.

Alongside of this mental training he provides for a bodily training, beginning almost as early and lasting like the other through life. These two elements, μουσική and γυμναστική, form a sort of foundation on which he builds up his advanced education. In this mathematics come first, then dialectics, i. e., the science of reasoning or the laws of thought. Then fifteen years, from thirty-five years of age to fifty, to be spent in the active duties of the government, and from fifty years of age on, in the study and contemplation of philosophy." When we look at Plato's scheme, we notice several points of difference from our modern systems, chief among which are, first, the important part given to physical culture, and, second, the period of education, which, according to Plato, is co-extensive with life itself. The latter part of Plato's scheme is almost exactly parallel with the training of England's literary statesmen, though the Government of England wholly neglects the education of the child.

Says Aristotle, in Book VIII., Chap. I., of his "Politica," "No one can doubt that the legislator ought greatly to interest himself in the care of youth, for where it is neglected it is hurtful to the state. As there is one end in view in every state, it is evident that education ought to be one and the same in all." Chap. II. "What education is and how children ought to be instructed is what should be well known, for now-a-days there are doubts concerning the business of it." . "We cannot determine with certainty whether it is right to instruct a child in what will be useful to him in life or in that which tends to virtue and is really excellent." "The freeman should be taught everything useful which will not make him who knows it mean; but every work is to be esteemed mean and every art and discipline, as well, which renders the body, the mind, or the understanding of freemen unfit for the habits and practice of virtue." "For which reason all those arts which tend to deform the body are called mean, and all those employments which are exercised solely for gain, for they take off from the leisure of the mind and render it sordid." "There is a great deal of difference in the reason for which any one does or learns anything."

Speaking of music as an element of education, he says: "As to music, some may entertain a doubt since most people now use it for the sake of pleasure; but those who originally made it a part of education did so because nature requires not only that we

should be properly employed, but that we should be able to enjoy leisure honorably for this of all things is the principal." "By all means we ought to learn what we should do when at rest."

It will be readily seen that the system of education of Aristotle is less formal than that of Plato, and covers the ground of a limited public education. It is also easier to determine what these systems were not, than just what they were. In the first place they were not utilitarian, using the word in its modern sense, for they insist on philosophical and ethical pursuits. But these, again, were not their sole concern, for they included the study of art, music, and the practice of athletics. Neither did they aim directly at a formal morality. These systems were never put into general practice; they were ideal, a sort of ex post facto plans, based upon living examples of their time. Perhaps Xenophon was the best example of an all-round culture such as these systems taught culture conterminous with a man's life; beginning at birth and ending only with death. It is true that under this system Xenophon shone brightest as a general, Socrates as a moral teacher, Lysias as a lawyer, Isocrates as a rhetorician and writer, thus falling into the niche for which they were naturally, not artificially, destined. Their position in life, as that of every one, was the inevitable outcome of their natural talents plus their cultivation, either of which, we may assume, would have been wellnigh a dead letter without the other.

a

Now amongst the many systems of education, and their name is legion, from Aristotle to the present day, it may as well be confessed, that but few have had any other ostensible object than the very one of Aristotle; i. e., the development of the whole man ; only that from the modern tendency to specialize departments of learning, and to provide different schools and regimen for these separate departments, we are in great danger, today, of mistaking the means for the end. The means that is, the special methods for the prosecution of individual subjects for the end, that is, culture in general. And so, we hear people speak of taking a classical education, a technical, a scientific, a musical education, instead of being trained in these special subjects; no one or two of which can properly be said to constitute an education. It cannot, we think, be too clearly set forth, that the general development of the physical, the mental and the moral in man, has been the aim of the great teachers of mankind, who have allowed special talents

at first to take care of themselves. Today, however, an opposite tendency is seen. The way in which schools for special subjects have been pushed, and the magnificent provision which has been made for them, and, more still, the one-sided influence of men who have had only this special training, is evidently tending to turn aside the minds of men from the old-time idea of education; from, if you please, the Aristotleian idea. Moreover, this specializing of training is but a product of other influence due to the progress, not of the civilization, to which it is so often erroneously attributed, but of the material prosperity of the age and especially, of the blind devotion to that prosperity and to all that it implies; individual wealth, luxury, influence, station. A careful examination of the educational courses of the day will not fail to show that in this race, as in some others, it is "money that makes the mare go." "Put money in thy purse" would seem to be an appropriate, if a somewhat bold motto, for many of the educational institutions of our country, not excluding those of the most exalted pretensions. Not content with the old method of developing the natural aptitude of men by a long course of disciplinary training, we are trying to produce these aptitudes by launching the undisciplined minds of our children into special pursuits. Does this not seem a case of "putting the cart before the horse"? The results of this forcing process of training will be the best proof of its value. In the new order of utilitarian education they have hardly had the opportunity to manifest themselves. Something, however, of what might be expected in this line may be seen, for reasons peculiar to the profession itself, in the preparation of ministers for the church. The constant demand for men in this special field of activity, and the reluctant supply has had a strong tendency to bring into it unfit material by which unquestionably the status of the profession has been lowered. In this case, for the peculiar reasons referred to above, there is also a peculiar excuse. We may imagine, however, a similar result from similar causes, befalling the profession of medicine, astronomy, mathematics, or any department of science or art. Half the world would soon be imbibing their facts and their fancy from meager, if not polluted streams.

But few will be found to deny the reasonableness of that method of education which throws the greatest stress on the development of a man's whole capacity. It is not the general mental attitude towards this question which is at fault, but the strength of the

mighty force which overbears our mental persuasion. That force is, confessedly, all that is represented by the term wealth. It is safe to say that almost all students, now-a-days, who address themselves to the getting an education, do so with the purpose of preparing themselves for making a pecuniary fortune; and failing this, the world pronounces them failures indeed. The schools and even colleges of this country, not excepting our public schools and universities (to take the extremes), are largely modeled on the plan of fitting their students for money-making, in one form or another. The effect of this attitude is, in the case of the lower schools, to exaggerate the already strong money-making spirit and to make it the one object, not only of education but of life, and toinduce a contempt for higher learning which has not for its foundation the same motive. In the case of the universities, where, if anywhere, the tradition of pure education, of culture for its own sake, still exists, this sordid spirit of the age tends to isolate them from the other extreme of the educational army, the common schools; leading the former to seek large endowments for the secure prosecution of their aims, to plant their headquarters aside from the mighty army of students over which they should, but do not preside, to make invidious distinction between the character of their work and that of the officers in the ranks below them; to endeavor, by raising a high pecuniary, rather than a high intellectual barrier, to win a select clientele. Now, no one will deny that making money is a creditable business, if made honestly and for a right purpose, and, so, the endowments of high institutions of learning, in order that talented specialists may prosecute their investigations, is highly praiseworthy. The question is, has either of these pursuits anything to do with a general system of education. We think not. If money considerations are foisted into the early education of children, thus robbing them of the only taste of pure culture which the most of them can ever hope to have, they might as well be sent to the work-shop and store at once. And if special training is declared to be of such moment that immature young men are asked to elect life pursuits before their powers are well in hand, then would they better abandon the university and take up, at the first, with the training school, as many are already doing. No, as James Russell Lowell has recently reminded us, a university has been defined as a place where nothing useful is taught; a sentiment by the way derived from Aristotle's more truthful and

less extravagant statement, "Politica," VIII., III.: “Tò dè Sŋteîv πανταχοῦ τὸ χρήσιμον ἥκιστα ἁρμοττει τοῖς μεγαλοψίχοις καὶ τοῖς ἑλευδέροις.” "To be forever striving for the useful little befits noble and free men." And it is nobility and freedom of soul that any education worthy the name inculcates. But, passing from theory to fact; we are confronted, at the present day, in the United States, with schools of so-called learning, advocating methods based upon diametrically opposite principles. The one of which has for its object the furnishing of the mind with a learning practical and useful (to employ the favorite characterization of this kind of education), the other, aiming at the general and even development of a man's capabilities without regard to its immediate practicality. We do not have to go far to derive the parentage of these two systems. The former, as has been said, is the direct product of the spirit of this practical age-an age, which in politics demands rights before respect for law, in business, profit before honor, in society, wealth before worth. Such an age must perforce demand, in education, facts before theories. But the simple accumulation of facts is like the accumulation of money; in itself, of small practical utility; nay, of decided detriment in unskilful or untrained hands. Moreover, exclusive devotion to the accumulation of facts produces an effect similar to the exclusive devotion to the accumulation of money, namely, an incapacity to handle the material when once acquired. The contrast of the treatment of the facts of evolution by a Darwin and a Haeckel, or a Tyndall, and of the use of their accumulated thousands by a Peabody, and many another millionaire who might be mentioned, will serve to illustrate this truth. There seems to be no doubt that the preceding ages of intellectual training in metaphysical and abstract lore furnished to the human mind just the necessary education for grappling with the facts of modern discovery. The natural order of development would seem to be first, analysis, then synthesis. A man must first have studied and thoroughly mastered the relations of bones in the animal frame before he can reconstruct, from a fraction of the skeleton of an extinct species, not only the skeleton itself, but the entire animal. So the inductive philosophy has no place in the history of a world or in the education of an individual before the deductive philosophy has been, as it were, exhausted. At any rate, we must confess that this has been the history of the development of philosophy and we have