Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 06.djvu/751

* EDUCATION. 653 EDUCATION. ing, discus-throwing, javelin-casting, wrestling, and boxing. Nor were the music schools dc- signe<l to produce perlornicrs : they were rather schools of expression. "Gjniinaslic for the hody, music for the soul." was Plato's summary of the process of education, each in its way to prodice harmony of develojnnent. In the fifth century B.C. intellectual education was much broadened by the Sophists, and nmch greater scope given to individualism. It became more largely a liter- ary process. dilTcrcntiating into the rhetorical or oratorical and the philosophical educatiim. Of the former, Socrates is the cliief exponent; Socrates. Plato, and Aristotle are the chief ex- ponents of the latter. In the Hci>ubUc of Plato, which may be termed the first scientitic treatise on the subject, elementary education consists of training in g-mnastic and nuisic. including let- ters: secondary, of the study of aritlimetic. geom- etry, music, and astronomy: and higher, of dia- lectics or philosophy. The elementary studies produced a harmony of body and soul that was the basis of all virtue; the secondary led to unity of thought: and the higher led to the contempla- tion of i)ure being, the union of truth and beauty. The purpose of this education was to obtain an insight into the essential nature of things. In this treatise, together with that contained in the Laws, there is found the fundamental distinction between the liberal and the practical education, between the different stages of education, and between the groups of study so long recognized under the terms irhiitm and qiiadriiiiiiti. It is indicative of the importance of education in Greek thought that, with Plato and Xenophon and Aristotle, it finds a place in the discussion of the science of government. Xot only is education to be intrusted to the State, it is the State's most important function. However, in practice the philosophical influence on education but reinforced the tendency toward individualism : for the for- mation of the philosophical schools still further weakened the Greek Commonwealth, instead of counteracting the disintegrating influence of the Sophists, as was the aim of the theory. The rhetorical education of the later Greek period is best represented by Isocrates. It is this type that is rejjroduced at Rome, and best pre- sented in Cicero's dialogue On Oratory, and Quin- tilian's Institiitex of Oralori/. The early Roman education consisted of a training for the prac- tical affairs of life, economic, military, and po- litical, for which little or no literary instruction was ne<-cssarv. The Laws of the Twelve Tables. with the biography and legends of historical characters, furnished all the sibject-matter of this stage, aside from the training given in practical duties. l"ndcr the influence of the Greeks a literary education was substituted, and with the early Empire there was developed an elaborate system consisting of an elementary school, the ludus, which had existed from early times, the grammar or se'condary school, the rhe- torical schools, and. in certain centres, as Rome, Constantinople. Marseilles, etc., a higher insti- tution resembling the modern university. With the loss of lilx>rty >mder the Empire, orators- lost its chief inspiration, and education became large- ly a process of formal training, in which even literature became a study of form. Thovigh many of the emperors — among them Vespasian. Ha- drian, and . toninus — were patrons of education, learning ceased to have any profnuml influence on the character of society. Toward this formal intellectual life, represented in Greece by the philosophical schools, and in Konic by the rhetori- cal schools, the early Chrisiian fathers were rather favorably inclined, notably Clement of Alexandria, Origen. and Basil : but later the at- titude of the Christian teachers became distinctly hostile. Especially is this true of the Latin fathers, as represented by TertuUian and Saint Augustine, the latter being responsible for the edict of the Council of Carthage, which forbade the study of pagan literature by the bishops. The ascetic spirit was another cause of the oppo- sition to learning and culture, since l)oth were es- sentially worldly, and hence evil. Yet to monasti- cism (q.v.) is chiefly due the preservation of learn- ing during the centuries known as the Dark Ages. The rules of Saint Benedict provide for the copy- ing of manuscripts, and the reading or the hear- ing of the Scriptures as a part of the daily rou- tine of monastic life. Yet during some centuries many monasteries existed in which no rea<ling or writing could be done. On the other hand, the monasteries sheltered some at all ages who had an abiding interest in literature and learn- ing. During the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages this was especially so of those monasteries that transmitted the Grecian influence. Saint Basil, in opposition to the extreme asceticism of Egypt and the East, had introduced a more in- tellectual element into Grecian monasticism ; this was carried by Cassianus to southern France, and from there by Saint Patrick to Ireland. Celtic monasticism dominated the Britisli Isles during the seventh and eighth centuries, and thence the intellectual interest was carried to France and the Continent by Alcuin in the eighth century, and by John .Scotus Erigena in the ninth. Scotus marks the beginning of Scho- lasticism (q.v.), though the scholastic movement can hardly be said to have been general before the twelfth century, and it culminated in the thirteenth. Scholasticism was the first of the great intellectual revivals, unless the movement under Alcuin and Charlemagne can be considered a preliminary revival of interest in learn- ing, organized now with the form if not the content of ancient times. (See Art.s. Liber.l.) Scholasticism was distinctly an intellectual move- ment, Iwginning with the discussion of the Pla- tonic and Aristotelian problems of the nature of ideas, and ending with the systematization of all thought in the forin of a theological philosophy. However, the intellectual interest was clothed in a theological form, and jiartook of a logical rather than a rhetorical character: in fact, its exponents sought rather to avoid literary form for severe and precise statement. Out of the scholastic movement came the early universities, at least the one at Paris and its offshoots. In them intellectual interests were provided with a home, and education obtained that institutional foundation which had been wanting since the de- cline of Roman culture and government. This conception of the formal character of the subject matter of education and the disciplinary charac- ter of its method prevailed both within and without the universities until the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. At this time the world awoke to the fact that there were other interests in life besides the religious, and that there was a vast litera- ture much more varied and complete than that