BRANCHES OF GREEK EDUCATION

With thee the aged car-borne Peleus sent me on the day whereon from Phthia to Agamemnon he sent thee, a mere boy, not yet acquainted with mutual war or councils, in which men rise to distinction—for this end he sent me forth to teach thee all these things, to be a speaker of words and a doer of deeds.—(Phoenix in) Homer.

Above all and by every means we provide that our citizens shall have good souls and strong bodies.—Lucian.

Life is the original school—life, domestic and social. All other schools merely exercise functions delegated by the family and by society, and it is not until the latter has reached such a state of complication as to necessitate a division of labor that special schools exist. Among the Homeric Greeks we find no mention of schools, and the only person recorded as having had a tutor is Achilles, who was sent away from home so early in life as to be deprived of that education which he would naturally have received from his father. In what that education consisted, we learn from the first quotation at the head of this chapter. It consisted in such training as would make the pupil "a speaker of words and a doer of deeds"—a man eloquent and persuasive in council, and brave and resolute on the field of battle. For these ends he required, as Lucian says, a good soul and a strong body.

These expressions mark the two great divisions into which Greek education at all periods fell—Mental Education and Physical Education—as well as their original aims, viz. goodness (that is, bravery) of soul and strength of body. As time went on, these aims underwent considerable changes, and consequently the means for attaining them considerable modifications and extensions. Physical education aimed more and more at beauty and grace, instead of strength, while mental education, in its effort to extend itself to all the powers of the mind, divided itself into literary and musical education.

As we have seen, the Greeks aimed at developing all the powers of the human being in due proportion and harmony. But, in course of time, they discovered that the human creature comes into the world with his powers, not only undeveloped, but already disordered and inharmonious; that not only do the germs of manhood require to be carefully watched and tended, but also that the ground in which they are to grow must be cleared from an overgrowth of choking weeds, before education can be undertaken with any hope of success. This clearing process was called by the later Greeks Katharsis, or Purgation, and played an ever-increasing part in their pedagogical systems. It was supposed to do for man's emotional nature what Medicine undertook to do for his body. The means employed were mainly music and the kindred arts, which the ancients believed to exert what we should now call a dÆmonic effect upon the soul, drawing off the exciting causes of disturbing passion, and leaving it in complete possession of itself. It would hardly be too much to say that the power to exert this purgative influence on the soul was regarded by the ancients as the chief function and end of the Fine Arts. Such was certainly Aristotle's opinion.

When purgation and the twofold education of body and mind had produced their perfect work, the result was what the Greeks called Kalokagathia (?a?????a??a) that is, Fair-and-Goodness. Either half of this ideal was named ??et? (aretÊ), Worth or Excellence. We are expressly told by Aristotle (Categories, chap. viii.) that the adjective to ??et? is sp??da??? (spoudaios), a word which we usually render into English by "earnest." And we do so with reason; for to the Greek, Excellence or Worth meant, above all, earnestness, genuineness, truthfulness, thoroughness, absence of frivolity.