EDUCATION FOR WORK AND FOR LEISURE

When we consider the different arts that have been discovered, and distinguish between those which relate to the necessary conditions of life and those which contribute to the free enjoyment of it (d?a????), we always consider the man who is acquainted with the latter wiser than him who is acquainted with the former, for the reason that the sciences of the latter have no reference to use. Hence it was only when all the necessary conditions of life had been attained that those arts were discovered which have no reference either to pleasure or to the common needs of life; and this took place first in those countries where men enjoyed leisure.—Aristotle.

The free life of God is such as are our brief best moments.—Id.

It is not fitting that the free enjoyment of life should be permitted to boys or to young persons; for the crown of perfection belongs not to the imperfect.—Id.

Obviously, the free enjoyment of life demands not only the noble but also the pleasant; for happiness consists of these too.—Id.

Among the Homeric Greeks, whose life was almost entirely devoted to practical pursuits, education was mainly practical, aiming to produce "a speaker of words and a doer of deeds." As civilization advanced, and higher political forms were evolved, certain classesof men found themselves blessed with leisure which they were not inclined to devote to mere play. In order to make a worthy use of this leisure, they required a certain training in those arts which were regarded as befitting a free man. Education, accordingly, in some states, widened its scope, to include those accomplishments, which enable men to fill their hours of freedom with refined and gracious enjoyment—music and letters. Music, indeed, had been cultivated long before, not only by professional bards, but even by princes, like Achilles and Paris; this, however, was for the sake of amusement and recreation rather than of the free enjoyment of life. It had been regarded as a means, not as an end. We must be careful, in our study of Greek life and education, not to confound play and recreation, which are for the sake of work, with the free enjoyment of life, which is an end in itself, and to which all work is but a means. "Enjoyment is the end." We shall see, as we proceed, to what momentous results this distinction leads, how it governs not only all education but all the institutions of life, and how it finally contributes to break up the whole civilization which it determines. It may fairly be said that Greece perished because she placed the end of life in individual Æsthetic enjoyment, possible only for a few and regarding only the few.

In historic Greece, music came to be an essential part of the education of every free man. Even free women learnt it. Along with music went poetry, and when this came to be written down, it was termed "letters." As every free man came to be his own minstrel and his own rhapsode, the professional minstrel and rhapsode disappeared, and the Homeric poems even, in order to be preserved from oblivion, were committed to writing by an enlightened tyrant—Pisistratus.

The first portion of the Greek people that attained a degree of civilization demanding an education for hours of leisure, was the Æolian race, and particularly the Asiatic portion of it. Accordingly we find that all the earliest musicians and poets, didactic and lyric, are Æolians—Hesiod, Terpander, Arion, AlcÆus, Sappho, Pittacus, etc. Lesbos seems to have taken the lead in this "higher education." The last five names all belong to that island, which produced also the earliest Greek historian and prose-writer—Hellanicus. But the Æolians, though earliest in the field, were soon outstripped by the other two races, the Doric and the Ionic. Æolian education and culture never advanced beyond music and lyric poetry. It knew no drama, science, or philosophy.

The Æolians were followed, almost simultaneously, by the Dorians and Ionians, who pursued two widely divergent directions. The former borrowed the lyric education and culture of the Æolians, and produced several lyric poets of distinguished merit—TyrtÆus, Alcman, Ibycus, Stesichorus: nay, they even advanced far enough to take the first steps in science, philosophy, and dramatic poetry. Pythagoras, Epicharmus, Sophron, Xenarchus, and Susarion were all Dorians. But the progress of the race was retarded and finally checked by rigid political institutions of a socialistic character, which, by suppressing individual initiative, reduced the whole to immobility. The Ionians, on the contrary, borrowing freely from both Æolians and Dorians, and evolving ever freer and freer institutions, carried education and culture to a point which has never been passed, and rarely, if ever, reached, in the history of our race. And when they ceased to grow, and decay set in, this was due to exactly the opposite cause to that which stunted them among the Dorians; namely, to excessive individualism, misnamed liberty. Individualism ruined Athens.

Although education assumed different forms among different portions of the Greek race, there are certain features that seem to have been common to all these forms during the epoch of the "Old Education." Two of these deserve attention.

First. Education was everywhere a branch of statecraft, and the State itself was only the highest educational institution. This was equally true whether the schools were public, as at Sparta, or private, as at Athens. Everywhere citizenship was a degree, conferred only upon sons of free citizens, after a satisfactory examination (d???as?a).

Second. The stages or grades of education were everywhere the same, although their limits were not everywhere marked by the same number of years. The first, extending usually from birth to the end of the seventh year, was that of home education; the second, extending from the beginning of the eighth year to the end of the sixteenth or, perhaps oftener, the eighteenth year, was that of school education; the third, extending from the beginning of the seventeenth or nineteenth year to the end of the twentieth (in Sparta of the thirtieth), was that of college education, or education for the duties of citizenship; the fourth, including the remainder of life, was that of university education, or education through the State, which then was the only university. At the beginning of the third period, the young men took their first State examination, and if they passed it successfully, they received the degree of Cadet or Citizen-novice (?f???); but it was only at the beginning of the fourth period, and after they had passed a second examination (d???as?a e?? ??d?a?), that they received the degree of Man and Citizen and were permitted to exercise all the functions of freemen. The State then became, in a very real sense, their Alma Mater.

In most states, this graded education fell only to the lot of males, the education of females stopping short with the first grade, the family, which was regarded as their only sphere. It was otherwise at Sparta, Teos, and apparently among the Æolians generally. As a consequence it is only among the Æolians and Dorians that any poetesses of note appear—Sappho, Corinna, Telesilla, etc. Although, however, woman's sphere was the family, and she was considered to have done her duty when she worthily filled the place of wife, mother, and mistress, there was nothing to prevent her from acquiring the higher education, if she chose to do so. That she did not often so choose, seems true; still there are examples of learned women even among the Athenians. The daughter of Thucydides is said to have continued his history after his death, and, whether the statement be true or not, the fact that it was made shows that the ability to write history was not regarded as impossible or surprising in a woman.