish invasions, rich libraries having disappeared in the pillage of churches and convents. At his accession Wessex could not boast a single person able to translate a Latin book. He invited to his court

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