Address in Praise of Founders

"Encoenia Exercises" The University Monthly VII, 9 (June 1888): 2-6. (UA Case 71)

Let me endeavor to present to you some aspects of Plato’s theory of education, and illustrate them by reference to more modern views. Education was for Plato, in a word, the development of the capacities of the pupils in order that they might become good citizens. In the seventh book of the Republic he describes his method in these words:—

"Certain professors of education are mistaken in saying that they can put a knowledge into the soul which was not there before like giving eye to the blind; whereas our argument shows that the power is already in the soul, and that as the eye cannot turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too, when the eye of the soul is turned round, the whole soul must be turned from the world of generation into that of being and be­come able to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, that is to say, of the good. And this is conversion, and the art will be how to accomplish this as easily and completely as possible; not implanting eyes for they exist already, but giving them a right direction which they have not."

This passage indicates that the right preceptorial method was based upon the fact that the child to be educated was at the outset possessed of certain physical and mental endowments. The teacher is not a sculptor who moulds into conformity with his own ideal the lifeless block. Rather does the teacher feed and water the child's soul as a care­ful gardener would nourish his plants. Thus a com­mon word of education in Plato is "nurture." The teacher gives the child its nourishment by as­similating which it expands with its rightful sta­ture. But even the idea, of nurture, though useful as a figurative explanation of education, falls far short of a full account of it, for nurture has to do with the body while education has to do with the mind, or rather, as Plato says, the soul. Not that he ig­nored the training of the body; indeed gymnastics was one of the compulsory subjects in his curriculum of study. But the training of the body was for Plato not an end but simply a means to the formation of a fully developed soul. Thus the nurture of the soul is the problem of the educationist. But further, it is not enough for the teacher to have as his principle the nurture of the youth; he must know what are the highest capacities of the youth and his aim must be to nourish those capacities. In other words the teacher must not be satisfied with a method; he must be clear as to the end which this method is to subserve. Plato, with his Greek proclivities, held that the ideal man was the good citizen, one who considered us his chiefest delight the furtherance of the well-being of the state. Here are two essentials of a right education, the process, namely, the development of character and the re­sult, namely, the disinterested citizen.

Before the details of the process are considered, it is worthy of notice in how far the general prin­ciple accords with more modern ideas. At once PIato's system opposes itself absolutely to every form of cramming. Cram is the stultification and repression of the mind, and not the method by which it grows. Indirectly Plato would object to examinations as leading to promote cramming. Again his system, as that by which is attained the good character, is antagonistic in spirit to the sys­tem which has as its aim the imparting of knowledge. He who can make use of what he knows, though he may know little, is better educated, Plato would say, than he who knows much but cannot make use of it. Thus there is no such thing as useful knowledge. That man alone who has the capacity to use knowledge can possess useful knowledge. The thing of consequence is not the bestowal of a certain quantity of useful in­formation, but the development of the capacity to understand. So far Plato would agree with the view that education should be practical in the sense that only he who is able to turn his know­ledge to account has received anything worthy of the name of education. But Plato would differ from the modern advocates of a practical education in his conception of the capacity to be developed in order to give the pupil a mastery of things. The end of education is not the enabling of a student to secure a sufficiency of bread and butter. The necessaries of physical life are not to be despised, but a man cannot live by bread alone, he must live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Thus the end of education is to build up the righteous character. Everything that conduces to that end is useful. That which ignores that end is not only useless but detrimental. The imparting of knowledge, if considered as the end of education, is hurtful, as it tends to make the mind merely receptive. The cry for a practical education may be a cry to be suppressed if it means the putting of bread in the place to be occupied by good character.

Once more Plato's ideas would come into conflict with the opinion that culture of any kind was the end of education, or that a college was to congratu­late itself upon the number of clever men it succeeded in producing. Plato would not condemn cleverness or culture, but he would bid us remem­ber that a clever rogue was no uncommon person, and that it was also common to see culture divorced from all interest in the welfare of man. Clever­ness might be a means to evil; culture might lead to a disdain of one's fellow-men. Cleverness and culture are justified only if they submit to work in the sphere of goodness.

There is another modern view with which the view of Plato partly coincides. It is often said that certain subjects of study, as mathematics, Greek, and it may be philosophy, are valuable mainly as a mental training, in contradistinction to such a subject as science, which is valuable, so the argument runs, not so much for its mental disci­pline as for its practical application. Plato would have preferred to say that not some but all subjects should be made a mental discipline, and yet that all subjects must be estimated by their conse­quences upon life. Thus, while for him every subject must furnish a mental training, it must be more than a mere mental training, or it is value­less. It must bear upon the life and character. The modern educationist might be willing to admit that philosophy and classics could be made to influence the lives of the pupils, but he might hesitate to extend the admission to mathematics. Plato would have replied that the doubt as to whether the study of mathematics did or did not influence character could arise only from a con­tracted view of mathematics or a contracted esti­mate of what formed character.

The branches of education were classed by Plato as primary and secondary. Primary educa­tion consisted of the two customary subjects of Greek teaching, music and gymnastics. Music was the generic term for art of all kinds, including poetry. As music embraced the fairy tales and tales of heroes told by mothers to their children, the right education must be dated from earliest infancy. No tale must be told which did not exalt virtue and condemn vice. Art in its most general signification is occupied with the expression of the beautiful and the beautiful was for the ordinary Greek synonymous with the good.

"Absence of grace," says Plato, "and inharmoni­ous movement are nearly allied to ill-words and ill-nature as grace and harmony are the sisters and images of goodness and virtue" "Let our artists," he says again, "be those who are gifted to discern the true nature of beauty and grace; then will our youth dwell in a land of health and fair sights and sounds, and beauty, the effluence of fair works will meet the sense like a breeze and insensibly draw the soul even in youth into harmony with the beauty of reason." Art then was an essential in Greek education as by means of it the eye of the soul was turned so that it might catch the first flush of the rising sun of reason.

Since art has from the days of Plato developed with civilization, the higher and more complex art of to-day is as worthy of taking a place in a com­plete education as was the more elementary art of the Greeks in their education. It is one of the tendencies of our perhaps too easy grasp of the abstract, that we have in our colleges avoided an artistic training. We speak of our arts' education in which no art is found, but the art of poetry. Painting, sculpture, architecture are almost un­taught and unknown. Even music, though taught extensively to-day, is not taught as Plato conceived it should be taught. One might be able to play musical instruments and understand musical scales without knowing what it is in a great piece of music that makes it great. To learn five passages from Shakespeare and to understand the connexion of the sentences is not to know what constitutes a masterpiece of dramatic art; nor does he know poetry who can make flowing rhymes. A tragedy or comedy is understood by him alone who knows something of the working of the artist's imagination. It is not different in music. Notes and scales are good enough in their inferior place. To be able to play an instrument may also be good enough in its inferior place. But for the regular scholar the greatest accomplishment is to understand and enter into sympathy with the heave and swell and ebb of the harmonious tide of sound. For, so Plato would say, thus to take the composer's place and feel as he felt was to have the soul rightly attuned to a harmony which lifted one away from the discord of life; and harmony is the prophecy of goodness. Thus the uppermost purpose of the occupant of a collegiate chair of music would be to make the student capable of appreciating the mas­terpieces of the musical art. The same is true of painting and sculpture though in the case of these a college would labor under the difficulty of being unable to procure the original works,  nevertheless good copies of pictures and good casts of statues could be obtained. In this way Plato's conception of art would find its appreciation in modern education.

The first thing which strikes us is the wide difference between the Greek and our estimate of the educational power of the beautiful. We play with the beautiful and with the single exception of the beautiful of poetry, think it to be unworthy of serious study. But why should the beautiful in poetry be selected for study and the other forms of the beautiful ignored? The beauty of poetry is un­doubtedly the highest beauty, but the world of music and painting and sculpture and architecture are large worlds. They occupy no mean place in the starry cluster of things that are lovely. We are so dominated by the narrowly practical that we in effect assert that beauty is of no use. Matthew Arnold, in his criticism of American civilization, spoke of it as failing to be interesting. Education, not only in America but elsewhere, would be more interesting if the beautiful were co­ordinated in collegiate training with the practical and the intellectual. Like political parties, colleges are busy feeling the pulse of the country, and cater­ing to the opinions of the majority. Chairs are founded because they attract students, and not be­cause they meet an eternal need. It is one of the highest offices of a true education, the spirit of Plato would say, to break down the high walls which surround the ordinary life instead of building up these walls till they touch heaven. And nothing could be more effectual in extending the horizon of American life than the attainment of the perception of things beautiful.

Plato, however, thought that it was possible to run to excess in musical training, and so produce effeminacy of the soul. To counteract this tend­ency was the province of gymnastics. True, gymnastics is, according to Plato, an art and the twin sister of music. It effected two important results, first, the healthy body, and second, the temperate soul. It differed from unregulated exercise. The usual outdoor sports of our colleges are, Plato would agree, good in part and in part bad. They are good in that they, when engaged in moderately, produce a fair measure of health. They are bad when they are indulged in immoder­ately, because the health obtained through them may be only the fair outside of weakness and be­cause they give the student a distaste for his more important collegiate work. But Plato's main rea­son for belittling indiscriminate sport is that it is treated not as an art but simply as an amusement. Each sport is, no doubt, capable of being made scientific, and so we speak of a scientific game of cricket or foot ball. But the Greek would say that those sports can be made truly scientific by him alone who is at home in the master science—gym­nastics. The study of gymnastics may not be amusing any more than the study of philosophy may be amusing, but amusement is not the imme­diate object. If by diligent pursuit of true athletics every part of the body be developed in harmony with every other part the ultimate result will be more than an hour's amusement; it will be the joy of a mastery over one's physical frame and the deep delight of health. One sport develops only certain sets of muscles and certain organs of the body. The art of gymnastics treats the body as a whole and yet looks to every part. Grace of move­ment and perfect health are the ultimate products. Perfect grace joined with perfect health a combina­tion not often found in our country, was an every day sight on the streets of Athens or Sparta. The movements of the body which imitate the flight of birds or the flow of water are not to be attained by any study of how to walk or pose. "Hard is the good," Plato says. Physical grace which is the cause of the delight in the easy doing of difficult things, is obtainable only by a severe bodily disci­pline. Moreover grace of body is nearly allied to grace of soul. He, every part of whose body is in working harmony with every other part, will not create physical disorder by any kind of excess. Thus the final merit of gymnastics is that it aids in the formation of a temperate or well balanced character. The modern view is gradually recogniz­ing steady and well regulated gymnastics as against spasmodic exercise. But we do not yet esteem athletics as an art or make it a compulsory subject in our arts course. It may be that here also as well as in the case of the loftier arts we might with advantage adopt the Grecian standards.

In Plato's theory of primary education, nothing remained to be done after the youth had been trained in gymnastics and music, except to test them to see if the training had produced the ex­pected results. Then if they came out victorious from every trial, they were counted worthy to be rulers and guardians of the state.

The scheme of secondary or higher education re­quired that the student must not only engage in gymnastics and the various branches of music, but must spend some years in obtaining a knowledge of the sciences, and especially the master-science, namely, the science of good. Plato's list of the sciences is incomplete, because of the elementary character of scientific research of his day. He speaks of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and the science of harmony; but mechanics, chemistry, biology and sociology were unknown to him. In order to understand his general views, however, it is not important to discuss the position which science in his time had actually reached. It is necessary to know simply that a scientific education was to be given to the rulers. But this statement is likely to convey an erroneous impression, owing to the difference between Plato's and our conception of what would be embraced under a scientific educa­tion. His view of the study of science is unlike the generally received view of to-day in that he had no thoughts of advocating the study of science as a means towards procuring the necessaries of life. Arithmetic was ta be studied not in order to facilitate the making of change or to count interest or to work questions in stocks. The truly intelli­gent man studied arithmetic with a very different object that he might understand, namely, the nature of number, the seemingly simple little matter of odd and even. Thereby he learned the principle that lies at the foundation of arithmetic and was so far conducted on his way to a knowl­edge of the good. Geometry, again, was to be studied not for the purpose of measurement or for any reason commonly called practical, but that a knowledge might be gained of the nature of space. A right conception of space was an additional step towards an understanding of the good. Further astronomy rightly interpreted had nothing to do with the majority of the celestial orbs or with navigation. At the basis of astronomy lay the nature of motion and the idea of force, and these principles also were to be studied with a view to their connexion with the ultimate or final principle of the good. So was it with all the special sciences, each of which rests on an hypothesis or universal principle. To the principles enumerated by Plato modern science would add the principles of chemical affinity, vitality, sociality and the general principle of evolution. What then is the good? The science of the good has for its object the systematic  criticism of all the principles with a view to construct in thought the ordered universe. Plato's position at once assumes interest for us when it is understood that in his philosophy the good is fre­quently identified with God. The universe is a harmonious whole, every part working together for good with every other part, from the pebble or  blade of grass to the stars in their courses—this universe is the revelation of God. Thus the crowning science, which unites and gives strength to all the sciences from arithmetic to sociology is theology or the science of God. Plato consequently says with emphasis that every man who should undertake to guide the ship of state must end beforehand some years in the study of theology. Plato lays stress upon a knowledge of the good as the highest and best knowledge because he believed that anyone who really knew the good would perform the good, or in other words that a knowledge of God was the essential condition of rational obedience.

It is almost impossible to contrast this idea of Plato's with modern opinion owing to the fact that modern opinions are so diversified; but a broad contrast may nevertheless be made. It is a general impression now-a-days that theology is independ­ent of science as regards its object and largely op­posed to science as regards its method. Because of this supposed difference a theological training is now given only to certain students, those namely who intend to be ministers Those students are generally expected to have taken a course in arts, but only because it is required of them to be men of intelligence. So likewise it is believed that men can be completely educated though they know nothing of theology. The course in theology is absolutely distinct from the course in arts or science. Again, not only is theology conceived of as separate from science, but there are as many theologies as there are sects.

Thus we find each denomination with its own divinity schools in which are taught the tenets of the sect. This state of things would have been in­comprehensible to Plato, who believed that theology was essentially one and was the truth of science. Plato says nothing more strongly than that the student cannot really know science till he knows theology, any more than he can know theology till he has become acquainted with science.

The modern isolation of the study of the science of God is a direct outcome of our views of God. He is considered as a being independent and external to the world. He has to do with the working of the world so it is thought only as a machinist has to do with the working of the machine. God is supposed to be capable of inter­fering with the order of the universe as an engineer might interfere with the running of his engine. Thus is popular theology. God is especially manifest in the peculiar, the strange, the incomprehen­sible, the region of miracle. At this Plato would shake his head. It is the glory of the good, he would say, that it is manifest in the brown earth and the daily sky. God is not far from every one of us. In Him we live and move and have our being. He is not manifest in the peculiar any more than in the usual, in the strange any more than in the common; or in that which occurs once in a thousand years any more than in that which takes place every minute of the day. The good is not something occupying a special place and ap­pearing only at special seasons. It is identified with the laws of science and the things of every­day life. It is the truth and explanation of all things, usual and unusual, strange and ordinary. Plato might have, in a large measure, appropriated the language of the poet, who says: —

What shall I give? and which are my miracles?
Realism is mine—my miracles take freely.
Take without end, I offer them to you wherever your feet carry you, or your eyes reach.
Why? Who makes much of a miracle,
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles.
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I loved—or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at the table at dinner with my mother,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey bees around the hive of a summer hour,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds--or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown—or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring,
Or whether among those I like best and that like me best--mechanics, boatmen, friends,
Or among the savans, or to the soiree, or to the opera,
Or stand a long time looking at the movements of machinery,
Or behold children at their sports,
Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old woman,
Or the sick in hospitals or the dead carried to burial,
Or see my own eyes and figure in the glass,
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles;
The whole referring, vet each distinct and in its place,
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle;
Every inch of space is a miracle;
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same;
Every cubic foot of the interred swarms with the same;
Every spear of grass--the frames, limbs, organs of men and women, and all that concerns them;
All these are to me unspeakable perfect miracles.
To me the sea is a continued miracle;
The fishes that swim, the rocks, the instinct, the waves— the ships with men in them;
What stranger miracles are there?

Thus theology has to do directly with the world and the laws of the world. It is not opposed to science, but is the blossom and fruit of science. It is not understood rightly if said to occupy a position of exclusiveness and antagonism towards the realm of reason and experiment. The true theology is not the impossible explanation of the incomprehen­sible, but the rational or reasoned comprehension of the universe.

I have sharpened the contrast between the Platonic and the modern conceptions, perhaps more than is justifiable. I have given what seems to me to be the tendency of Plato's idea rather than a view which he ever explicitly enunciates, and there are many indications that the exclusiveness of theology is disappearing. Our foremost theolo­gians are now prepared to welcome the discoveries of science, no matter what may be their nature, and many also are looking forward to and aiding in bringing about a union in aim and thinking of the various denominations. The outcome of this latter tendency may be the establishment in our colleges of chairs of theology in which the nature of God may be taught irrespective of dogmas.

To sum up the main aspects of Plato’s theory of education: Education is the development of all the capacities of the pupil. A harmonious nature must first of all be secured and this is to be obtained by exercise of mind and body. Gymnastics is made compulsory and is associated with art, in which music and poetry take a prominent part. Thus the body and the imagination are properly nurtured. That the intellect also may be developed the youth must subsequently study science with a view to comprehending the good. A harmonious nature imbued with a knowledge of the good will do what is good. The aim and result of the teaching is the whole character. We moderns may sit at Plato's feet and learn of him the right place in the college course for bodily training, the right view of art and the true dignity of the study of theology.