THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS
The Greeks originally recognized two branches of liberal education[6] (1) Gymnastics, for the body, and (2) Music, for the soul. Out of music grew, in process of time, not only the so-called Liberal Arts, that is, the arts that go to constitute the education of every freeman, but also what was regarded as a superfluous luxury (pe??tt?), Philosophy. It is the purpose of this appendix to trace, as far as possible, this gradual development.
In doing so, one must bear in mind that originally the term "Music" covered, not only what we call music, but also poetry, and that poetry was the vehicle of all the science that then was. The Homeric aoidos knows the "works of gods and men." Strictly speaking, therefore, it was out of music and poetry that all the arts and sciences grew. The first step in this direction was taken when Letters were introduced, that is, about the first Olympiad.[7] But it was long before Letters were regarded as a separate branch of education; they were simply a means of recording poetry. Even as late as the time of Plato, Letters are still usually included under Music. In Aristotle, they are recognized as a separate branch. It follows from this that, when we find Greek writers confining soul-education to Music, or Music and Letters, we must not conclude that these signify only playing and singing, reading and writing. Socrates was saying nothing new or paradoxical, when he affirmed that Philosophy was the "highest music." The Pythagoreans had said the same thing before him, and there can be no doubt that Pythagoras himself included under Music (1) Letters, (2) Arithmetic, (3) Geometry, (4) Astronomy, (5) Music, in our sense, and (6) Philosophy (a term invented by him). Plato did the same thing. He speaks of "the true Muse that is accompanied with truth (?????) and philosophy." But in his time "Music" was used in two senses, a broad one, in which it included the whole of intellectual education, and a narrow one, in which it is confined to music in the modern sense. It is in this latter sense that it is used by Aristotle, when he makes the intellectual branches of school education (1) Letters, (2) Music, and (3) Drawing. Philosophy he places in a higher grade. Having distinguished Letters from Music, it is natural enough that he should assign to the former the branches which Pythagoras had included under the latter. His literary scheme appears to be (1) Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Dialectic, (4) Arithmetic, (5) Geometry, (6) Astronomy. Add Music, and we have exactly the Seven Liberal Arts; but, as Drawing must also be added, it is clear that there was, as yet, no thought of fixing definitely the number seven. That Drawing was for a long time part of the school curriculum, is rendered clear by a passage in a work of Teles (b.c. 260) quoted by StobÆus (xcviii, 72), in which it is said that boys study (1) Letters, (2) Music, (3) Drawing; young men, (4) Arithmetic, and (5) Geometry. The last two branches are here already distinguished from Letters; but we cannot be sure that the list is intended to be exhaustive. What is especially noticeable in the list of Teles is, that it draws a clear distinction between the lower and higher studies, a distinction which foreshadows the Trivium and Quadrivium of later times.[8]
Philosophy, or the highest education, Aristotle divided into (1) Theory and (2) Practice. Theory he subdivided into (a) Theology, First Philosophy, or Wisdom, called later Metaphysics, the science of the Unchangeable, and (b) Physics, the science of the Changeable; Practice into (a) Ethics, including Politics and Œconomics, and (b) Poetics or Æsthetics.
After Teles we hear little of the Greek school-curriculum until about the Christian era. Meanwhile, the Romans, having acquired a smattering of Greek learning, began to draw up a scheme of studies suitable for themselves. It is noticeable that in this scheme there is no such distinction as the Greeks drew between liberal (??e?????a?, ?????????, ?????a?) and illiberal (??a?s??) arts.[9] As early as the first half of the second century b.c., Cato the Censor wrote a series of manuals for his son on (1) Ethics, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Medicine, (4) Military Science, (5) Farming, (6) Law. It is very significant that the only Greek school-study which appears here is Rhetoric; this the Romans, and notably Cato himself, always studied with great care for practical purposes. It seems that Cato, in order to resist the inroads of Greek education and manners, which he felt to be demoralizing, tried to draw up a characteristically Roman curriculum. Greece, however, in great measure, prevailed, and half a century later we find Varro writing upon most of the subjects in the Greek curriculum: Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, Music, Philosophy, besides many others. He wrote a treatise in nine books, called Disciplinarum Libri. Ritschl, in his QuÆstiones VarronianÆ,[10] tried to show that these "DisciplinÆ" were the Seven Liberal Arts, plus Architecture and Medicine, and Mommsen, in his Roman History, has followed him; but Ritschl himself later changed his opinion. There seems no doubt that (1) Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Dialectic, (4) Music, (5) Geometry, and (6) Architecture were treated in the work: what the rest were we can only guess.[11] There is no ground for the assertion that the Seven Liberal Arts were obtained by dropping Architecture and Medicine from Varro's list. It must have been about the time of Varro, if not earlier, that Roman education came to be divided into three grades, called respectively (1) Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, and (3) Philosophy, the last falling to the lot of but few persons. Of course "Grammar" now came to have a very extensive meaning, as we can see from the definition of it given by Dionysius Thrax, in his grammar, prepared apparently for Roman use (b.c. 90). In the Scholia to that work (I am unable to fix their date), we find the Liberal Arts enumerated as (1) Astronomy, (2) Geometry, (3) Music, (4) Philosophy, (5) Medicine, (6) Grammar, (7) Rhetoric.[12]
But to return to the Greeks. In the works of Philo JudÆus, a contemporary of Jesus, we find the Encyclic Arts frequently referred to, and distinguished from Philosophy. The former, he says, are represented by the Egyptian slave Hagar, the latter by Sarah, the lawful wife. One must associate with the Arts before he can find Philosophy fruitful. In no one passage does Philo give a list of the Encyclic Arts. In one place we find enumerated (1) Grammar, (2) Geometry, (3) Music, (4) Rhetoric (De Cherub., § 30); in another (1) Grammar, (2) Geometry, (3) "the entire music of encyclic instruction" (De Agricult., § 4); in another (1) Grammar, (2) Music, (3) Geometry, (4) Rhetoric, (5) Dialectic (De Congressu QuÆr. Erud. Grat., § 5); in another, (1) Grammar, (2) Arithmetic, (3) Geometry, (4) Music, (5) Rhetoric (De Somniis, § 35), etc.
It would seem that the Encyclic Arts, according to Philo, were (1) Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Dialectic, (4) Arithmetic, (5) Geometry, (6) Music. Astronomy appears in none of the lists. Philosophy is divided into (1) Physics, (2) Logic, (3) Ethics (De Mutat. Nom., § 10), a division that was long current.
From what has been adduced, I think we may fairly conclude that at the Christian era no definite number had been fixed for the liberal arts either at Athens, Alexandria, or Rome. The list apparently differed in different places. Clearly the Roman programme was quite different from the Greek. Shortly after this era, we find Seneca (who died a.d. 65) giving the liberal arts, liberalia studia, as (1) Grammar, (2) Music, (3) Geometry, (4) Arithmetic, (5) Astronomy (Epist., 88). He divides Philosophy into (1) Moral, (2) Natural, (3) Rational, and the last he subdivides into (a) Dialectic and (b) Rhetoric. Above all he places Wisdom, "Sapientia perfectum bonum est mentis humanÆ" (Epist., 89). Here we see that two of the Seven Liberal Arts are classed under Philosophy. A little later, Quintilian divides all education into (1) Grammar, and (2) Rhetoric, but condescends to allow his young orator to study a little Music, Geometry, and Astronomy.
Turning to the Greeks, we find Sextus Empiricus, who seems to have flourished in Athens and Alexandria toward the end of the second century, writing a great work against the dogmatists or "mathematicians," of whom he finds nine classes, corresponding to six arts, and three sciences of philosophy. The arts are (1) Grammar, (2) Rhetoric, (3) Geometry, (4) Arithmetic, (5) Astronomy, (6) Music: the sciences, (1) Logic, (2) Physics, (3) Ethics. We are now not far from the Seven Liberal Arts; still we have not reached them.
There is not, I think, any noteworthy list of the liberal arts to be found in any ancient author after Sextus, till we come to St. Augustine. In his Retractiones, written about 425, he tells us (I, 6) that in his youth he undertook to write Disciplinarum Libri (the exact title of Varro's work!), that he finished the book on (1) Grammar, wrote six volumes on (2) Music, and made a beginning with other five disciplines, (3) Dialectic, (4) Rhetoric, (5) Geometry, (6) Arithmetic, (7) Philosophy. It has frequently been assumed that we have here, for the first time, the Seven Liberal Arts definitely fixed; but there is nothing whatever in the passage to justify this assumption. The author does not say "the other five disciplines," but merely "other five." Among these five, moreover, is named Philosophy, which, though certainly a "discipline," was never, so far as I can discover, called an art, liberal or otherwise. There is not the smallest reason for tracing back the Seven Liberal Arts to St. Augustine, who surely was incapable of any such playing with numbers. He does not, indeed, recognize the "Seven."
It is in the fantastic and superficial work of Martianus Capella, a heathen contemporary of Augustine's, that they first make their appearance, and even there no stress is laid upon their number. They are (1) Grammar, (2) Dialectic, (3) Rhetoric, (4) Geometry, (5) Arithmetic, (6) Astronomy, (7) Music. These, no doubt, were the branches taught in the better schools of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries, when, on the whole, the Greek liberal curriculum had supplanted the Roman rhetorical one. There is not the slightest ground for supposing that Capella had anything to do with fixing the curriculum which he celebrates. His work is a wretched production, sufficiently characterized by its title, The Wedding of Mercury and Philology. He wrote about seven arts because he found seven to write about. Attention was first called to the number of the arts, and a mystical meaning attached to it, by the Christian senator, Cassiodorus (480-575) in his De Artibus et Disciplinis Liberalium Litterarum. He finds it written in Prov. ix, 1, that "Wisdom hath builded her house. She hath hewn out her seven pillars." He concludes that the Seven Liberal Arts are the seven pillars of the house of Wisdom. They correspond also to the days of the week, which are also seven. It is to be observed that he distinguishes the "Arts" from the "Disciplines," or, as they said later, the Trivium from the Quadrivium. The pious notion of Cassiodorus was worked out by Isidore of Seville (died 636) in his EtymologiÆ, and by Alcuin (died 804) in his Grammatica. Of course, as soon as the number of the arts came to be regarded as fixed by Scripture authority, it became as familiar a fact as the number of the planets or of the days of the week, or indeed, as the number of the elements. About a.d. 820 Hrabanus Maurus (776-856), a pupil of Alcuin's, wrote a work, De Clericorum Institutione, in which the phrase Septem Liberales Artes is said to occur for the first time. About the same date Theodulfus wrote his allegorical poem De Septem Liberalibus in quadam Pictura Descriptis.[13]
The Liberal Studies after St. Augustine did not include Philosophy, which rested upon the Seven Arts, as upon "seven pillars," and was usually divided into (1) Physical, (2) Logical, (3) Ethical.[14] After a time Philosophy came to be an all-embracing term. In a commentary on the TimÆus of Plato, assigned by Cousin to the twelfth century, we find the following scheme:—
| Philosophy | - | | Practical | - | | Ethics. |
| Economics. |
| Politics. |
|
| Theoretical | - | | Theology. |
| Mathematics. | - | | Arithmetic | | - | = Quadrivium. |
| Music |
| Geometry |
| Astronomy |
| Physics. |
The author expressly says that "Mathematica quadrivium continet"; but he plainly does not include the Trivium under Philosophy. This, however, was done the following century. In the Itinerarium Mentis in Deum of St. Bonaventura (1221-74) we find the following arrangements:—
| Philosophy | - | | Natural | - | | Metaphysics--essence: leads to First Principle = Father. |
| Mathematics--numbers, figures: leads to Image = Son. |
| Physics--natures, powers, diffusions: leads to Gift of Holy Spirit. |
|
| Rational | - | | Grammar--power of expression = Father. |
| Logic--perspicuity in argument = Son. |
| Rhetoric--skill in persuading = Holy Spirit. |
|
| Moral | - | | Monastics--innascibility of Father. |
| Œconomics--familiarity of Son. |
| Politics--liberality of Holy Spirit. |
Here we have the Trivium, under the division "Rational," while the Quadrivium must still be included under "Mathematics." In both cases we get nine sciences or disciplines, and the number was apparently chosen, because it is the square of three, the number of the Holy Trinity. In the latter case this was certainly true. Speaking of the primary divisions of Philosophy, the Saint says: "The first treats of the cause of being, and therefore leads to the Power of the Father; the second of the ground of understanding, and therefore leads to the Wisdom of the Word; the third of the order of living, and therefore leads to the goodness of the Holy Spirit."
Dante, in his Convivio (II, 14, 15), gives the following scheme, based upon the "ten heavens," nine of which are moved by angels or intelligences, while the last rests in God.
| Liberal Arts | - | | Trivium | - | | Grammar | Moon | Angels. |
| Dialectic | Mercury | Archangels. |
| Rhetoric | Venus | Thrones. |
|
| Quadrivium | - | | Arithmetic | Sun | Dominions. |
| Music | Mars | Virtues. |
| Geometry | Jupiter | Principalities. |
| Astrology | Saturn | Powers. |
| Philosophy | - | | Physics and Metaphysics | Starry Heaven | Cherubim. |
| Moral Science | Crystalline Heaven | Seraphim.[15] |
| Theology | Empyrean | God. |
In Dante are summed up the ancient and mediÆval systems of education.
